Among those men who in the space of a comparatively brief career have attained an eminent position in the legal profession is Robert W. Stewart, general attorney for the Standard Oil Company, at Chicago.
Mr. Stewart was born at Cedar Rapids, Iowa, March 11, 1866, a son of William and Eliza Mills (Lucore) Stewart. The former was a native of Mercer, Pennsylvania, and the latter of Portage, New York. The Stewarts, who were of Scotch-Irish ancestry, are numbered among the oldest families of Pennsylvania. William Stewart, the great grandfather of Robert W., was a lieutenant in the Revolutionary war, and was given a land grant in Mercer county, Pennsylvania, in consideration of the distinguished services he rendered.
About 1843, William Stewart, the father of our subject, came west, working his passage part of the way on an Ohio river steamer. He located at Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and subsequently purchased a farm near that city, where he resided until his death in 1893. He acquired a comfortable fortune and spent the winters of his declining years in California. His widow still survives and resides at San Diego, California, where she has erected a beautiful home.
They were the parents of seven children of whom three are living: George W. Stewart, a farmer residing near Cedar Rapids. Iowa; Eliza B., wife of Clarke W. McKee, attorney at law, of San Diego, California; and Robert \V. the subject of this sketch.
In 1888 and 1889 he held the position of managing clerk in the law office of Judge William K. Townsend and George D. Watrous, at the same time filling a tutorship at Yale Law School from which he won the Townsend prize. In the latter year Mr. Stewart removed to Pierre, South Dakota, and there engaged in the practice of law as a member of the firm of Homer & Stewart until 1905. He was then made general attorney for the Chicago & North Western Railway for the states of North and South Dakota, and also general attorney in the northwest for the Standard Oil and International Harvester Companies, and took up his residence at Huron. Two years later he received the appointment of general attorney for the Standard Oil Company at Chicago and in July 1907 removed to this city.
From the very beginning of his career Mr. Stewart has risen rapidly and substantially until today he stands near the head of his profession. No higher compliment could be paid to his legal ability than the recognition accorded him by such corporations, and few men attain such professional eminence within so brief a period.
And no less are the honors that have been thrust upon him in public life. He was elected state's attorney for Hughes county, South Dakota in 1893, and in 1894 was appointed state supreme court reporter, which office he held until May, 1898. In 1899 he was elected to the state senate from Hughes, Hyde and Sully counties and reelected in 1901, serving two terms. From 1895 to 1907 he- was a member of the executive council of the republican state central committee of South Dakota.
Mr. Stewart is a high Mason, being a Knight Templar and Shriner, and is also a member of the Knights of Pythias and the Elks. His social affiliations are with the University, Union, Yale, Chicago Golf, Glen View Country and South Shore Country Clubs, and his chief recreations are golf and motoring.
At Aberdeen, South Dakota, July 14, 1907, Mr. Stewart was united in marriage with Miss Maude Elliott, of that place, a native of Kentucky. They have one child, Donald Stewart, born November 16, 1907. Their residence is at 103 Bellevue Place
(Source - Excerpts from "Chicago Its History and Builders, a Century of Marvelous Growth" by Josiah Seymore Currey, 1912, Chicago, Ill.)
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- "Chesty Child
Last week the Standard Oil Co. of Indiana, chesty child of a potent tribe, made a few announcements
1) Its net earnings for 1926 were $62,500,000-$6.03 a share- 13.68% on the capital invested.
2) It has changed its president. Dr. William M. Burton, who "cracked" petroleum so hard that it yielded twice as much gasoline, was granted his wish to retire, was succeeded by Edward G. Seubert, a onetime newsboy. Soon, no doubt, the success magazines will be asking Mr. Seubert for the story of his rise. It is an epitome of the great U. S. biography, a machinist's helper at 15, a bookkeeper whose accounts balanced, a chief clerk who plugged, a vice president -one of the faithful rewarded when he reached a healthy 50.
3) Robert H. McElroy and Edward J. Bullock, both of whom had served the Standard Oil long and faithfully, were lifted to the rank of vice president.
