The Rockefeller Oil Monopoly is now 127 years old, yet in 1911, the Supreme Court, bowing to public outrage, had ruled that it had to be broken up.
The resulting companies proved to be no problem for the Rockefeller interests.
The family retained a two per cent holding in each of the "new" companies, while the Rockefeller foundations took a three per cent holding in each company.
This gave them a five per cent stock interest in each company; a one per cent holding in a corporation is usually sufficient to maintain working control.
The involvement of the Rockefellers in promoting the World Communist Revolution also developed from their business interests.
There was never any commitment to the Marxist ideology; like anything else, it was there to be used.
His banker, Jacob Schiff had previously financed the Japanese in their war against Russia and had sent a personal emissary, George Kennan to Russia to spend some twenty years in promoting revolutionary activity against the Czar.
Trotsky was brought to the U.S., where he lived rent free on the Standard Oil property at Bayonne, New Jersey, its tank field.
When the Czar abdicated, Trotsky was placed on a ship with three hundred Communist revolutionaries from the Lower East Side of New York.
Rockefeller obtained a special passport for Trotsky from Woodrow Wilson and sent Lincoln Steffens with him to make sure he was returned safely to Russia.
For traveling expenses, Rockefeller placed a purse containing $10,000 in Trotsky's pocket.
On April 13, 1917, when the ship stopped in Halifax, Canadian Secret Service officers immediately arrested Trotsky and interred him in Nova Scotia.
The case became an international cause célèbre, as leading government officials from several nations frantically demanded Trotsky's release.
The Secret Service had been tipped off that Trotsky was on his way to take Russia out of the war, freeing more German armies to attack Canadian troops on the Western Front.
Prime Minister Lloyd George hurriedly cabled orders from London to the Canadian Secret Service to free Trotsky at once - they ignored him.
Trotsky was finally freed by the intervention of one of Rockefeller's most faithful stooges, Canadian Minister Mackenzie King, who had long been a "labor specialist" for the Rockefellers.
King personally obtained Trotsky's release and sent him on his way as the emissary of the Rockefellers, commissioned to win the Bolshevik Revolution.
Thus, Dr. Armand Hammer, who loudly proclaimed his influence in Russia as the friend of Lenin, has an insignificant claim compared to the role of the Rockefellers in backing world Communism.
