oil-refiner

Updated: May 28, 2025

Rockefeller was what used to be called a "self-made" man. He began his business life in Cleveland as a clerk at an extremely modest salary. Capacity for details and for shrewd bargaining, patience, frugality, seriousness, secretiveness, caution, an instinctive sense for business openings, self-control all these were characteristic both of the Cleveland clerk and the later oil-refiner.

Charles Ramsdell Lingley - The United States Since the Civil War