EPUB paragraph 12 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c27_r1.htm
To start things off, Judge Landis asked, “Mr. Rockefeller, what is the business of the so-called Standard Oil Company of New Jersey?” “I believe, your Honor …” Rockefeller began, then appeared to lose his way. He paused, fiddled with his cane, crossed his legs, then made a second stab at an answer. “I believe, your Honor …” Here again, his mind wandered as Judge Landis tapped his spectacles on his desk in frustration. Finally, Rockefeller concentrated his faculties and replied, “I believe, your Honor, they operate an oil refinery in New Jersey.” To all questions, Rockefeller responded in this same slow, disconnected style, making his testimony worthless. In exchange, Landis had to give Rockefeller the one thing he dearly wanted: immunity from criminal prosecution. This testimony was not only a fiasco for the judge but a public-relations victory for Rockefeller. How, people wondered, could this sweet, bumbling old man have been the evil wizard of the trust? His testimony even received plaudits from the press. As he told Archbold afterward, “My experience at Chicago and with the newspaper people generally of late has been very satisfactory.”
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · John D. Archbold · Kenesaw Mountain Landis · Standard Oil · Chicago · New Jersey
EPUB paragraph 13 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c27_r1.htm
A month later, Judge Landis took his revenge. On the morning of August 3, 1907, as more than a thousand people sought entrance to his courtroom, Landis read aloud his decision in the Standard Oil case. (Possibly in anticipation, Rockefeller had just announced a $32 million gift to the General Education Board.) Once again, with difficulty, the marshals shut the great doors to keep out waves of spectators. Pale and edgy, Judge Landis called Standard Oil no better than a common thief and castigated its lawyers for their “studied insolence.” As spectators guffawed at these insults, the bailiffs repeatedly had to rap for order. Then, Landis delivered his bombshell: a fine against Standard Oil of Indiana that dwarfed any other in American corporate history up until that time: $29.24 million ($457 million in 1996 dollars). This was the maximum penalty: $20,000 for each of 1,462 carloads of oil cited in the indictment. Reporters struggled to convey the magnitude of this fine. That money could build five battleships; fill 177 flatcars with silver dollars; employ 48,730 city-street workers each year. It amounted to slightly more than half the money coined annually by the federal government. Since it represented nearly 30 percent of Standard Oil’s $100 million capitalization, Rockefeller’s theoretical share of the fine worked out to $8,011,760. Asked about the penalty, Mark Twain said it reminded him of the bride’s words the next morning: “I expected it but didn’t suppose it would be so big.”
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Kenesaw Mountain Landis · Mark Twain · Standard Oil · General Education Board · Standard Oil of Indiana
EPUB paragraph 14 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c27_r1.htm
Rockefeller used the record fine to put on a characteristic show of aplomb. He was in the middle of a golf foursome in Cleveland when a messenger came sprinting across the fairway, clutching a yellow envelope. Taking it and handing the boy a dime, Rockefeller read the verdict without even a twitch. Finally, he put the message in his pocket and said to his golf partners, “Well, shall we go on gentlemen?” Then he hit an excellent drive of about 160 yards down the fairway. At first, nobody dared to ask the question on their minds, but then one person screwed up his courage: “How much is it?” “Twenty-nine million, two hundred and forty thousand, the maximum penalty, I believe,” Rockefeller answered coolly. Then he gestured toward the tee and said, “It is your honor. Will you gentlemen drive?” By all reports, Rockefeller was in superb form that day and completed nine holes in fifty-three shots, his best score ever. The next day, in relating the incident, one Cleveland paper said: “Not by Change of Countenance or Movement Did the Standard’s Founder Betray the Fact That He Might Have Been Annoyed or Angered by the Sentence Handed Down in Chicago.”
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Standard Oil · Cleveland · Chicago
EPUB paragraph 15 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c27_r1.htm
Of course, Rockefeller’s poker face concealed deep rage. The Landis fine supported the thesis that the Standard Oil empire was based on unethical, even illegal, rebates, not on the business acumen of its founders. Before the day was over, Rockefeller issued a statement upbraiding the court: “A great injustice has been done the company. It was from ignorance on how the great business was founded. For all these years no one has known and no one seems to have cared how it came into existence.” Descrying Teddy Roosevelt’s influence, Gates told Rockefeller that he had lost his admiration for the man and hoped that “this amazing and reckless robbery and plunder under the forms of law, may awake the business interests of the country and thoughtful men, to the perils into which we have drifted.”
