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As Rockefeller boasted, Standard Oil was an infallible moneymaker. In the late 1880s, Henry M. Flagler testified it had average earnings of 13 percent a year on net assets, which considerably understated its performance. When Teddy Roosevelt’s Bureau of Corporations later examined the matter, it computed a more handsome 19 percent return from 1882 to 1896. Rockefeller defended these high returns as justified by the fear that the oil might run dry and render the trust’s vast investment worthless. He knew public opinion was inflamed by the exorbitant dividends declared on Standard Oil shares, which sometimes ran as high as 200 percent. These figures were misleading, Rockefeller argued, since Standard Oil’s actual capital was typically ten times its official capitalization. In terms of real capital, the 200 percent dividend declared in January 1885 was more like 20 percent—extremely high but not astronomical. Such a rich but not altogether outrageous return was just what the politic Rockefeller wanted.
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