The place of Josephus Daniels in recent American history has not been defined clearly. Doubt or controversy surrounds part of his career. Secretary of the Navy under Wilson, editor of the News and Observer (Raleigh, North Carolina), Ambassador to Mexico from 1933 to 1941, Democratic party leader, and author, Daniels was a man of real attainments and of charming personality. Some, however, have doubted his capacities and laughed at his small town ways and ideas. Daniels was a “dry,” a family man, a churchgoer, an affable gentleman of the Southern type, a fervent Democrat, and an anti-monopolist. One early estimate of his ability became famous, the more so because it was disproved. Walter Hines Page was asked in 1913 whether he thought Daniels was Cabinet timber. “Timber!” he exploded. “He isn’t a splinter!” But the Raleigh editor had solid virtues. Among them was a deep devotion to the public interest. In spite of Page’s contemptuous remark, Daniels became Secretary of the Navy in 1913 and made a good record—but also many enemies.
One phase of Daniels’ career which added to his stature related to the naval oil reserves. As Navy Secretary he helped to establish the reserves and to formulate a policy for them. He insisted that a reserve should be exactly what the word means; the Navy should have authority to preserve oil in its own lands for its modern, oil-burning vessels and thus be prepared for emergencies. By 1921, when Daniels left office, it appeared that his efforts had been successful, for laws of the United States as well as administrative precedent upheld the oil reserve policy.
But in the early ’twenties his handiwork seemed to fall to pieces. Secretary of the Interior A. B. Fall, under President Harding, leased the naval reserves to private interests. Directly and by implication Daniels’ policies were attacked. His reputation and the oil reserves were saved, however, by the great Teapot Dome scandal of 1924 when a Senate investigation showed that Fall’s leases were misguided and, in fact, sensationally corrupt. With his position vindicated, Daniels continued, in a private capacity, to prize and guard the reserves.
Only in a piecemeal and casual way has this story been told. It merits a careful telling. Daniels was an architect of the American conservation system. Though brief, this account incorporates a number of new sources* and traces Daniels and the reserves from 1913 to 1948.
The naval petroleum policy was originated , under William Howard Taft. He was the first President who acted to save United States petroleum lands from reckless exploitation, pending the evolution of a sound policy for their use. In September, 1909, Taft ordered that public lands within an area of about three million acres in California and Wyoming be withdrawn from private entry. This was a warning to oil prospectors to stay out. Next, in 1912, he designated two tracts in California within the reserved lands as naval oil reserves No. 1 and No. 2. They were to be held for the “exclusive use or benefit” of the Navy—subject, however, to valid existing rights. The policy was extended, upon Daniels’ recommendation, when President Wilson established another naval reserve in Wyoming, nicknamed “Teapot Dome” because of a rock formation in the area. In spite of its famous name, Teapot Dome was never as rich or significant as the California reserves.
Although it might seem simple for the government to retain these public lands, few actions have led to so many administrative nightmares. Reserve No. 2 was a “checkerboard,” containing both government land and patented land. Drilling in the private (patented) lands might drain oil from adjacent naval lands. The question constantly arose, how was the government’s oil to be protected? Or could it be? Another difficulty was that in parts of both No. 1 and No. 2 reserves the government’s title was in question. Private claimants by the hundreds asserted their rights to portions of the public oil lands, both outside and inside the naval oil reserves. Some were frauds while others had a legitimate claim. There were prospectors who in accordance with the law had drilled for oil and had struck it before the President’s withdrawal order; others had done some work but failed to strike oil before the order. Some claimants had gone upon the land illegally after it had been withdrawn but, even so, demanded favored treatment from the government. Many of these had prospected not only after the President’s withdrawal order but also after both the Congress and the Supreme Court had upheld his action; they too demanded favored treatment. Many of these oil men were small operators, but others represented powerful companies. They lobbied incessantly for “relief” legislation which would give them titles or leases to their claims. Some pleaded their cases before officials of the Interior Department, hoping in that way to obtain titles or leases.
Increasingly, however, the sentiment among claimants and among Western leaders was for leasing legislation. They recognized that conservation had come to stay. Since titles on public mineral land had become almost impossible to get, they reasoned that leases were better than nothing. Gradually more and more members of Congress accepted this leasing principle. But arguments over technicalities waxed furious, and conservationists saw the greedy conspiratorial hand of exploiters in the clamor for leasing.
Secretary of the Navy Daniels quickly took a stand on the subject of petroleum reserves and leasing legislation. In his first annual report (1913) he recognized that his powers over the reserves were slight. He recommended that Congress give to the Navy actual control of its own petroleum resources.
