Titan

by Ron Chernow

  The second day held surprises for Junior’s detractors. He buttonholed Mother Jones—who had been jailed in Colorado for nine weeks and escorted from the state at bayonet point—and invited her to visit his office. Responding in a friendly manner, she told Junior that she had never believed he knew what “those hirelings out there were doing. I can see how easy it is to misguide you.” Junior kidded her about throwing compliments his way. To the delighted roar of press and spectators, Mother Jones retorted, “I am more inclined to throw bricks.”56 On the stand that day, Junior delivered the mea culpa so long awaited by the public when he admitted that he had taken too narrow a view of a director’s responsibilities. “I should hope that I could never reach the point where I would not be constantly progressing to something higher, better— both with reference to my own acts and . . . to the general situation in the company. My hope is that I am progressing. It is my desire to.”57 Mackenzie King later identified this testimony as the turning point in Junior’s life.

  Such public confessions of error were alien to Senior, who interpreted criticism as the martyrdom of the just. In Junior’s place, he would have reacted with cool defiance or expedient forgetfulness. Yet he saw that his son was following King’s advice, exhibiting uncommon courage, and accomplishing a critical shift in the family’s public posture. Moved by his son’s strength, Senior bequeathed to Junior another eighty thousand shares of CFI stock, which gave him effective control of the company. If he had been scanning the heavens for a sign that his son was strong enough to carry the burden of a colossal fortune, this was it. He said later of his son’s testimony:

  They tried so hard to badger my son, to harrow him into saying something that they could use against him, against us. It was like the trial of Joan of Arc. I don’t know where he got the answers, his language, so quick, so instant to every question. . . . He surprised us all. He seemed to answer like one inspired. Indeed, I believe that his sainted mother must have inspired him; he was so kindly, so right in his attitude and all his statements. 58

  For most reporters, Junior came across as frank and sincere, if a trifle stuffy. Walter Lippmann, however, accused him of mouthing commonplaces.

  Those who listened to him would have forgiven him much if they had felt that they were watching a great figure, a real master of men, a person of some magnificence. But in John D. Rockefeller, Jr., there seemed to be nothing but a young man having a lot of trouble, very much harassed and very well-meaning. No sign of the statesman, no quality of leadership in large affairs, just a careful, plodding, essentially uninteresting person who justifies himself with simple moralities and small-scale virtues. 59

  It was a savage indictment and one repeated frequently over the years. But it failed to appreciate how bravely this pedestrian young man at age forty had managed to appease both a venomous public and an all-powerful father. He had repudiated his father’s principles without seeming to repudiate the man, an ingenious strategy that opened up fresh possibilities for the family. To see how far Junior had traveled beyond his reactionary mentors, one need only cite a hysterical memo that Gates wrote after the Walsh testimony, deploring Junior’s leniency:

  I do not so understand Christ that he adopted any spirit of conciliation toward those who came to him in the spirit of these Unionists. . . . I would have engaged an array of the most brilliant and able counsel to be gotten in New York—men not afraid, if necessary, to make a scene in court. . . . If necessary I would have carried the matter so far as to invite arrest, and I would have resisted arrest, and been carried struggling—shrieking from the court room for the purpose of getting my case vividly, powerfully, before the people of the United States.60

  How much Junior had evolved beyond such die-hard opposition was also made clear when Mother Jones visited him at 26 Broadway. The eighty-four-year-old, cheerfully vulgar, Cork-born rabble-rouser liked to rally striking miners while outfitted in boots and bonnets and peering at them humorously through granny glasses. Now, having helped to turn the Colorado strike into an anti-Rockefeller vendetta, she stood face-to-face with Junior. She teased him that she had pictured him with a hard jaw and firm-set mouth, clutching for money. Mimicking this, she added, “When I saw you going on the stand, and listened to the evidence, and saw the kind of man you are, I was filled with remorse. I felt I had done you a great injustice.”61 Having paid tribute to Junior’s sincerity, Mother Jones did not mince words about his employee-representation plan, which she called “a sham and fraud.”62 But after the bitter stalemate of past years, this meeting represented a major advance in mutual confidence. After the chat, Ivy Lee invited in reporters, and Junior, his face reddening shyly, said, “Gentlemen, I know it is my duty as a director to know more about actual conditions in the mines. I told Mother Jones that, of course, there should be free speech, free assembly, and independent, not company-owned, schools, stores and churches in the mine field. I am going to Colorado as soon as I can to learn for myself.” 63 The promised two-week trip was made in September 1915, an overdue rite of passage that would complete the partial conversion begun in New York.