These announcements and most maneuvers of importance in the Standard Oil Co. of Indiana are the work of a burly lawyer-Colonel Robert Wright Stewart, chairman of the board of directors. He did not rise from the bottom. He broke in at the middle and puffed out the chest of the Indiana oilcan. Babbitts could not understand how he did it. He had played football at Coe College (Iowa), plunged into the law at Yale, cavorted with Theodore Roosevelt's Rough Riders, dabbled in politics in South Dakota. But he was and is a shrewd lawyer. The Standard Oil wanted him. Soon the general counsel was made chairman of the board (1918).* He summoned lethargic directors to thrice-weekly meetings, made them agree unanimously on every decision. Under the Stewart impetus the company grew big with physical properties and profits. More than 15,000
employe stockholders shared the resulting pleasures.
Mr. Stewart's biggest coup came in 1925 when he combined the Pan-American Petroleum Co. (Edward L. Doheny's mainspring) and the British Mexican Co. with the Standard Oil Co. of Indiana. And that is why some say that Mr. Stewart is the toughest and least stoppable fullback in the oil field.
* A not unusual practice among great corporations within the last two decades." (Source - Time Magazine, Monday March 14, 1927)
"Rockefeller v. Stewart
The annual meeting of the stockholders of Standard Oil Co. of Indiana will be held on March 7. Only a handful of the 58,000 stockholders* will be present. But practically every stockholder will be represented by a proxy, for a bitter fight is to be settled. One group of proxies will be held by a representative of John Davison Rockefeller Jr. The other will be held by Col.Robert Wright Stewart. The fight is over the re-election of Colonel Stewart as Chairman of the Board.
On the day last week when Mr. Rockefeller Jr. was gazing at the Rock of Gibraltar, en route to Egypt on an expedition with famed Digger James Henry Breasted of the University of Chicago, the Rockefeller office in Manhattan made public a letter which he had written to the stockholders of Standard Oil of Indiana.
In the letter, Mr. Rockefeller Jr. told how he had lost confidence in Colonel Stewart's leadership because of Colonel Stewart's testimony before the Senate Committee on Public Lands, concerning the oil scandals; how he had asked for Colonel Stewart's resignation last April; how Colonel Stewart has continued to ignore his request. "I am therefore," wrote Mr. Rockefeller Jr., "asking the stockholders of the company to join me in opposing his re-election."
Forthwith Colonel Stewart returned from Manhattan to Chicago with the words: "If the Rockefellers want to fight, I'll show them how to fight. . . . I may be mistaken, but it seems to me that I owe fully as much to the person holding ten shares of Standard Oil of Indiana. . . as I may owe one who has so much wealth that he has to hire experts to spend his income for him."
In his Chicago office, Colonel Stewart received reporters, photographers, talked freely, posed pleasantly. He was confident of enough proxies to secure reelection.
Meanwhile, Frank J. Hogan, smart lawyer for Colonel Stewart, pointed out that the oil man had been tried and acquitted of charges of contempt and perjury growing out of his testimony before the Senate committee. Lawyer Hogan made public a statement signed by the twelve jurors of the perjury trial, saying: "It was our intention that our
verdict should stand as a vindication of Colonel Stewart."
Editorially, most metropolitan newspapers supported Mr. Rockefeller Jr. Said the conservative New York Evening Post: "He [Rockefeller] is right. The other position is only a variation of a famous exclamation to make it read, 'principle be damned.
" Practically, Wall Street estimated that previous to the Rockefeller letter only 17% of Standard Oil of Indiana stock was in Rockefeller hands, while Colonel Stewart and allies controlled 51%.
It was not entirely clear, last week, who would be the Rockefeller candidate for Chairman of the Board. Nor was it clear why Mr. Rockefeller Jr. had gone to Egypt on the eve of his biggest fight.
*Standard Oil Co. of Indiana has issued 9,160,000 shares of capital stock. President E. G. Seubert of Standard Oil Co. of Indiana was mentioned in the Rockefeller letter as a "loyal and devoted" leader. But he had long been considered a Stewart man. Now he may be the crux of the battle." (Source - Time Magazine Monday January 21, 1929)
Teapot Dome
"Teapot Dome Scandal also called the Oil Reserves, or Elk Hills, Scandal, in American history, scandal of the early 1920s surrounding the secret leasing of federal oil reserves by the secretary of the interior, Albert B. Fall. After President Warren G. Harding transferred supervision of the naval oil reserve lands from the navy to the Department of the Interior in 1921, Fall secretly granted to Harry F. Sinclair of the Mammoth Oil Company exclusive rights to the Teapot Dome (Wyoming) reserves (April 7, 1922). He granted similar rights to Edward L. Doheny of Pan American Petroleum Company for the Elk Hills and Buena Vista Hills reserves in California (1921-22). In return for the leases, Fall received large cash gifts and no-interest "loans."
