Part 35

If his gifts were larger at this time than they had ever been before, his money-making was greater. If they were more spectacular than ever before, it may have been because he thought it was time to call the public’s attention to what they were getting out of the Standard Oil fortune. At all events it seemed to me only fair that the point should be emphasized that it had not taken a public revolt against his methods to force him to share his profits.

I could not escape the controversies, hard as I tried. Nor could I escape events, events which were forcing me against my will to continue my observations and reports. My book was hardly published before it was apparent that the oil field which it had covered and which for so long had been supposed to be the only American oil field of importance was soon to be surpassed by those in the Southwest. The first state to force recognition of the change on the country at large was Kansas, where suddenly in the spring of 1905 there broke out an agitation as unexpected to most observers as it was interesting to those who knew their oil history. Kansas, we old-timers told ourselves, was duplicating what the Oil Creek had done in 1872. It was putting on a revolt. How had it come about?

For a number of years “wildcatters” with or without money had been prospecting for oil in the state. Only a modest production had rewarded them at first, but in 1904 oil suddenly poured forth in great quantities. On the instant Kansas went oil-mad, practically every farmer in the state dreamed of flowing wells. As soon as it was proved that Kansas was to be a large field the Standard took charge. It leased, drilled, and, most important, it threaded the state with its pipe-line system. No sooner was oil proved to be on a farmer’s land than the pipe-line people were there caring for it at market rates. But they began not only to develop and handle scientifically and efficiently, but quite as scientifically and efficiently they began to get rid of all the small fry that in the early days of small wells had been refining and marketing. They would take all the oil that Kansas could produce, they said, but on their own terms: they wanted no interference.

As soon as this became clear to Kansas the state rose in revolt. The Populists, who for six years now must needs grumble in a corner, came out to inveigh with all of their old fervor against the trust. Women’s clubs took it up, political parties took it up. A program was developed, the gist of which was that Kansas would take care of its own oil. Bills were introduced into the legislature calculated to control railroad rates, pipe-line rates, competitive marketing. To the joy of the Populists and to the horror of the conservatives a bill for a state refinery was presented by the governor himself. Kansas had a hemp factory in the state penitentiary not doing so badly. Why should not the penitentiary run an oil refinery, too? The legislature agreed to do it.

The excitement grew and so attracted the attention of the country that the office concluded that I must go out and see what I could make of it. I did not much want to go, not only because of my desire to free myself of the subject but because my heart was too heavy with personal loss to feel enthusiasm for any task. In the spring of 1905 my father had died after a long slow illness. To me he had always been everything that is summed up in the word “dear.” Modest, humorous, hard-working, friendly, faithful in what he conceived to be the right, he loved his family and friends and church, and asked only to serve them. His business associates held him as a man of honor and a gentleman.

Father’s death for a time darkened my world. Later I began to realize that the dearness of him was to remain as a permanent thing in my life. But in 1905 this sense of continued companionship was something which came slowly out of a dark sea of loss. So it was with a heavy heart that I went to see what was happening in Kansas.

First I wanted to see with my own eyes if the fields I had been hearing about were as rich as advertised; so I spent some ten days driving about southeastern Kansas and northeastern Oklahoma, then just coming in with the promise of great wells. It was about as exciting a journey as I ever have made. It was on one of these trips I saw my first dust storm. Driving in a buckboard behind two spirited horses across a practically unbroken prairie, my companion suddenly looked behind him. “Jehoshaphat!” he shouted. “Wrap your head up.” I turned to see the sky from horizon to zenith filled with dark rolling clouds. It was not from fire. What was it? “A dust storm,” my companion cried.

Quickly and expertly he prepared to take it. He loosened the checkreins of the horses, and the spirited animals evidently knowing what they were in for dropped their heads as low as they could hold them and leaned up against each other. We wrapped ourselves as closely as we could and, like the horses, clung to each other. The storm did not last long, but it was pretty awful while it did. The air was thick, you could not breathe. But it passed, and I was ordered to shake myself out. I found that I was almost engulfed with a fine black dust, that it was packed close to the hubs of the wheels of our buckboard. It was ten days before I got rid of that dust, for it was ten days before I had a real bath. The dust had turned the primitive water supplies into a muddy liquid quite impossible to drink and hopeless for cleansing.

The wonder of it was that the real discomforts counted not at all at the time. I had joined an eager, determined, exultant procession of wildcatters and promoters, of youths looking for their chance or seeking adventure for the first time, tasting it to the full.

Nothing so great as this Kansas and Indian Territory field had ever been known. Every well was to be a gusher, every settlement a city. On every side they were selling town lots and stock in oil companies. One of the most irresponsible stock-selling schemes I have ever known, I happened on in one of these trips. Two anxious-faced boys were going about among experienced oilmen begging them for oil leases, preferably oil leases on which there was a proved well. The lads had come as sightseers and had been caught in the wild excitement of the region. Everybody had a scheme to make himself and his friends rich. Why not they? And largely as a joke they had sent out a flamboyant letter offering stock in a mythical oil field. The letter had gone to scores of innocents in the East, and in answer schoolteachers, clergymen, and women with little or no money had poured in subscriptions.

