Growth of a Great Corporation—Misunderstood and Misrepresented—Improvements in Treating and Transporting Petroleum—Why Many Refineries Collapsed—Real Meaning of the Trust—What a Combination of Brains and Capital has Accomplished—Men Who Built Up a Vast Enterprise that has no Equal in the World.

“Not to know me argues yourself unknown.”—Milton.

“The keen spirit seizes the prompt occasion.”—Hannah Moore.

“Genius is the faculty of growth.”—Coleridge.

“Success affords the means of securing additional success.”—Stanislaus.

“Fortune, success, position, are never gained but by determinedly, bravely striking, growing, living to a thing.”—Townsend.

“The goal of yesterday will be the starting-point of to-morrow.”—Voltaire.

“Where the judgment is weak the prejudice is strong.”—Kate O’Hara.

“Censure is the tax a man pays to the public for being eminent.”—Dean Swift.

“As though a rose should shut and be a bud again.”—John Keats.

Compared with a petroleum-sketch which did not touch upon the Standard Oil-Company, in different respects the greatest corporation the world has ever known, Hamlet with “the melancholy Dane” left out would be a masterpiece of completeness. Perhaps no business-organization in this or any other country has been more misrepresented and misunderstood. To many well-meaning persons, who would not willfully harbor an unjust thought, it has suggested all that is vicious, grasping and oppressive in commercial affairs. They picture it as a cruel monster, wearing horns and cloven-hoofs and a forked-tail, grown rich and fat devouring the weak and the innocent. Its motives have been impugned, its methods condemned and its actions traduced. If a man in Oildom drilled a dry-hole, backed the wrong horse, lost at poker, dropped money speculating, stubbed his toe, ran an unprofitable refinery, missed a train or couldn’t maintain champagne-style on a lager-beer income, it was the fashion for him to pose as the victim of a gang of conspirators and curse the Standard as vigorously and vociferously as the fish-wife hurled invectives at Daniel O’Connell.

The reasons for this are as numerous as the sands of the sea. It is no new thing to shove upon other shoulders the burden that belongs properly to our own. In their fiery zeal to convict somebody people have been known to bark up the wrong tree, to charge the innocent with all sorts of offences and to get off their base entirely. Such people and such methods did not die out with the passing of the Salem witch-burners. The Standard was made the scape-goat of the evil deeds alleged to have been contemplated by the unsavory South-Improvement Company. That odious combine, which included a number of railroad-officials, oil-operators and refiners, disbanded without producing, refining, buying, selling or transporting a gallon of petroleum. “Politics makes strange bedfellows” and so does business. Among subscribers for South-Improvement stock were certain holders of Standard stock and also their bitterest opponents; among those most active in giving the job its death-blow were prominent members of the Standard Oil-Company. The projected spoliation died “unwept, unhonored and unsung,” but it was not a Standard scheme.

Envy is frequently the penalty of success. Whoever fails in any pursuit likes to blame somebody else for his misfortune. This trick is as old as the race. Adam started it in Eden, Eve tried to ring in the serpent and their posterity take good care not to let the game get rusty from disuse! Its aggregation of capital renders the Standard, in the opinion of those who have “fallen outside the breastworks,” directly responsible for their inability to keep up with the procession. Sympathizers with them deem this “confirmation strong as proof of Holy Writ” that the Standard is an unconscionable monopoly, fostered by crushing out competition. Such reasoning forgets that enterprise, energy, experience and capital are usually trump-cards. It forgets that “the race is to the swift,” the battle is to the mighty and that “Heaven is on the side with the heaviest artillery.” Carried to its logical conclusion, it means that improved methods, labor-saving appliances and new processes count for nothing. It means that the snail can travel with the antelope, that the locomotive must wait for the stage-coach, that the fittest shall not survive. In short, it is the double-distilled essence of absurdity.

Any advance in methods of business necessarily injures the poorest competitor. Is this a reason why advances should be held back? If so, the public could derive no benefit from competition. The fact that a man with meagre resources labors under a serious disadvantage is not an excuse for preventing stronger parties from entering the field. The grand mistake is in confounding combination with monopoly. By combination small capital can compete successfully with large capital. Every partnership or corporation is a combination, without which undertakings beyond individual reach would never be accomplished. Trunk railroads would not be built, unity of action would be destroyed, mankind would segregate as savages and the trade of the world would stagnate. Combinations should be regulated, not abolished. Rightful competition is not a fierce strife between persons to undersell each other, that the one enduring the longest may afterwards sell higher, but that which furnishes the public with the best products at the least cost. This is not done by selling below cost, but by diminishing in every way possible the cost of producing, manufacturing and transporting. The competition which does this, be it by an individual, a firm, a corporation, a trust or a combination, is a public benefactor. This kind of competition uses the best tools, discards the sickle for the cradle and the cradle for the reaper, abandons the flail for the threshing-machine and adopts the newest ideas wherever and whenever expenses can be lessened. To this end unrestricted combination and unrestricted competition must go hand-in-hand. A small profit on a large volume of business is better for the consumer than a large profit on a small business. The man who sells a million dollars’ worth of goods a year, at a profit of five per cent., will become rich, while he who sells only ten-thousand dollars’ worth can get a bare living. If the builder of a business of one-hundred-thousand dollars deserve praise, why should the builder of a business of millions be censured? Business that grows greater than people’s limited notions should not for that cause be fettered or suppressed. When business ceases to be local and has the world for its market, capital must be supplied to meet the increasing demand and combination is as essential as fresh air. Thus large establishments take the place of small ones and men acting in concert achieve what they would never attempt separately. The more perfect the power of association the greater the power of production and the larger the proportion of the product which falls to the laborer’s share. The magnitude of combinations must correspond with the magnitude of the business to be done, in order to secure the highest skill, to employ the latest devices, to pay the best wages, to invent new appliances, to improve facilities and to give the public a cheaper and finer product. This is as natural and legitimate as for water to run down hill or the fleet greyhound to distance the slow tortoise.