  When Junior journeyed to southern Colorado, he betrayed the feverish urgency of a man on a spiritual quest. In a second round of hearings in May, Frank Walsh had released subpoenaed copies of correspondence that had passed between Junior and CFI executives during the strike. They showed Junior in his most militantly antiunion mood, implicating him more deeply in management than he had admitted and making the expiatory trip to Colorado even more essential. Having always shrunk from contact with his anonymous foes, Senior confided to a friend that he would give a million dollars to spare his boy exposure to peril in Colorado. He tried to prevail upon Charles O. Heydt to carry a gun, but Junior, determined to prove his courage, refused either weapons or bodyguards. The eight reporters who tagged along were requested, as a security precaution, to keep his itinerary a secret.

  The trip pointed up critical differences between Senior and Junior. For Senior, vast wealth had permitted a retreat to his estates, whereas for Junior it underscored the need for greater openness. Instinctively, he behaved like a head of state, always cordial and generous in public—a style he transmitted to his children. Unlike his father, he did not wish to be eternally at war with the American public and had the courage to make the necessary midcourse corrections; in this last respect, he was a stronger person than his indomitable father, who had always dug in his heels and become intransigent when attacked.

  Throughout his life, Junior had shadowboxed with unseen enemies who suddenly became three-dimensional human beings in the Colorado mining camps. Now, he would mingle with workers whose fate he had governed from afar. First, the caravan stopped at Ludlow itself, a haunted, windblown spot, now denuded of its tents. Emerging from their cars, Junior, King, and the reporters solemnly approached two railroad ties, nailed together in a black cross, marking the spot where the two women and eleven children had been suffocated in the pit. Afterward, they rode to the first of eighteen CFI coal towns, where they lunched on beefsteak, beans, and mashed potatoes. Entering into the spirit of the place, Junior and King responded to Ivy Lee’s suggestion and bought two-dollar suits of denim overalls from a company store before descending a coal shaft.

  At one coal-mining camp, Junior delivered a short talk to workers in the local schoolhouse then suggested, with uncharacteristic spontaneity, that they clear the floor and hold an impromptu dance. As a little four-piece band struck up “The Hesitation Waltz,” he grabbed a miner’s wife and gaily stepped onto the floor. Too well-bred for tokenism, Junior spent the evening dancing with each of the twenty or so women in attendance—an ironic sequel for a young man once so bashful at Brown that he hesitated to dance at all. Nobody was more flabbergasted than Abby, who tracked his progress in the press. “From the papers I gather that your dancing has been one of your greatest assets,” she wrote to him. “I will never demur again.”64

  On October 2, 1915, in the town of Pueblo, Junior addressed two hundred C
FI workers and managers. “This is a red-letter day in my life,” he began. “It is the first time I have ever had the good fortune to meet the representatives of the employees of this great company, its officers and mine superintendents, together, and I can assure you that I am proud to be here, and that I shall remember this gathering as long as I live.” 65 Preaching his gospel of cooperation, he laid out his plans for a joint labor-management grievance panel along with new committees for health, sanitation, mine safety, recreation, and education. Significantly, nobody would be fired for joining a union, and there were promises of new housing, schools, and recreation centers. Taking a down-home approach, Junior laid three heaps of coins on a table to represent workers, managers, and directors then tried to show how each group siphoned off coins, leaving nothing for dividends on the $34 million Rockefeller investment. In the end, Junior must have been fairly persuasive, for 2,404 of 2,846 miners voted for his plan in a secret ballot. On the other hand, possibly from disdain for this paternalism, 2,000 miners boycotted the vote.

