Oil and Ideology: The Cultural Creation of the American Petroleum Industry (review)

Oil and Ideology: The Cultural Creation of the American Petroleum Industry. By Roger M. Olien and Diana Davids Olien. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000. Pp. xv+305. $49.95/$18.95.

In Oil and Ideology Roger M. Olien and Diana Davids Olien seek to explore the ways in which images of a business are defined and perpetuated. In so doing, they address what they call "channels of discourse," each of which "has specific contextual information and characteristic perspectives along with broader elements of ideology" (p. xiii). The channels of discourse they emphasize here include operational, technological, economic, political, and moral, or normative. Because the petroleum industry had internal channels that excluded the public, the public created its own channels and defined an image of the industry as exploitative and greedy.

Beginning with the early history of the industry in Pennsylvania, the Oliens provide an excellent account of the struggle of small companies to fend off larger pools, and show that John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil was only one of many attempts to reign in and profit from the exploitation of petroleum. Through the work of Henry Demarest Lloyd and Ida Tarbell, however, the image of Standard's trust became predominant. Newspaper accounts and nonfiction treatises such as Lloyd's 1894 Wealth Against Commonwealth are effectively used in the section of the book that most resembles cultural history (and without which the reader might feel deceived by the title's reference to the "cultural creation" of petroleum).

Oil and Ideology depicts the systematic contest over the image of the petroleum industry, but it is not cultural history. The authors are not looking for broader patterns in American culture with which to link patterns within the industry, nor do they utilize sources that express popular sentiment. Instead, they explore efforts within the industry to contend with or manage public perception. When reformers began throwing antitrust jabs, management defined a new level of discourse as it sought to combat such ideology with a different vision. Oil and Ideology is a fine addition to the literature of petroleum history, even though Daniel Yergin's The Prize (1993) remains the most conclusive work on general patterns of petroleum development in the twentieth century.

To readers with an interest in the history of technology, Oil and Ideology offers an insightful reading of developments from 1880 to 1945. Instead of an analysis of material artifacts, the Oliens offer a systems analysis of the business of oil. Following Alfred Chandler, they demonstrate that management was neither invisible nor entirely visible; instead, the business was structured through a dynamic and shifting discourse within the industry and among policymakers and the public. By emphasizing discursive shifts, Oil and Ideology offers a unique case study in the relationship between commerce and the consumer.

After the antitrust battles of the 1910s, efforts at conservation (managing the level of production) became the main battlefield. Producers, of course, wished to keep control for themselves while not appearing greedy. But a literature commencing with John Ise's United States Oil Policy (1926) depicts the history of the petroleum industry as "one long moral disaster for America." This literature describes how the reckless and wanton waste inherent in the industry grew more disgraceful as American dependence on petroleum became greater with each passing year. New Deal efforts led by Harold Ickes formalized government controls over production, particularly that coming out of East Texas. In their descriptions of these episodes the Oliens clearly demonstrate the larger dynamics at work in American petroleum, which distinguish this commodity from any other.

Oil and Ideology is an excellent source for business historians. Often, though, its intensely limited scope leaves the reader with unanswered questions, and it would be well to consider this book in conjunction with others such as Yergin's. The history of the petroleum industry is undergoing a vibrant scholarly reinvestigation, which one hopes will be useful...