How has the Standard affected the consumer of petroleum-products? What has it done for the people who use illuminating oils? Has it advanced the price and impaired the quality? The early distillations of petroleum were unsatisfactory and often dangerous. The first refineries were exceedingly primitive and their processes simple. Much of the crude was wasted in refining, a business not financially successful as a rule until 1872, notwithstanding the high prices obtained. Methods of manufacture and transportation were expensive and inadequate. The product was of poor quality, emitting smoke and unpleasant odor and liable to explode on the slightest provocation. In 1870 a few persons, who had previously been partners in a refinery at Cleveland, organized the Standard Oil-Company of Ohio, with a capital of one-million dollars, increased subsequently to three-and-a-half millions. For years the history of refining had been mainly one of disaster and bankruptcy. A Standard Oil-Company had been organized at Pittsburg by other persons and was doing a large trade. The Cleveland Standard Refinery, the Pittsburg Standard Refinery, the Atlantic Refining Company of Philadelphia and Charles Pratt & Co. of New York were extensive concerns. Because of the hazardous nature and peculiar conditions of the refining industry, the need of improved methods and the manifold advantages of combination, they entered into an alliance for their mutual benefit. Refineries in the oil-regions had combined before, hence the association of these interests was not a novelty. The cost of transportationtransportation and packages had been important factors in crippling the industry. Crude was barreled at the wells and hauled in wagons to the railroads prior to the system of transporting it by pipes laid under ground. Railroad-rates were excessive and irregular. Refiners who combined and could throw a large volume of business to any particular road secured favorable rates. The rebate-system was universal, not confined to oil alone, and possibly this fact had much to do with the combination of refiners afterwards known as the Standard Oil-Company.

Very naturally the Standard endeavored to secure the lowest transportation-rates. Quite as naturally railroad-managers, in their eagerness to secure the traffic, vied with each other in offering inducements to large shippers of petroleum. The Standard furnished, loaded and unloaded its own tank-cars, thereby eliminating barrels and materially cheapening the freight-service. This reduction of expense reduced the price of refined in the east to a figure which greatly increased the demand and gave oil-operations a healthy stimulus. Still more important was the introduction of improvements in refining, which yielded a larger percentage of illuminating-oil and converted the residue into merchantable products. Chemical and mechanical experts, employed by the combined companies to conduct experiments in this direction, aided in devising processes which revolutionized refining. The highest quality of burning-oil was obtained and nearly every particle of crude was utilized. Substances of commercial value took the place of the waste that formerly emptied into the streams, polluting the waters and the atmosphere. In this way the cost was so lessened that kerosene became the light of the nations. Consumers, whose dime now will buy as much as a dollar would before the “octopus” was heard of, are correspondingly happy.

Since consumers have fared so well, how about refiners outside the Standard? That smaller concerns were unable to compete with the Standard under such circumstances was no reason why the public should be deprived of the advantages resulting from concentration of capital and effort. Many of these, realizing that small capital is restricted to poor methods and dear production, either sold to the Standard or entered the combination. In not a few cases wide-awake refiners took stock for part of the price of their properties and engaged with the company, adding their talents and experience to the common fund for the benefit of all concerned. Others, not strong enough to have their cars and provide all the latest improvements, made such changes as they could afford to meet the requirements of the local trade, letting the larger ones attend to distant markets. Some continued right along and they are still on deck as independent refiners, always a respectable factor in the trade and never more active than to-day. Those who would neither improve, nor sell, nor combine, sitting down placidly and believing they would be bought out later on their own terms, were soon left far behind, as they deserved to be. Let it be said positively that the Standard, in negotiating for the purchase or combination of refineries, treated the owners liberally and sought to keep the best men in the business. A number who put up works to sell at exorbitantexorbitant prices, failing in their design, howled about “monopoly” and “freezing out” and tried to pass as martyrs. It is true hundreds of inferior refineries have been dismantled, not because they were frozen out by a crushing monopoly, but because they lacked requisite facilities. The refineries in vogue when the Standard was organized could not stay in business a week, if resurrected and revived. A team of pack-mules might as well try to compete with the New York Central Railroad as these early refineries to meet the requirements of the petroleum-trade at its present stage of perfection. They were “frozen out” just as stage-coaches were “frozen out” by the iron-horse or the sailing-vessel of our grandfathers’ time by the ocean-liner that crosses the Atlantic in six days. Every labor-saving invention and improvement in machinery throws worthy persons out of employment, but inventions and improvements do not stop for any such cause. Business is a question of profit and convenience, not a matter of sentiment. The manufacturer who, by an improved process, can save a fraction of a cent on the yard or pound or gallon of his output has an enormous advantage. Must he be deprived of it because other manufacturers cannot produce their wares as cheaply? Refining petroleum is no exception to the ordinary rule and a transformation in its methods and results was as inevitable as human progress and the changes of the seasons.