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Theodore Roosevelt · Kenesaw Mountain Landis · Frederick T. Gates · Standard Oil
EPUB paragraph 16 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c27_r1.htm
At one point during that famous golf game of August 3, 1907, Rockefeller had remarked, “Judge Landis will be dead a long time before this fine is paid,” and his prediction proved accurate. He seldom spoke so harshly in public. Many observers saw the Landis fine as more of a political statement and a publicity stunt than sound jurisprudence. In July 1908, a federal appeals court not only revoked the fine but severely reprimanded Landis for considering each carload of oil as a separate offense. Judge Peter S. Grosscup, calling Landis’s act an “abuse of judicial discretion,” ordered a retrial, in which Standard Oil was subsequently found not guilty. Teddy Roosevelt was hopping mad at the appeals court. While he had thought the Landis fine excessive, he had thought the trial itself fair. The day after the fine was thrown out, Roosevelt announced that the government would again prosecute Standard Oil for accepting rebates, since “there is absolutely no question as to the guilt of the defendant nor of the exceptionally grave character of the offense.” Dismayed, he said with a touch of bombast that the decision had “hurt the cause of civilization.”
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Theodore Roosevelt · Kenesaw Mountain Landis · Standard Oil · Peter S. Grosscup
EPUB paragraph 17 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c27_r1.htm
By the early fall of 1907, many Wall Street soothsayers were predicting a savage downturn in financial markets in response to the Landis fine and the antitrust suits. “It must be that these persecutions against business interests will not always continue,” Senior warned his son in late August. “If so, we must be prepared for very disastrous results to our commercial fabric. I think we better increase our reserves of money with our income.” In the week after the Landis fine, Standard Oil shares skidded from 500 to 421, leading a stock-market slump.
Names: Kenesaw Mountain Landis · Standard Oil · Wall Street
EPUB paragraph 18 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c27_r1.htm
For reform-minded critics, the ensuing panic originated with the misbehavior of the business fraternity itself. For several years, the stock market had coasted on a tide of easy money, low interest rates, and manic speculation in copper, mining, and railroad shares. In this euphoric mood, stock promoters had flogged unsound companies, and investors had gorged themselves on watered stock. Among the most flagrant speculators were trust companies that exploited legal loopholes to speculate heavily in the stock market while also lending excessively against securities as collateral. Roosevelt inveighed against “an era of over-confidence and speculation” that would lead to a severe purgative reaction.
Names: Theodore Roosevelt
EPUB paragraph 19 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c27_r1.htm
As money tightened that September, Rockefeller deposited in several New York banks bonds that could be pledged as security for government loans—a rescue operation for which he reaped a handsome 2 percent commission. As panic overtook Wall Street in late October 1907, throngs of petrified depositors lined up in front of banks to empty their accounts, and J. P. Morgan rushed back to New York from an Episcopal convention in Richmond. On October 22, after his aides examined the books of the Knickerbocker Trust, Morgan decided that it was hopelessly insolvent and had to be shut. That night, in an extraordinary pledge of faith in a private citizen, Treasury Secretary George Cortelyou met with Morgan in a Manhattan hotel and placed at his disposal twenty-five million dollars in government funds to stem the panic. While Morgan was the impresario of the salvage operation, Rockefeller provided more private money than anybody else.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · J. P. Morgan · New York · Manhattan · George Cortelyou · Richmond · Treasury · Wall Street · Knickerbocker Trust · Episcopal
EPUB paragraph 20 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c27_r1.htm
When Gates got wind of the Knickerbocker’s collapse, he telephoned Rockefeller at Pocantico in the early morning and said a public statement from him might restore confidence. Rockefeller stood there in his bathrobe, mulling over the matter, then decided to call Melville E. Stone, general manager of the Associated Press. He told Stone, for quotation, that the country’s credit was sound and that, if necessary, he would give half of all he possessed to maintain America’s credit. It was an unprecedented statement: A single citizen had promised to bail out Wall Street. The next morning, as these sedative words were reprinted across America, reporters spilled onto the golf course at Pocantico. When asked if he would really give half his securities to stop the panic, Rockefeller replied, “Yes, and I have cords of them, gentlemen, cords of them.” It was a rare case of Rockefeller boasting about his wealth, but it was clearly meant to lift public morale. Because Rockefeller deposited ten million dollars there, National City Bank had the deepest gold reserves and cash resources of any bank during the panic. “They always come to Uncle John when there is trouble,” Rockefeller noted with pride. When J. P. Morgan decided to save the shaky Trust Company of America on October 23, he received three million dollars in rescue funds from George F. Baker of First National Bank and James Stillman of National City Bank, the latter drawing on Rockefeller money.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · James Stillman · J. P. Morgan · Frederick T. Gates · National City Bank · Pocantico Hills · United States · George F. Baker · Melville E. Stone · Stone · First National Bank · Uncle John · Associated Press · Wall Street · Knickerbocker · Trust Company of America
