ABSTRACT
John D. Rockefeller, Jr. was the son of the founder of the Standard Oil Company; his own sons became in later years governors of New York, Arkansas and the Chase Manhattan Bank. From the first Mr. Rockefeller was on the defensive. His intellectual helplessness was the amazing part of his testimony. Freedom of enterprise, untrammeled private property, the incentives of the profiteer, culminate in the achievements of his family. He is the supreme negation of all equality, and unquestionably a symbol of the most menacing fact in the life of the republic. Yet he talked about himself on the commonplace moral assumptions of a small business man. Mr. Rockefeller means to use his absolute power in somewhat more enlightened fashion. But his power is supreme and unquestioned, and whatever is done will be an act of grace or of prudence.