Over-production is justly chargeable with the low price of crude that wafted many producers into bankruptcy. Regardless of the inexorable laws of supply and demand, operators drilled in Bradford and Butler until forty-million barrels were above ground and the price fell to forty cents. Time and again the wisest producers sought to stem the tide by stopping the drill, which started with renewed energy after each brief respite. With the stocks bearing the market the dropping of crude to a price that meant ruin to owners of small wells was as certain as death and taxes. Gold-dollars would be as cheap as pebbles if they were as plentiful. Forty-million barrels of diamonds stored in South Africa would bring the glistening gems to the level of glass-beads. The Standard, through the National-Transit Company, erected thousands of tanks to husband the enormous surplus, which the world could not consume and would not have on any terms. Hosts of operators were kept out of the sheriff’s grasp by this provision for their relief, using their certificates as collateral during the period of extreme depression. The richest districts were drained at length, consumption increased and production declined, stocks were reduced and prices advanced. Then a number of oil-operators, foremost among whom were some of the men whom the Standard had carried over the grave crisis, thought the National-Transit was making too much money storing crude and tried to secure legislation that was hardly a shade removed from confiscation. The legislature refused to pass the bills, the company voluntarily reduced its charges and the agitation subsided. Thousands of producers sold or entered large companies, into whose hands a good share of the development has fallen, mainly because of the great expense of operating in deep territory and the wisdom of dividing the risk attendant upon seeking new fields. Operators who had to retire were “frozen out” by excessive drilling, nothing more and nothing less!

The highest efficiency in all fields of economical endeavor is obtained by the greatest degree of organization and specialization of effort. To attack large concerns as monopolies, simply because they represent millions of dollars under a single management, is as stupid and unjust as the narrow antagonism of ill-balanced capitalists to organized labor. If organized capital means better methods, greater facilities and improved processes, organized labor means better wages, greater recognition and improved industrial conditions. Hence both deserve to be encouraged and both should work in harmony. The Standard Oil-Company established agencies in different states for the sale of its products. As the business grew it organized corporations under the laws of these states, to carry on the industry under corporate agencies. Manufactories were located at the seaboard for the export-trade. It was easier and cheaper to pipe crude to the coast than to refine it at the sources of supply and ship the varied products. Thus the refining of export-oil was done at the seaboard, just as iron is manufactured at Pittsburg instead of at the ore-beds on Lake Superior. The company aimed to open markets for petroleum by reducing the cost of its transportation and manufacture and bettering its quality. It manufactured its own barrels, cans, paints, acids, glue and other materials, effecting a vast saving. On January second, 1882, the forty persons then associated in the Standard owned the entire capital of fifteen corporations and a part of the stock of a number of others. Nine of these forty controlled a majority of the stocks so held, and it was agreed on that date that all the stocks of the corporations should be placed in the hands of these nine as trustees. The trustees issued certificates showing the extent of each block of stock so surrendered, and agreed to conduct the business of the several corporations for the best interests of all concerned. This was the inception of the Standard Oil-Trust, the most abused and least understood business-organization in the history of the race.

The Standard Trust, which demagogues lay awake nights coining language to denounce, did not unite competing corporations. The corporations were contributory agencies to the same business, the stock owned by the individuals who had built up and carried on the business and held the voting power. These individuals had combined not to repress business, but to extend it legitimately, by allying various branches and various corporations. The organization of the Trust was designed to facilitate the business of these corporations by uniting them under the managementmanagement of one Board of Trustees. This object was business-like and laudable. It had no taint of a scheme to “corner” a necessity of life and elevate the price at the expense of the masses. On the contrary, it was calculated to enlarge the demand and supply it at the minimum of profit. For ten years the Standard Trust continued in existence, dissolving finally in 1892. During this term its stockholders increased from forty to two thousand. Many of the most skillful refiners and experienced producers joined the combination and were retained to manage their properties. Each corporation was managed as though independent of every other in the Trust, except that the rivalry to show the best record stimulated them to constant improvement. Whatever economy one devised was adopted by all. The business was most systematic and admirably managed in every detail, running as harmoniously as the different parts of a watch. Clerks, agents and employÉs who could save a few hundred dollars purchased Trust Certificates and thus became interested in the business and gains. If it is desirable to multiply the number who enjoy the profits of production, how can it be done better than through ownership of stock in industrial associations? The problem of co-operation and profit-sharing can be solved in this way. The Standard Trust was a real object-lesson in economics, which illustrated in the fullest measure the benefits of an association in business that affected consumers and producers of a great staple alike favorably.

