After They Loaded Sixteen Tons
…All work and no play? Not these Whiting refinery workers.

Jerry Banik
June 2020

In two recent articles we looked at the physical plant of the Whiting refinery of a hundred years ago, and at the occupations of some of the men and women who worked there. 

When Standard’s Whiting workers of a century ago punched out and left the plant each day they may have been another day older but not likely deeper in debt.  For them, wages and benefits were good.  And they didn’t owe their souls to the company store.  Standard didn’t have one.   Management actually rejected the idea of creating a company store when it was requested by a group of employees. 

So what did those workers do when not on the clock?  Past issues of the company’s monthly magazine for its employees, the Stanolind Record, make it pretty clear they didn’t sit on the their front porches whittling when they got home.  Their pastimes, interests and passions, as reported on in each issue were many and diverse. 

From the Record in 1919:

Was the report of Mr. Groat’s dream of flying his own biplane serious or just tongue-in-cheek?  Either way the story was just one of many that the magazine’s gossip columns carried about life outside the plant.  And to give credit where it is due, the company put time, money, and effort into sponsoring leisure activities not only for its employees but their family members as well.  A few items about Whiting men:

One more ton, Charles, and you’d have kept pace with Tennessee Ernie Ford’s miners!

In November of 1919 the Record reported on a move underway to organize and seek company support for a concert band composed of refinery employees:

According to the Record, “In a period of five months Mr. Foy has been able to take a group of employees from the plant few of whom—though they possessed natural talent—had ever played this class of music and entertain his audience with a program of which any professional concert band might be proud.” 

Sadly less than a month after their public debut they were called on to play at the funeral of their new director, F.J. Lewis.

The band went on to play and entertain music lovers throughout the Calumet Region and beyond for many years.  They were highly acclaimed and reportedly never charged a ticket fee for listeners, except when playing to raise funds for non-profit organizations.

A nice day in July inspired these five Whiting refinery girls to go boating on Cedar Lake.

Some of the employees and their family members took advantage of night school classes made available through a joint effort of Standard Oil and Whiting High School.  Pictured below in 1919 were these “dainty lassies” in a cooking class, as well as a few household tips, a frequent feature in the Record.  Hopefully the condescending tone of the photo caption wasn’t interpreted as gravely a hundred years ago as it might be today. 

In the 1890s a group made up mostly of Standard Oil employees had organized The Whiting Owls Club, a men’s social and athletic organization that has been written about in detail on the Whiting/Robertsdale Historical Society web site in the past.  While not formally a Standard Oil organization,  the Owls athletic teams received support from the company.  Then in 1920 the Record’s  January issue announced Standard’s backing of a new athletic association.

A team of refinery workers kicked off the first bowling season under the auspices of the new association by knocking off a team from the Chicago office:

Women were already playing organized basketball and were slated to compete for the Director’s Cup in the new league the following year.

Baseball was America’s most popular sport when Standard’s athletic association formed, and soon it sponsored numerous teams, each bearing the name of a Standard oil product.  There was intense rivalry between the Polarines and the Perfections, and speculation about the amount of money being won and lost by the many fans who attended and wagered on their games.  The Record regularly reported on the baseball league in detail.  It once suggested that the league was losing too many baseballs because of the rate at which its sluggers were launching home runs from the Whiting Park diamond into Lake Michigan. One indication of how seriously the baseball league was taken was this:  “In order to pay the expense of getting men off to play the league games, the Athletic Association has adopted the expedient of selling tags at ten cents each, the proceeds to go to pay players for time lost at the refinery,” 

Some of the refinery’s finest who were featured in magazine articles included Eddie Pond, Gus Griesel, Paddy McShane, “Home Run” Wilson, Skinny Shanner and just plain Kaschak:

The league’s fans were not left out:

And if baseball was not your cup of tea,

maybe football was.

The association sponsored tennis:

And trapshooting at Whiting Park was also supported by the association:

On Labor Day weekend, 1920, Standard Oil put on quite a celebration for its workers, featuring employee boxing matches, wrestling matches, tug-of war competitions and a track and field meet with two hundred and twenty six entrants, including girls. The Record reported, “Several thousand people attended the Labor Day fete held at Whiting under the auspices of the Standard Oil Company Athletic Association of the Whiting refinery.  The track and field meet was won by the Polarine team, with the assistance of their girl athletes, while the Renowns copped second place, and the Perfections third.  The boxing bouts were featured by two knockouts, Ed Hanson, who came from Wood River in response to a challenge, sending Battling Billy Schultz to dreamland in the second round, and Delrocco knocking out Bernard Kelly in the same stanza.”

Click on images to enlarge:

Finally, one hundred years ago, in May of 1920, Standard announced plans to build the facility that would become the Whiting Community Center, for decades the city’s home for sporting events, concerts, parties, meetings and gatherings of every stripe.  The project was completed in 1923.

“The thousands of employees of the Standard Oil Company (Indiana), who, with their families make Whiting their home, will benefit by the erection of this Community House.  It is but another manifestation of the policy of the new management of the Standard Oil Company (Indiana) to do whatever is possible to make the communities in which they have refineries, better places to call home.  In announcing the gift [Chairman of the Board] Colonel Stewart made it clear...that the Company made its contribution as a citizen of Whiting, not as an employer.”