Cameron County press. [volume] (Emporium, Cameron County, Pa.) 1866-1922, 1910-03-10

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have been exceeding the speed limit
who knows!
A man in England once said to me-:
30, what pity that Rockefeller rob
bed and ruined the oil country the
| destitution must be terrihlep
The man had been reading Ida Tar
bell.
Then ! had to tell my friend that,
while l didn't know much about John
D. Rockefeller, l was familiar with the
oil country, and | knew that, since
The Standard Oil Company had got
a-going. there bad been a steady
growth of prosperity in the oil coun-
I try, where before there was the fear Of
uncertainty, and all the doubt that
disturhs, distresses and dissolVes /
told him that The Standard Oil Com
pany was not made ~ of gamblers
/ they were miners, producers, distribn-
/ tors and creators.
Titusville, OIL City, Cory, Franklin,
Olean are beautiful and growing cities
where peace aud plenty are the rule
cities Of homes, schools, churches,
stores, opera-hou5es, ibraries--where
good things We're 10 be found in an
abundance and to degree never
before known.
Also, told him that wherever the
Standard Oil went it carried system,
order, safety, prosperity; and that it
paid wage beyond. its competitors,
even beyond "Union Scale" and 40
sorbea the best and strongest into it's
ranks; that The Standard Oil Com
pany met It's obligations, never de-
faulted on its payroll, and supplied
the world high quality of goods at
prices which were regarded as reason
able and right
Its offense lay in the fact that it had
succeeded; and through the inappre-
citation and lack Of understanding as
10 what tremendously rich and boun-
tiful country this is in which we live.
WHAT IS HISTORY?
Ore Of the greatest books ever writ
ten by mortal man is Thomas Henry
| Buckles History of Civilization"
Buckle never got beyond the intro
| duction, which forms volume in it
self, and is immortal on account of its
wealth of logicand c!earness ofinsight.
The whole volume is a protest against
the way in which history has been
wrilten--a protest against the assump-
ton that military history, history of
marches and countermarches, of skir
mi5hes and fights, Of sieges and
slaughters, is history at all.
Certainly il is not the history of the
life and evolution of people. That
which makea or unmakes a nation is
the quiet, peaceful, productive life of
the people. Nations are great through
their architects engineers, artists,
teachers, business men and workers
and not through their lawyers, preach
ers and policemen.
It is production and dis
tribution-that has given America her
proud place among the nations, not
lawsuits. Our supremacy lies in the
one fact that Eve have produced the
goods" And yet in reading Ida Tar
bell you find thirty-six pages given to
an account Of lawsuit with an out
come comparatively trivial in any
event, and in which, as in most law
suits, all parties lost ont to the lawyers
Jaggers was the only man who won.
TO read TarbelI is to read history
militant, as if uothingreally happened
in America between the time Jackson
beat the British in Eighteen Hundred
Twelve mt New Orleans and the time
sumpter was fred upon in Eighteen
Hundred Sixty-one.
The Tarbell history is . history of
strife, chickering's, of misunderstand.
ings, of lawsuits--an infinite SEE he, sez
she, and sez /. 1t is over-the-back-
fence gossip, raised to fortissimo. For
instance, the gifted author cites Com
modore Vanderbilt as authority con-
cerning the genius Of John d. Rookie
feler and his partners. She should
first have read "Moore on Facts"
wherein the credibility of witnesses is
treated at great length. There she
whould have learned that, when she
quotes Commodore Vanderbilt, in JUS
tice to the jury she should have stated
that when Vanderbilt gave his testi-
mony he was eighty-three years old,
and moreover was talking of a man he
had never met, and of business con-
cerning which be knew nothing. She
should also have told that, even in his
best days, Vanderbilt was OF most vio-
lent and prejudiced nature.
Moore says that Pontius PLATE and
Caiaphas were both good men, but
unsafe, unreliable and incompetent as
Witnesses