When the affair became known, Congress directed President Harding to cancel the leases; the Supreme Court declared the leases fraudulent and ruled illegal Harding's transfer of authority to Fall. Although the president himself was not implicated in the transactions that had followed the transfer, the revelations of his associates' misconduct took a severe toll on his health; disillusioned and exhausted, he died before the full extent of the wrongdoing had been determined. Fall was convicted of accepting a bribe in the Elk Hills negotiations and imprisoned. Doheny and Sinclair were acquitted of charges of bribery and criminal conspiracy, but Sinclair spent 6 1/2 months in prison for contempt of court and contempt of the U.S. Senate. Although the secretary of the navy, Edwin Denby, had signed all the leases, he was cleared of all charges. While "Teapot Dome" entered the American political vocabulary as a synonym for governmental corruption, the scandal had little long-term effect on the Republican Party. Calvin Coolidge, a Republican, was elected president in 1924." (Source- Encyclopedia Britannica)
- Rockefeller v. Stewart
Monday, Feb. 18, 1929
Fifteen rounds having been fought (TIME, Jan. 28 et seq.); the fight to a finish between John Davison Rockefeller Jr. and Col. Robert Wright Stewart, minority stockholder and board-chairman, respectively, of Standard Oil Co. of Indiana, continued last week as follows:
Round 16. Col. Stewart and his board of directors declared a 50% stock dividend a $1.12½ cash dividend (including a so-cent extra dividend), thus calling attention to their ability to put fat profits into the hands of the stockholders. During the brief speculative flurry which followed, Standard Oil of Indiana achieved the stock market (paper) value of a billion-dollar corporation.
Round 17. The Sun Life Insurance Co. of Montreal sent proxies for 44,000 shares to Col Stewart. Dartmouth College sent proxies for 2,360 shares to Mr. Rockefeller Jr. Julius Rosenwald, philanthropist and board-chairman of Sears, Roebuck & Co. came out for Mr. Rockefeller Jr. with the statement: "It was fitting for stockholders in any enterprise to see that the business is managed by officers whom they can trust." But Philanthropist Rosenwald's influence was moral, not financial. He owns no stock in Standard Oil of Indiana.
Round 18. As a member of the Rockefeller proxy committee, Winthrop Williams Aldrich announced that he and his colleagues held proxies for 51% of the stock of Standard Oil of Indiana, or enough to enable Mr. Rockefeller Jr. to win the fight and oust Col. Stewart. Mr Aldrich is a son of the late Senator Nelson Wilmarth Aldrich (oldtime friend and intimate of Mr. Rockefeller Sr.) . . . the younger Aldrich now attacks for his impregnable brother-in-law.
Mr. Aldrich is an able lawyer-member of the Manhattan firm of Murray, Aldrich & Roberts.
Round 19. Another able lawyer is Frank J. Hogan of Washington, D. C. He could write an authentic, an exhaustive, history of the Oil Scandals-from the point of view of Edward L. Doheny,* Albert Bacon Fall, Harry Ford Sinclair, Col. Stewart.
As lawyer for Col. Stewart, Mr. Hogan replied to Mr. Aldrich's announcement of Rockefeller proxies with a sophistry. Said he: "If, therefore, Mr. Rockefeller's associates should succeed, it will mean that numerical strength in shares will thwart the wishes of the overwhelming majority of stockholders."
It was true that Col. Stewart claimed the support of a majority of Standard Oil of Indiana stockholders. But it is also true that the application of Mr. Hogan's reasoning would cause all U. S. business to totter, to go into a panic. It would mean that, in any corporation, the holder of one share would be as powerful as the holder of 10,000 shares.
Round 20. In this round several thousand words were hurled. Mr. Aldrich mailed to stockholders a 69-page pamphlet summing up Mr. Rockefeller Jr.'s objections to Col. Stewart and reviewing in great detail the Stewart conduct for the past seven years. Col. Stewart immediately flayed the Aldrich pamphlet as "a cunningly drawn document . . . nothing less than cowardly and dastardly libel."