Misrepresentation is as hard to eradicate as the Canada thistle or the English sparrow. Once fairly set going, it travels rapidly. “A lie will travel seven leagues while Truth is pulling on its boots.” The Standard is the target at which invidious terms and bitter invective have been hurled remorselessly, often through downright ignorance. Although reputable editors might be misled, in the hurry and strain of daily journalism, to give currency to deliberate falsehoods against corporations or capitalists, reasonable fairness might be expected from the author of a pretentious book. Henry D. Lloyd, of Chicago, last year published “Wealth Against Commonwealth,” an elaborate work, which is devoted mainly to an assault upon the Standard Oil-Company. The book, notable for its distortion of facts and suppression of all points in favor of the corporation it assails, caters to the worst elements of socialism. The author views everything through anti-combination glasses and, like the child with the bogie-man, sees the monopoly-spook in every successful aggregation of capital. He confounds the South-Improvement Company with the Standard and charges to the latter all the offenses supposed to lie at the door of the organization that died at its birth. One thrilling story is cited to show that the Standard robbed a poor widow. The narrative is well calculated to arouse public resentment and encourage a lynching-bee. It has been repeated times without number. Within the past month two Harrisburg ministers have referred to it as a startling evidence of the unscrupulous tyranny of the Standard millionaires. To make the case imposing Mr. Lloyd informs mankind that the husband of this widow had been “a prominent member of the Presbyterian church, president of a Young Men’s Christian Association and active in all religious and benevolent enterprises.” After his death she continued the business until she was finally coerced into selling it to the Trust at a ruinously low price—a mere fraction of its actual value. Mr. Lloyd states her hopeless despair as follows:

“Indignant with these thoughts and the massacred troop of hopes and ambitions that her brave heart had given birth to, she threw the letter—a letter she had received from the Standard regarding the sale of her property—into the fire, where it curled up into flames like those from which a Dives once begged for a drop of water. She never reappeared in the world of business, where she had found no chivalry to help a woman save her home, her husband’s life-work and her children.”

Is this harrowing statement true? The widow continued the business four years after her husband’s death. Competition increased, prices tumbled, the margin of profit was constantly narrowing, new appliances simplified refining-processes and the widow’s plant was no longer adapted to the business. She sold for sixty-thousand dollars, the Standard paying twice the sum for which a refinery better suited to the purpose could be constructed. Foolish friends afterwards told her she had sold too low and the widow wrote a severe letter to the president of the Standard. The company had bought the property to oblige her and at once offered it back. She declined to take it, or sixty-thousand dollars in Standard stock, evidently realizing that the refinery had lost its profit-earning capacity and that even the new management might not be able to make it pay. This will serve to illustrate the unfairness of “Wealth Against Commonwealth,” which has been widely quoted because of its presumed reliability and the high standing of the publishers. Yet this story of imaginary wrong has been worked into speeches, sermons and editorials of the fiercest type! In its treatment of the widow the Standard was truly magnanimous. Few business-men would consent to undo a transaction and have their labor for naught, simply because the other party had become dissatisfied. Possibly Mr. Lloyd would not be as generous if there was any profit in the transaction. If the Standard cut prices to ruin the widow and other competitors, would not oil have gone up again when they were disposed of? No such upward movement occurred. The widow disappeared. Many small refineries disappeared. Monopoly railroad-contracts, if such ever existed, have disappeared, but the price of refined-oil has been falling steadily for twenty years, declining from an average of nineteen cents a gallon in 1876 to five cents in 1895. The potent fact in this connection is that the Standard has continued to make profits with the declining price of oil. This conclusively demonstrates that the decline was due to economic improvements in the productive methods and not to a malicious cut to ruin a widow or anybody else, as Mr. Lloyd assumes. Otherwise a profit accompanying the fall in price would have been impossible and the Standard would have been sold out by the sheriff long years ago.

All the dealers in slander from Lloyd down to the chronic kicker who has attempted to make money by annoying the Standard have played the Rice case as a trump-card. According to their version, Mr. Rice was an angelic Vermonter, whose success inspired the Standard with devilish enmity and it determined to compass his ruin. Rice had operated at Pithole and at Macksburg and owned a small refinery at Marietta. It was alleged that the Cleveland & Marietta Railroad discriminated against him, doubling his freight-charge and giving the Standard a drawback on all the oil that went over the road. This was an iniquitous arrangement, entered into by the receiver of the road and cancelled by the Standard whenever a report of what was done reached New York. Mr. Rice had paid two-hundred-and-fifty dollars wrongfully, the money was at once refunded and Mr. Rice did not harass the company into buying his twenty-thousand dollar refinery for half a million. This will serve as an example of the dishonest misstatements that had wrought lots of good people up to white heat. The sins of the trusts may be very scarlet and very numerous, but economic literature should not pollute the sources of information and the foundations of public opinion.

