Enterprise in Oil: A History of Shell in the United States

New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1957. First? Edition. First? Printing. Hardcover. good. 25 cm, 815 pages, illus., boards somewhat worn and soiled, corners bumped, former owner's stamp in several places. The full story of the founding and growth of the Amerian Shell companies. The volume of Kendall Beaton on the Shell Oil Company and its predecessors is well written, carefully done, and full of information, The Shell operations in the United States have certain elements of interest different from those of the domestic companies. Not only is Shell Oil the only foreign oil company operating extensively in the United States, but doubtless it is the largest foreign industrial interest in this country. Always dominated by an unusually able group of Dutch-British financiers and oil men who headed the Royal Dutch Petroleum Company (Royal Dutch-Shell group companies), it nevertheless employed many American executives in its subsidiaries here, financed these companies in part with American money, and opened one-third of the stock of Shell Oil to purchase on the New York stock market. There the market had been dominated by Standard Oil, and to meet this competition these two companies and the Rothschilds combined in 1902. Shell Transport and Trading Company began to buy American oil in 1901 and in 1912 the Royal Dutch-Shell group entered California as a competitor to the local companies. Between 1912 and 1920 Shell moved from California into the Middle West and in the 1920's into the eastern seaboard. During the twenties expansion was rapid and by the end of the decade it operated in every state of the union. The period of the thirties was a different story; it was one of retreat, consolidation, and retirement from marketing in most of the area between the Mississippi and the Rockies. As a result of the war, business was good in the forties and Shell did notable work in its technical and scientific research. In the fifties Shell enjoyed a new era of expansion and prosperity.