The final round will be fought at the annual meeting of stockholders in Whiting, Ind., on March 7. It will be essentially a battle of proxies, though any holder of even a single share (purchased before Feb. 5) is entitled to be present and vote in person.†
If the Rockefeller representatives hold the whip hand, they will first prevent the re-election of Col. Stewart as a director, thus making impossible his re-election as board-chairman. Then they can proceed either with iron hand or with compromise. The present board of directors and President Edward G. Seubert are all pro-Stewart men. To oust them and elect pro-Rockefeller directors might create a too sudden confusion in Standard Oil of Indiana. To re-elect them would be the height of compromise-a pro-Stewart Standard Oil of Indiana without Stewart. Much depends on what man, if any, is the Rockefeller candidate for chairman ot the board of directors.
*Lawyer Hogan was reputed to have received $1,000,000 for successfully defending Oilman Doheny in the Doheny-Fall conspiracy trial.
†Karl August Bickel, president of the United Press assured himself of a ringside seat by purchasing five shares of Standard Oil of Indiana, five minutes before the closing hour.
- Another look at Teapot Dome as taken from the book "The Prize, The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power" by Daniel Yergin, 1992.
“The Colonel and the Liberty Bonds
The scandal had even wider repercussions when further investigations revealed that the bogus company, Continental Trading, was really a mechanism by which a group of prominent oil men had received kickbacks in the form of government Liberty Bonds on purchases of oil made by their own companies, Harry Sinclair had used part of his kickback as payoff money to Fall, passing on the bonds. He had also given some of the bonds to the Republican National Committee. The nation was shocked to learn that among those receiving Liberty Bond kickbacks was one of America's most distinguished, successful, and forceful oil men, Colonel Robert Stewart, chairman of Standard of Indiana.
A broad-faced, bulky man, Stewart had ridden with Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders. Unlike the heads of many of the other major oil companies he had never had a day of practical oil field xperience. He had first gone to work for Standard of Indiana as an attorney, and he had ridden his legal skills to the top of the company. That was not so surprising; after all, the legal challenges before and after dissolution had dominated and redefined the oil industry, and since 1907 Stewart had been at the center of every single major case involving Standard of Indiana. Autocratic, commanding, and combative, he infused the company with an aggressiveness that made it into the nation's number-one marketer of gasoline during the 1920's. "Colonel Bob," as he was called, was among the most respected and admired leaders not only of the oil industry but of all of American business. Who could believe that someone so upstanding would stoop to besmear himself in the slush of Teapot Dome? Yet, after years of evading questions about his involvement with Continental Trading and the Liberty Bonds, Stewart finally admitted receiving about $760,000 in bonds.
As Stewart became ever more deeply embroiled in the Teapot Dome controversy, the largest stockholder in Standard of Indiana, who had until then hardly interfered in the company's management, urged Stewart "to remove any just ground for criticism." Stewart would not cooperate. Finally, in 1928, the stockholder decided he had given Stewart every chance and concluded he would have to go. The stockholder was known as "Junior"; he was the only son of John D. Rockefeller.
John D. Rockefeller, Jr., was a short, shy, serious, and reclusive man. He worshiped his father and had wholeheartedly imbibed his lessons about thrift. As a student at Brown University, the younger Rockefeller had surprised his college classmates by hemming his own dish towels. But, more than anything else, he had been rigorously and repeatedly schooled by his mother in "duty" and "responsibility" and concerned himself with probity. He found his own life's vocation, independent of his father, in the systematic giving away of a significant part of the family fortune, though much would still, of course, be left over. He also involved himself in a wide variety of civic and social causes, once going so
far as to chair an official investigation into prostitution, on behalf of the city of New York.
The younger Rockefeller even established a dialogue with Ida Tarbell, his father's "lady friend" and muckraking nemesis. He had met her at a conference in 1919 and had gone out of his way to be extremely polite, even chivalrous to her. A few years later, he asked Tarbell to review a series of interviews with his father that were to be the basis of a book he was planning. To facilitate matters, he himself delivered the materials to Tarbell's apartment in Gramercy Park in Manhattan. After studying the interviews, Tarbell told him that the elder Rockefeller's comments were self-serving and sidestepped all the charges made against him. "Junior" was persuaded. "Miss Tarbell has just read the biography manuscript and her suggestions are most valuable," Rockefeller wrote to a colleague. "It seems clear that we should abandon any thought to the publication of the material in anything like its present incomplete and decidedly unbalanced form."
