Working At Standard Oil’s Whiting Refinery 100 Years Ago

Jerry Banik
April 2020

From 1919 through 1947 the Stanolind Record was the official magazine published for and about the employees of Standard Oil of Indiana who worked at its four refineries (Whiting; Sugar Creek, MO; Wood River, IL; and Casper, WY), and those who worked for its sales force and general offices.  No small publication, it was issued every month and delivered to every employee.

In a recent post we got a glimpse through the Record of what the physical plant of Whiting’s Standard Oil refinery looked like one hundred years ago.  Now let’s look at some of the employees who made the plant hum back then.

And although he worked from Standard’s corporate office in Chicago, not in Whiting, we’ll start with Colonel Robert W. Stewart.

Colonel Stewart graced the cover of the inaugural issue of the Record in October of 1919.  A colorful man with an imposing presence, Stewart had ridden with Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders in the Spanish-American War and later became an attorney.  Standard Oil hired him in 1907, and he rose through the ranks to become Chairman of the Board of Directors of Standard Oil of Indiana in 1918.  Years later, after having been tarred by the infamous Teapot Dome scandal, he would be ousted from the company at a legendary Standard stockholders’ meeting held in the Whiting Community Center’s auditorium.  We’ll have to save a report on both the scandal and his ouster for another time.

In his first year as Chairman, on the opening pages of Vol. 1, Issue No. 1 of the Record, Stewart wrote at length about how difficult it had become at large corporations with thousands of workers for corporate executives and managers to maintain the close personal contact needed with those who worked for them.

Perhaps he was motivated by concern over labor unrest which had been growing out of Russia’s Bolshevik Revolution and had spread to other countries, or perhaps by altruism, but whatever his motives may have been he noted that, “It has been recognized by the more advanced thinkers...[that] the employee, the man who worked with his hands or his brain...had a vital interest in his job.”

 Accordingly he outlined the new Standard Oil Of Indiana Company Industrial Relations Plan that was put in place to guide the relationship between management and employees in order to benefit both.  That plan led to improvements in workers’ health and safety on and off the job, pensions, death benefits and other perquisites often not previously provided to workers in that era.  It created “Joint General Committees” to “...give the employee a direct voice in all matters pertaining to his employment, working and living conditions.”

In words and pictures, that first issue of the Record reported on the process and results of the first ever election of employee representatives for the workers in the Whiting refinery.

“Every employee entitled to vote is asked to take part in the voting in order that representatives be elected as the result of a full and free choice on the part of the employees.”

1919: The Whiting refinery’s first elected employees’ representatives:

When that first election was complete board chairman Stewart, along with the board’s president, vice president and numerous other top level executives, met and dined with the workers in the company’s lunch room at the Whiting refinery.  “All formality was dispensed with...The visiting executives were scattered about and had opportunity to rub elbows with those men at the plant who happened to sit next to them.”

Each month the Record touted opportunities raised and problems solved as a result of the cooperative efforts of Standard’s employees and managers under the new Industrial Relations Plan.

The company sponsored English and citizenship classes in conjunction with Whiting’s night school for both American and foreign born workers.  It also enrolled willing and able workers in manual training classes, including machining, bench work, mechanical drawing, blue print reading, and wood turning.

Having just emerged from World War I the company was understandingly proud of its distinguished service to the war effort. 

“Every city, town, village and hamlet sent its quota of men overseas.  From the Whiting works 463 men were called.  When these men called upon their immediate superiors and said, ‘I have been called,’ they were told to go, and when the big fight was over to come back, for their jobs always would be open, ready to receive them.”

The Record’s first edition also included a WWI “In Memoriam” story honoring Whiting refinery men who had given their lives in service to their country:

 Joseph Heath, age 28, killed in action in France

Marcus Woodward, age 19, killed in action in Argonne Forest

Frank Girard, age 25, died at Le Mans, France

James Dillon, age 25, died in Marine Hospital, Chicago

Nick Steppich, age 28, died at Camp Taylor, Kentucky

Ted Schaeffer, age 20, died at Great Lakes Naval Training Station

In the earliest issues of the Record we get a look at some of the refinery workers. There were jehus (the plant’s teamsters and truck drivers), and there were barrel boys:

There were still cleaners; those seen below are from Standard’s Sugar Creek refinery, but we can presume Whiting’s were also hot, but happy and similar in appearance:

There were welders big and small and there were guards, “genial and efficient”:

There were cooks.  New workers temporarily housed in the Whiting refinery’s boarding house camp had to be fed, apparently so well that at least one resident was not in a hurry to leave:

And there was a sizable refinery police force:

Although fewer in number than the men, women also worked at the refinery:

In January, 1920 the Record reported that sick and death benefits were now being extended to female employees:

Among the women workers were “pretty, young candle makers:”

Beneath the photo of the candle makers the Record found it prudent to help them understand how they might want to dress and to advise them of what every mother should know about child development.  Such fashion and fathering advice attached to photos of male workers is harder to find in the Record.

Women also worked in the can house, grease works, white oils, and the yard office:

Not surprisingly Standard Oil men as far away as Kansas didn’t let the beauty of Whiting women escape them:

It is not certain whether each or any of the Kansans received the line or two they hoped for.

Though Standard was a company that a lot of people wanted to work for in 1920, animosity toward giant, powerful corporations, and especially toward the original Standard Oil Company, was still fresh in the minds of many.  Having been seen for years as a monstrous, evil monopoly, Standard had been broken up into thirty-four separate companies by federal government “trustbusters” only nine years earlier.

Perhaps for that reason in July 1920, management took advantage of a full page of the Record to remind its employees that “Contrary to popular opinion” the company was “not a close corporation, owned and controlled by one or two rich men.”  Rather, it was “a corporation owned by the people at large, doing for the people, to the best of its ability, a big job.”

So who owns the Standard Oil Company of Indiana?  Turns out lots of people in Whiting did, and still do today in the form of American depositary shares of British Petroleum, the company that acquired Amoco, which in the 1980s had become Standard Oil of Indiana’s official name.

 Coming soon:  How did Standard workers spend their time when they were off the clock?