THE OIL-WORLD'S NAPOLEON: HENRY DETERDING
If the Royal Dutch has succeeded in its amazing effort to reduce the power of the Standard Oil, it is because the former possessed a man who was worth millions, whom the Americans, in their outspoken admiration, have called the "Oil-World's Napoleon"—Henry Deterding.
"Mr. Deterding is Napoleonic in boldness, and Cromwellian in depth," said Admiral Lord Fisher, the reorganizer of the British Navy in the twentieth century. The strongest personality in the oil-world is no longer Rockefeller, but Deterding. Supported by such men as Gulbenkian, the "Talleyrand of Oil"; Colijn, formerly War Minister to the Netherlands; Loudon, Cohen, Stuart, and Sir Marcus Samuel, the founder of the Shell and a former Lord Mayor of London—Deterding dared to challenge the Standard Oil and to keep up the war for twenty years in every part of the world, and even to establish himself on the latter's own ground, the United States.
The Royal Dutch was established in 1890, when the Standard ruled as absolute sovereign over the markets of Europe and America. De Gelder was the first Chairman, but he was soon replaced by the more capable Kessler.
"Old Kessler," as the Royal Dutch people call him among themselves, fixed his head-quarters at Batavia. Needing an assistant, he engaged the young Deterding, who was then employed in a bank at Batavia. It was Kessler who guided the Royal Dutch through the difficulties of its early years. But he died suddenly in 1900, and Deterding succeeded him.
While the Standard stuck to the formula, "American oil to light the world," Deterding set to work to acquire oil deposits as near as possible to all markets. The new policy extolled by Walter Teagle, Chairman of the Standard Oil of New Jersey, on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the company in January 1920, is no other than that pursued by Deterding for fifteen years. For the Standard Oil, seeing to what a pass its former policy has brought it, has sought since 1919 to revise its methods and copy those of its rival.
Five factors have contributed to the world-wide expansion of the Royal Dutch.
1. Deterding's cleverness in associating the Royal Dutch with the Shell, and in interesting the Rothschilds of Paris in his operations. Thanks to these connections, he surrounded himself with able personalities, such as Frederick Lane, Sir Marcus Samuel, Sir Waley Cohen, and Gulbenkian.
2. The support of the Dutch Government.