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Up for sale a RARE "President of Standard Oil " Walter C. Teagle Clipped Signature.
ES-741A
Walter Clark Teagle (May 1,
1878 – January 9, 1962) was president of Standard Oil Company of New Jersey
from 1917 to 1937 and was chairman of the board from 1937 to 1942.[1][2] He was responsible for leading Standard Oil to the forefront of the oil
industry and significantly expanding the company's presence in the petrochemical
field. In 1923, Cornell University announced that Teagle was
their highest salaried alumnus. He served as vice president of the Cornell Club
of New York and on a variety of committees. He
was born in Cleveland, Ohio on May 1, 1878 into a wealthy
oil family. Teagle was the grandson of Maurice B.
Clark, one of John D. Rockefeller's former partners in Standard Oil.
Teagle's father, John Teagle, headed
Scofield, Shurmer and Teagle, Standard Oil's
competitor in Cleveland. Teagle entered Cornell University with the class of 1900, but
graduated early in 1899 with a B.S. in chemistry. As a student, Teagle was said
to have "managed everything," serving as manager for two
publications, the football team, class politics, and as chair of the committees
for class promenades and cotillions. He was a member of the Quill and
Dagger society and Alpha Delta
Phi. In 1901, Standard Oil bought out the Teagle family
refinery, and placed Teagle in charge. Two years later, he joined the export
committee of Standard Oil of New Jersey, traveling
around the world for the next seven and a half years. He became a director of Standard Oil
in 1910, and a vice president shortly thereafter. During this time, he acquired
operations in Venezuela and Iran. At the age of 39, Teagle became the youngest president
of Standard Oil
of New Jersey, then known as Esso, for Standard Oil of New Jersey, and since
1972, known as Exxon.
Under his leadership, Standard Oil became the world's largest oil producer,
increasing market share from 2% to 11.5%. He helped pioneer worker
representation on refinery councils and the eight-hour
workday. Teagle married twice, to Edith
Murray on October 3, 1903, and after her death, to Rowena Lee in 1910. Following
Standard Oil house counsel Virgil Kline, who had earlier won cases against
Standard for his father's firm, Teagle built a summer house in Blue Hill,
Maine. He served as a trustee for Cornell University from 1924 to 1954 and
donating funds for the Teagle Hall athletic building. Teagle has been accused
of contributing to Nazi Germany during World War II
through his involvement with German chemical company IG Farben.
As a director of IG Farben's American subsidiary, he allied Standard Oil with
the German company and conducted research jointly. Standard Oil supplied
information to IG Farben on how to manufacture tetraethyl
lead and synthetic rubber, both critical resources to
the war effort. In 1938, under Teagle's leadership, Standard Oil and its
British subsidiaries supplied five hundred tons of tetraethyl lead to Germany's
Luftwaffe. Germany had very few industrial resources of its own, and without
this octane booster for its aviation gas, the Luftwaffe would have been
practically grounded. At the time tetraethyl lead was a rare and highly
controlled commodity and it is unlikely Germany would have been able to find
another source for it. Had Teagle not arranged such a massive transfer of the
substance to the Luftwaffe, it is likely that the second World War would have
been postponed for several years. Standard Oil, under Teagle, also supplied
Japan with large quantities of this critical aviation gas component. When
America entered the war a few years later, it was desperately short of rubber
because Standard Oil, again under Teagle's leadership, refused to produce any
synthetic rubber for the American military, because Teagle had transferred the
patent rights for synthetic rubber to IG Farben, a German company. Because of
the patents it had sold to Germany, Standard Oil also interfered with America's
production of synthetic ammonia (for use in explosives), acetic acid (another
crucial war material), and methanol (another fuel additive). Standard and
Teagle, again protecting IG Farben's patents, had also worked to prevent the US
military from obtaining paraflow, a crucial high-altitude lubricant used in
fighters and bombers. Though Teagle himself had two sons in the Army Air Force,
Standard Oil, through its subsidiaries, continued to supply Germany with oil.
Faced with a United States Department of Justice
investigation, Teagle convinced President Franklin D. Roosevelt that a suit would
hurt the war effort, instead choosing to pay an out-of-court
fine. The result was a fall in public favor for Standard Oil and the
resignation of Teagle in 1942, one year short of the mandatory retirement age.
He was replaced by Ralph W. Gallagher. Despite the settlement, for the duration of
the Second World War, Standard Oil, under deals Teagle had overseen, continued
to supply Nazi Germany with oil. The shipments went through Spain, Vichy
France's colonies in the West Indies, and Switzerland. Standard's oil shipments
from the United States to Spain were briefly halted in January 1944 due to
American public pressure, then began again in May 1944. Spain, meanwhile, was
shipping 48,000 tons a month of American oil to Germany. In 1962, Teagle died
at the age of 83 in Byram, Connecticut after a long illness.