Since
Rockefeller lived to the amazing age of 98, his only
child John Jr did not inherit full control over the
fortune - and foundations until he was 63 and nearly
retired. When 'Junior', as he was called, attempted
to take an active part in the family business in the
first decade of the twentieth century, he found that
he was being held personally responsible for the reign
of terror and bloodshed in industrial America, which
reached its height in 1915 after the Rockefeller controlled
Colorado Fuel and Iron company was closed down by workers
who demanded the right to collective bargaining and
the enforcement of state labor laws which the company
had been ignoring for years. The company, with the Rockefellers'
active support, called in a private army of gunmen and
the state militia to crush the strike and in the ensuing
violence the tent camp of miners at Ludlow, Colorado,
was ruthlessly sprayed with machine gun fire and burned
to the ground. Along with several workers, 11 children
and two women were killed in what became known nationally
as the 'Ludlow Massacre'. With great gusto the national
Press used the image of 'roasted children' to portray
'Junior' as a new national villain. Years later Junior
told his official biographer Raymond B. Fosdick, that
the Colorado strike was "one of the most important things
that ever happened to the family" - if nothing else,
it demonstrated to him that the future of the family
depended on creating a new public image, one outside
corporate business. An entire new public relations industry
was created to focus public attention completely on
the charitable work of the family. Junior turned the
family business over to professional managers, and undertook
such projects as saving the redwood trees in California
and creating three new national parks. He financed crusades
such as the Interchurch World Movement, an unsuccessful
interdenominationalist effort "to Christianize the world".
He also financed the effort to prohibit the consumption
of alcohol in the United States.
He assiduously avoided politics,
though he married Abby Aldrich, daughter of Senator Winthrop
Aldrich, the most important Republican leader of his time.
His only important business venture, according to his
biographer, was the erection of Rockefeller Center, a
colossal office building complex on Fifth Avenue in the
heart of New York City which he bravely built at the height
of the depression in the 1930s. Rockefeller Center, which
today provides some 10 million square feet of office space
and brings 174 in rent in the order of a hundred million
dollars a year for the Rockefeller family, instantly became
a major tourist attraction with its Art Deco murals workers
in factories and Radio City from which NBC broadcasts
its programs. The Center also provided 'Room 5600' which
consists in fact of the entire 55th and 56th floors of
the tallest building. From Room 5600, the family's far-flung
finances and public were professionally managed.
The public relations operation
in Room became especially effective. All Information about
the Rockefellers is stored in either "sensitive" or "public"'
files. The former, which might conflict with the image
being promoted, is embargoed or destroyed, The latter
is disseminated to writers of authorized biographies and
vetted journalists. Through the careful cultivation of
the press, the public image of public enemy that Rockefeller
Junior inherited was subtly transformed to one of a public
benefactor. When died at the age of 86, his six children
had already ascended to the highest strata of the social
and political order. No longer outcasts, the Rockefeller
heirs became the twentieth-century American aristocracy.
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