An oft-repeated story is that the Standard owes its success to railway-discriminations. In proof of this the testimony of A. J. Cassatt is quoted. The testimony, published in a congressional investigation-report, shows that granting rebates was then the custom of railway-companies. Largely the same rebates were granted to all who shipped over the railways. Special to the Standard was payment of a joint freight-rate over pipe-line and railroad. A large rebate was given for one summer to all shippers by rail to equalize low rates by canal, of which many shippers took advantage. The only discriminatory rebate received by the Standard was ten per cent. for equalizing its large shipments over three trunk-lines, shipping exclusively by rail, even when water-rates were cheaper, furnishing terminal facilities and exempting the roads from loss by fire or accident. Courts in England and this country have very properly held that railways have the right to carry for less rates under such circumstances. Many wise men are of the same opinion. Subsequently it was developed that, while the short-lived agreement existed, the Standard’s strongest competitors were getting lower rates of freight than it was paying! Why do the Lloyd brand of critics ignore this pointed fact?

Another favorite story is that some officers of the Standard were convicted of burning a rival refinery. As all know who ever took the trouble to investigate, they were indicted for conspiracy to injure a rival. The counts in the indictment embraced the enticing away of an employÉ, the bringing of suits to prevent infringement of patents and the serious charge of inciting an employÉ to burn the works. When all the evidence on the part of the State was in, the court directed the discharge of every person connected with the Standard.Standard. There was not a scintilla of evidence against them. Two of the indicted persons were convicted of conspiracy, but they were not connected with the Standard,Standard, and never owned a share of Standard stock. The majority of the jurymen made affidavits that they found the convicted persons guilty only of enticing away an employÉ. The employÉ thus enticed had first been enticed from the works of the convicted parties and induced to reveal the secret processes by which a valuable lubricating-oil was manufactured. The best citizens of Rochester certified that the men convicted were men of unimpeachable honor, while the men who testified against them were quite the reverse. The whole affair was a wicked plot to blacken the character of men who stood and who still stand as high as any in Rochester. The court, satisfied of their innocence of any grave offence, inflicted merely a nominal fine.

Many of the attacks in a well-known work by a leading socialist against the Standard are made up of court-cases. The accusations are copied, the moving speeches of plaintiffs’ attorneys are printed; but all else is omitted, except that the case was decided in favor of the Standard. The inference is left to be drawn, or the charge is made openly, that the court was corrupt. Had the evidence of both sides been given, there would be no more room for such an inference than for a pretty maiden’s small brother in the parlor when her best young man is about to pop the momentous question. The rustic divine, weak in his spelling and strong in his opposition to the feminine style of coiling the hair in a huge knot, had better grounds for declaring the Scripture endorsed his view of the fashion. Reading the familiar passage, “let him that is on the housetop not come down to take anything out of his house,” he based his terrific sermon on this dismembered clause of the verse: “Top not, come down.”

One instance may be noted briefly. A Pennsylvania office-holder, whose unworthy motives an investigation exposed, charged that the Standard had defrauded the State of millions of taxes. The case was ably tried before an upright judge and the allegation found to be utterly baseless. Then the judge was charged with corruption. The case was taken to the highest court of the State, which affirmed the decision of the court below. At once the Supreme Court and the Attorney-General, who conducted the case for the State with signal ability, were accused of rank corruption. Perhaps the greatest surprise is that they were not charged with an attempt to get even with Moses by breaking all the commandments at one lick. An investigation committee, appointed by the Legislature, went fully into all the facts and allegations and reported that the case had been ably and fairly tried and correctly decided. It only remained to charge the legislative committee with corruption, which was done with great promptitude and emphasis. Yet every lawyer knows that the case of Pennsylvania against the Standard Oil-Company is a leading case on the subject of taxation of foreign corporations, establishing correct principles which, since its decision, the Supreme Court of the United States has affirmed.

In another case a respectable old man conceived the idea that he had solved the problem of continuous distillation of oil, an invention which would very much cheapen the product and be worth millions to refiners. The Standard aided him in his experiments until convinced they were unsuccessful. He became crazed on the subject and brought suit, alleging he had been prevented from demonstrating his discovery. The case was tried and the baseless suit dismissed, with as little injury to the poor man’s feelings as possible. This incident figures in histories written to fire the popular heart in the war against wealth, accompanied by pictures of a soulless corporation and an insane old man, calculated to draw hot tears and inflame public indignation to a dangerous pitch. Of course the readers are supposed to infer that the court was corrupted and justice grossly outraged. And so the changes are rung along the whole line; but the Standard, regardless of malevolent assaults and villainous distortions of facts, goes right on with its business of furnishing the world with the best light in the universe.

Russian competition, the extent and danger of which most people do not begin to appreciate, was met and overcome by sheer tenacity and superior generalship. The advantages of capable, courageous, intelligent concentration of the varied branches of a great industry were never manifested more strongly. Deprived of the invincible bulwark the Standard offered, the oil-producers of Pennsylvania, New York, West Virginia, Ohio and Indiana would have been utterly helpless. The Muscovite bear would have gobbled the trade of Europe and Asia, driving American oil from the foreign markets. Local consumption would not have exhausted two-thirds of the production, stocks of crude would have piled up and the price would have fallen proportionately. Instead of ranking with the busiest, happiest and most prosperous quarters of the universe, as they are to-day, the oil-regions of five states would have been irretrievably ruined, dragging down thousands of the brightest, manliest, cleverest fellows on God’s footstool! Instead of bringing a vast amount of gold from England, France and Germany for petroleum produced on American soil, refined by American workmen paid American wages and exported by an American company in American vessels, the trade would have been killed, the cash would have stayed across the waters and the country at large would have suffered incalculably! These are things to think of when some cheap agitator, with a private axe to grind, a mean spite to gratify or a selfish object to attain, raises a howl about monopoly and insists that the entire creation should “damn the Standard!”

