Jersey had adopted a law that permitted a parent company to own the stock of other companies. It is estimated that Standard Oil owned three-fourths of the petroleum business in the U.S. in the 1890s. In addition to being the head of Standard, Rockefeller owned iron mines and timberland and invested in numerous companies in manufacturing, transportation, and other industries. Although he held the title of president of Standard Oil until 1911, Rockefeller retired from active leadership of the company in 1896. In 1911 the U.S. Supreme Court found the Standard Oil trust to be in violation of the anti-trust laws and ordered the dissolution of the parent New Jersey corporation. The thirty-eight companies which it then controlled were separated into individual firms. In his biography, Study in Power, John D. Rockefeller, Industrialist and Philanthropist, the historian Allan Nevins reports that Rockefeller at that time owned 244,500 of the companys total of 983,383 outstanding shares. PHILANTHROPY Rockefeller was 57 years old in 1896 when he decided that others should take over the day-to-day leadership of Standard Oil. He now focused his efforts on philanthropy, giving away the bulk of his fortune in ways designed to do the most good as determined by careful study, experience and the help of expert advisers. From the time he had begun earning money as a boy, he had been giving a share of his income to his church and charities. His philanthropy grew out of his early family training, religious convictions, and financial habits. "I believe it is every mans religious duty to get all he can honestly and to give all he can," he once wrote. During the 1850s, he made regular contributions to the Baptist church, and by the time he was 21, he was giving not only to his own but to other denominations, as well as to a foreign Sunday school and an African-American church. Support of religious institutions and African-American e...
