Can the Rockefellers Persuade Exxon Mobil to Create Alternative Fuels?

Come and read my little article about a man named John D. Rockefeller. Rich businessman, he could easily keep his family fed and well'er. And then one day while being with his brood, up through the ground came a bubblin' crude. The Standard Oil Company, that is. Well, not to get facetious here in a Beverly Hillbillies sort of way. What's the most fascinating about the first sentences above is that the 2007 movie "There Will be Blood" may have so many elements of truth to it, that it's downright scary if still gratifying. What I'm talking about here are the ancestors of the Rockefellers currently chastising Exxon Mobil that was once the Standard Oil Company, founded by John D. Rockefeller in 1870. Many of the offspring from the John D. Rockefeller family are still shareholders in Exxon Mobil, and many of them see that the company is turning in unfathomably huge record profits while the middle class and poor in America suffer at the gas pump. You can't say a lot of the Rockefellers haven't attempted to help humanity in a lot of ways.

But how do we view John D. Rockefeller from the late 19^th century? If you've seen "There Will be Blood" in the movie theatre or on DVD, it's starting to become more clear to me that Daniel Day-Lewis's Daniel Plainview isn't entirely a metaphor for all American oil businessmen who lost their scruples--but perhaps borrowing the business side of John D. Rockefeller himself. In fact, Upton Sinclair, who wrote "Oil!" (the book "Blood" was based on) may have based his initial characters on the Rockefellers--as different as those characters are from the movie.

John D. Rockefeller in 1885.

Credit: The Rockefeller Archive Center

Copyright: Public Domain (Wikipedia Commons)