Cameron County press. [volume] (Emporium, Cameron County, Pa.) 1866-1922, 1910-03-10
Standard Oil.
Continued from 1st page

aries. a 1eW We're organized Tor lne
purpose of selling out to the Standard.
This decentralization is one of the
chief reasons for the success of the
Standard. IL is on the order of the
modern departmeDt-store, which is
merely fifty, sixty or seventy stores in
one, each under a competent general
manager. Every department has it's
own complete system of bookkeeping,
and must make a profit, or show a
reason why.
In the old way of merchandising,
the life of a successful business was
twenty years, then it went broke.
There we're leaks that could not be To-
Gated, dead stock, dead wood, dead
men who thought that they were alive,
sGlesmen in a comotose state, extrava-
CANT buyers, and lime in the bones of
the boss. The law of diminishing re-
turns wrecks every big venture that is
not decentralized, that is, divided up
into water-tight compartments, so if
one springs leak all the damage that
is done is to food that particular de.
partment. The ship still floats.
The General Electric Company has
recently begun to decentralize, and so
have most of the other big corpora
tions. And all of these are simply fol-
lowing the lead of the Standard Oil
Company.
ITS MARVELLOUS ORGANIZATION:
AS an organization, Tie Standard
Oil Company is equaled by only one
other institution on Earth-and Tll
not tell you what that one is. IF you
do not know, the matter would not in
terest you, anyway.
The success of the Standard Oil
Company has turned on its selection
of men and its service to the public,
and not on its strength of capital. The
capital came as q result-it was an in
cident. The men who manage The
Standard Oil Company at one time
had no capital-they did, however,
have brains and energy. "All wealth
is a result of labor, applied to land"
says Adam Smith. Later he added
capital as a factor in the production of
wealth. Modern economists add a
fourth factor, and this is the most i'm
portant of all-it is Enterprise. The
French call it the service of the Entire
preneur.
Ida Tarbell surely tells one great
truth. 1t is this: Gwen the elevator
boys in the Standard Oil offices are
selected with an idea to their develop
ment.'
THE RESULT OF COMPETITION.
The position of the The Standard Oil
Company in the commercial world. is
the result of competition. 1t is the
natural result of a commercial struggle
for existence. It is the survival of the
fittest. People who hate monopoly
should reverence The Standard Oil
Company For the men who manage
The Standard Oil Company went into
a freefor-all field, and won their way
to fortune with exactly the same tools
and weapons that all their competitors
had Ia this fight for business there
was no favors asked nor given. And
the battle was fought according to the
established ru'es of the game.
They have done to their competitors
what their competitors were trying to
do to them. Often after the fight these
competitors found themselves with
money enough to live on in ease the
rest OF their days. Retired oil mer-
chants living in easy affluence in many
sections are thick as heas on a dog
one result of Standard Oil rapacity.
THE NEW BUSINESS ETHICS.
Practically, the world has been made
over within twenty years. time, and
we have now a new business ethic.
The error of some reformers is to try
a man, according to present-day stand
ars, for offences committed in Eight
cen Hundred Eighty-fve.
In that year / we'll recall how the
firm for which l worked had ship
ment of heavy chemicals arrive on the
docks in New York from Liverpool.
The goods had not been removed from
the lighters before we had bids from
three different railroads and two canal
lines to transport the shipments to
Buffalo. The reduced bids came in
the form of rebates for Carriage"
commissions" 'lighterage," or
"dockage" There was a strife for
traffic and the company that gave the
biggest rebate got the business.
We bought in the lowest market, and
sold in the highest The railroads
have but one thing to sell and that is
transportation. All railroads then
sold their transportation for as much as
they could, and took what they had to
Every body bought .scalpers' tickets,
except those who rode on passes, [