EPUB paragraph 21 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c27_r1.htm
For the first time in several years, John D. Rockefeller, Sr., strode through the portals of 26 Broadway on October 24 and took up his command post. “I was surprised to find so many men who had come to the front since my last visit years ago. Afterward I had an opportunity to talk with old associates and many new ones, and it was a source of great gratification to me to find that the same spirit of cooperation and harmony existed unchecked.” Rockefeller offered his services to J. P. Morgan, and his millions formed part of the twenty-five-million-dollar fund that Morgan marshaled that day to keep the stock market open, averting the bankruptcy of at least fifty brokerage houses. Whatever his personal distaste for Morgan, Rockefeller generously praised his leadership during the 1907 panic. “His commanding personality served a most valuable end,” he wrote in his memoirs. “He acted quickly and resolutely when quickness and decision were the things most needed to regain confidence.”
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · J. P. Morgan · 26 Broadway
EPUB paragraph 22 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c27_r1.htm
Several family members sought Rockefeller’s help to withstand the storm. He bought $4.5 million of International Harvester stock from the cash-strapped McCormicks and extended a huge $7 million loan to his brother William, who was hip-deep in stock-market maneuvers. Even with a brother, Rockefeller could not suspend standard business practices—Frank had already learned that—and he asked William to furnish a list of securities as collateral. But when Rockefeller’s adviser Henry E. Cooper demanded more, it prompted an ironic reminder from Rockefeller: “Well, Mr. Cooper, don’t be too rigorous. Remember, William is a very rich man.”
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Frank Rockefeller · International Harvester · Henry E. Cooper · McCormicks · Cooper · Uncle William
EPUB paragraph 23 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c27_r1.htm
With full-blown panic raging around him, Rockefeller refused to depart from his daily schedule for long and, after his one day at the office, he returned to Pocantico to play golf. During his morning game, he was interrupted repeatedly by urgent messages, and each time he pedaled his bike back to the carriage house and made another enormous pledge to stave off trouble. He then resumed his game with his usual sangfroid and air of unconcern.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Pocantico Hills
EPUB paragraph 24 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c27_r1.htm
During the 1907 panic, Rockefeller, for the first time, appeared civic-minded to the general public and garnered lavish praise. As he told a relative, the newspapers had “spoken very kindly and favorably, and all have shown great appreciation of what we have tried to do to save the ship.” For a time, it seemed this goodwill might moderate the antitrust zeal against Standard Oil, but this hope soon evaporated when Rockefeller told a reporter, “The runaway policy of the past administration can have but one result. It means disaster to the country, financial depression, and chaos.” According to Rockefeller, he made this statement off-the-record and professed pity for the errant reporter who published it in violation of his solemn oath. The comment aggravated the hostility that President Roosevelt already felt toward Rockefeller, especially since Rockefeller kept pleading ill health as his reason for not coming to the White House to discuss Standard Oil. Privately, Roosevelt said that Rockefeller felt wounded because the government had published the plain truth about Standard Oil.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Theodore Roosevelt · Standard Oil · White House
EPUB paragraph 25 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c27_r1.htm
After the Landis fine was announced, Standard Oil tried to alter its strategy and negotiate a government compromise. That September, it held out a tempting deal to investigators: It would open its books and abide by any recommendations to guarantee compliance with the antitrust laws if the government withdrew its suit. Government officials were caught off guard by this peace offering. “A really astonishing proposal,” James R. Garfield wrote in his diary. But Roosevelt was no longer in the mood for a truce. “If we have a criminal case against these men,” he told Attorney General Charles Bonaparte, “I should be very reluctant to surrender it.”
