This multiplication of varieties is, of course, a perfectly legitimate merchandising device, but it is not a development of products, properly speaking. Nor indeed was it for discoveries and inventions that the Standard Oil Trust was great in 1882, or that it is now — it is in the way it adapts and handles the discoveries and inventions it acquires. Take the matter of lubricating oils. After a long struggle it gathered to itself the factories and the patents of lubricating oils, and it has developed the trade amazingly; for, while in 1872 less than a half million gallons of petroleum lubricants were going abroad, in 1897 over 50,000,000 gallons went. The extension of the lubricating trade was made possible largely by the discovery of Mr. Merrill referred to above. In 1869 Mr. Merrill discovered a process by which a deodorised lubricating oil could be made. He had both the apparatus for producing the oil and for the oil itself patented. The oil was so favourably received that the market sale was several hundred per cent. greater in a single year than the firm had ever sold before. Naturally, an attempt was made by other lubricating works to imitate Mr. Merrill's new product. The most successful imitation was made by Dr. S. D. Tweedle of Pittsburg. The oil he put upon the market was considered an infringement by Mr. Merrill, who commenced suit against the agents handling it. The case was before the courts for some six years, and Mr. Merrill spent over $100,000 in maintaining the patent. The case was finally decided in his favour by the Supreme Court in Washington. During this suit the Standard Oil Company stood behind Dr. Tweedle, furnishing the money to defend the suit. When finally they were defeated they took a license under the new patent which Mr. Merrill was obliged to get out, and paid him a royalty on the oil until within about a year and a half before the end of the life of the patent, when they bought it outright for a large sum, Mr. Merrill reserving the right to manufacture and sell the oil without a royalty. Most lubricating oils from petroleum are now made after Mr. Merrill's process.

Having obtained control of the lubricating oils, the Standard showed the greatest intelligence in studying the markets and in developing the products. It makes lubricants for every machine that works. It offers scores of cylinder oils, scores of spindle lubricants, of valve lubricants, of gas-engine lubricants, special brands for sewing machines, for looms, for sole leather, for dynamos, for marine engines, for everything that runs and works by steam power, by air, by electricity, by gas, by man, or by beast power. Now any lubricating factory can produce the six or eight primary lubricants. Given these, the varieties to be produced by skilful compounding are infinite. They can be made more or less viscous, flowing, heavy, light, according to the needs of the machines and the idiosyncrasies of individuals who run them. The man who runs a machine soon knows what oil suits him, and if his trade is big enough an oil is put up especially for him with a name to tickle his vanity. It may be exactly like a dozen other oils on the market, but having its own name it is reckoned a new product. Skilful compounders insist that they can duplicate any of the 833 lubricating oils of the Standard if they can have samples. Of course this close study of the needs of a market, and this adaptation of one's goods to the requirements, are the highest sort of merchandising.

Unquestionably the great strength of the Standard Trust in 1882, when it was founded as it is to-day, was the men who formed it. However sweeping Mr. Rockefeller's commercial vision, however steady his purpose, however remarkable his insight into what was essential to the realisation of his ambition, he would have never gone far had he not drawn men into his concern who understood what he was after and knew how to work for it. His principle concerning men was laid down early. "We want only the big ones, those who have already proved they can do a big business. As for the others, unfortunately they will have to die." The scheme had no provision for mediocrity — nor for those who could not stomach his methods. The men who in 1882 formed the Standard alliance were all from the foremost rank in the petroleum trade, men who without question would be among those at the top to-day if there had never been a Standard Oil Company. In Pittsburg it was Charles Lockhart, a man interested in petroleum before the Drake well was struck, who had begun oil operations on Oil Creek in March, 1860, who had carried samples of crude and refined to Europe as early as May, 1860, who had built one of the first refineries in Pittsburg, and who was easily the largest refiner there in 1874 when Mr. Rockefeller bought him up. In Philadelphia, the largest refiner in 1874 was W. G. Warden of the Atlantic Refining Company, and it was he whom Mr. Rockefeller wanted. In New York it was the concern of Charles Pratt and Company, one of the three largest concerns around Manhattan — the concern to which H. H. Rogers belonged. Charles Pratt had been in the oil and paint business since 1850, and he had become a refiner of petroleum at Greenpoint, Long Island, in 1867. Before Standard Oil was known outside of New York the fame of Pratt's Astral Oil had gone around the world. Mr. Pratt's concern was rated at the same daily capacity as Mr. Rockefeller's (1,500 barrels) in the spring of 1872, when the latter wiped up the Cleveland refineries and grew in a night to 10,000 barrels. Mr. Vandergrift, who united his interests with Mr. Rockefeller's in 1874 and 1875, had been a far better known man in the oil business and controlled much greater and more varied interests up to South Improvement times. When he went into the Standard he controlled the largest refinery on Oil Creek, the Imperial, of about 1,400 barrels. He was president of a large system of pipe-lines, and he was a member of one of the largest oil-producing concerns of the time — the H. L. Taylor Company.

