JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER.

Taranaki Daily News, 8 September 1923, Page 8

JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER.

EIGHTY-FOURTH BIRTHDAY. EARLY START TO RICHES. Four score and four lighted candles on a cake marked the 84th birthday of John D. Rockefeller, the richest man in the world, wrote the New York correspondent of a London paper recently. In the little church which he helped to build in the Pocantico Hills, where he has his New York summer home, the occasion was alluded to indirectly by the minister who prayed: “We ask Thy gracious blessing for those who are aged and who are approaching that greater fellowship.” Mr. Rockefeller himself celebrated the event by distributing a pocketful of brand new five-cent pieces to children in the A curious bit of history concerning Mr. Rockefeller’s boyhood, passed in virtual penury in a wooden house near the village of Moravia, New York, has become public in connection with Mr. Rockefeller’s birthday. It is related by inhabitants of the village, where there still survive 155 inhabitants who have passed the 90 years’ According to the story, Rockefeller began his commercial career in this way. When a barefooted boy of seven, he saw a wild turkey hen in the woods, and tracked her to her nest, which he despoiled or the baby chicks. Those he took home and raised, and in the autumn sold them m the village market. It was several years later that be set out in earnest to make money by entering a forwarding and commission house m Cleveland, Ohio, as clerk at the salary of 15s a week. His genius as an organiser demonstrated itself when, at 19, he became a partner in the firm of Clarke and Rockefeller, commission merchants, which subsequently was reorganised as Andrews, Clhrke and Company, and launched into the oil business. In 1865 John and his brother William took over the concern and built the Standard Oil Works at Cleveland, laying thus the foundation of his stupendous fortune. Mr. Rockefeller’s fortune was estimated in 1921 to be something like 2,400,000,000 dollars (£480,000,000), and his annual income at more than £10,000,000. This was a guess in a work entitled “Dynastic America,” by Henry H. Klein, First Deputy Commissioner of Accounts of New York City, who appraised Mr. Rockefeller’s holdings in Standard Oil and other oil securities alone at 1,000,000,000 dollars (£200,000,000). Exactly what the aged Croesus wealth does total is not publicly known, for John D Rockefeller, jun., contesting Mr. Kleins estimate, said:—“My father’s estate has never reached 1,000,000,000' dollars, and has been materially reduced by the large gifts from principal which he has made during recent years.” Rockefeller is reputed to have given away nearly £100,000,000.