The Nation: The Rockefeller Clan: A Public Family

The nation's first billionaire believed that the power to make money was "a gift from God to be developed and used to the best of our ability for the good of mankind." Along with the bulk of his fortune, John D. Rockefeller passed that belief on to his only son, John D. Jr., who transmitted it to his own six children. After John D. Jr.'s death in 1960 at the age of 86, Lyndon Johnson said of him: "That old man up in heaven—or wherever he may be—must be awfully proud of all his boys. Every one of them's been a...

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