Names: Theodore Roosevelt · Kenesaw Mountain Landis · Standard Oil · Charles Bonaparte · James R. Garfield
EPUB paragraph 26 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c27_r1.htm
Archbold should have persisted in his conciliatory approach, but he was too accustomed to heavy-handed politics. He was openly contemptuous of all political attacks against the combine. During the spring and summer of 1908, he held several confidential meetings with President Roosevelt arranged by Senator Jonathan Bourne of Oregon. The president expressed an earnest wish to see the Standard Oil case settled out of court. While Archbold believed in his sincerity, he also knew that Roosevelt had vacillated on this issue. Archbold then resorted to a typically tactless maneuver. In late October 1907, he had Senator Bourne suggest to the president that if the government struck a deal, Standard Oil would help Roosevelt win renomination in 1908. A horrified Garfield called this brazen offer “stupidly corrupt.”
Names: John D. Archbold · Theodore Roosevelt · Standard Oil · Jonathan Bourne · Garfield · Oregon
EPUB paragraph 27 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c27_r1.htm
Because of Rockefeller’s helpful intervention in the Panic, Roosevelt observed a brief moratorium in attacking Standard Oil then made up for lost time in January 1908. In a special message to Congress, he complained that “the speculative folly and flagrant dishonesty of a few great men of wealth” had engendered the loss of fiscal confidence, and he condemned the “bitter and unscrupulous craft” of the Standard Oil leadership in fighting reform measures. The antitrust suit would proceed as planned.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Theodore Roosevelt · Standard Oil · Panic
EPUB paragraph 28 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c27_r1.htm
Since Rockefeller had created the largest business empire of the late nineteenth century, it was only fitting that he should face the most massive antitrust suit of his day. Some 444 witnesses delivered 11 million words of testimony; swollen by 1,374 exhibits, the proceedings filled 12,000 pages in 21 thick volumes. Before it was over, Standard Oil also contested some 21 state antitrust suits from Texas to Connecticut, leading one historian to comment, “Never before in the history of the United States had there been so far-reaching a struggle between industry and government.” To supplement its legal staff, Standard Oil retained John G. Milburn and M. F. Elliott of Wall Street, D. T. Watson of Pittsburgh, Moritz Rosenthal of Chicago, and John G. Johnson of Philadelphia. For its part, the Justice Department brought in Charles B. Morrison, a federal district attorney from northern Illinois, and Frank B. Kellogg, a Saint Paul attorney whose success in the case catapulted him to the post of secretary of state in the late 1920s.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Standard Oil · Frank B. Kellogg · Pittsburgh · Philadelphia · Chicago · United States · John G. Johnson · John G. Milburn · Charles B. Morrison · Moritz Rosenthal · D. T. Watson · Texas · Illinois · Connecticut · Justice Department · Saint Paul · Wall Street · M. F. Elliott
EPUB paragraph 29 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c27_r1.htm
Throughout the case, the public fancied Rockefeller to be the all-powerful wire-puller who manipulated Archbold and the other pliant marionettes. If this was sheer fantasy, what then was his actual influence? He did exert limited influence on Standard Oil strategy through the medium of Henry Clay Folger, a Standard Oil director. A thin, bearded man, Folger was diplomatic and extremely diligent in his duties. Unlike the rugged Standard Oil businessmen of an earlier day, Folger had graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Amherst and then attended Columbia Law School. A cultured man, he left to posterity America’s foremost collection of Shakespeare First Folios as well as a splendid library. Far more important to Rockefeller was that Folger played excellent golf and joined him on the links every Wednesday morning.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · John D. Archbold · Standard Oil · Henry Clay Folger · United States · Phi Beta Kappa · Amherst · Columbia Law School · Shakespeare First Folios
EPUB paragraph 30 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c27_r1.htm