That was in 1924. Now, four years later, the younger Rockefeller was no less aroused by the specter of wrongdoing in Standard of Indiana than Ida Tarbell had been by the wrongdoing in the old Trust. By profession, he was a philanthropist, not an oil man, and he had made a habit of staying away from the business of the successor companies. To much of the country, the father remained a great villain; now the son broke into the public scene in quite a different guise as a reformer. And he was intent on carrying the mantle of reform to the heart of Standard Oil of Indiana. He told a Senate committee that, in the affair of Colonel Stewart, nothing less than the "basic integrity" of the company and indeed of the whole industry was at stake. But the Rockefeller interests directly controlled only 15 percent of the stock in the company. When Stewart refused to resign voluntarily, Rockefeller launched a proxy fight to oust him. The colonel counterattacked vigorously. "If the Rockefellers want to fight," he declared, "I'll show them how to fight." He had a strong business record; in the last ten years of his leadership, the company's net assets had quadrupled. And now, for good measure, he declared an extra dividend and a stock split to boot. Some saw the bitter struggle as a battle between East and West for the control of the oil industry; others said the Rockefellers wanted to reassert their control over the entire industry. But the Rockefeller forces were not clamorous for dividends; they wanted victory, and they organized and campaigned hard. And, in March of 1929, they won, with 60 percent of the stockholders' votes. Stewart was out.
John D. Rockefeller, Jr., had intervened directly, and in a highly visible way, in the affairs of one of the successor companies of his father's Standard Oil Trust. He had done so not for mere profits but in the name of decency and high standards, and to safeguard the oil industry from new attacks from government and the public-and to protect .the Rockefeller name. He was much berated for his efforts. "If you look up the record of your father in the early days of the old Standard Oil Company," one angry supporter of Stewart wrote to Rockefeller, "you will find it pretty well smeared with black spots ten times worse than the charges you lay at the door of Col. Stewart. There is not enough soap in the world to wash the hands of the elder Rockefeller from the taint of fifty years ago. Only people with clean hands should undertake to blacken the character of other and better men."
A college proferssor disagreed. "No endowment of a college nor support of a piece of research," he wrote, "could have done more it seems to me to educate the public toward honest business." American Capitalism, and the oil industry could never again be as rapacious. as it once had been; now the future of the industry and of business was at stake, not the fortunes of a few men. And the oil industry had its public image to consider. But if the younger Rockefeller's hands were clean, the entire "Teapot Dome" scandal from Fall, Doheny, and Sinclair to Stewart had picked up where the Standard Oil Trust had left of in ingraining in the public mind a nefarious image of the power and corruption of "oil money."
(Source – The Prize by Daniel Yergin)
Daniel Yergin is best known for The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power, a number-one bestseller that won the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction in 1992. The book was adapted into a PBS mini-series seen by more than 20 million viewers. Yergin was awarded the 1997 United States Energy Award for "lifelong achievements in energy and the promotion of international understanding." According to a biographical note in the March/April 2006 issue of Foreign Affairs, Yergin is currently at work on "a new book on oil and geopolitics."
- Robert Wright Stewart
Courier article (Nov ‘20)
Chairman Board of Directors, Standard Oil Company; Stewart is CEO for one of the largest and strongest corporations in the world.
Public education in C.R.; graduated from Coe at age of 19. Law degree from Yale. After working in a law office in Conn. He moved to Pierre, S.D. in 1899; practice law there until 1905; while in Pierre married Maude Bradley Elliott of Aberdeen; four sons. In 1905 to Huron, S.D., general attorney for Chicago North-Western Railway. State senator for two years; state’s attorney from Hughes county and supreme court reporter. As lawyer in S.D., he represented International Harvester Co, Standard Oil Co., and North-Western Railway.
1907: becomes general attorney for Standard Oil in Chicago; in 1914, becomes general counsel of Standard Oil.
Spanish-American War: a major in a Rough Rider regiment; later promoted to a colonel of infantry after returning to S.D.
Courier article after his death (Oct 1947); this is an excellent article, well-written, informative.
Born 11 May 1866; died in Miami, FL, 24 Feb ‘47. Scotch-Irish descent.
Parents: hard-working, thrifty; active in Second Presbyterian Church (Old School) that later became Westminster Presbyterian. Home located just south of Montrose Hotel, church across the street. “Robert’s earliest memories include the experience of being scrubbed and dressed on Sunday morning and joining the family in its single file march to the Church; father at the head of the procession and mother bringing up the rear. As they marched they passed but spoke not to other families with whom they were friendly but on Sunday in violent doctrinal disagreement.”
