Business & Finance: No Oil Compromise

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New Jersey's Teagle. Huge is the Standard of New Jersey organization, but not too huge for the personal domination of Walter Clark Teagle. Mr. Teagle is 6 feet, 2 inches tall and weighs 230 pounds. When he opens the door of the company's offices, his presence is instantly felt throughout the premises. He seldom leaves the office without a briefcase; usually works at home from dinner time to bed time; goes to sleep as soon as his head hits the pillow. His only outside interest is hunting and fishing. He is an active member of a Canadian fishing camp and a hunt club in Georgia. Of his champion setter, Mary Blue, he is particularly proud. Mr. Teagle is one of the few Standard Oil men of whom Sir Henri Deterding approves and the two have hunted together on Sir Henri's estate in Scotland.

Mr. Teagle's maternal grandfather, Morris Clark, was first partner of John Davison Rockefeller, in the days before Mr. Rockefeller began the formation of Standard Oil. His father, John Teagle, was an early oilman. It was to drive a tank car in his father's firm (Scofield, Schurmer & Teagle) that young Walter Teagle in 1900 refused an instructorship at Cornell University, from which he had just been graduated. Then the Republic Oil Company absorbed Scofield, Schurmer & Teagle and Walter Teagle, at 23, became Republic's vice president. In 1903 he went to Standard of New Jersey, as member of its export department, was an important factor in building up the company's tremendous export field. When Standard was dissolved in 1911, Mr. Teagle (a vice president and a director at 33) became president of Imperial Oil, Ltd., then and now Standard's Canadian subsidiary. With the outbreak of the War, the tremendously increased demand for petrol enabled Mr. Teagle to develop Imperial Oil from a small company to the second largest corporation in the Dominion. Then, in 1917, when the U. S. entered the War, Mr. Teagle was made president of Standard of New Jersey (A. C. Bedford was moved up to the board chairmanship) to repeat his successes in Wartime expansion. In 1927 he supervised the reorganization of Standard of New Jersey from an operating company to its present holding company status. He was one of the first oilmen to foresee the necessity of restricting the oil output and was a pioneer exponent of the present conservation program.