The second person I decided on was John D. Rockefeller. John grew up the second of six children, his mother a homemaker, his father a con man, or traveling salesman of elixirs. As a child John earned money selling turkeys, candy doing odd jobs for neighbors, even loaning small amounts of money to neighbors. In 1855 at the age of 16, John got a job as an office clerk for a commission firm that bought, sold, and shipped grain, coal and other commodities. In 1859, John and a partner established their own commission firm and in 1863 John and several partners entered the oil business by investing in a Cleveland refinery. In 1865 John borrowed money to buy his partners out. Over the next few years he acquired other partners, and started buying up more refineries and eventually his own ships and tanker cars in order to transport his oil and kerosene He named his company Standard Oil and was buying any and all rival companies, eventually forming the Standard Oil Trust which by 1880 controlled a staggering 90% of all refinery operations in the United States. Standard Oil did everything from build its own barrels to hiring top scientists to find