If there had been few subscriptions they would have been able to return them, but here they were when I saw them with literally a suitcase full of checks and money orders and not a foot of land leased, and in the excitement there was practically no land to be had. They must either get a lease or go to the penitentiary, they concluded. Hence their alarm, their pitiful begging of older men to help them out of the predicament into which their irresponsibility had plunged them.

It was not long before I found I was being taken for something more serious than a mere journalist. Conservative Standard Oil sympathizers regarded me as a spy and not infrequently denounced me as an enemy to society. Independent oilmen and radical editors, who were in the majority, called me a prophet. It brought fantastic situations where I was utterly unfit to play the part. A woman of twenty-five, fresh, full of zest, only interested in what was happening to her, would have reveled in the experience. But here I was—fifty, fagged, wanting to be let alone while I collected trustworthy information for my articles—dragged to the front as an apostle.

The funniest things were the welcomes. The funniest of all was at the then new town of Tulsa, Oklahoma. I had arrived late at night in what seemed to me a no man’s land, and after considerable trouble had found a place in a rough little hostelry where I was so suspicious of the look of things that I moved the bureau against the lockless door. I am sure now that I was as safe there as I should have been in my bed at home.

I had registered, of course, and the next morning before I had finished my breakfast I was waited on by the editor of the local newspaper, who took me to his office, a barnlike structure next door, for an interview. Almost immediately a handsome youth in knickerbockers and high laced boots came hurriedly in.

“I think I ought to tell you, Miss Tarbell,” he said with a grin, “that you are in for a serenade.”

“A serenade,” I said, “what do you mean?”

“Well,” he said, “the Tulsa boomers have been making a tour of cities to the north. Their special train has just come in; they want something to celebrate, and, learning that you were in town they are sending up the band to welcome you. They want a speech.”

I had never made an impromptu speech in my life. I was horrified at the idea. “You must get me out of this,” I begged of my gallant but very amused informer.

“No,” he said, “there is no way to escape. Here they are.”

And there they were—a band of thirty or forty pieces, several of the players stalwart Indians.

I had to face it, and for once in my life I had a happy idea. “Go buy me two boxes of the best cigars that are to be had in town.” And I shoved a bill into his hand. “Go quickly.”

And then the band began. Not so bad, but so funny. There I was standing on the sidewalk with all the masculine inhabitants of Tulsa—so it seemed to me—packed about, some of them serious and some of them highly delighted at my obvious consternation. I had not guessed wrong about the cigars. They preferred them to a speech, I saw as I passed around the circle distributing them to the players. What was left I gave to the bodyguard which had assembled to back me up. A compliment I have always treasured was given by one of the Indians, as he watched me disposing of my goods: “He all right.” Still more flattering it was as I went around in Tulsa that day to meet gentlemen who had fat cigars tied with little red ribbons in their buttonholes, and to have them point gaily to them as I passed.

But the serenade was not the end of the celebration. That afternoon I was taken out in a barouche—the only one in the countryside, I was told—the band behind, and paraded up and down the distracted streets of Tulsa. A day or two later when I went on my journey, it was with a seatful of candy, magazines, books, flowers, everything that the community afforded for a going-away present. I never had been before nor have been since so much the prima donna.

But all this was preliminary to the real task of finding out what was happening in Kansas, outside of the production of oil. The legislation already passed was intended to make the Standard Oil Company the servant of the state. But I had long ago learned it was one thing to pass laws and another thing to enforce and administer them. How were they getting on?

I went first to see the governor—E. W. Hoch—a humorless and honest man. It was he who had sponsored the state refinery. I found him impressed by what he had done, but a little doubtful about how things were going to come out. He was opening his mail when I went in and he showed me letters nominating him for the Presidency. He had been receiving many of them, he said. It was obvious they came from radical socialists rejoicing over the encouragement that he was giving to the public ownership of industry. He liked the applause but did not like the source. He was no socialist, he protested to me. He was a firm believer in the competitive system. The state refinery was a “measuring stick.”

He had wanted to settle definitely just what the profits of the refinery business in Kansas were. Nobody knew except experts, and they wouldn’t tell. A first-class oil refinery would settle for all time the cost of refining Kansas oil and force the sale at a reasonable price. He was not trying to drive private industry out of the state. He merely wanted to force private industry to be reasonable—the private industry being of course the Standard Oil Company.

Governor Hoch and the state as a whole were soon feeling the effect of the letdown which always follows an exciting legislative campaign, particularly for the winner. Not since the early nineties had Kansas enjoyed so rousing a time. And now it was over and they had to come down to business. But could they get down to business? Could they administer the new laws? Meetings were being held, half in jubilation over the successful legislation, half in anxiety about the next step. I was asked to come and speak at one of them.

I was no speaker, but I could not let them down. Moreover, because of my familiarity with past exciting experiments on the part of indignant oil independents I realized better than they did, so I thought, the hard pull they had before them.