Its last triumph was its entry into Spain. The eminently suggestive list of companies controlled by the Royal Dutch will give an idea of the network which it has spread over the whole world:—
Shell Transport and Trading Company.
Asiatic Petroleum Company.
Anglo-Saxon Petroleum.
Bataafsche Petroleum Maatschappij.
Erdol und Kohle Veränderung Aktien Gesellschaft.
Aktien Gesellschaft für Petroleum Industrie.
Deutsche Bergin A.G.
Anglo-Swedish Oil Company.
Asiatic Petroleum (Ceylon).
Asiatic Petroleum (Egypt).
Asiatic Petroleum (Federated Malay States).
Asiatic Petroleum (India).
Asiatic Petroleum (Northern China).
Asiatic Petroleum (Philippines).
Asiatic Petroleum (Siam).
Asiatic Petroleum (Southern China).
Asiatic Petroleum (Straits Settlements).
Anglo-Egyptian Oil-fields.
British Imperial Company (Australia).
British Imperial Company (New Zealand).
British Imperial Company (South Africa).
Astra Romana.
Caribbean Petroleum.
Dordesche Petroleum Industrie Maatschappij.
Dordesche Petroleum Company.
Sumatra Palembang.
Nederlandsche Indische Tanks Troomboat.
Vereinigte Benzinwerke, Hamburg.
Home Light Oil Company.
British Petroleum Company.
Norsk Encelska Mineralojeanie Colaget.
Shell Marketing Company.
Italian Company for the Import of Oil.
British Tanker Company.
Moebi Hid.
Ceram Petroleum.
Ceram Oil Syndicate.
Société Bnito.
North Caucasian.
Russian Standard of Grosny.
Mazut Company.
Ural-Caspian Company.
Grosny Sundja Oil-fields.
New Shibaïeff Petroleum.
Commercial and Industrial Oil Companies of the Caspian and Black Seas.
Mantasheff.
Lianosoff.
Tsatouroff.
Kotoku Oil-fields Syndicate.
United British Refineries.
New Orleans Refining Company.
Simplex Refining Company of Panama.
Panama Canal Storage Company.
Shell Company of California.
Californian Oil-fields, Ltd.
W.V. Oil Company.
Volley Pipe-Line Company.
Roxana Petroleum Company (Oklahoma).
Trahola Pipe-Line Company (Oklahoma).
Shell Corporation of Martinez.
Shell Company of Canada.
Roxana Petroleum Maatschappij (Texas).
Tampico-Tanuco Petroleum.
La Corona.
Mexican Eagle.
Eagle Oil Transport.
Venezuelan Concessions Company.
Curaçao Petroleum.
General Asphalt Company.
Burlington Investment Company.
United British Oil-fields of Trinidad.
United British West Indies Petroleum Syndicate.
Turkish Petroleum.
Roxana Petroleum Corporation of Virginia.
Ozark Pipe-Line Corporation.
Union Oil of Delaware.
Société Maritime des Pétroles.
Photogen (Austria, Hungary, Poland).
Jugo-Slav Petroleum.
This list is certainly not complete, and it grows longer every day. Is it not eloquent by itself?
The Royal Dutch has penetrated every State in the world, assuming everywhere the national colour of the country it desires to conquer.
It has travelled far since it began in the Dutch Indies, with a tiny capital of a million florins and seven small tank steamers. Its annual production, which was then 25,000 tons, to-day exceeds 15 million tons. Its fleet of tankers is one of the most powerful in the world. Last year it amounted to 1,400,000 tons. And the Royal Dutch controls a capital of twenty-two thousand million francs.
Partial Decline of the Standard
The Standard Oil is certainly no longer the colossus of the world. It has never completely recovered from the last judgment delivered against it in 1912, which compelled it to separate from its subsidiary companies. Although the sentence of the Supreme Court could not put an end to the community of interests which united these—since Rockefeller himself possessed 25 per cent. of the shares of the various affiliated companies—it has certainly hampered the development of the Standard during the last few years. The very heavy taxation imposed upon it has also contributed to limit its powers of expansion. The American Government takes 44 per cent. of its income in the form of taxes. In 1920 Rockefeller paid an ordinary federal tax of 12 per cent. and a super-tax of 65 per cent. In fact, Rockefeller and all his associates are being driven out of the business by the federal taxes. If Rockefeller is the person who paid in 1920 the largest sum in income tax (14,800,000 dollars), it is clear that the greater part of his money is passing from the coffers of the company to be invested in Government, State and municipal securities which are not taxable.
Up to about 1890 the Standard Oil reigned as absolute mistress of the oil market, both in Europe and America. But in 1890 the oil from the Caucasus, Galicia and Rumania began to break up this monopoly. Purely European financial groups, the Rothschilds of Paris and Vienna, the Nobels of Sweden, the great German banks, and those of Lille and Roubaix which later were to form the "Consortium du Nord," became progressively more and more interested in the new oil enterprises that were taking shape in Eastern Europe. Germany had formed an actual Trust, the Europeanische Petroleum Union, which, but for the War, would certainly have led to German control of all European oil. Instead of only two great Trusts fighting for world supremacy for the benefit of Britain or the United States, we should see a third, claiming Europe and Turkey in Asia for its share in the name of Germany.
But this group, expanding rapidly when war broke out, found itself opposed from that moment by another organization, the Royal Dutch-Shell, which was also advancing by giant strides and which concentrated all its power throughout the world against that of the Standard Oil.
The most skilful part of the policy of the Royal Dutch was to establish itself wherever there was any oil, while the Standard confined itself almost exclusively to America. This was a great mistake. To dominate the production and sale in America was defensible as a commercial policy so long as the United States were the greatest producers of oil. It became an error from the day on which important oil deposits were discovered in other parts of the world.