Part 28

“Don’t worry about it,” said he. “I want to think it over. Mrs. McClure and you and I will go to Greece for the winter. You’ve never been there. We can discuss Standard Oil in Greece as well as here. If it seems a good plan you can send for your documents and work in the Pantheon.” And he chuckled at the picture.

Almost before I realized it we were headed for Greece via the Italian Lakes, Milan and Venice. In Milan Mr. McClure suddenly decided that he and Mrs. McClure needed a cure before Greece and headed for the ancient watering place of Salsomaggiore. Here, in the interval of mud baths and steam soaks and watching such magnificent humans as Cecil Rhodes and his retinue recuperating from their latest South African adventure, we finally came to a decision. I was to go back to New York and see what I could make of the outline I had been expounding. Greece was to be abandoned.

Leaving Mr. and Mrs. McClure to finish their cure, I headed for New York to write what, as far as title was concerned, certainly looked like a doubtful enterprise for a magazine like McClure’s: “The History of the Standard Oil Company.”

“McClure’s has courage.” How often that remark was made after our undertaking was under way! But courage implies a suspicion of danger. Nobody thought of such a thing in our office. We were undertaking what we regarded as a legitimate piece of historical work. We were neither apologists nor critics, only journalists intent on discovering what had gone into the making of this most perfect of all monopolies. What had we to be afraid of?

I soon discovered, however, that, if we were not afraid, I must work in a field where numbers of men and women were afraid, believed in the all-seeing eye and the all-powerful reach of the ruler of the oil industry. They believed that anybody going ahead openly with a project in any way objectionable to the Standard Oil Company would meet with direct or indirect attack. Examination of their methods had always been objectionable to them. “Go ahead, and they will get you in the end,” I was told by more than one who had come to that conclusion either from long observation or from long suffering.

Even my father said, “Don’t do it, Ida—they will ruin the magazine.”

It was a persistent fog of suspicion and doubt and fear. From the start this fog hampered what was my first business, making sure of the documents in the case. I knew they existed. Almost continuously since its organization in 1870 the Standard Oil Company had been under investigation by the Congress of the United States and by the legislatures of various states in which it had operated, on the suspicion that it was receiving rebates from the railroads and was practicing methods in restraint of free trade. In 1872 and again in 1876 it was before Congressional committees; in 1879 it was before examiners of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and before committees appointed by the legislatures of New York and of Ohio for investigating railroads. Its operations figured constantly in the debate which led up to the creation of the Interstate Commerce Commission in 1887; and again and again since that time the Commission had been called upon to examine directly or indirectly into its relations with the railroads.

In 1888, in the Investigation of Trusts conducted by Congress and by the State of New York, the Standard Oil Company was the chief subject for examination. In the state of Ohio, between 1882 and 1892, a constant warfare was waged against the Standard in the courts and the legislature, resulting in several volumes of testimony. The legislatures of many other states concerned themselves with it. This hostile legislation compelled the trust to separate into its component parts in 1892, but investigation did not cease; indeed, in the great industrial inquiry conducted by the Commission appointed by President McKinley, the Standard Oil Company was constantly under discussion, and hundreds of pages of testimony on it appear in the nineteen volumes of reports which the Commission submitted.

This mass of testimony—most, if not all, of it taken under oath—contained the different charters and agreements under which the Standard Oil Trust had operated, many contracts and agreements with railroads, with refineries, with pipe lines; and it contained the experiences in business from 1872 up to 1900 of multitudes of individuals. These experiences had exactly the quality of the personal reminiscences of actors in great events, with the additional value that they were given on the witness stand; and it was fair, therefore, to suppose that they were more cautious and exact in statement than are many writers of memoirs. These investigations, covering as they did all of the important steps in the development of the trust, included full accounts of the point of view of its officers in regard to that development, as well as their explanations of many of the operations over which controversy had arisen.

Aside from the great mass of sworn testimony accessible to the student, there was a large pamphlet literature dealing with different phases of the subject, as well as files of the numerous daily newspapers and monthly reviews, supported by the Oil Region, in the columns of which were to be found, not only statistics, but full reports of all controversies between oil men.

But the documentary sources were by no means all in print. The Standard Oil Trust and its constituent companies had figured in many civil suits, the testimony of which was in manuscript in the files of the courts where the suits were tried.

I had supposed it would be easy to locate the records of the important investigations and cases, but I soon found I had been too trustful. For instance, there was a Federal investigation of the South Improvement Company, the first attempt to make a hard and fast alliance between oil-bearing railroads and oil refiners, an alliance which inevitably would kill everybody not admitted, since by the contract the railroads not only allowed the privileged refiners a rebate on all their shipments, but paid them a drawback on those of independents. The railroads also agreed to give them full information about the quantity and the destination of their rivals’ shipments. The Standard Oil Company as a monopoly had grown out of this pretty scheme.

Where could I get a copy of that investigation? More than one cynic said, “You’ll never find one—they have all been destroyed.” When I had located copies in each of two private collections I was refused permission to put my hands on them.

To be sure, I did by persistent searching find that so-guarded investigation in a pamphlet which is one of the three which are all I know to be in existence. I am not supposing that there are not others, for I quickly learned, when I was told that the entire edition of a printed document had been destroyed, to go on looking. Once a document is in print, somewhere, some time, a copy turns up, however small the edition. For instance, there was the important Hepburn investigation of the relations of railroads and private industries made by the State of New York in 1879. I could not find a copy in the Oil Region where I was working. The Standard had destroyed them all, I was told. At that time there was in the Public Library of New York City one of the ablest of American bibliographers—Adelaide Hasse. She had helped me more than once to find a scarce document.

“How about this Hepburn investigation?” I wrote Miss Hasse.