When the history of this wonderful century is written it will tell how an American boy, born in New York sixty years ago, clerked in a country-store, kept a set of books, started a small oil-refinery at Cleveland and at forty was the head of the greatest business in the world. This is, in outline, the story of John D. Rockefeller’s successful career. Yesterday, as it were, a youth with nothing but integrity, industry and ambition for capital—a pretty good outfit, too—to-day he is one of the half-dozen richest men in Europe or America. Better than all else, integrity that is part and parcel of his moral nature, industry that finds life too fruitful to waste it idly and ambition to excel in good deeds as well as in business are his rich possession still. Gathering the largest fortune ever accumulated in twenty-five years has not blunted his fine sensibilities, dwarfed his intellectual growth, stifled his religious convictions or absorbed his whole being. Increasing wealth brought with it a deep sense of increasing responsibility and he is honored not so much for his millions as for the use he makes of them. Even in an age unrivalled for money-getting and money-giving, Mr. Rockefeller’s keen foresight, executive ability and wise liberality have been notably conspicuous. His faith in the future of petroleum and his desire to benefit humanity he has shown by his works. Believing in the power of united effort to develop an infant-industry, his genius devised the system of practical co-operation that developed into the Standard Oil-Trust, against which prejudice and ignorance have directed their fiercest fire. Believing in education, his magnificent endowment of Chicago University—eight to ten-million dollars—ranks him with the foremost contributors to the foundation of a seat of learning since schools and colleges began. Believing in fresh air for the masses, he donated Cleveland a public park and a million to equip it superbly. Believing in spiritual progress, he builds churches, helps weak congregations and aids in spreading the gospel everywhere. Believing in the claims of the poor, his charities amount to hundreds-of-thousands of dollars yearly, not to encourage pauperism and dependence, but to relieve genuine distress, diminish human suffering and put struggling men and women in the way to improve their condition. He has differed from nearly all other eminent public benefactors by giving freely, quietly and modestly during his active life, without seeking the popular applause his munificence could easily obtain.

Mr. Rockefeller is a strict Baptist, a regular attendant at church and prayer-meeting, a teacher in the Sunday-school and a staunch advocate of aggressive Christianity. His advancement to commanding wealth has not changed his ideas of duty and personal obligation. He realizes that the man who lives for himself alone is always little, no matter how big his bank-account. He and his family walk to service or ride in a street-car, with none of the trappings befitting the worship of Mammon rather than the glory of God. Earnest, positive and vigorous in his religion as in his business, he takes no stock in the dealer who has not stamina or the profession of faith that is too destitute of backbone to have a denominational preference. The president of the Standard Oil-Company impresses all who meet him with the idea of a forceful, decisive character. He looks people in the face, his eyes sparkle in conversation and he relishes a bright story or a clever narration. You feel that he can read you at a glance and that deception and evasion in his presence would be utterly futile. The flatterer and sycophant would make as little headway with him as the bunco-steerer or the green-goods vendor. His estimate of men is rarely at fault and to this quality some measure of the Standard’s success must be attributed. As if by instinct, its chief officer picked out men adapted to special lines of work—men who would not be misfits—and secured them for his company. The capacity and fidelity of the Standard corps are proverbial. Whenever Mr. Rockefeller wishes to enjoy a breathing-spell at his country-seat up the Hudson or on his Ohio farm, he leaves the business with perfect confidence, because his lieutenants are competent and trustworthy and the machine will run along smoothly under their watchful care. He has not accumulated his money by wrecking property, but by building up, by persistent improvement and by rigidly adhering to the policy of furnishing the best articles at the lowest price. Fair-minded people are beginning to understand something of the service rendered the public by the man who stands at the head of the petroleum-industry and more than any other is the founder of its commerce. He has invested in factories, railroads and mines, giving thousands employment, developing the resources of the country and adding to the wealth of the nation. He is human, therefore he sometimes errs; he is fallible, therefore he makes mistakes, but the world is learning that John D. Rockefeller has no superior in business and that the Standard Oil-Company is not an organized conspiracy to plunder producers or consumers of petroleum. It is time to dismiss the idea that ability to build up and maintain a large business is discreditable, that marvellous success is blameworthy and that business-achievements imply dishonesty.

William Rockefeller, who resembles his brother in business skill, is a leader in Standard affairs and has his office in the Broadway building. He was a member of the first Board of Trustees and bore a prominent part in organizing and developing the Oil-Trust. He is largely interested in railroads, belongs to the best clubs, likes good horses and contributes liberally to worthy objects. The Standard folks don’t lock up their money, loan it on mortgages at extravagant rates, spend it in Europe or try to get a gold squeeze on the government. They employ it in manufactures, in railways, in commerce and in enterprises that promote the general welfare.