Robert’s father, William: Dean Steward, farmer and blacksmith. Vigorous fighter against saloons.
Mother was less pugnacious; Robert always had a deep reverence for his mother.
Sister, Belle, graduate of Coe and Coe’s first librarian.
Graduated in class of ‘86. “Frequently he drove a team hauling a load of wood or farm truck from the farm near Bertram. At the end of the school day he returned to the farm and hard work.”
Five men in his graduating class. One was Edward A. Ross, who was chosen to give commencement address in 1936 at the 50th anniversary of the class of ‘86. Robert Stewart said: “I shall attend commencement and hear Ed, but shall not agree with anything he will say.” Ross the liberal; Stewart, the conservative. Had also been true 50 years earlier. “Ed Ross as valedictorian had written an oration which faculty and trustees felt was not proper for a graduate of Coe to deliver. When the little commencement program was printed it was apparent that a compromise had been reached. Salutatorian and valedictorian had changed places. It announced, first, “Oration on Modernism in Government, by Edward Alsworth Ross” and second, “Oration on the Constitution, Our Strong Defense, by Robert Wright Stewart.”
At Yale, he worked to pay his expenses. Evidence of Robert’s independence. No assistance from father, who had some money. Did not receive any money when father died because Robert had said he did not need the money.
After law school, Robert pawned his watch and arrived in Pierre, S.D. with $7.50. His first law position with Jack Horner, who “gave him desk room, the duty of tending the office stove, and the privilege of sleeping in the back room.” In Pierre, Stewart not only practiced law but “engaged in the cattle business, served in the legislature, represented various corporations having business at the state capitol and ‘played’ politics vigorously on the conservative side.” He was in S.D. National Guard.
In 1922 Colonel Stewart was at Coe for homecoming football and spoke at alumni argument. Expressed his appreciation for the vigorous debating in college while upholding fundamental principles. Ended speech for praising President Phelps speaking in chapel “thundering the proclamations of the Almighty.” Stewart also gave commencement speech and received honorary doctor of laws degree.
1923: Coe had begun to buy property north of the campus. Stewart brought his friend E. R. Graham to Coe to study the campus; Graham came up with plan for expansion.
1924: Stewart joins Board of Trustees. Always active member; regular attender of meetings. His remarks also focused on “institutional policy” and he left administrative procedures up to the faculty and president. Strong defender of ROTC. Also felt college needed a real library. In 1929, when he retired from Standard Oil, he donated $200,000 for the building, totally on his own initiative. Building dedicated in 1930. “Over his fireplace in his Nantucket home was a picture of the Library. He said it was the most expensive picture on the island!” When he died in 1947, he left a further $50,000 to the college to ensure the Library’s upkeep.
Stewart also responsible for the construction of Greene Hall. Felt the college must have dormitory for men; wrote a check and gave it to the college but could only be used if the Board approved the erection of a dormitory, which became Greene.
Buried in mausoleum in Oak Hill Cemetery.
Notes from other sources:
Major in 3rd U.S. Volunteer Cavalry (Grigsby’s Rough Riders); commanded a battalion of the regiment in battle of San Juan Hill. He enlisted as a private, but he was quickly promoted because he could ride and shot and fight.
After war he was asked by governor to reorganize national guard. For eight years after the war, he was a colonel of regiment of S.D. National Guard.
President Gage on Robert Stewart: “He was a man of large desires and great ambition, and he felt limits where to the average person none existed.”
Teapot Dome: 1925 article from Consolidated Press Association
“There are all sorts of varying reports down in Wall street as to the meaning and extent of the vast transaction whereby Edward L. Doheny, storm center of the oil scandals in Washington a year ago, sold out all his Mexican and South American holdings to a syndicate headed by Col. Robert W. Stewart, chairman of the board of the Standard Oil of Indiana. But there is general agreement as to who engineered the deal. It was Bob Stewart of the Standard of Indiana, already rated as the greatest producer and seller of gasoline in all the world.”
He brought some progressive ideas to the oil industry. For example, he believed in the idea of popular ownership. Stockholders in Standard Oil increased from 4,500 to 50,000. Created a system in which company employees “have a void in the matter of wages, working hours, conditions and everything affecting their welfare. More than 15,000 employees of the company are stockholders.” From article in Chicago Daily News.
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