In memos to Folger about the suit, Rockefeller never touched on political or legal tactics but mostly addressed arcane calculations of profitability. Rockefeller wanted to prove that Standard Oil’s profits had never been excessive or extortionate. Many other companies watered their stock—that is, issued them at inflated capitalization—so that their dividends appeared deceptively modest. To save on taxes and conform to Ohio law, Standard Oil had kept its capitalization low, which produced misleadingly high dividends of 40 or 50 percent per year. Rockefeller pegged the real dividend rate at something closer to 6 or 8 percent.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Standard Oil · Henry Clay Folger · Ohio
EPUB paragraph 31 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c27_r1.htm
Folger performed statistical analyses showing that with its capitalization more accurately stated to reflect retained earnings, Standard Oil had paid average dividends twice as high as Rockefeller had surmised. “I am surprised to find the average dividends for twenty-five years 13.86%,” the company founder confessed sheepishly to Folger. Rockefeller now had to rationalize the higher figure and suddenly found it within an acceptable range, noting the larger profits of “many other large businesses with less risk, including the United States Steel Company.” “Business men will not regard the earnings … which you present as excessive,” he told Folger. Afraid that militant trustbusters might see things differently, he promised to destroy this incriminating data. He also reminded Folger that Standard Oil had not kept prices low out of altruism but to deter competition and “keep our profits on such a basis that others would not be stimulated to enter the field of competition with us.” This belied his frequent claim that his motive was to bequeath cheap oil to the working people.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Standard Oil · Henry Clay Folger · United States
EPUB paragraph 32 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c27_r1.htm
During his Standard Oil tenure, Rockefeller had mollified the public by generally keeping kerosene prices low. But when Archbold took control in the mid-1890s, he kept domestic prices high while depressing foreign prices to diminish overseas competition. During the dozen years before Rockefeller’s retirement, the trust’s return on assets ranged from 11 to 17 percent. With Archbold at the helm, returns soared from 21 to 27 percent between 1900 and 1906. This might have been smart business but it was very poor politics: The trust was booking record profits just when it could least afford to enrage public opinion. It is no coincidence that Ida Tarbell’s series and Teddy Roosevelt’s trust-busting coincided with Archbold’s more grasping regime. He was a much less clever monopolist than his mentor.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · John D. Archbold · Ida M. Tarbell · Theodore Roosevelt · Standard Oil
EPUB paragraph 33 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c27_r1.htm
When Frank Kellogg grilled Rockefeller in November 1908 at the customs house in New York, much of the testimony concerned Standard Oil’s pricing policy. Standing by maps showing the operational areas of Standard marketing units, Kellogg tried to entrap Rockefeller into admitting that the cartel had divided America into exclusive sales territories. “Does the Standard Oil of Ohio have a limited territory?” he asked. “It has not,” said Rockefeller calmly. “Has it not in the last five years?” asked Kellogg. “Not to my knowledge,” Rockefeller replied. “Its field is the world. That is its mission, to light the world with the cheapest and best.” Smiling and imperturbable, Rockefeller kept glancing for guidance to his lawyers, who continually raised objections to Kellogg’s questions.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Standard Oil · Frank B. Kellogg · New York · United States · Ohio · Kellogg
EPUB paragraph 34 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c27_r1.htm
Kellogg tried to show that Standard Oil routinely engaged in predatory pricing, eliminating competitors and then hoisting prices to exorbitant levels. He estimated that true competition prevailed in fewer than 10 percent of all petroleum markets and noted that kerosene prices had risen unreasonably from 1895 (when Archbold took charge) to 1906, creating widespread consumer discontent. To justify Standard’s plush earnings, Rockefeller cited everything from fire hazards to the vagaries of drilling to the need to invest in new fields. To which Kellogg responded with sarcasm: “But Standard Oil has been paying enormous dividends right along.” Lifting his eyes heavenward, Rockefeller replied, “And we were grateful for it.”