I desire to recommend to Congress the immediate consideration of providing fuel oil for the Navy at reasonable rates, and the passage of legislation that will enable the department to refine its own oil from its own oil wells and thus relieve itself of the necessity of purchasing what seems fair to become the principal fuel of the Navy in the future, at exorbitant and ever-increasing prices, from the private companies that now completely control the supply. . . . This proposed step is no new departure, for the Navy now builds some of its own ships, maintains large industrial navy yards, a gun and a clothing factory—all of which are indispensable to the supply of superior articles for the Navy and for the control of prices from commercial concerns furnishing similar articles.
This represented his maximum hope—never quite realized.
As for leasing legislation, Daniels took the position that it was all right—if it left the naval oil reserves intact. This meant in effect that he was hard on the claimants who sought “relief.” Many of them, he thought, had no rights and deserved nothing from the United States. Those claimants who actually had an equity on the reserves he hoped would sell out to the government.
In subsequent years Daniels tried to adhere to this position. He thus became one of the principals in a long squabble over petroleum lands. There was bickering among the oil men and among the public at large. There also was warfare within the administration. Daniels and Attorney General T. W. Gregory opposed Franklin K. Lane, Secretary of the Interior, who was sympathetic toward the oil claimants. Woodrow Wilson usually sided with Daniels and Gregory. Thus three Southern men lined up against Lane, the Californian. Repeatedly, however, the President used his influence in the hope of working out a compromise which would protect the public lands but deal justly with the oil claimants.
Daniels fought hard those claimants who by pleading before the Interior Department tried to perfect questionable titles to land within the naval reserves. A notable case was that of the Honolulu Consolidated Oil Company. This company laid claim to seventeen tracts inside reserve No. 2. A favorable ruling was obtained from Secretary Lane. But Daniels, Gregory, and even Wilson thought the claims were fraudulent. After extended controversy the Honolulu Company lost its case—temporarily—when the President sided with Daniels and Gregory, overruling Lane’s decision. Wilson explained his action in a letter to Lane of February 11, 1920: the matter was dangerous and might lead to “serious scandals” unless handled “with the utmost foresight.” Wilson’s alertness on this question, which later was to ruin others less alert, is noteworthy.
Daniels also took a spirited position on leasing legislation. Bills on this subject frequently gave concern to him and his Assistant Secretary, Franklin D. Roosevelt, both being alert to any legislation that menaced the reserves. In 1916, for example, Daniels opposed a general leasing bill which he felt would, if passed, “seriously jeopardize the future supply of fuel oil for the Navy” by making concessions to false claimants. He declared in a letter to Woodrow Wilson that by Presidential action, by endorsement of the Congress, and by confirmation of the Supreme Court, the Navy was entitled to its reserves. Moreover, legitimate claimants had obtained complete protection under the Pickett Act of 1910, when it gave Congressional sanction to withdrawal of public lands. He added: “It has been acknowledged by the oil men themselves before the Public Lands Committee of the House, that about 90% of the claimants have no valid claim whatever to the land.”
Daniels’ opinions were shared by some members of Congress like Senator Robert M. La Follette of Wisconsin and Representative James R. Mann of Illinois. On the other side was Secretary Lane with his Congressional friends such as James D. Phelan of California. After much disagreement in Congress the bill failed to pass, and a legislative stalemate ensued.
Animosities within the administration flared into the open. Newspaper stories circulated in 1916 that Secretary Lane was a friend of the big oil interests. Daniels and Gregory, it was charged, were instigators of these stories. When Senator Phelan pointed accusingly at the two, President Wilson anxiously requested them to explain. They did so. They denied responsibility for anything beyond a statement of the facts and declared that no reflection on Secretary Lane’s motives had emanated from their departments. The fact remained, however, that feeling was bitter; and those who followed the oil business knew it.
Those most indignant over this stalemate were the California oil men for whom Senator Phelan spoke. The name of their friend in the administration, Secretary Lane, was being belittled, and they had failed to get the bills they wanted. By constant agitation and pressure, however, they kept leasing bills before the Congress and on the verge of passage.
Secretary Daniels was not incapable of compromising on “relief” measures as part of a leasing bill. He reacted favorably to a compromise proposal advanced in 1917 by Claude A. Swanson, the chairman of the Senate Naval Affairs Committee. Swanson’s plan was more liberal and more specific than the earlier Pickett Act of 1910. The Pickett Act had recognized oil men’s claims as valid if they were diligently exploring for oil on or before September 27, 1909, and continued to do so after this date of withdrawal. The compromise in Senator Swanson’s plan was to extend rights to those oil men who began prospecting after September 27, 1909, but before July 3, 1910. Leases, moreover, were to be given all legitimate claimants who had pressed to a discovery.
In a letter to Attorney General Gregory, Daniels expressed his willingness to accept such a compromise although he reiterated his belief that “those who entered upon the public land after its withdrawal did so in violation of a valid order, on the chance that the order would be held invalid.” He realized, however, that some men because of legal advice or for some other reason had gone upon the lands in good faith and invested their money. Swanson’s plan, he believed, “would afford substantial relief to all such claimants” and yet “save a large part of the land for the Navy.” His main reason for yielding was that the Western states badly needed a leasing bill to open their resources to development. He would not stand in the way.
