But unlike the gold strikes, America was further along the path of industrialization. There were …show more content…
His Scottish mother, Eliza, had raised him to be “orderly, hardworking, and exact.” As she was Baptist, she raised all five of her children to be models of Puritanical moralness. But off all of them, John D. remained the most true to her teachings, never drinking, playing cards, dancing, or smoking. On the opposite end of the spectrum and often absent was his father, the self-styled Dr. William Rockefeller, a traveling businessman, who marketed such items as elixirs and cancer cures. Ironically, most of Dr. Rockefeller’s cures were concocted mostly out of oil. Double dealing, con-artist that he was, William, nevertheless, was a sharp trader and taught Rockefeller many tactics that would form his habits later on. As a child, Rockefeller never realized the nature of his father’s work and admired him greatly. But it was his mother’s influence that instilled him the strict piety and generous conduct that would characterize him throughout his