Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.

Nonfiction | Biography | Adult | Published in 1998

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prelude and Chapters 1-4

Chapters 5-8

Chapters 9-12

Chapters 13-16

Chapters 17-20

Chapters 21-24

Chapters 25-28

Chapters 29-32

Chapters 33-35

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

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Discussion Questions

Background

Literary Context: Past Biographies and the Rockefeller Archive Center

Titan is the most ambitious and most comprehensive biography of John D. Rockefeller ever written. As he explains in the book’s foreword, Chernow had access to the Rockefeller Archive Center, “the repository of millions of family documents” (xiv). This access allowed Chernow to undertake a biographical project of unprecedented scope and focus.

Chernow was initially reluctant to write about Rockefeller. Existing studies and biographies, nearly all of which were published during Rockefeller’s lifetime or shortly after his death, betray intense personal or ideological agendas. Detractors such as Henry Demarest Lloyd and Ida Tarbell depicted Rockefeller as the embodiment of everything evil in American economic life. On the other hand, family-sponsored biographies read as hagiographic, or excessively flattering, and thus absurdly shallow. Whether fawning or critical, these books “have been marred by a numbing repetition,” as if the reader is “sitting through the same play over and over again, albeit from slightly different seats in the theater” (xiv). For reasons both personal and political, these earlier authors made no effort to achieve balance or depth.

The Rockefeller Archive, however, allowed Chernow to write the kind of book about Rockefeller that no other biographer has yet attempted: a study of the inner man. In fact, Chernow explained to the curators at the Rockefeller Archive Center that he would not even begin the project unless, by reading the preserved materials, he could detect Rockefeller’s elusive “inner voice,” what Chernow calls “the music of his mind” (xiv). One such window into Rockefeller’s mind was the transcript of a private interview conducted between 1917 and 1920. Reading it left Chernow “astonished,” for it convinced him that the intensely secretive Rockefeller was actually “analytic, articulate, even fiery,” as well as “quite funny” (xv).

Furthermore, the repository contains “twenty thousand pages of letters that Rockefeller received from his more outspoken business associates,” which Chernow describes as “a windfall of historic proportions,” for it reveals “a panorama of greed and guile” under Rockefeller’s watch that “should startle even the most jaundiced students of the Gilded Age” (xv).

Historical Context: The Gilded Age and the Progressive Era

Rockefeller’s life is incomprehensible outside the broader context of the historical eras in which he lived. As an industrial titan, Rockefeller came to embody both the spectacular achievements and dubious ethics of America’s Gilded Age. Likewise, his relentless pursuit of a lucrative monopoly over the oil industry resulted in industrial consolidation, which prompted outrage from Progressive Era reformers and led to significant structural changes in the US economy in the early 20th century.

The mocking phrase “Gilded Age” comes from an 1873 novel co-authored by Mark Twain. This derogatory term, referring to the period of US history from approximately 1870 through 1900, meant to convey the shallowness of this time’s materialist values: gilding—painting a thin layer of gold over a lead or hollow core—is meant to make something cheap look more expensive. The Gilded Age in the popular imagination appears as a period of excess greed and rank corruption in both business and public life. Few historians of late-19th-century America accept this one-sided view of an era rich with complexities. Nonetheless, as the architect of Standard Oil, a remorseless industrial juggernaut that crushed competitors and bribed politicians, Rockefeller seemed to personify Twain’s version of the Gilded Age.

The Progressive Era, on the other hand, was a reformist reaction against Gilded Age excesses. In a political sense, the Progressive Era refers to the first two decades of the 20th century (1901-1920), when a pair of reform-minded presidents, Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, occupied the White House for 16 years. While these progressive presidencies did coincide with important structural reforms (and the ostensibly-conservative William Howard Taft actually initiated more antitrust lawsuits than his predecessor Roosevelt), the Progressive Era’s broader significance encompasses far more than presidential politics. On the social and economic fronts, progressives called attention to the excesses of industrial capitalism. The “muckraking” journalist Ida Tarbell, whose 19-part exposé on Standard Oil led to the trust ultimately being dismantled, wrote with a concentrated outrage that focused public animus on industrial monopolists such as Rockefeller.

Notwithstanding the differences between the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era, we should be careful not to draw too sharp a chronological distinction. Industrial-capitalist greed, corporate shenanigans, and political corruption did not end in 1901, nor did consciences suddenly awaken and reform efforts begin in that year. The best and worst of both eras manifested across the entire half-century they describe (1870-1920). In this sense, they operate as a perfect complement to Chernow’s balanced portrayal of Rockefeller’s life.