Black Gold and Roses
[Dobie was an American educator, critic, and editor who frequently wrote about Southwestern history and folklore. In the review below, he favorably assesses Life and Death of an Oilman.]
Of all the filibusters, developers, demagogues (for no statesman of high rank can be named) cowmen, oilmen and other lusty figures who have played their parts on the vast earthen stage of the Southwest during the last hundred and fifty years, hardly half a dozen have received treatment in biographies that can be called mature. Life and Death of an Oilman is one of the scant half dozen. It is mature both in style and wisdom, in perspective, compass and interpretative power.
The oilman was E. W. Marland (1874–1941). As an "independent operator," which means that he was in constant combative contradistinction to the Standard companies, he represented perhaps the most vivid class of men who have made economic history in America during the present century. He wildcatted first in the Alleghenies under the Rockefeller shadow, rose to power exploiting virgin oil fields in Oklahoma, extended his operations to Texas, Colorado, California, Mexico and elsewhere, and then through the House of Morgan of New York saw the Marland Oil Company with all its ramifications become a mere feeder to Standard and himself cast out, to take impotent refuge in politics.
He never saw himself clearly, however. A partisan biographer might well have used him to indict Standard Oil. John Joseph Mathews, partisan only to truth and art, sees the cause of Marland's failure as lying within himself and in the ending of the "Age of Freedom" rather than in his stars or the ruthlessness of powerful competitors.
He failed because of his vanity and a humanitarianism based upon the false premise that pleasure for others is an attainable goal…. He was the equal of any of the big boys (as he called them) in energy, in dreaming, in cleverness, and in acquisitive capacity, but his ruthlessness was vitiated by the fact that he had been born a gentleman. His father, moreover, had stimulated in him a feeling for the underprivileged, by any measure a weakness in those who create for themselves a single standard of money. He lacked the primitiveness of the others. Throughout his life he was too much burdened with artificiality. And if a single inclination could be said to have motivated him, it was hedonism.
He loved the clank-CLUNK of the well-drilling machine and the smell of crude oil was perfume in his nostrils, but he was a patrician. His mansion in Ponca City, which started out to be Pueblo-Spanish in style, had the repose of an English manor house. He planted miles of roses to lap it in soft Lydian airs. The hospital he built for the town had "the atmosphere of an eternal siesta." He gave stock to his lieutenants as prodigally as the miners of Nevada gave "feet" to Mark Twain.
He built houses for laborers who helped him get rich and made shares of company stock available to them on easy terms. He admitted the unwashed to his gardens and swimming pools, but for his sensitivities there were always too many of the common people in the same place at the same time. He advised associated to adorn their homes with oil paintings and Persian rugs. He was patron to Jo Davidson, the sculptor. He loved England and preferred dealing with the gentlemen governing the Hudson's Bay Company to the roughneck entrepreneurs of his own territory. Yet he was an intense patriot.
As Governor of Oklahoma—the final act in the drama of his life—he followed the humanitarianism of Roosevelt's New Deal and proposed many reforms, including separation of state schools from politics, but he had no patience for details and could not stomach officeseekers. The one thing he gave Oklahoma that will probably keep his name green is Bryant Baker's statue of the Pioneer Woman.
"It was the literary value of the man that struck one," Mathews says. The essentials of an oilman's financial and technical career are contained in this biography, but revelation of his character is what makes [Life and Death of an Oilman] compelling—gaudy achievement out of a complexity of desires, tastes, gestures, contradictions, energy, lightning perception, and then dénouement.
In three preceding books John Joseph Mathews has interpreted the land of the Southwest with a sensitiveness and understanding equaled only by Mary Austin. The peaks of his present drama of character rise out of that land as integrated background. Through the powers of thought, imagination and craftsmanship—powers always overlapping each other—he has fully realized the "literary value" of his subject.
Get Ahead with eNotes
Start your 48-hour free trial to access everything you need to rise to the top of the class. Enjoy expert answers and study guides ad-free and take your learning to the next level.
Already a member? Log in here.