Standard Oil

In 1911 the Standard Oil Co. was broken up into its constituent companies. It was an illegal combination in restraint of trade in the Government's eyes, but in the minds of the public it was more than that-- a bugaboo for its enormity. That was the day before Babbitt could digest with equanimity huge business transactions retailed in his breakfast journal. Now he has become so used to big figures that he merely glances at the digits in the millions column and lets the remaining zeros trail in the fringe of consciousness.

Last week Chairman George H. Jones and President Walter C. Teagle of the Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey* quietly announced that their gross business last year amounted to $1,122,682,610. The amount stirred less interest than the fact that this one of the Standard Oil group does the second largest business in the world, ranking next to the U. S. Steel Corp. ($1,406,505,195) and ahead of General Motors Corp. ($734,592,000).*

This billion-and-an-eighth turnover (resulting in net earnings of $111,231,355) pays no little tribute to the restless business genius of Walter Clark Teagle. Once, not so long ago, he was indecisive about a career. He had done so well by getting his Cornell B. S. degree in chemistry in three years (he matriculated at 18) that that University offered him an instructorship with a professorship in sight. The initial salary of $600 annually tempted him little. However, the academic life did.

John Teagle, his father and a successful oil man of Cleveland, stopped that notion, told his boy to go to work. Young Teagle did --for his father-- and learned every department of the oil business. He has an infinite capacity for absorbing detail; so there was no wonder when he became vice president of the Republic Oil Co. at its organization in 1900. He went into the foreign field, became the great expert on oil export that he is. This eventually gained him the presidency of the Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey in 1917.

In fact, when his company has to do any intricate foreign dickering over oil, he almost invariably goes himself. Recently he was in Europe, returning in ample time for his 48th birthday on May 1 and for last week's meeting of his stockholders. He brought back with him positive arrangements for U. S. oil companies to partake with British, French and Dutch concerns in the exploitation of the Mesopotamian oil regions.

To get control of these regions there has long been considerable confused rivalry among European interests, rivalry which was seemingly set at rest by the San Remo treaty of 1920. This left the U. S. out of consideration and was so vigorously protested that the British, French and Dutch interests eventually permitted the U. S. a quarter share of the work and rewards. But one Calouste Sarkis Gulbenkian, Armenian banker, millionaire and onetime business agent of defunct Sultan Abdul Hamid, held a neat 5% of the Turkish Petroleum Co., under whose 75-year exploitation concession the internationals intended to operate.

Gulbenkian has now been persuaded to surrender his 5% and take instead a royalty on production.

The U. S. members of the four-way syndicate are: Standard Oil of N. J. (Mr. Teagle's firm), Standard Oil of N. Y., Pan-American Petroleum and Transport Co., Gulf Refining Co., and Atlantic Refining Co. The syndicate at first will spend $5,000,000 prospecting for oil; at present contemplates no production.

* There are also Standard Oil companies of New York (Socony), of Indiana, of Kansas, of Kentucky, of Nebraska and of Ohio.

* The Pennsylvania last year did the largest business among the railroads-- $672,136,962.