Palestine daily herald. [volume] (Palestine, Tex.) 1902-1949, 1909-07-08
ROCKEFELLER 70 TODAY
Celebrated His Birthday BY Playing
Golf on Links of His Estate,
Forest Hill.
(Herald Specially

NE1S1eA0 0PcSAeA.g
Cleveland, O., July S.-John D.
Rockefeller, the founder of the Stand
ard Oil company, and by many be-
lieved to be the richest man in the
world, reached the biblical three
score and ten" years today and cele-
brated the event quietly and with &C
customed frugality by playing golf on
the recently completed golf links on
his magnificent estate. Forest Hill.
At sixty Mr. Rockefeller was an old
man of rather feeble health; but care
full diet and exercise did wonders for
him and now, at seventy, he is almost
as fresh and rugged as other men at
fifty and his physician, DR.. Paul AL
len, has expressed the opinion that
Mr.. Rockefeller has every prospect of
reaching the age of hundred years.
Fortunes, properly and judiciously
invested, have the peculiar habit of
in proportion with the increase of the
fortune Mr. Rockefeller's fortune is
not an exception. The largest por
ton of it is invested in Standard Oil
stock, which is worth now in the
neighborhood of $500 a share, while
the rest is invested in railroads, steel
and bank stocks of the most profit
able description. His holdings of
Standard Oil stock alone are estimat-
ed at s175,000,000, about 25 per cent
of the total amount of stock of the
company. How profitable these hold
ings alone are may be inferred from
the fact that the total net earnings of
the company in 1908 reached a total
of about SS0,000,O00, nearly one half
of which was paid out in dividends to
the stockholders, while the rest was
added to the surplus, which is now
estimated at about s275,000, 900.
Accepting s7O0,00o,O00 as conserv-
alive estimate of Mr. Rockefeller's
present fortune, investigators with a
mathematical turn of mind have made
some interesting calculations con-
corning the probable wealth of Mr.
Rockefeller on his one hundredth
birthday, should he really live until
July 8, 1889. They have computed
that in case the present ratio of in
crease should be maintained-and
there seems to be no reason why it
should not-Mr. Rockefeller's fortune
on his one hundredth birthday will
have reached the respectable sum of
$25, 1872, 100000, or in round figures
about twenty-six thousand millions,
Almost three times as much gold and
silver as there is in circulation, in
banks and in all the treasure houses
and mints on earth today.
1t is impossible for the human mind
to grasp the vastness of such a sum
of money. If the whole sum were In
81 bills and some one should want to
count them, he would find it hope
less task. Were he to count steadily |
at the rate of three dollars a second,
day and night, without stopping for a |
single moment until the task were
ended, it would take two hundred and |
ninety-five years, five months, two
weeks, sixteen hours, thirty-five min
utes and thirty-three seconds to COM
plete the work.
In 1904, when Mr. Rockefeller did |
not have much more than $500, 0OO. 900 |
to his name, his income was a little /
more than 50 every second of the
day, for seven days a week. Should
Mr.. Rockefeller reach the century
mark, his income then would amount
to nearly $500 a second, which is
more than great many men succeed
in accommodating in a lifetime. Even
should Mr.. Rockefeller continue to
give away few millions every now
and then, it is safe to assume that
he would not have to spend his Tooth
birthday at the poor house.
ROCkEFELLER'S HISTORY.