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Rockefeller DuBois |
Standard Oil fined $29 million
By Bernard Drew
Theodore Roosevelt was in the White House. The nation was in a monopoly-breaking mood. And federal officials in 1907 sought to subpoena the president of Standard Oil of New Jersey to testify in United States Circuit Court in Chicago. The conglomerate, with assets of $460 million, was accused of accepting rebates from the Chicago & Alton Railroad on oil shipments in Illinois as a means of controlling its monopoly. The trouble was, no one could find the company's president, John D. Rockefeller.
Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis presided over the Standard Oil trial in March and April. The jury reached a guilty verdict. Landis wanted to hear from Rockefeller (1839-1937) before pronouncing sentence. He subpoenaed the multi-millionaire to testify July 6. But Rockefeller wasn't at his Tarrytown, N.Y., home, nor was he at his summer place in Cleveland, Ohio. Rockefeller, in fact, was ensconced at Taconic Farm, a villa in West Pittsfield owned by his daughter and her husband, Mr. and Mrs. E. Parmalee Prentice.
Despite the best efforts of U.S. Marshals, it was a local furniture salesman and deputy, Charles L. Frink of North Adams, who located the oil baron. Frink (1850-1937) snuck onto the Onota Lake estate and found Rockefeller relaxing on the porch. "Is this Mr. Rockefeller?" the deputy asked. "The oil king looked at Frink, who towered above him - he stands 6 feet 8 inches - and with a smile that was plainly forced, said that he was the man. 'Pleaded guilty,' as the officer put it," The Pittsfield Journal reported. "'I have a paper for you, Sir,' said the officer, and handed the summons to Mr. Rockefeller. The latter took the papers with a careless look at them, and said to Mr. Frink: 'I was in hopes I could avoid a trip to Chicago at this time, but it looks as if I should have to go. I have avoided the Marshals, as I hoped that my attorneys would succeed in modifying the court's order for my appearance, but,' and here Mr. Rockefeller looked up at the tall officer with a smile, 'I see you are not a Marshal to be avoided.'" He invited Frink to sit down for a chat. "Mr. Rockefeller was a perfect gentleman," Frink said later. "He was exceedingly affable and courteous, and I have seldom if ever enjoyed a more pleasant half hour than I did with him Wednesday afternoon."
Rockefeller went to Chicago and appeared before Landis, who, unimpressed with answers to his questions, levied the maximum fine of $20,000 for each of the 1,462 counts charged. The astronomical total was $29,240,000. (Another judge later overturned the levy, but by May 1911, the Supreme Court forced Standard Oil to break apart its conglomerate.)
Disgusted with the whole episode, the Prentices abandoned Pittsfield and purchased Mount Hope Farm in Williamstown instead. Later owners of Taconic Farm overlooking Onota Lake built a new mansion, Tor Court. Hillcrest Hospital made its home there in 1949.
Unfair competition remains a corporate tool - for those who can get away with it. At century's end, a federal judge declared computer software giant Microsoft a monopoly, its marketing practices "stifles competition and harms consumers," The Eagle reported Nov. 6, 1999. (Microsoft's chairman Bill Gates, to our knowledge, did not hide out in Pittsfield from process servers.)
Intellectual leader of civil
rights movement
William E.B. DuBois addresses alumni
By Bernard Drew
There are many who have not forgiven William Edward Burghardt DuBois for
joining the Communist Party in 1961 at age 93. The American Legion in
national convention in 1969 condemned the use of public funds for a DuBois
memorial monument in Great Barrington, DuBois's home town, suggesting - no
doubt based on information fed it by J. Edgar Hoover's FBI - the civil
rights activist "was a secret member for many years."
DuBois (1868-1963) wrote in seeking party membership: "Capitalism
cannot reform itself; it is doomed to self-destruction. No universal
selfishness can bring social good to all." Those words ring of nine
decades of frustration. Men and women of African-American descent were not
and are not treated equally in the United States, and his application to
become a Communist was DuBois making a point one last time before he
uprooted and moved to Ghana to live out his last days.
Great Barrington thought highly of its native son in his early years. He
was raised by his mother on her father's farm west of town until he
reached school age; then they moved into the village where DuBois was
remembered as "a bright-faced, active, mischief-loving boy. It was
not until the delivery of his oration on Wendell Philips at the time of
his graduation as valedictorian from the high school in 1884, that people
began to regard him as one possessing marked abilities," The
Berkshire Courier said in July 1894. Mentored by the high school
principal, Frank Hosmer, and by the industrialist Church family, DuBois
applied to and attended Fisk University. He went on to study at the
University of Berlin and was the first black man to earn a doctorate from
Harvard in 1896. His dissertation was "The Suppression of the African
Slave Trade."
DuBois taught at Atlanta University until 1910. His book, "The Souls
of Black Folk," achieved considerable notice when it was published in
1903. In 1905-09 he was founder and general secretary of the Niagara
Movement, then for 24 years he was director of publicity and research and
a director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People. During that period he founded and edited the organization's
periodical, "The Crisis."
DuBois had fond recollections of growing up in Great Barrington and wrote
lovingly of his hometown in his autobiographies. He was among 188 Great
Barrington High School graduates who met for a reunion at the Red Lion Inn
in Stockbridge in July 1925. DuBois, described in The Courier as "one
of the most prominent men of his race in the United States," was
keynote speaker. He observed a trend, in cities such as Los Angeles and
Atlanta, toward bigness; but, he suggested, the small town was America's
salvation. "Men once prided themselves in coming from a small town
and this pride can well be renewed. We can make the small town the center
of civilization and avoid the reaction which is coming from the
overcrowding of the larger city today."
The 1969 dedication of the DuBois Memorial Park with Georgia legislator
Julian Bond as guest speaker went without a hitch, despite considerable
tension ahead of time. The site today is overgrown with bushes and largely
untended.