Page:Famous Living Americans, with Portraits.djvu/423

JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER By Richabd Gilbbbt Colubb JOHN DAVISON ROCKEFELLER is the paramount enigma of the world's notables. His has been a sort of lone-wolf existence. Aloofness has been second nature with him. He has shunned publicity^ never f riendlyi with an insistent hostility. His public utterances, few and g^narded, have failed to imprint upon the American mind any satLsfying conception of his personality, ambitions, or sentiments^ Els friendships have savored more of close business relationships than warm personal regard. Few men have enjoyed intimate association with him and they have kept their impressions to themselves. And to-day no man at all approaching him in position and importance in contemporary affairs is so little understood, so little appreciated. This is one of the inevitable penalties of his stupendous wealth. For considerably more than a quarter of a century Rockefeller and the Rockefeller fortune have been under sus- picion. Both have been assailed with relentless vigor. This feeling found emphatic expression a few years ago in the more or less general protest against tainted money. So, figura- tively speaking, every man^s hand has been raised against him. Extremely sensitive, Mr. Rockefeller knew and felt all this keenly and, knowing, his natural reserve was, perhaps, tinged with resentment, certainly with a considerable degree of timidity, and he became more and more a recluse. Only within the last half dozen years has this barrier been broken down. To-day more than ever before the human side of Mr. Rockefeller is being displayed where formerly only his insatiate thirst for wealth was apparent. While it was once well-nigh impossible to obtain a likeness of him, he now faces the camera smilingly and without hesitation. Now and then he welcomes an interviewer. Occasionally he has appeared unannounced at local gatherings of men of affairs. The life story of John D. Rockefeller strikingly emphasizes