From the days of the little refinery in Cleveland, the germ of the Standard, Henry M. Flagler and John D. Rockefeller have been closely associated in oil. Samuel Andrews, a practical refiner and for some time their partner, retired from the firm with a million dollars as his share of the business. The organization of the Standard Oil-Company of Cleveland was the first step towards the greater Standard Oil-Company of which all the world knows something. Its growth surprised even the projectors of the combination, who “builded better than they knew.” Mr. Flagler devotes his time largely to beneficent uses of his great wealth. He recognizes the duty of the possessor of property to keep it from waste, to render it productive and to increase it by proper methods. A vast tract of Florida swamp, yielding only malaria and shakesshakes, he has converted into a region suited to human-beings, producing cotton, sugar and tropical fruits and affording comfortable subsistence to thousands of provident settlers. He has transformed St. Augustine from a faded antiquity into a modern town, with the magnificent Ponce de Leon Hotel, paved streets, elegant churches, public halls, and all conveniences, provided by this generous benefactor at a cost of many millions. He has constructed new railroads, improved lines built previously, opened interior counties to thrifty emigrants and performed a work of incalculable advantage to the New South. He and his family attend the West Presbyterian Church, of which the Rev. John R. Paxton, formerly of Harrisburg, was pastor until 1894. Mr. Flagler is of average height, slight build and erect figure. His hair is white, but time has not dealt harshly with the liberal citizen whose career presents so much to praise and emulate.

John D. Archbold, vice-president of the Standard Oil-Company and its youngest trustee during the entire existence of the Oil-Trust, has been actively connected with petroleum from his youth. No man is better known and better liked personally in the oil-regions. From his father, a zealous Methodist minister, and his good mother, one of the noble women to whom this country owes an infinite debt of gratitude, he inherited the qualities of head and heart that achieved success and gained multitudes of friends. A mere lad when the reports of golden opportunities attracted him from Ohio to the land of petroleum, he first engaged as a shipping-clerk for a Titusville refinery. His promptness, accuracy, and pleasant address won him favor and promotion. He soon learned the whole art of refining and his active mind discovered remedies for a number of defects. Adnah Neyhart induced him to take charge of his warehouse in New York City for the sale of refined-oil. His energy and rare tact increased the trade of the establishment steadily. Mr. Rockefeller met the bright young man and offered him a responsible position with the Standard. He was made president of the Acme Refining Company, then among the largest in the United States. He improved the quality of its products and was entrusted with the negotiations that brought many refiners into the combination. He had resided at Titusville, where he married the daughter of Major Mills, and was the principal representative of the Standard in the producing section. When the Trust was organized he removed to New York and supervised especially the refining-interest of the united corporations. His splendid executive talent, keen perception, tireless energy and honorable manliness were simply invaluable. Mr. Archbold is popular in society, has an ideal home, represents the Standard in the directory of different companies and merits the high esteem ungrudingly bestowed by his associates in business and his acquaintances everywhere.

The personal traits and business-successes of Charles Pratt, an original member of the Standard Trust, were typical of American civilization. The son of poor parents in Massachusetts, where he was born in 1830, necessity compelled him to leave home at the early age of ten and seek work on a farm. He toiled three years for his board and a short term at school each winter. For his board and clothes he next worked in a Boston grocery. His first dollar in money, of which he always spoke with pride as having been made at the work-bench, he earned while learning the machinist-trade at Newton, in his native state. With the savings of his first year in the machine-shop he entered an academy, studying diligently twelve months and subsisting on a dollar a week. Then he entered a Boston paints-and-oil store, devoting his leisure hours to study and self-improvement. Coming to New York in 1851, he clerked in Appleton’s publishing-house and later in a paint-store. In 1854 he joined C. T. Reynolds and F. W. Devoe in a paints-and-oil establishment. Petroleum refining became important and the partners separated in 1867, Reynolds controlling the paints-department and Charles Pratt & Co. conducting the oil-branch of the business. The success of the latter firm as oil-refiners was extraordinary. Astral-oil was in demand everywhere. The works at Brooklyn, continuous and surprising as was their expansion, found it difficult to keep pace with the consumption. The firm entered into the association with the Cleveland, Pittsburg and Philadelphia companies that culminated in the Standard Oil-Trust, Mr. Pratt holding the relation of president of the Charles-Pratt Manufacturing Company. He lived in Brooklyn and died suddenly at sixty-three, an attack of heart-disease that prostrated him in his New-York office proving fatal in three hours. For thirty years he devoted much of his time to the philanthropies with which his name will be perpetually identified. He built and equipped Pratt Institute, a school of manual arts, at a cost of two-million dollars. He spent a half-million to erect the Astral Apartment Buildings, the revenue of which is secured to the Institute as part of its endowment. He devoted a half-million to the Adelphia Academy and a quarter-million towards the new edifice of Emanuel Baptist Church, of which he was a devout, generous member. His home-life was marked by gentleness and affection and he left his family an estate of fifteen to twenty-millions. Charles Pratt was a man of few words, alert, positive and unassuming, sometimes blunt in business, but always courteous, trustworthy and deservedly esteemed for liberality and energy.

