Version that&#x27;s possible to read:<p>&quot;Rockefeller was relentless in ferreting out ways to cut costs. During an inspection tour of a Standard Oil plant in New York City, for instance, he observed a machine that soldered the lids on five-gallon cans of kerosene destined for export. Upon learning that each lid was sealed with 40 drops of solder, he asked, &quot;Have you ever tried 38?&quot; It turned out that when 38 drops were applied, a small percentage of the cans leaked. None leaked with 39, though. &quot;&#x27;That one drop of solder&#x27;, said Rockefeller,...&#x27;saved $2,500 the first year; but the export business kept on increasing after that and doubled, quadrupled--became immensely greater than it was then; and the saving has gone steadily along, one drop on each can, and has amounted since to many hundreds of thousands of dollars&quot;&#x27; (Chernow 1998, pp. 180-81). Over the course of his career at the helm of Standard Oil, &quot;Rockefeller cut the unit costs of refined oil almost in half&quot; (Ibid., p. 150).