Business-men recall with a shudder the frightful stringency in 1893. All over the land industries drooped and withered and died. Raw material, even wool itself, had no market. Commerce languished, wages dwindled, railroads collapsed, factories suspended, and myriads of workmen lost their jobs. Merchants cut down expenses to the lowest notch, loans were called in at a terrible sacrifice, debts were compromised at ten to fifty cents on the dollar, the present was dark and the future gloomy. The balance of trade was heavily against the United States. Government securities tumbled and a steady drain of gold to Europe set in. The efforts of Congress, the Treasury Department and syndicates of bankers to stem the tide of disaster were on a par with Mrs. Partington’s attempt to sweep back the ocean with a sixpenny-broom. Amid the general demoralization, when the nation seemed hastening to positive ruin, one splendid enterprise alone extended its business, multiplied its resources and was largely instrumental in restoring public confidence.
The Standard Oil-Company, unrivalled in its equipment of brains and skill and capital, not merely breasted the storm successfully, but did more than all other agencies combined to avert widespread bankruptcy. Through the sagacity and foresight of this great corporation crude oil advanced fifty per cent., thereby doubling and trebling the prosperity of the producing sections, without a corresponding rise in refined. By this wise policy, which only men of nerve and genius could have carried out, home consumers were not taxed to benefit the oil-regions and the exports of petroleum-products swelled enormously. As the result, while the American demand increased constantly, millions upon millions of dollars flowed in from abroad, materially diminishing the European drainage of the yellow metal from this side of the Atlantic. The salutary, far-reaching effects of such management, by reviving faith and stimulating the flagging energies of the country, exerted an influence upon the common welfare words and figures cannot estimate. Petroleum preserved the thread of golden traffic with foreign nations.
SAMUEL C.T. DODD.
Hon. Samuel C.T. Dodd, one of the ablest lawyers Pennsylvania has produced, is general solicitor of the Standard and resides in New York. His father, the venerable Levi Dodd, established the first Sunday-school and was president of the second company that bored for oil at Franklin, the birthplace of his son in 1836. Young Samuel learned printing, graduated from Jefferson College in 1857, studied law with James K. Kerr and was admitted to the Venango Bar in August of 1859. His brilliant talents, conscientious application and legal acquirements quickly won him a leading place among the successful jurists of the state. During a practice of nearly twenty-two years in the courts of the district and commonwealth he stood in the front rank of his profession. He served with credit in the Constitutional Convention of 1873, framing some of its most important provisions. He traveled abroad and wrote descriptions of foreign lands so charming they might have come from Washington Irving and N. P. Willis. His selection by the Standard Oil-Trust in 1881 as its general solicitor was a marked recognition of his superior abilities. The position, one of the most prominent and responsible to which a lawyer can attain, demanded exceptional qualifications. How capably it has been filled the records of all legal matters concerning the Standard abundantly demonstrate. Mr. Dodd’s profound knowledge of corporation-law, eminent sense of justice, forensic skill, rare tact and clear brain have steered the great company safely and honorably through many suits involving grave questions of right and millions of money. The papers he prepared organizing the Standard Trust have been the models for all such documents since they left his desk. Terse logic, sound reasoning, pointed analysis and apposite expression distinguish his legal opinions and arguments, combining the vigor of a Damascus blade with the beauty of an epic. He is a delightful conversationalist, sincere friend and prudent counsellor, kindly, affable and thoroughly[thoroughly] upright. His home, brightened by a loving wife and devoted family, is singularly happy. Amid the cares and anxieties incident to professional life he has cultivated his fine literary-taste, writing magazine-articles and wooing the muses at intervals of leisure only too far apart. He has the honor of writing the first poem on petroleum that ever appeared in print. It was a rich parody on Byron’s “Isles of Greece” and was published in the spring of 1860, as follows:
The land of Grease! the land of Grease!
Where burning Oil is loved and sung;
Where flourish arts of sale and lease,
Where Rouseville rose and Tarville sprung;
Eternal summer gilds them not,