robber-baron war of the Standard Oil Company!- secret rebates with railroads, the
ruthless crashing of all rivals. In the oil fields of Pennsylvania, John D. Rockefeller was
the most hated man on earth. He was hanged in effigy by the men he had crushed.
Many of them longed to tie a rope around his withered neck and hang him to the limb of
a sour-apple tree. Letters breathing fire and brimstone poured into his office -letters
threatening his life.
He hired bodyguards to keep his enemies from killing him. He attempted to ignore this
cyclone of hate. He had once said cynically: "You may kick me and abuse me provided
you will let me have my own way." But he discovered that he was human after all. He
couldn't take hate -and worry too. His health began to crack. He was puzzled and
bewildered by this new enemy-illness-which attacked him from within. At first "he
remained secretive about his occasional indispositions," tried to put his illness out of his
mind. But insomnia, indigestion, and the loss of his hair-all physical symptoms of worry
and collapse-were not to be denied. Finally, his doctors told him the shocking truth. He
could take his choice: his money and his worries-or his life. They warned him he must
either retire or die. He retired. But before he retired, worry, greed, fear had already
wrecked his health.
When Ida Tarbell, America's most celebrated female writer of biographies, saw him, she
was shocked. She wrote: "An awful age was in his face. He was the oldest man I have
ever seen." Old? Why, Rockefeller was then several years younger than General
MacArthur was when he recaptured the Philippines! But he was such a physical wreck
that Ida Tarbell pitied him. She was working at that time on her powerful book which
condemned the Standard Oil and all that it stood for; she certainly had no cause to love
the man who had built up this "octopus". Yet, she said that when she saw John D.
Rockefeller teaching a Sunday-school class, eagerly watching the faces of all those
around him-"I had a feeling which I had not expected, and which time intensified. I was
sorry for him. I know no companion so terrible as fear."
When the doctors undertook to save Rockefeller's life, they gave him three rules-three
rules which he observed, to the letter, for the rest of his life. Here they are:
- Avoid worry. Never worry about anything, under any kind of circumstances.
- Relax, and take plenty of mild exercise in the open air.
- Watch your diet. Always stop eating while you're still a little hungry.
John D. Rockefeller obeyed those rules; and they probably saved his life. He retired. He
learned to play golf. He went in for gardening. He chatted with his neighbours. He
played games. He sang songs.
But he did something else too. "During days of torture and nights of insomnia," says
Winkler, "John D. had time for reflection." He began to think of other people. He stopped
thinking, for once, of how much money he could get; and he began to wonder how much
that money could buy in terms of human happiness.
In short. Rockefeller now began to give his millions away! Some of the time it wasn't
easy. When he offered money to a church, pulpits all over the country thundered back
with cries of "tainted money!" But he kept on giving. He learned of a starving little college
on the shores of Lake Michigan that was being foreclosed because of its mortgage. He
came to its rescue and poured millions of dollars into that college and built it into the
now world-famous University of Chicago. He tried to help the Negroes. He gave money
to Negro universities like Tuskegee College, where funds were needed to carry on the