“Here in the Library for your use whenever you will come around.” But she added: “Only one hundred copies were ever published. It is a scarce piece. I have known of a complete set selling for $100.00. It was understood at the time,” she explained, “that one or two important railroad presidents whose testimony was given before the committee bought up and destroyed as many sets as they could obtain.”

In the end all the printed documents were located. But there was the unprinted testimony taken in lawsuits. Had incriminating testimony been spirited away from the court files? Henry Lloyd made such an accusation in his first edition of “Wealth Against Commonwealth.” It disappeared from a second edition. I wrote to ask him, “Why?” “The testimony was put back after my book first appeared,” he answered. I was particularly anxious to have the original of one of these documents, but when I came to look for it, it was not in the files. Where was it? How was I to locate it? And if I did succeed would there be any chance—to judge from past experience—that it would be turned over to me? I saw that I must have an assistant, someone preferably in Cleveland, Ohio, so many years the headquarters of the Standard’s operations. It meant more expense, and I was already costing the office an amount which shocked my thrifty practice. But Mr. McClure and Mr. Phillips, being generous and patient and also by this time fairly confident that in the end we should get something worth while, told me to go ahead.

I had learned in my Lincoln work that an assistant, even if faithful and hard-working, may be an incumbrance when it comes to investigation. It needs more than accuracy; it needs enthusiasm for finding out things, solving puzzles—anybody’s puzzles. I wanted a young man with college training, a year or two of experience as a reporter, intelligent, energetic, curious, convinced everything he was asked to do was important, even if he did not at the moment know why. He must get his fun in the chase—you in the bag. Also he must be trusted to keep his mouth shut.

I can recommend the technique I practiced in this case for finding my rare bird. From each of three different editors in Cleveland I asked the name of a young man whom he thought competent to run down a not very important-looking bit of information. To each of the names given me I wrote instructions from New York. I would be around soon to pick up the report, I told them, adding that I should prefer that he say nothing about the assignment.

When I went to Cleveland to view my prospects I found both number one and number two fine intelligent fellows. Their reports were excellent, but they had not the least interest in what they had done. I thanked them, paid them, and said, “Good day.” The third young man came, short and plump, his eyes glowing with excitement. He sat on the edge of his chair. As I watched him I had a sudden feeling of alarm lest he should burst out of his clothes. I never had the same feeling about any other individual except Theodore Roosevelt. I once watched the first Roosevelt through a White House musicale when I felt his clothes might not contain him, he was so steamed up, so ready to go, attack anything, anywhere.

The young man gave me his report; but what counted was the way he had gone after his material, his curiosity, his conviction that it was important since I wanted it. I thought I had my man. A few more trials convinced me John M. Siddall was a find. He at that time was an associate of Frank Bray in the editing of The Chautauquan, the headquarters of which had been shifted to Cleveland from Meadville.

When Siddall once understood what I was up to he jumped at the chance—went to work with a will and stayed working with a will until the task was ended. He was a continuous joy as well as a support in my undertaking. Nothing better in the way of letter writing came to the McClure’s office. In time everybody was reading Siddall’s letters to me, whether it was a mere matter of statistics or a matter of the daily life in Cleveland of John D. Rockefeller, the head of the Standard Oil Company. If anything in or around Ohio interested the magazine the office immediately suggested, “Ask Sid.” And Sid always found the answer. Mr. McClure and Mr. Phillips began to say, “We want Sid as soon as you are through with him.” Sid saw the opportunity, and as soon as I could spare him in Ohio he joined the McClure’s staff.

I had been at work a year gathering and sifting materials before the series was announced. Very soon after that, Mr. McClure dashed into the office one day to tell me he had just been talking with Mark Twain, who said his friend Henry Rogers, at that time the most conspicuous man in the Standard Oil group, had asked him to find out what kind of history of the concern McClure’s proposed to publish.

“You will have to ask Miss Tarbell,” Mr. McClure told him.

“Would Miss Tarbell see Mr. Rogers?” Mark Twain asked.

Mr. McClure was sure I would not ask anything better, which was quite true. And so an interview was arranged for one day early in January of 1902 at Mr. Rogers’ home, then at 26 East Fifty-seventh Street. I was a bit scared at the idea. I had met many kinds of people, but this was my first high-ranking captain of industry. Was I putting my head into a lion’s mouth? I did not think so. It had become more and more evident to me that any attempt to bite our heads off would be the stupidest thing the Standard Oil Company could do, its reputation being what it was. It was not that stupid, I told myself. However, it was one thing to tackle the Standard Oil Company in documents, as I had been doing, quite another thing to meet it face to face. And then would Mr. Rogers “come across”? Could I talk with him? So far my attempts to talk with members of the organization had been failures. I had been met with that formulated chatter used by those who have accepted a creed, a situation, a system, to baffle the investigator trying to find out what it all means.

My nervousness and my skepticism fell away when Mr. Rogers stepped forward in his library to greet me. He was frank and hearty. Plainly he wanted me to be at ease. In that way he knew that he could soon tell whether it was worth his while to spend further time on me or not.

Henry Rogers was a man of about sixty at this time, a striking figure, by all odds the handsomest and most distinguished figure in Wall Street. He was tall, muscular, lithe as an Indian. There was a trace of the early oil adventure in his bearing in spite of his air of authority, his excellent grooming, his manner of the quick-witted naturally adaptable man who has seen much of people. His big head with its high forehead was set off by a heavy shock of beautiful gray hair; his nose was aquiline, sensitive. The mouth, which I fancy must have been flexible, capable both of firm decision and of gay laughter, was concealed by a white drooping moustache. His eyes were large and dark, narrowed a little by caution, capable of blazing as I was to find out, shaded by heavy gray eyebrows giving distinction and force to his face.