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · John D. Archbold · Standard Oil · Kellogg
EPUB paragraph 35 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c27_r1.htm
Once again, the press found it hard to believe that this amiable old gent with his sudden memory lapses and fuzzy logic was the fearsome raptor of Standard Oil. “Now that Mr. Rockefeller has emerged from his seclusion and is seen in the fierce light of a public inquiry, he appears no such monster as the public fancy has painted,” observed one paper. “He is affable to the point of cordiality.” Said another: “If Rockefeller has been playing a part, he has done so in a way that would do credit to Uriah Heep. If not, it is barely possible that the curious old man has been misrepresented … and that the world owes him an apology.” Perhaps if Rockefeller had made himself available at the beginning of his career as he now did at the end, he might not have been sitting in the witness stand.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Standard Oil · Uriah Heep
EPUB paragraph 36 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c27_r1.htm
In anointing Archbold as his successor, Rockefeller had made him the chief potentate in the world oil industry for the next twenty years. Round-faced, bright-eyed, and peppery, with a tiny body and big head, Archbold, the son of a poor Baptist minister, often bounded down the corridor whistling “Onward Christian Soldiers.” But a violent temper lurked beneath the vivacity. Nevertheless, he and Rockefeller always traded compliments about each other. “You know, when John Rockefeller dies,” Archbold said, “the world is going to be surprised to learn what a very great man he has been in every way.” Rockefeller responded in kind: “[Archbold] was a man of imagination, of courage, of great persuasiveness, with a genius for reading men and dealing with them.”
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · John D. Archbold · John Rockefeller
EPUB paragraph 37 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c27_r1.htm
Yet as chief executive of Standard Oil, Archbold stooped to a far rougher style of combat than Rockefeller had, and he freely bribed elected officials. Rockefeller, of course, was no stranger to such skulduggery, but he engaged in payoffs more reluctantly, if only because he so disliked politicians. Archbold had fewer scruples, and as government regulation intruded deeper into business, he decided that the trust needed permanent representation in the U.S. House and Senate.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · John D. Archbold · Standard Oil · U.S. House
EPUB paragraph 38 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c27_r1.htm
The first documented instance of Archbold suborning an official occurred in 1898, during Frank Monnett’s suit against Standard of Ohio, when Archbold placed Senator Joseph B. Foraker of Ohio on the payroll. He started with a payment of $15,000, then made another of $14,500 three weeks later, winding up with a total of $44,000 in a six-month period. A corporate lawyer from Cincinnati and former Ohio governor, Foraker was a formidable speaker who earned the nickname of “Fire Alarm Joe” for his rousing oratory. Archbold got excellent value for his money. In February 1900, he wrote to the senator, apropos of a proposed bill hostile to Standard Oil: “It is so outrageous as to be ridiculous, but it needs to be looked after and I hope there will be no difficulty in killing it.” When Foraker helped to dispatch the bill, Archbold sent congratulations: “I enclose you a certificate of deposit to your favor for $15,000…. I need scarcely express our great gratification over the favorable outcome of affairs.” The certificate of deposit was more difficult to trace than a check and was the instrument of choice for political bribery.
Names: John D. Archbold · Joseph B. Foraker · Frank S. Monnett · Standard Oil · Standard Oil of Ohio · Cincinnati · Ohio
EPUB paragraph 39 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c27_r1.htm
Another favorite recipient of Standard Oil largesse was Senator Matthew Quay of Pennsylvania, who received $42,500 between 1898 and 1902. In one lighthearted note, Archbold told Quay that he was enclosing a $10,000 certificate of deposit as a reward for the senator’s “enticing ways.” Evidently, Archbold felt more at ease with small, scattered payments, for he advised Quay on another occasion, “Please ask for payments as needed from time to time, not all at once.” Another true friend of the trust from western Pennsylvania was Representative Joseph C. Sibley, later called “a political procurer for Archbold, an agent for the seduction and corruption of public men by the Standard Oil.” In official Washington, Sibley acted as a conduit for Standard Oil money, once writing to Archbold, “A Republican United States Senator came to me today to make a loan of $1,000. I told him I did not have it but would try and get it for him in a day or two. Do you want to make the investment?”
