Three Short Standard Oil Stories From 1924

The Good, the Bad and the Oily

Jerry Banik, August 2024

The Good

“Reuse, reduce, recycle” is a philosophy that’s been around longer than any of us have been.  The Stanolind Record, Standard Oil of Indiana’s monthly magazine for its employees, showed us how Whiting Refinery workers put that doctrine to work 100 years ago.

LUMBER SAVED IS MONEY EARNED AT WHITING

Refinery Salvage Lumber Yard Saves Thousands Of Dollars’ Worth Of Lumber Each Year From Odds And Ends That Would Have Been Thrown Away

The article tells us how, for years, oil soaked and other damaged lumber was strewn around tanks, fields, roads and at the ends of the still batteries at Standard’s Whiting Refinery.  Prior to their Safety department creating a Lumber Salvage Department in 1921, most of this material was being burned up, while some was sold as scrap wood.  After purchasing a power saw that could rip and crosscut, the Salvage Department cooperated with the plant’s Cleanup Department, whose gangs picked up all the scattered wood around the plant and piled it along the roads.  They reported the piles’ locations to a foreman who had a pickup team haul the wood to the Salvage Lumber Yard.  There workers cleaned it, pulled nails, and did anything else necessary for the saw to receive it.

Hardwood planks were sawn or ripped into 2X4, 2X6 and 2X12-inch pieces of up to 12 feet in length.  Lumber that was partly oil soaked or burnt was cut to save whatever part was not damaged.  Even the sawdust was saved and used for cleaning out tanks and cleaning up oil on iron walks. What was left was sold as scrap.

At the time that the story in the Stanolind Record ran in March of 1924, they had on hand more than 126,000 feet of reclaimed lumber ready for use, including “6,000 feet of hardwood blocking, 70,000 feet of blocking for storage, 35 various ladders, boilermaker and bricklayer horses, doors, pump bases and skids, gin poles and concrete chutes.”

The total cost of reclaiming this material was estimated at $10 per thousand, and it replaced new lumber which cost $50 or more per thousand.  If new lumber had been supplied where all of the salvaged lumber was used in the prior year, it would have cost the company more than $19,000.  The entire cost of the salvaging operation, however, was just $3,815.

Over the years, Standard Oil workers purchased tens of thousands of pieces of salvaged lumber and put them to good use in projects around their homes. If you’re a local resident there’s a good chance you seen many of them, and not realized it.

A penny saved is a penny earned, and it works for thrifty families and giant corporations alike.

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The Bad

A massive fire destroyed much of Standard Oil’s mechanical shop building and equipment on New Year’s Day, 1924.

Built less than four years earlier, the shop building was a plant within the plant, housing boiler, machine and blacksmith shops.  448 feet long and 206 feet wide, steel framed and glass sided, it was pronounced the last word in modern shop construction and equipment by visitors from all parts of the United States.  While it played no direct part in the production of refined oil and its many by-products, it was just as essential to their production as all of the refinery’s other operations.

The refinery had been essentially shut down for the New Year’s holiday, and the fire of unknown origin was discovered by a watchman at about 1:45 in the afternoon.  Standard employees from all around town rushed in to fight the fire, but because of the delay in rounding them up, the blaze gained a great deal of headway.  A call for help went out to the city’s fire department, and the men fought intense cold and exposure during the blaze, which lasted into the evening before it could finally be brought completely under control.

The machine shop was practically destroyed, along with much of its equipment.  The flames also burned their way into much of the boiler shop.  Even though the company’s huge oil tanks were located some distance away, strong winds carried flaming debris to some of them, but a force of firefighters stood guard at the tanks to extinguish every spark.

Hundreds of men who worked in the shops were temporarily without jobs, but new machinery and materials were quickly ordered, and the shops were rebuilt.

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The Oily

The Whiting Community Center, the Rockefeller family’s gift to the city, was only one year old when, in December, 1924, Standard Oil held a three day, “artistic display of oil products” there. The exhibition was visited by thousands. It proudly displayed petroleum based products that the company created, the likes of which were “never before seen in the history of the petroleum industry,” and in addition it offered “entertainments and booster meetings.”

At the Polarine motor oil display, spectators saw an animated picture of Polarine oil flowing from a can, resulting in “much favorable comment.”  One side of this display had “a machine showing the actual work of Polarine Oils and Greases in moving machinery.”  On the other side, an apparatus “showed the different viscosity of oils by means of air bubbles which rose in speeds in direct ratio to the heaviness of the Polarine.”  In the center of this display were “artistically arranged Polarine cans, making one of the best exhibits of motor oils and greases ever seen.”

The Semdac exhibit (no, this writer had never heard of Semdac either) “gave a new insight into the being of the Standard Oil Company (Indiana).”  At the Semdac exhibit, two General Office girls showed housewives how to use this new petroleum based product, as they polished a mahogany table with it.  “The display was very beautifully done with color tones of Autumn.”

Next in line was the Parowax household wax exhibit, where a mason jar of peaches was sealed by means of Parowax, insuring air-tightness, demonstrating a direct contrast to the old method of twisting the top on tight and hoping that no air would enter.

Then came the Finol utility oil display, where cans and containers of “the oil of a thousand and one uses” were displayed.

The Stanolax display came after that.  Stanolax’s major use, as its name suggests, was to cure constipation.

Then came the farm products display, showing all the Standard Oil products with specialized farm use, like Mica (axle grease), Bovinal (fly spray for cattle), Polarine, thresher oil, harness oil and others.

After seeing all the displays, including Standard’s very popular Candle Shop display, where small Kalo Chrome candles were given away as souvenirs, visitors entered the auditorium.  There they could see a film, “The Story Of Gasoline,” or maybe a gymnastics demonstration, a ventriloquist sketch, community singing, performances by the Blue Moon Orchestra, and the Whiting Works orchestra, or booster talks.

Standard Oil reported that more than 15,000 people visited the exhibition, and of these, 9,920 attended the entertainments. 

It must have been quite a bash.