A Doctor's Son

JOHN D.--A Portrait in Oils--John K. Winkler--Vanguard ($2.25*).

Dr. William A. Rockefeller

THE CELEBRATED CANCER SPECIALIST

HERE FOR ONE DAY ONLY!

All cases of Cancer CURED Unless Too Far Gone And Then They Can be Greatly BENEFITED!

Ballyhooed by this handbill, "Doc" Rockefeller witched dollars out of the pop-eyed citizenry of Midwestern hamlets before the Civil War. Husky, usurious, "Doc" believed sharping made the victim sharp. Hence didactic William sharped his own son out of board-money. That son, grateful for sharpness thus acquired, was, is, John Davison Rockefeller, "world's richest man," whose ninetieth birthday comes next week.

Tall, blond and 15, John Davison Rockefeller left his small-town family in Parma, Ohio, and went north to Cleveland. There he paid $1 a week for board. He shot no pool, drank no beer, sang no barbershop ballads, ogled no wenches. He satisfied his social needs in the Erie Street Baptist Church. There he would memorize hymns and Scripture passages, play clerk to the trustees, mingle with solid people, spend little. A sanctimonious social life satisfied him, but high school did not. Though nattered by his academic nickname, "The Deacon," he was lured early by Business. Leaving school two months after his sixteenth birthday in 1855, he soon became office-boy in a warehouse on a day since reverenced by the Rockefeller clan. Never the mythical, poverty-stricken Rockefeller boy, he became at 17 a trustee of the Erie Street Baptist. He was junior partner and bookkeeper of the young but prosperous firm of Hewitt and Tuttle. Ecstatically, auto-suggestively, he one day told someone: "I am bound to be rich! Bound to be rich! BOUND to be rich!"

He knew a short, plump, brown-eyed, dark-haired schoolteacher with a wealthy sire and Puritan blood. Her name was Laura Celestia Spelman. When they were 25 each, John D. married her. The next year (1865) from dabbling tentatively in the oil that was gushing up in Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York, John D. became an oilman to the exclusion of all else. His refining firm was Rockefeller, Andrews & Flagier, later (1870) the Standard Oil Company. Railroads whose good customer Standard became helped Standard suppress competition by furnishing reports on competitors' shipments. John D. hated having rivals. By 1877 one company gathered, transported, refined and sold practically all U. S. oil--the Standard.

In 1907 Federal Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis fined Standard $29,240,000, largest fine in history. Said Judge Landis: "You wound society more deeply than those who counterfeit the coin." Even had Standard paid the fine, it would have been a mere drop out of the Standard bucket. In 1911 the U. S. Supreme Court ordered Standard to "resolve into its original units, and restore free competition in the oil industry." Author Winkler suspects and says that Standard still functions as a unit.

Did a new ethic based on predatory opportunism as the highest good emerge in the U. S. from Standard practice? No. Whatever he did actually, spiritually John D. never grew beyond his boyhood beliefs. To propitiate his own Christian beliefs and the public which still embraced them, more than three-fourths of Rockefeller's gifts of $750,000,000 "have been distributed since 1911, the year the public became mathematically conscious of his vast wealth." More than any other's, his money is responsible for Prohibition. To needy institutions went most of these millions. To needy individuals (20,000) went shiny dimes. Once to an indigent old acquaintance Rockefeller sent a pair of shoes almost equally old, saying: "Have these shoes recobbled and they will last another year."

In the Pocantico Hills, N. Y., is an estate called "Kijkuit" (Dutch for "Keep Out"). There, in the summertime, behind stone walls, barbed wire and grilled iron, lives the Richest Man. Thither he returned last week from Lakewood, N. J., his annual intermediate stop between the North and Florida. The bed from which he rises at 7 is crumbless, for at "Kijkuit" no one may breakfast abed. At 7:30 the Master leaves his bath. On the scales he finds he weighs less than 100 lbs. In the mirror he sees pale, blue eyes, pointed chin, sunken cheeks, large head, hairless skin, stooped shoulders, and his stomach. Harmless looking from the outside, it is this organ which has caused him more woe than anything else in life. A folkstory says this stomach is "lined with silver." The Master dons one of several hundred ties, selects one of 60 suits. He glances at the New York Times. At 8 he masticates eclectically. After breakfast someone reads a Bible for ten minutes. At 10 dark glasses are put on and John D. goes out for golf. The whole year he never loses more than three balls. When he wins he does a happy little Charleston. If a flapper is around he may remark: "You ought to kiss my hand for that." The flapper usually complies, and gets a dime.

