RARE \"President of Standard Oil \" Walter C. Teagle Clipped Signature For Sale

Up for sale a RARE "President of Standard Oil " Walter C. Teagle Clipped Signature.

ES-741A

Walter Clark Teagle (May 1,

1878 – January 9, 1962) was president of Standard Oil Company of New Jersey

from 1917 to 1937 and was chairman of the board from 1937 to 1942.[1][2] He was responsible for leading Standard Oil to the forefront of the oil

industry and significantly expanding the company's presence in the petrochemical

field. In 1923, Cornell University announced that Teagle was

their highest salaried alumnus. He served as vice president of the Cornell Club

of New York and on a variety of committees. He

was born in Cleveland, Ohio on May 1, 1878 into a wealthy

oil family. Teagle was the grandson of Maurice B.

Clark, one of John D. Rockefeller's former partners in Standard Oil.

Teagle's father, John Teagle, headed

Scofield, Shurmer and Teagle, Standard Oil's

competitor in Cleveland. Teagle entered Cornell University with the class of 1900, but

graduated early in 1899 with a B.S. in chemistry. As a student, Teagle was said

to have "managed everything," serving as manager for two

publications, the football team, class politics, and as chair of the committees

for class promenades and cotillions. He was a member of the Quill and

Dagger society and Alpha Delta

Phi. In 1901, Standard Oil bought out the Teagle family

refinery, and placed Teagle in charge. Two years later, he joined the export

committee of Standard Oil of New Jersey, traveling

around the world for the next seven and a half years. He became a director of Standard Oil

in 1910, and a vice president shortly thereafter. During this time, he acquired

operations in Venezuela and Iran. At the age of 39, Teagle became the youngest president

of Standard Oil

of New Jersey, then known as Esso, for Standard Oil of New Jersey, and since

1972, known as Exxon.

Under his leadership, Standard Oil became the world's largest oil producer,

increasing market share from 2% to 11.5%. He helped pioneer worker

representation on refinery councils and the eight-hour

workday. Teagle married twice, to Edith

Murray on October 3, 1903, and after her death, to Rowena Lee in 1910. Following

Standard Oil house counsel Virgil Kline, who had earlier won cases against

Standard for his father's firm, Teagle built a summer house in Blue Hill,

Maine. He served as a trustee for Cornell University from 1924 to 1954 and

donating funds for the Teagle Hall athletic building. Teagle has been accused

of contributing to Nazi Germany during World War II

through his involvement with German chemical company IG Farben.

As a director of IG Farben's American subsidiary, he allied Standard Oil with

the German company and conducted research jointly. Standard Oil supplied

information to IG Farben on how to manufacture tetraethyl

lead and synthetic rubber, both critical resources to

the war effort. In 1938, under Teagle's leadership, Standard Oil and its

British subsidiaries supplied five hundred tons of tetraethyl lead to Germany's

Luftwaffe. Germany had very few industrial resources of its own, and without

this octane booster for its aviation gas, the Luftwaffe would have been

practically grounded. At the time tetraethyl lead was a rare and highly

controlled commodity and it is unlikely Germany would have been able to find

another source for it. Had Teagle not arranged such a massive transfer of the

substance to the Luftwaffe, it is likely that the second World War would have

been postponed for several years. Standard Oil, under Teagle, also supplied

Japan with large quantities of this critical aviation gas component. When

America entered the war a few years later, it was desperately short of rubber

because Standard Oil, again under Teagle's leadership, refused to produce any

synthetic rubber for the American military, because Teagle had transferred the

patent rights for synthetic rubber to IG Farben, a German company. Because of

the patents it had sold to Germany, Standard Oil also interfered with America's

production of synthetic ammonia (for use in explosives), acetic acid (another

crucial war material), and methanol (another fuel additive). Standard and

Teagle, again protecting IG Farben's patents, had also worked to prevent the US

military from obtaining paraflow, a crucial high-altitude lubricant used in

fighters and bombers. Though Teagle himself had two sons in the Army Air Force,

Standard Oil, through its subsidiaries, continued to supply Germany with oil.

Faced with a United States Department of Justice

investigation, Teagle convinced President Franklin D. Roosevelt that a suit would

hurt the war effort, instead choosing to pay an out-of-court

fine. The result was a fall in public favor for Standard Oil and the

resignation of Teagle in 1942, one year short of the mandatory retirement age.

He was replaced by Ralph W. Gallagher.  Despite the settlement, for the duration of

the Second World War, Standard Oil, under deals Teagle had overseen, continued

to supply Nazi Germany with oil. The shipments went through Spain, Vichy

France's colonies in the West Indies, and Switzerland. Standard's oil shipments

from the United States to Spain were briefly halted in January 1944 due to

American public pressure, then began again in May 1944. Spain, meanwhile, was

shipping 48,000 tons a month of American oil to Germany. In 1962, Teagle died

at the age of 83 in Byram, Connecticut after a long illness.