There is no doubt but that Mr. Rockefeller had plenty of brains in his great trust. It was those who had done business with him who were the first to point this out when critics declared that the concern could not — or must not live. "There is no question about it," W. H. Vanderbilt told the Hepburn Commission in 1879, "but these men are smarter than I am a great deal. They are very enterprising and smart men. I never came in contact with any class of men as smart and able as they are in their business. They would never have got into the position they now are without a great deal of ability — and one man would hardly have been able to do it; it is a combination of men."

It was not only that first-rate ability was demanded at the top; it was required throughout the organisation. The very day-labourers were picked men. It was the custom to offer a little better day wages for labourers than was current and then to choose from these the most promising specimens; those men were advanced as they showed ability. To-day the very errand boys at 26 Broadway are chosen for the promise of development they show, and if they do not develop they are discharged. No dead wood is taken into the concern unless it is through the supposed necessities of family or business relations, as probably occurs to a degree in every human organisation.

The efficiency of the working force of the Standard was greatly increased when the trust was formed by the opportunity given to the employees of taking stock. They were urged to do it, and where they had no savings money was lent them on easy terms by the company. The result is that a great number of the employees of the Standard Oil Company are owners of stock which they bought at eighty, and on which for several years they have received from thirty to forty-eight per cent. dividends. It is only natural that under such circumstances the company has always a remarkably loyal and interested working force.

Mr. Rockefeller's great creation has really been strong, then, in many admirable qualities. The force of the combination has been greater because of the business habits of the independent body which has opposed it. To the Standard's caution the Oil Regions opposed recklessness; to its economy, extravagance; to its secretiveness, almost blatant frankness; to its far-sightedness, little thought of the morrow; to its close-fistedness, a spendthrift generosity; to its selfish unscrupulousness, an almost quixotic love of fair play. The Oil Regions had, besides, one fatal weakness — its passion for speculation. Now, Mr. Rockefeller never speculates. He deals only in those things which other people have proved sure!

It is when one examines the inside of the Standard Oil Trust that one sees how much reason there is for the opinion of those people who declare that Mr. Rockefeller can always sustain the monopoly of the oil business he has achieved. One begins to see what Mr. Vanderbilt meant in 1879 when he said: "I don't believe that by any legislative enactment or anything else, through any of the states or all of the states, you can keep such men down. You can't do it! They will be on top all the time, you see if they are not." [161] It is not surprising that those who realise the compactness and harmony of the Standard organisation, the ability of its members, the solidity of the qualities governing its operations, are willing to forget its history. Such is the blinding quality of success! "It has achieved this," they say; "no matter what helped to rear this structure, it is here, it is admirably managed. We might as well accept it. We must do business." They are weary of contention, too — who so unwelcome as an agitator? — and they began to accept the Standard's explanation that the critics are indeed "people with a private grievance," "moss-backs left behind in the march of progress." Again and again in the history of the oil business it has looked to the outsider as if henceforth Mr. Rockefeller would have to have things his own way, for who was there to interfere with him, to dispute his position? No one, save that back in Northwestern Pennsylvania, in scrubby little oil towns, around greasy derricks, in dingy shanties, by rusty, deserted oil stills, men have always talked of the iniquity of the railroad rebate, the injustice of restraint of trade, the dangers of monopoly, the right to do an independent business; have always rehearsed with tiresome persistency the evidence by which it has been proved that the Standard Oil Company is a revival of the South Improvement Company. It has all seemed futile enough with the public listening in wonder and awe to the splendid rehearsal of figures, and the unctuous logic of the Mother of Trusts, and yet one can never tell. It was the squawking of geese that saved the Capitol.

Certain it is that many and great as are his business qualities, John D. Rockefeller has never been allowed to enjoy the fruits of his victory in that atmosphere of leisure and adulation which the victor naturally craves. Certain it is that the incessant agitation of men with a "private grievance" has ruined some of his fairest schemes, has hauled him again and again before investigating committees, and has contributed greatly to securing a federal law authorising so fundamental and obvious a right as equal rates on common carriers. Certain it is that the incessant efforts of those who believed they had a right to do an independent business have resulted in the most important advances made in the oil business since the beginning of Mr. Rockefeller's combination, namely, the seaboard pipe-line, for transporting crude oil, due to the Tidewater Pipe Line, and later the use of the seaboard pipe-line for transporting refined oil, due to the United States Pipe Line. Certain it is, too, that all of competition which we have, with its consequent lowering of prices, is due to independent efforts.

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