Jabez A. Bostwick, a member of the Standard Trust from its inception, was born in New York State, spent his babyhood in Ohio, whither the family moved when he was ten years old, and died at sixty-two. His business-education began as clerk in a bank at Covington, Ky. There he first came into public notice as a cotton-broker, removing to New York in 1864 to conduct the same business on a larger scale. He secured interests in territory and oil-wells at Franklin in 1860, organized the firm of J. A. Bostwick & Co. and engaged extensively in refining. The firm prospered, bought immense quantities of crude and increased its refining capacity extensively. Mr. Bostwick was active in forming the Standard Oil-Trust and was its first treasurer. He severed his connection with his oil-partner, W. H. Tilford, who also entered the Standard Oil-Company. Seven years before his death he retired from the oil-business to accept the presidency of the New York & New England Railroad. He held the position six years and was succeeded by Austin Corbin. Injuries during a fire at his country-seat in Mamaroneck caused his death. The fire started in Frederick A. Constable’s stables, in rear of Mr. Bostwick’s. Unknown to his coachman, who was pushing behind it, Mr. Bostwick seized the whiffletrees of a carriage. Suddenly the vehicle swerved and the owner was violently jammed against the side of the stable. The coachman saw his peril and pulled the carriage back. Mr. Bostwick reeled forward, his face white with pain and sank moaning upon a buckboard. “Don’t leave me, Mr. Williams,” he whispered to his son’s tutor, “I fear I am badly hurt.” The sufferer was carried to the house, became unconscious and died in ten minutes, surrounded by members of his household and his neighbors. In 1866 Mr. Bostwick married a daughter of Ford Smith, a retired Cincinnati merchant, who removed to New York during the war. They had a son and two daughters. The daughters married and were in Europe when their father met his tragic fate. The widow and children inherited an estate of twelve millions. Mr. Bostwick was liberal with his wealth, giving largely without ostentation. Forrest College, in North Carolina, and the Fifth Avenue Baptist Church of New York were special recipients of his bounty, while his private benefactions amounted to many thousands yearly. He was strict almost to sternness in his dealings, preferring justice to sentiment in business.

These were the six trustees of the Standard Oil-Trust as first constituted of whom the world has heard and read most. Many of the two-thousand stock-holders of the Standard Oil-Company are widely known. Benjamin Brewster, president of the National-Transit Company, retired with an ample fortune. His successor, H. H. Rogers, the present head of the pipe-line system, is noted alike for business-sagacity and sensible benefactions. The great structure at No. 26 Broadway, the largest office-building in New York occupied by one concern, is the Standard headquarters. Each floor has one or more departments, managed by competent men and all under supervision of the company’s chief officials. From the basement, with its massive vaults and steam-heating plant, to the roof every inch is utilized by hundreds of book-keepers, accountants, stenographers, telegraphers, clerks and heads of divisions. Everything moves with the utmost precision and smoothness. President Rockefeller has his private offices on the eighth floor, next the spacious room in which the Executive Committee meets every day at noon for consultation. Mr. Flagler, Mr. Archbold and Mr. Rogers are located conveniently. The substantial character of the building and the business-like aspect of the departments impress visitors most favorably. There is an utter absence of gingerbread and cheap ornamentation, of confusion and perplexing hurry. The very air, the clicking of the telegraph-instruments, the noiseless motion of the elevators and the prompt dispatch of business indicate solidity, intelligence and perfect system. From that building the movements of a force of employÉs, numbering twice the United States army and scattered over both hemispheres, are directed. The sails of the Standard fleet whiten every sea, its products are marketed wherever men have learned the value of artificial light and its name is a universal synonym for the highest development of commercial enterprise in any age or country.

Business-men recall with a shudder the frightful stringency in 1893. All over the land industries drooped and withered and died. Raw material, even wool itself, had no market. Commerce languished, wages dwindled, railroads collapsed, factories suspended, and myriads of workmen lost their jobs. Merchants cut down expenses to the lowest notch, loans were called in at a terrible sacrifice, debts were compromised at ten to fifty cents on the dollar, the present was dark and the future gloomy. The balance of trade was heavily against the United States. Government securities tumbled and a steady drain of gold to Europe set in. The efforts of Congress, the Treasury Department and syndicates of bankers to stem the tide of disaster were on a par with Mrs. Partington’s attempt to sweep back the ocean with a sixpenny-broom. Amid the general demoralization, when the nation seemed hastening to positive ruin, one splendid enterprise alone extended its business, multiplied its resources and was largely instrumental in restoring public confidence.

The Standard Oil-Company, unrivalled in its equipment of brains and skill and capital, not merely breasted the storm successfully, but did more than all other agencies combined to avert widespread bankruptcy. Through the sagacity and foresight of this great corporation crude oil advanced fifty per cent., thereby doubling and trebling the prosperity of the producing sections, without a corresponding rise in refined. By this wise policy, which only men of nerve and genius could have carried out, home consumers were not taxed to benefit the oil-regions and the exports of petroleum-products swelled enormously. As the result, while the American demand increased constantly, millions upon millions of dollars flowed in from abroad, materially diminishing the European drainage of the yellow metal from this side of the Atlantic. The salutary, far-reaching effects of such management, by reviving faith and stimulating the flagging energies of the country, exerted an influence upon the common welfare words and figures cannot estimate. Petroleum preserved the thread of golden traffic with foreign nations.

SAMUEL C.T. DODD.