million such lamps were sold in China. Regarding how people from the heart of China, where the winter nights last an average of 16 hours, have learned to use kerosene, says one of the company's agents.
In hundreds of small villages in central China, a poster was put up with a picture of a company lamp and an explanatory text at the bottom, composed by one connoisseur of the soul of a Chinese commoner. Here is an approximate translation of this explanation:
“Happiness, longevity, consolation and peace!
If you want to have happiness, longevity, comfort, health, and peace, you must strive to be surrounded by light. In order to live among the light, you must light the Mei-Fu-Gong lamp, made on a scientific basis, where Mei-Fu oil burns. If you light this lamp and this oil, its light is as clear as day.
A lamp filled with this oil burns for 10 long hours; there is no oil that can compare with Mei-Fu oil.
This lamp can be placed on a table, hung on a wall or carried by hand. Anyone who buys it will be delighted with it. The Standard Oil Company made it on a scientific basis, with the help of skilled artists, designed a lamp in which the oil burns out to the last drop, without giving off a smell.
If this lamp is somewhat more expensive than those made by local locksmiths, which give little light, but at the same time an abyss of soot, then it will not be difficult for you to understand that whoever lights such a lamp in his house, whether he is a man or a woman, will be able to see clearly at night work without fatigue. Here is your first benefit. Then, your children can study at night, and the lamp will create comfort for them, and therefore they will be engaged in science with great pleasure.
Meanwhile, it is unlikely that any father will refuse to have his son become a scientist. So: this lamp will help in this direction slowly but surely! Do not think that these are empty words, although they may seem strange to you. They are literally true, believe it.
Some of you may say: "You buy this lamp, and the glass suddenly bursts or breaks, now the lamp is useless, because there is no other glass." So we inform you that the Standard Oil Company has a huge stock of glasses in every harbor, from which they can be shipped to any place. Is the same the company fixed on them fixed prices once and for all, at which merchants were obliged to sell these items: each lamp with glass and wick costs no more and no less than 17 Mexican cents. Who buys several at once, receives a discount.
Do you still think that this lamp is expensive? It doesn't cost, in fact it costs nothing at all, because in the end you get:
"Happiness, Welfare and Longevity."
This poster is, as we have already said, a masterpiece of advertising. As soon as it was pasted into places, crowds of curious people began to gather in front of them, literate people read them, and the matter went into motion.
Various were the difficulties encountered in the export of American kerosene to Europe, but there is nothing to bring them here. It will suffice to mention that the Standard Oil Company, or, more precisely, the companies that have arisen through it in Europe, have an average of more than seventy huge harbors and four thousand warehouses on land, which are associated with trading agencies, that sixteen factories have been founded, in the turnover of which there are four thousand tank cars. This number is joined by more than two thousand tank wagons traveling along the highway, about one hundred and fifty tugboats, steamers, coastal vessels and barges. The first tanker steamer, which ushered in the era of transporting kerosene to Europe, arrived there in 1885 and delivered about a million gallons of kerosene. Currently, kerosene is also delivered by tugboats. The Iroquois built two years ago and its barge can take at least one hundred and twenty thousand tons (7,200,000 pounds)! Between themselves, the ships are connected by wireless telegraph in order to avoid the destruction of barges during stormy weather.
How the Standard Oil Company counts, so to speak, every penny, can be seen, if only from the fact that even tank steamers take cargo with them on their way back; in quiet times it even happened that tankers from New York carried grain to Antwerp. Often the return cargo is: rice from Rangoon, sugar from Java, tea and dried fruits from China. Having unloaded its kerosene, in one of the Asian harbors, the tanker is thoroughly ventilated and washed with a disinfectant liquid, then a second floor and second walls are placed on each such steamer, and the former tank steamer becomes, in this way, an ordinary cargo ship. This type of transportation round-trip cargo brings the company a decent income.
The desire to avoid, where possible, any material damage and waste of labor, is one of the main principles of the company. But this ingenious system of economy does not in any way imply ordinary hoarding. On the contrary, in order to create favorable conditions for sale, the company is sometimes even wasteful, but if profit is achieved only by the most strict economy, it will bring the economy to the most extreme limits. So, for example, the company, of course, despite all the assurances of envious people, does not refuse its employees for wastefulness in relation to pens and pencils, but on the other hand, all the metal crumbs that fall to the ground during soldering are carefully collected and hidden. Manure is collected in the yards, carefully sorted and sorted, and even boxes are sold in which tin is delivered from England, or they are used for kindling. And the employees of the company are more proud of these small benefits than the fifty thousand dollar checks that often pass through their hands.
The Standard Oil Company, all its ingenious organization, the principles on which it operates and is governed, are all the work of Rockefeller. He is the only engineer who invented and launched this colossal undertaking, the only strategist, on whose instructions these trade campaigns are victoriously conducted.
Whoever is able to find faithful helpers, who is able to give each of them a suitable place in his work, he will be able to achieve a lot in our days. Rockefeller has always been especially distinguished by this skill, and in this skill lies the secret of his success and, at the same time, the success of the Standard Oil Company. The power of Rockefeller's influence on others is truly amazing. His memoirs contain some excellent anecdotes on this subject. And this strength is by no means a consequence of the charm of his personality, but much more - the result of the influence on people of his amazing intelligence.
Like soldiers in Napoleon's army, every employee of the Standard Oil Company carries a marshal's baton in his knapsack. Each of them, thanks to personal efficiency, can expect one day to take a place in the main board. All of them start from the lowest levels and develop their abilities along with independence along with the service. They don't have our dead discipline. Everyone is given a certain amount of independence and freedom of action, many bear high responsibility, many are equipped with exclusive powers, and, at the same time, which is so contrary to our fundamental European habits, in principle, the company's affairs are flourishing. Rockefeller is a Democrat in real life from head to toe.
Where can you see something similar to the breakfast of company employees? Director, manager and modest accountant, millionaire and servant - they all have breakfast at the same table! Here, perhaps, is the reason for the emergence of this spirit of the corporation, common to all participants in the company, from the director of the manager to the groom.
What fanatical attacks, what cruel insults, the creation of Rockefeller has not been subjected to from the first moment of its appearance! For example, his people (albeit only in the images) hung up, then bored through the tanks of firms belonging to the trust, and so on. What only insults were not subjected to the outstanding personality of Rockefeller! And this is what is especially remarkable: no matter how prejudiced an enemy he had to meet, no matter how viciously opposed to this wolf in sheep's clothing, this vicious enemy, thanks to his charming and open manner of address, became his friend and admirer. Recently there was a letter in the newspapers from a lady who, in the form of an introduction, spoke of her statement "that she would not take this vampire's money to save a child from starvation." Now she makes this kind of statement: “I watched Rockefeller day after day, with the intention of discovering, observing at least one word, one of his actions, giving reason to suspect a wolf in sheep's clothing. In vain! This old, amiable, sensitive man constantly turned to me his calm, thoughtful face, always kind, always ready to smile, illuminated by two sparkling blue eyes, with the utmost frankness he revealed his past, his path to what he had become, and willingly answered any questions.
Rockefeller's characterization cannot be clear to us in view of the ideological orientation of the moment, in view of the fact that he is still alive, but here, in this modest series of simple paintings, in these memoirs, devoid of any embellishments, only here we will get