“I came with my parents to America when I was three years old, and I have often heard them tell of the tedious voyage of thirty days in an emigrant sailing ship, and the subsequent voyage over the Erie Canal to central New York, where they settled in Lewis County. My parents were very poor and very pious. The poverty in our family was so stringent that it was necessary for me to go out and work, and I bear upon my body to-day the marks of the injustice and wrong of child labor.
“At the age of eighteen I heard of the opportunities in the oil regions in Pennsylvania, and at once made my way to Titusville. I landed there with fifteen cents in my pocket, and without an acquaintance in the State. For three days I went through one of the most trying experiences of any young man’s life—living without money and seeking work among strangers. I had promised to write to my mother, and I used hotel stationery to fulfil my promise, but was without the necessary three cents then needed to purchase a postage stamp. This was one of the hardest financial problems of my life. I overcame it through stratagem. Seeing a man on the way to the post-office with a bundle of letters I inquired of him: ‘Are you going to the post-office?’ ‘Yes, sir,’ he said. ‘Will you have the kindness to mail this for me?’ At the same time I put my hand into my empty pocket in search of the necessary coin, fumbling my pocket-knife and keys a moment. The gentleman kindly said: ‘Never mind, I’ll stamp it,’ and the revenue was provided which took my first letter to my mother.
THE LAND OF OPPORTUNITIES.
“But I was on the right track; I was in a land of opportunities. I soon found work and a business that was to my taste; a business, too, that the good Providence has removed in part, at least, from the domain of the competitive destroyer—the business of producing crude petroleum from the earth.
“Since 1870 I have been more or less of an oil producer. In 1866, I came to the Ohio oil fields and began the business of producing oil at Lima. Since that time I have followed it both in Ohio and Indiana, and to some extent in Pennsylvania and West Virginia. In 1893 I invented some improvements in appliances for producing oil, and, finding manufacturers unwilling to make the articles, fearing there would be no profit, I concluded to undertake their manufacture. This brought me in contact with labor conditions in a city for the first time in my life. As a rule, labor in the oil fields had enjoyed large wages compared with similar classes outside. I found men working in Toledo for a fraction of a dollar a day. I began to wonder how it was possible for men to live on such a small sum of money in a way becoming to citizens of a free republic. I studied social conditions, and these led me to feel very keenly the degradation of my fellow-men, and I at once declared that the ‘going wages’ rule should not govern in the Acme Sucker-Rod Company, which is the firm name of our business. I said that the rule that every man is entitled to such a share of the product of his toil as will enable him to live decently, and in such a way that he and his children may be fitted to be citizens of the free republic, should be the rule governing the wages of our establishment.
“To break down the feeling of social inequality, we began to ‘get together,’—that is, we had little excursions down the bay. We invited our workmen and their families, and also some other people who live in big houses and do not work with their hands. We sought to mix them, to let them understand that we were all people—just people, you know.
GOOD WILL AND FELLOWSHIP IN BUSINESS.
“As our business increased, we took in new men. We made no special effort to select. We asked no questions as to their habits, their morals, their religion or their irreligion. We were ignoring the sacred rule of business, getting along in a sort of free and easy way, occasionally giving the boys a word of caution, printed on the envelopes; then, perhaps, a little letter expressing good will and fellowship. Then we came to feel the need of a rule to govern the place. We thought, to that extent, we ought to be like other people. So we had the following printed on a piece of tin and nailed to the wall. It’s there to-day:
“‘The Rule Governing This Factory: Therefore, whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so unto them.’
“In 1895, at Christmas time, we made a little cash dividend, accompanying it with such a letter as we believed would be helpful. In 1896, we repeated the dividend and the letter. In 1897 and 1898 we did the same.”