Business: The Humble Man

MONROE JACKSON RATHBONE

IN Houston this week the last steelwork was put in place for a 44-story skyscraper, the tallest building west of the Mississippi and the headquarters of a U.S. oil giant: Humble Oil & Refining Co. The giant is the creation of another giant, Standard Oil Co. (N.J.), the world’s largest oil company. Its building symbolizes the fulfillment of a longtime dream of Jersey Standard’s president and chief executive, Monroe Jackson Rathbone. Quietly and almost unnoticed, tall (6 ft. 3 in.), brainy Jack Rathbone, 60, has carried off one of the biggest corporate reorganizations in history. Into Humble, long the producing subsidiary of Jersey Standard, he has integrated five of Jersey’s U.S. regional subsidiaries (Carter, Oklahoma Oil, Pate, Esso Standard and Enjay) to form a single marketing and refining organization, the nation’s biggest energy producer.

Jersey Standard, a huge holding company, created a more powerful Humble (named after a town near the firm’s wells in Texas) in order to have a company that can sell its products on a nationwide basis. The 1911 antitrust decision that broke up Standard Oil forbids the five remaining regional companies to invade one another’s territories with brand names derived from the words Standard Oil. Thus Jersey Standard’s popular Esso brand gasoline (from Eastern states Standard), for example, was kept away from Sohio (Standard of Ohio) territory and Calso (California Standard). By breaking its shackles, Jersey Standard will be able to develop a single brand name to be pushed nationally. Already it is using Humble along with Esso and the names of the other five companies in ads. While plugging Humble, it is not sure whether this should be the nationwide name. Another possibility: Enco (for energy company), now being tested.

Standard’s Jack Rathbone is used to dealing on a big scale. From his corner office on the 29th floor of Manhatten tan’s RCA Building, he directs a worldwide organization consisting of 48 affiliates in 34 countries, 146,000 employees and 53 refineries on five continents— all of which provide 18% of the world’s total oil consumption. Despite a worldwide oil glut, Jersey Standard managed to raise its earnings 6½% to $2.62 a share in 1960’s first ten months.

Like all top oilmen, Rathbone must be a combination of secretary of state, technician, international socialite and world economist. He has to worry about everything from the dumping of cheap Russian oil on world markets (“aimed at creating dissension and undermining the economies of free nations”) to the lightning-quick onslaught of national revolutions (he got out of Iraq and Lebanon just before fighting broke out in each place). He must be ready to chat with the Duke of Edinburgh about how to bring up children, which he did recently at the dedication of a British plant, or sacrifice his digestion to insistent entertainers, as he did on a 50,000-mile, three-week trip to Africa that included no luncheons, dinners and cocktail parties. Rathbone has also elevated TV standards by having Standard sponsor the controversial Play of the Week last year and a current Shakespeare series called An Age of Kings, insisting on the view, radical to most corporations, that Standard leave complete control of the program to producers.

Rathbone got his interest in oil from his oilman father. Born in Parkersburg, W. Va., he served a short hitch in the Army before graduating from Lehigh University (’21), then went to work as an engineering draftsman in the Baton Rouge refinery of Standard Oil of Louisiana, a Jersey affiliate. He was made refinery manager when he was only 32, so impressed headquarters that four years later he was moved up to president of the affiliate.

ONE problem was the rabble-rousing Governor, Huey Long. To win votes, Huey taxed Standard so heavily that it shut down its Baton Rouge refinery. When 8,000 jobless workers assembled to march on the capital with pistols and hunting rifles, Long quickly suspended the tax. Later, Long suddenly boosted Standard’s taxes $20 million, summoned Rathbone. When Long, always trying to infiltrate Standard, asked for a job for a pal, Rathbone insisted that he would take him for a 30-day trial, keep him only if he worked out well. Long canceled the tax on the spot (his man was a success, is now a Standard manager).

Rathbone’s self-assured, calm efficiency and a record of building his subsidiary into a topnotch operating company won him the post of president of Esso Standard in 1944. He moved on to Jersey Standard’s board of directors in 1949, became president in 1954, and took over as chairman of the executive committee and chief executive in 1960 when Eugene Holman resigned. “Getting along is the key to success,” says Rathbone. “I’ve always been fortunate in being able to get people to work with me.”

A 9-to-5:30 man who finds plenty of time to read history and detective stories, Rathbone also likes to work at carpentry and stonemasonry. Besides his $234,587 annual salary, he owns 16,510 shares of Jersey Standard stock (current value: $699,611) and has options to buy 10,000 more. He and his wife live alone (his two children are married) in a ten-room Tudor-style house in Summit, N.J., and have a 30-acre farm 25 miles outside Baton Rouge. There he changes pace from his favorite sport, golf (in the 90s), gets in some duck shooting in the nearby marshes.

Despite the oil surplus, Rathbone’s Jersey Standard intends to spend about $900 million in 1961 on capital expenditures, biggest total in the last three years, and another $200 million to search for oil and gas. It is already spending 10% of its profits on research, and 25¢ of every research dollar on the promising field of petrochemicals. Out of this push in research and plant improvement, Jack Rathbone expects to come new economies and new products that will make Jersey Standard even better equipped to maintain its lead in the changing world of oil.