Names: John D. Archbold · Standard Oil · United States · Joseph C. Sibley · Pennsylvania · Washington · Matthew Quay
EPUB paragraph 40 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c27_r1.htm
The trust’s Washington operations might never have surfaced had it not been for a kind act by Archbold. At his Tarrytown mansion, he employed a valued black butler, James Wilkins, who had a twenty-four-year-old ne’er-do-well son named Willie. Out of sympathy for Wilkins, Archbold hired Willie as an office boy at Standard Oil at a time when few if any blacks were employed there. Willie liked to play the ponies and was chronically short of cash. Hoping to take advantage of the political backlash against Standard Oil, he teamed up with Charles Stump, a nineteen-year-old white office boy, to scout out incriminating evidence on Archbold’s desk. In December 1904, the two young men pinched a couple of telegrams and contacted Fred Eldridge, an editor at William Randolph Hearst’s New York American, who studied the loot and said it was worthless. But he expressed a special interest in letters from Archbold to senators or congressmen and gave the two enterprising young men two hundred names that might interest readers. Armed with Eldridge’s wish list, Stump and Wilkins began to scour Archbold’s correspondence after hours, and when they spotted letters to Sibley and Foraker, they took them to Eldridge and haggled over prices. On several occasions, when they reached an impasse, the editor would say he had to “see Mr. Hearst.” This espionage lasted from December 1904 until February 1905, when Archbold discovered the missing political documents, accused Stump and Wilkins of theft, then fired them. With the $20,500 that they had received from Hearst, the two young entrepreneurs were able to open their own saloon in Harlem.
Names: John D. Archbold · William Randolph Hearst · Joseph B. Foraker · Standard Oil · Fred Eldridge · Joseph C. Sibley · Charles Stump · James Wilkins · Washington · Tarrytown · Willie · Wilkins · Harlem · New York American
EPUB paragraph 41 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c27_r1.htm
For months, Archbold dreaded publication of the purloined letters and must have been puzzled when they did not appear. Hearst had stored the incriminating documents in his safe and awaited a propitious moment to unveil them. By attacking the trusts, Hearst had created a hybrid role for himself as the people’s tribune, who would advance his own imperial ambitions by exposing those of his fellow empire builders. By the 1930s, Hearst became fiercely reactionary, yet in the early 1900s he was still a populist champion. Showing exceptional self-control, Hearst did not publish the letters when he ran against Charles Evans Hughes, a friend of Rockefeller’s, for the New York governorship in 1906. “Charles, I do hope you beat that man Hearst!” Rockefeller told Hughes that year.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · John D. Archbold · William Randolph Hearst · New York · Charles Evans Hughes · Pratt. Charles, Sr. · Hughes
EPUB paragraph 42 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c27_r1.htm
But in the election of 1908, Hearst backed the Independence League Party, which nominated Massachusetts’s Thomas L. Hisgen, a manufacturer of axle grease, as its presidential candidate. Hisgen had once spurned a bid from Standard Oil to buy him out for $600,000, and when the trust retaliated by slashing prices and trying to ruin him, Hisgen became an implacable foe. Hearst picked him as the party’s candidate with the Archbold letters in mind. On September 17, 1908, Hearst gave a pro-Hisgen speech in Columbus, Ohio, in which he claimed that just before the talk a stranger had appeared in his hotel room and handed him copies of correspondence between Archbold and several politicians. “I am now going to read copies of letters written by Mr. John Archbold, chief agent of the Standard Oil, an intimate personal acquaintance of Mr. Rockefeller and Mr. Rogers,” Hearst announced with great fanfare. He then created a national sensation by reading aloud letters written by Archbold to Senator Foraker and Congressman Sibley. Later, in a Saint Louis speech, he recited two more specimens, with the correspondence prominently reproduced in Hearst papers.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · John D. Archbold · William Randolph Hearst · Joseph B. Foraker · Standard Oil · Thomas L. Hisgen · Saint Louis · Joseph C. Sibley · Ohio · Rogers · Massachusetts · Columbus · Independence League Party
EPUB paragraph 43 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c27_r1.htm
Realizing that he could not deny the authenticity of the letters, Archbold tried to finesse the charges by claiming that the correspondence was “entirely proper.” At first, Foraker pretended that the payments were strictly lawful and aboveboard. “That I was employed as counsel for the Standard Oil Company at the time and presumably compensated for my services was common knowledge,” he insisted. “At least I never made any effort to conceal it.” When the public refused to buy this, Foraker and Sibley were hounded from public life. Archbold survived as head of Standard Oil, however, and the following year, perhaps to mend his increasingly tattered image, he gave one million dollars to Syracuse University.
Names: John D. Archbold · Joseph B. Foraker · Standard Oil · Joseph C. Sibley · Syracuse University
Source: Ron Chernow, Titan. Names and relationships retain the full atlas’s extraction limits. Map points are references; historical sites and regions can be approximate. Open the full interactive atlas.