John D. Rockefeller and "Charlie Soong"--Protestantism and Capitalism
UPDATE Feb. 25: Correction: I received a very thoughtful e-mail from George Wen, pointing out that "there is no Fou Foong family. Charlie Soong worked at the Fou Foong Flour Mill, which was owned by the Sun family of Shouxian, Anhui. I know this because it is my mother's family that founded the mill...." Mr. Wen has written to author Sterling Seagrave (my source) to make this correction.
I appreciate the correction, and the brief glimpse into other details of Chines history that Mr. Wen provided.
Linking a book I just finished reading with one I just started.
John D. Rockefeller was the son of a snake-oil salesman and bigamist, who may have committed serious crimes--partly to come up with his sudden and unexplained windfalls of cash. Young John D. grew up thinking money was good, and there was nothing wrong with an intense craving for it. Yet thanks to the women in his life--his mother, to some extent his grandmother, and eventually his wife--he was always a pious Baptist. He often said it was good to make as much money as possible; save as much as possible; and give as much as possible to charity. From the time he had his first real job, he did give consistently to his church and to needy people. As he became the richest man in the world, his charitable giving also became spectacular.
His biographer, Ron Chernow, keeps saying that it is difficult to reconcile the two conspicuous sides of JDR: the utterly focussed, sometimes ruthless or voracious capitalist; and the careful, but almost superhumanly generous, Christian and donor to good causes. JDR never saw any contradiction. Somehow the "Baptist" rules, like the ones against drinking and cards, were associated with a regimen for health and hygiene--lots of sleep, chewing one's food x number of times, daily exercise, etc. Since all these rules were good, only a foolish person would question them--and JDR kept on proving their goodness by living to a ripe old age in excellent health. (His wife, however, was an invalid for decades; his daughters suffered various kinds of ill-health including, it seems, mental illness; and JDR Jr.--well, another story).
He may have been the only example he knew of someone who could get rich, and successful in business, while remaining in some ways unworldly. Even when he bought big properties, and appointed them with some luxury, it was mainly so that he could play golf in private. His colleagues tended to be ex-Baptists, or ex-Protestants of some kind, including several ex-ministers of the cloth. None of his children kept up the Baptist faith. JDR Jr. and his wife "rebelled" by dancing, even during their courtship; their Sunday observance as a couple was a walk in the woods rather than a church service. JDR Jr. may have done a lot to solidify the family's faith in medicine and other research rather than in anything supernatural.
JDR's successor as CEO of Standard Oil, H.M. Flagler, was probably even more ruthless than JDR in business--especially when it came to dominating the retail or consumer market by driving out competition. Flagler's private life was a bit extravagant. He began to spend grandly with his second wife, who gradually went insane. He had her committed, and changed his official state of residency so that he could marry for the third time. The marriage was once again a lavish one. Rockefeller "must have felt Flagler was making a spectacle of himself."
"Charlie Soong" was the founder of a kind of dynasty on the coast of China that remained important during the whole "revolutionary" period of about 1890 to the 1950s. One of his daughters was "Mrs. Sun Yat Sen," although the wedding was bigamous, and did not produce children. She later became a high official under Mao. Another became even more famous, at least in the West, as Madame Chiang Kai-shek. Again there were no children. The third daughter married a businessman; they had several children who established themselves in the States.
The lives of all these people were given a kind of official gloss by Westerners--especially by missionaries or their defenders, such as Henry Luce, founder of Time magazine, and his wife Clare Booth Luce. (Henry was the child of missionaries in China). Because Chiang ended up as the ultimate Chinese anti-Communist, he and everyone who worked with him or was closely related to him had to be somehow sanctified.
"Charlie Soong"--a kind of made-up English name which he used with English speakers--was raised by people who spent a lot of time trading with their big junks in the South China Sea--from the island of Hainan as far away as Java. Ethnically he was a Hakka--meaning a distinctive group, with a distinctive dialect, among the Chinese. The Hakka were "clannish." His family was in the chiu chao brotherhood. Shortly after he became a missionary around Shanghai, he joined a triad. He may always have been, at least partly, what he was brought up to be, which was more or less a pirate. Yet after he got some education in the States (through a combination of being brought there by an "uncle" who wanted to exploit his labour, using his wits to set out on his own, and having the good fortune to fall among people who could appreciate his good qualities), he always gave every appearance of being a pious Methodist.
Dr. Sun Yat Sen, a married man, proposed elopement with one of Soong's daughters before he eventually eloped with another. In both cases, Soong gave every appearance of being truly shocked at this self-indulgence. Soong, as treasurer of the revolutionary movement, gathered money from many sources--some probably illegal. He and Dr. Sun, along with Chiang Kai-shek, stood for the proposition that they could achieve revolution by converting the criminal triads to revolutionary activity, without working directly with the peasants. The communists eventually succeeded by working primarily with the peasants. Soong always gave every appearance of seeking respectability in Western eyes--his daughters were sent to college in the States, and some of them spoke English with a Southern accent, as Charlie himself did. He dressed Western, and built a house that reminded him of grand homes in the U.S. south. When he returned after his years in the States, he no longer even liked Chinese food, and he was more fluent in English than in Chinese. He liked to do his own gardening. No wonder American missionaries both for Christianity and for democracy were thrilled with him and his group.