  Selling the plan to management was no easier. After initial resistance, Welborn accepted the grievance mechanism and introduced other innovations, but L. M. Bowers opposed this reform, and Junior realized he had to cashier Gates’s uncle. “One of the most unpleasant tasks I ever performed was to get his resignation,” he said. “I shall never forget the three or four hours I spent with him in my house here trying to get him to retire amicably—for he could be a nasty enemy.”66 At this point, Junior’s relations with Gates began to cool forever. The tradition-minded Junior never formally deposed the old gods—his father and Gates—but instead staked out new directions with new advisers. When E. H. Weitzel, CFI’s fuel manager, complained about his clemency toward unions, Junior shot back: “Your attitude in this respect is definitely paternalistic, an attitude which on general principles I am sure you will agree it is unwise for any corporation to maintain. . . . Paternalism is antagonistic to democracy.” 67 Junior had defected, at least halfway, to the enemy camp. But his representation plan was, at best, only a middling success. In the following years, the company weathered four more strikes before the UMW finally won recognition in 1933. Junior’s species of “company union” was outlawed by the Wagner Act in 1935.

  For Junior, the Colorado trip was a trial by fire from which he emerged triumphant, converting the worst moment in the family history into something more promising. As King told Abby during the tour, “From now on he will be able to devote his time to advancing the vast projects . . . [relating] to human beings, without being thwarted at every step by . . . the voice . . . of popular prejudice.”68 Although much of what Junior had done was likely anathema to him, Senior cheered his son’s journey of reconciliation. “Yes, it was excellent,” he told an old friend. “I could not have managed it better myself.” 69

  After the Colorado trip, Junior became a prophet for improved labor relations throughout American industry, an evangelical role he enjoyed more than browbeating unions. Seizing the high ground, he sold his stock in U.S. Steel during a 1920 strike when management would not annul its policy of twelve-hour days, seven days a week. Junior and King introduced employee-representation plans at both Standard Oil of New Jersey and Standard Oil of Indiana. Abby even contributed to trade unions and to funds for striking workers—which her husband thought was going a bit far. As a nationwide drive to retain the open shop swept American business in the 1920s, many industrialists looked upon Junior as a dangerous liberal, even though many trade unionists saw his company unions as traps for unsuspecting workers.

  In one respect, Junior’s work with Mackenzie King proved a setback for the family: It fueled popular suspicion of the Rockefeller Foundation. From the outset, the family had insisted that it would be a public trust, not a vehicle to promote Rockefeller causes. Because King’s work was underwritten by the foundation, though, it looked as if the Rockefellers had exploited their philanthropy to lend a veneer of legitimacy to their business activities. After public hearings into the matter, the foundation decided to avoid economic issues and concentrate on public health, medicine, and other safe areas. To boost faith in the foundation’s autonomy, in July 1917 Rockefeller waived his future right to make founder’s designations.

  If the Ludlow Massacre was a turning point in Rockefeller family history, much of the credit must go to Mackenzie King, who emancipated Junior from strict obedience to his father. He strengthened Junior’s tenuous faith in his own judgment, making him feel that he was strong enough and fit enough to manage the family fortune. King probably did not exaggerate when he said of Junior in his diary: “I really think he feels closer to myself than to any other man he knows.”70 Politically, Mackenzie King emerged both well paid and unscathed from his detour into the Rockefeller universe. In 1919, he was elected leader of the Liberal Party in Canada and two years later became prime minister, serving in that post off and on for a record twenty-two years and forging much of the modern Canadian welfare state. Like many counselors to the Rockefellers, he had enjoyed the satisfaction of serving both his conscience and his bank account.

  CHAPTER 30

  Introvert and Extrovert

  The Ludlow saga was intertwined with the final, troubled phase of Cettie’s life. When demonstrators stormed the Pocantico gates, Rockefeller grew alarmed because, among other reasons, his wife lay terminally ill inside. Junior was about to make his trek of atonement to Colorado when his mother died on March 12, 1915, forcing him to postpone it until September. One of the first sympathy notes came from Mother Jones: “The sympathy of one whom thousands of men have called ‘Mother’ is with you at this time when your heart is filled with sorrow for her who called you ‘Son.’ ”1 A month later, Senator Aldrich, who had retired from the Senate in 1911, died of a stroke, steeping Junior and Abby in the thick gloom of double mourning.