At 3:30, having lunched, he goes motoring (35 m. p. h. minimum speed). Sometimes he goes as far as Bridgeport, to see his good friend, Mrs. Ira Warner. Returning he telephones No. 26 Broadway, transacts business, for he has not completely retired from oil. At 7:30, formally dressed, he sits down to dinner. Over the cloth he may tell a tale or two and his audience knows when to laugh. After dinner there is his favorite game, "Numerica." He plays it without cards or money. In bed by 11, John D. wills himself to sleep almost instantly.

He is credited with the following:

I was early taught to work as well as play,

My life has been one long, happy holiday;

Full of work and full of play--

I dropped the worry on the way--

And God was good to me every day."

The Significance. Neither as scholarly nor as impartial as his publishers believe, Author Winkler gives a very human, very rambling account. Moral, he writes: "[Graft] can scarcely be prevented when private citizens deliberately defy the moral and legal codes of organized society." He tries to stop as short of libel as of praise. Psychologically, his work is a study of the U. S. single-track mind engaged in the prime U. S. occupation--money-making. Historically, the work treats of a career coincident with the entire post-Civil War development of U. S. industry.

Mr. Rockefeller's usual remark about writings like this book, is: "If I step on that worm I will call attention to it. If I ignore it, it will disappear."

The Author. Born in Camden, S. C., John K. Winkler went to school in Manhattan. In 1908, aged 18, he got his first and only regular job, as a reporter for William Randolph Hearst, whom he seldom saw but about whom he was to do his most ambitious writing prior to this book in a series for The New Yorker, Manhattan smartchart, later bound as Hearst, An American Phenomenon. Author Winkler left the newsgathering business five years ago but still sleeps by day, works or plays by night. Closely related to a Baptist minister, it is perhaps through this connection that he met his latest subject. Or perhaps he golfed with Rockefeller cronies, kept record of their reminiscences. Those parts of the biography in which the subject lives and breathes, the publishers darkly attribute to sources "confidential and unimpeachable."

Violet Town

THE WOMAN WHO COMMANDED 500,000,000 MEN--Charles Pettit--Liveright ($2.50).

The slanting eyes of Ye-Ho-No-La made ardent avowal to the equally slanting, equally ardent eyes of her intended bridegroom, Yong-Lou. Both were aged ten. But at 15 she forsook the projected match for an infinitely worthier match. To the eternal glory of her family and the Manchu race, Ye-Ho-No-La became one of the 30 concubines attending the young Emperor of China. But the latter was a degenerate. His energy was spent in painting the town violet. Ye-Ho-No-La's problem was to convert the imperial energy to her own use, to induce the Emperor to condescend enough to let her bear him an heir. A son she bore and not only covered herself with glory but became as well the famed Dowager Empress of China (1835-1908). She commanded China's 500 millions, decapitated numerous missionaries, took her fun where she found it, including the Yong-Lou of her childhood.

Author Pettit is a sleek writer with a style naive and beguiling as his characters. He has a flair for provocative titles. His two previous books were called The Elegant Infidelities of Madame Li Pel Foil, The Son of the Grand Eunuch.

Stolen Steel

THE JEFFERSON SECRET--Richard Blaker--Doubleday, Doran ($2).

The Jefferson secret is a formula for making a new kind of steel; hard;as diamond, more durable. Young Donald Jefferson has charge of the formula when it disappears. Who could have stolen it? Could Miss Eames? Miss Eames, 42, diverts the passion Donald continually flings at her head so that she may marry his father. Could Bobbie Blaydes? Bobbie, Jefferson senior's old friend, is a social man, a person who plays around with many people for amusement; he knows nothing about steel, cares less. Could Jenny Carlton? Jenny, characterized as "a good egg," is Donald's cunning childhood chum, now his secretary. Could Arthur Willis? Willis, Jefferson senior's subordinate, got Miss Eames her job in the old man's office. Anyone of them could have stolen the formula. Author Blaker gives good account of himself in revealing his secret.

*Actually $2.15, since a shiny dime is imbedded in the cover of each copy,