As an impartial testimony to the then quality of the Standard's illuminating oils and the wonderful processes of manufacture which their Press Bureau now tells us they invented, I should give that document a high place. But to do them justice, the American refiners were not above taking a hint from other manufac turers. A gentleman with long experience in the oil trade once told me how Mr. H. H. Rogers about this time came to England. Up in the North there was a manufacturer of lubricating oils who had by his own ingenuity and skill developed some excellent ideas. He used to blend American oils, and Mr. Rogers asked one of the importers who dealt in their goods to introduce him. They went over the works together, and the proud owner showed them all his special processes and his little inventions and blends. Rogers was a practical refiner, he kept his eyes open, and after he returned to America the Standard's first lubricating oil branch, the Thompson and Bedford Company, of New York, began to export here some of the specialities which the North countryman had made. As brain-pickers the Standard men have no equal.
The first appearance of the Standard in this country was rather sudden. There came here an American gentleman named Frank E. Bliss, who had been connected with the business of Charles Pratt & Co. Nobody knew what his London business was, but one day there appeared in the Financial News the brief record of the registration at Somerset House on April 27, 1888, of the Anglo-American Oil Company, Limited. It had a capital of £500,000 in £20 shares. The first list of signatories contained several clerks and agents, but it also bore the name of Frank E. Bliss, and that told those who were in the trade what was coming. The first list of directors subsequently filed at Somerset House included such sound, reliable Standard Oil names as H. H. Rogers, J. D. Archbold, W. H. Libby, J. G. Gregory, and Wesley H. Tilford, all of 26, Broadway, New York, and Frank E. Bliss, of London. The precise significance of the word " Anglo " in its title becomes clearer when it is stated that the articles of association provided that the directors' meetings should be held in London, but that if a majority of the directors so decided they might be held in New York or any other part of the United States of America. As there was only one director resident in England, it is not hard to guess where most of the directors' meetings took place. This also helps us to appreciate the amount of truth in Mr. J. D. Archbold's Missouri evidence that he did not know why the Anglo-American Oil Company made loans amounting to £500,000 to its managing director, Mr. James A. Mac donald. Mr. Archbold was a director of the " Anglo " from the outset until somewhere between July, 1907, and July, 1908. In 1893 its capital was increased to £520,000, and at this time Mr. John D. Rockefeller's name first appears on the share list as the owner of 6,867 shares out of a total of 26,000. In July,
1899, the share list of the Anglo-American Oil Company contained the names set out below. As will be seen, many of them have appeared in the course of my story, and the list con tains a great deal of " American " and very little " Anglo." Where no address is given below, the return at Somerset House has " 26, Broadway, New York," which is the central address of the Standard :— The capital of the Company was at that date £1,000,000 in £20 shares. It is worthy of notice that in 1907-8, at a period when Mr. Roosevelt and his party were out after the Trusts, Mr. Archbold, Mr. Rogers, and nearly all the American directors of the Anglo American resigned. In June last the directors were Mr. J. H. Usmar, Mr. Thomas H. Hawkins, Mr. F. E. Powell, Mr. William P. McKendrick, of 22, Billiter Street, E.C. (the London address of the Anglo-American Oil Company, until it moved last autumn to St. James's Park), and Mr. F. D. Asche, of 26, Broadway, New York. Mr. Fred D. Asche is a clerk in the export department of the Standard in New York. Thus, while in 1889 there were five directors resident in New York and one in London, in 1910 there were four directors resident in London and one in New York—a somewhat significant reversal of the ratio. Mr. Jas. A.
Macdonald, the gentleman already mentioned, • ceased to be managing director in 1906, when his one share was transferred to the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey.
The advent of the Anglo-American Oil Com pany was the beginning of troubled times in the English petroleum trade. Mr. Rockefeller's motto, " Pay nobody a profit," was put into force, and the Trust began to buy out or to starve out the varies groups of middlemen who had hitherto been vending their oils to the English consumer. Some evidence on that point was given to the Select Committee on Petroleum in 1897 by Mr. W. J. Leonard, of Carless, Capel and Leonard, Pharos Oil Works, Hackney Wick. Mr. Leonard stated that London was then the only " free market " for other oil than Standard, since, although there were independent dealers in Liverpool, they had for several years a " selling agree ment " with the Anglo-American Oil Company. Then came these answers :— The Chairman : I want to know what there is to prevent you importing oil into Liverpool in competition with the Anglo-American Oil Company ? A. If we did this of course the Anglo-American Oil Company would at once put down their price, so that we should have to sell at a ruinous loss, and we cannot afford to compete with them ; I mean, we are all afraid of them. If we sent oil to Liverpool the Anglo-American price, instead of being nearly id. a gallon more than the price in London, would probably be something like id. a gallon less than the price in London. That would be the immediate effect.