John D. Rockefeller: 1839-1937
"Charlie Soong" (Han Chao-Shun): 1866-1918
1878:
Charlie, aged 12, goes to U.S. to apprentice with a Chinese "uncle" who has spent some time there
Rockefeller and Standard Oil are caught up in the "immediate shipment" controversy with oil producers in Pennsylvania (Standard Oil is still primarily in the refining and transportation (rail and pipeline) business. By the end of 1877 Rockefeller controlled nearly 90 per cent of the oil refined in the U.S. (still primarily refined for kerosene for lighting).
1879:
Charlie runs away from his "master" in Boston, and stows away in a cutter belonging to the U.S. Revenue Service. The captain, Eric Gabrielson, was a pious Methodist who took Charlie under his wing.
JDR among other officials faces criminal charges for conspiracy to monopolize the oil business, extort railroad rebates, and manipulate prices to cripple rivals.
1880:
Gabrielson introduces Charlie to many of the leading lights in Wilmington, North Carolina--mainly church-goers interested in missionary work in China. Charley is baptized in November.
At the end of 1879, Standard promised to end "immediate shipment," rebates, etc. in return for charges being dropped in Pennsylvania. None of the practices in question necessarily stopped. In 1880, a new pipeline that was supposed to help producers avoid the clutches of Standard Oil, began a formal cooperation with the company.
1881:
April: Charlie begins attendance at Trinity College, Durham--later Duke University.
1882:
Charlie transfers to Vanderbilt University in Nashville--possibly forced to do so because he took an interest in a Caucasian American girl.
Standard Oil trust agreement is finalized January 2, 1882. Incorporates Standard Oil subsidiaries in several states, allows a board in New York to control all related companies, and prevents each state from taxing Standard Oil property located outside the state, while technically complying with the letter of various state laws.
Standard Oil sends an agent to the Far East to make a two-year survey of the market.
JDR begins gifts that allow the establishment of Spelman College in Atlanta.
1883:
JDR moves family to New York. Brother William had operated Standard Oil of New York there for some time, and JDR and family had spent several winters there.
1885:
Charlie graduates from Vanderbilt and travels to China as a Methodist missionary.
Standard Oil moves into new headquarters at 26 Broadway.
1886:
Standard Oil starts a new pipeline company to monopolize crude oil from the new fields in Lima, Ohio. After a Standard scientist worked out how to make Lima oil usable, Standard bought up the fields themselves. "Complete control of the Lima field gave it unchallenged control of American oil in the 1890s."
1887:
Charlie marries in Shanghai.
1889:
JDR moves away from the idea of supporting the institution that eventually became Columbia University; begins his role as the major benefactor of the University of Chicago.
1889-91: Standard Oil of Indiana builds and opens "America's premier oil refinery at Whiting, Indiana, seventeen miles from downtown Chicago."
1892:
Spring: Charlie sets up his own printing business and resigns his position with the Southern Methodist China Mission.
1893-4:
With his printing business as a base, Charlie was approached by the Fou Foong family to manage a flour mill and profit from the ever-expanding noodle business. "Charlie became one of the first Chinese to import heavy industrial machinery for Chinese-owned factories. He was the chief English-language executive of the Fou Foong mills and held the lavishly-paid position for the rest of his life. He was rewarded with a major shareholding in the firm." Compradors who knew both the Chinese and the Western languages and worlds were essential for commerce, and could grow very rich.
This is getting too long. I must be an idiot to have started with the dates. A couple more:
In 1900 the Boxers went on a rampage, killing many foreigners including missionaries. Western armies then carried out retribution--killing many more people in return. It became known that the Westerners could be bought off in various ways--including concessions to Western companies. H.H. Kung, later Charlie's son in law, arranged things in Sansi province so that Western financial interests, including Standard Oil, became remarkably active.
1904: the first of Charlie's daughters goes to school in the States--in the first case, Wesleyan at Macon, Georgia. All three would eventually go. The youngest would also attend Wellesley in Massachusetts, while one son was attending Harvard.
August 1906: in the face of numerous lawsuits directed against Standard Oil, JDR formally requests to resign as president. His successor Archbold refused to accept his resignation. One executive explained to a writer later: "we told him that if any of us had to go to jail, he would have to go with us." Similar to a line in "It's a Wonderful Life": "Somebody's going to go to jail, old man, and it's not going to be me."
May 1918: Charlie dies, and there is very little official notice. Killed by business or political associates? Or died of a broken heart?
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