  Cettie had been withering away for many years. When she took up winter residence at 4 West Fifty-fourth Street in late 1909, she was already restricted to a wheelchair, so that Junior and Harold McCormick had to hoist her up the front steps. Largely bedridden, requiring round-the-clock nursing, she was inexplicably reluctant, like her husband, to consult the eminent physicians at the Rockefeller Institute. As her diaries show, she suffered from a gruesome host of afflictions, including pneumonia, shingles, pernicious anemia, and sciatica. She was pestered by so many ailments that it is impossible to come up with a single, clear diagnosis.

  Senior’s response to her chronic troubles was ambivalent. He was often loving and infinitely patient. At dinner parties, he would pluck a flower, excuse himself, tiptoe up the stairs, and present it to her, along with some amusing tidbit of table talk. “He was the most affectionate and thoughtful man in illness and sorrow I have ever known,” said his son. “No woman could have been more tender.”2 During Cettie’s siege, they remained an old-fashioned couple, sweet and unfailingly courtly with each other.

  Yet for all his devotion, Rockefeller was often away, refusing to modify his seasonal rotation of houses. During the winter of 1909–1910 at West Fifty-fourth Street, for instance, Cettie inscribed in her diary: “John Sr. is at Pocantico coming down Sundays.”3 Though he stayed away for long patches— sometimes weeks at a stretch—Cettie expressed no bitterness.

  During the summer of 1913 at Forest Hill, with Dr. Biggar in constant attendance, Cettie’s condition deteriorated as lumbago, pleurisy, congestive heart failure, and bladder and rectal problems were superadded to her already long list of maladies. In this cheerless season, sister Lute grew ill and took to a wheelchair, though she recovered by the spring. When doctors warned Rockefeller that Cettie was too frail to leave Cleveland, he was caught in an excruciating predicament, for his seasonal rotation demanded his presence at Pocantico in October. If he stayed through February, he could be listed as a Cleveland resident and face severe tax penalties. Nonetheless, he repeatedly postponed the trip due to Cettie’s frailty. Making the best of things, he drove Cettie around the grounds each day in an old-fashioned
open phaeton or newfangled automobile. “John so very cheerful and comforting and glad I am slowly improving,” Cettie told her diary.4 During one visit to the Euclid Avenue Baptist Church, Rockefeller was addressing the congregation when his gaze alighted upon Cettie’s pale, upturned face, and he was moved to a personal utterance. “People tell me I have done much in my life,” he said. “I know I have worked hard. But the best thing I ever accomplished and the thing that has given me the greatest happiness was to win Cettie Spelman. I have had but one sweetheart and am thankful to say I still have her.”5

  In February 1914, John preceded Cettie to Kykuit to ensure that the remodeled house would accommodate her comfortably. Perhaps with a premonition that she would never see Cleveland again, Cettie postponed her departure for New York. When one employee softly prodded her, she balked. “I don’t want to go yet,” she said. “This is where the children used to be, and Mr. John’s little rocking chair is upon the attic floor.” 6 The journey east in February proved an unspeakable ordeal. When the train stopped at Philipse Manor in North Tarrytown, Cettie, attended by doctors and nurses, was lifted to a waiting automobile. Once she was settled in at Pocantico, Senior promptly resumed his self-imposed routine and rushed off to his Lakewood haunt for his usual spring retreat. Without reproach, Junior wrote him, “Mother misses you, but is glad to feel that you are having a good rest, and while she will welcome you home, realizes that you should have this change.”7

  Dismayed by his wife’s sickness and perhaps feeling faintly guilty, Rockefeller tried to offset his absences with extravagant romantic gestures. On their golden wedding anniversary in September 1914, he brought a brass band to Kykuit, placed them on the lawn, and had Cettie carried from the house to Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March.”