Secretary Lane refused to accept the compromise. It was liberal enough, so far as the naval reserves were concerned, he wrote to Gregory. But the terms for leasing oil lands outside the reserves should be more reasonable. These lands, unlike naval reserves, were supposed to be developed. Leases would be given to someone and might as well go to the claimants. According to his thinking, all claimants who had struck oil, irrespective of the time or validity of their discovery, should receive leases. He advocated giving them a lease of 160 acres where they had discovered oil and the right to drill as many additional wells in that area as they wished. Lane’s attitude was a death blow to the compromise effort. Neither Wilson, Gregory, or Daniels would give more to the claimants than suggested by Senator Swanson.
A few months later in 1917 the President appealed for another effort at compromise. He sent to each of the interested Cabinet members a telegram from Gavin McNab, influential lawyer and politician of California, who asserted that the Navy Department was intractable; and Wilson added his plea that an equitable settlement be worked out. In reply, Daniels denied McNab’s assertion. He reminded the President that a short time before he had been willing to accept the Swanson compromise.
As Californians continued to assail him, Daniels investigated their complaint that the state suffered from a shortage of oil. He found it false. Daniels and Gregory became convinced that certain oil men of California were waging a ruthless battle against public officials who dared remain loyal to the public interest.
For the next three years Congress passed no leasing legislation. At last, however, in February, 1920, the disputants came to terms. A minerals leasing bill received the approval of Congress. As Wilson considered whether to sign it, Cabinet members and others offered their advice. Daniels disliked parts of the bill but called it a constructive measure, the best that could be obtained after seven years work. He also emphasized that the staunch conservationist Gifford Pinchot favored its passage. Daniels’ old associate, Gregory, who had recently resigned, believed otherwise. He thought that under this measure the naval reserves would not be protected adequately. Nevertheless Wilson decided to sign, and the long fight was over. Secretary Lane at this time was preparing to resign. Though his feud with Daniels had ended in a compromise, Lane got the worst of it and his reputation was not enhanced when, directly after his resignation, he accepted a job with the Pan American Petroleum Company of California at a reputed salary of $50,000 a year.
The leasing law was regarded as a victory for the conservationists but represented, for Daniels, something of a retreat from his earlier position. The relief sections permitted claimants on oil lands outside of the naval reserves to obtain preferential leases to their entire tracts up to 3200 acres, whereas the Swanson plan of three years earlier would have limited them to producing wells only. On the other hand, these claimants were required to have occupied the land prior to July 3, 1910, and to have pressed to a discovery of oil; they were prohibited from leasing an entire geologic oil structure of 640 acres or more in a producing area; and as lessees they were to pay a minimum royalty in oil or gas of 12 ½per cent—to be divided about two-thirds to the federal government and one-third to the state.
In the provisions for leases within the naval oil reserves Daniels hardly retreated an inch. Only producing wells and the necessary land for their operation were to be leased to the claimants, unless under special conditions receiving Presidential approval.
Also the Navy Secretary anticipated the passage of another measure which gave him great authority over the reserves. For years he had mulled over a plan and now saw his chance to make it into law. Acting through the Naval Affairs Committees of Congress, he obtained the passage of a highly significant amendment to the naval appropriation bill. Under this act of June 4, 1920, the Secretary of the Navy was given possession of all properties within the naval oil reserves which were free from claims or applications for permits and leases. He could “conserve, develop, use, and operate the same in his discretion, directly or by contract, lease or otherwise, and . . . use, store, exchange, or sell the oil and gas products thereof, and those from all royalty oil from lands in the naval reserves, for the benefit of the United States.” The only limitation of importance was financial and even that was vague; $500,000 in royalties from oil was placed at the disposal of the Secretary with the implication that further funds from Congress later would be necessary.
The two acts of 1920 established a new policy for the United States, but they also exposed the naval oil reserves to great danger. Various claimants were disgruntled over their treatment and greedily eyed the reserves. They searched the statutes for loopholes, they devised stratagems, they pleaded with responsible officials, but for a time got nowhere. Josephus Daniels set his chin stubbornly against their pleas. One oil man argued, “You are a Democrat and we are Democrats; give us a break. If you don’t, just as surely as we stand here, before the snow flies in 1921 the Republicans will give us leases.” Daniels was inflexible, but the oil man was right. The next administration was to be more sympathetic toward oil claimants.
In March, 1921, the Wilson administration gave way to Warren G. Harding and his Cabinet. Josephus Daniels went back to Raleigh and his News and Observer while new Cabinet members began to determine the oil policy of the United States. Two men were most influential. One of them, Secretary of the Navy Edwin Denby, knew little and cared less about the naval oil reserves. The other, Secretary of the Interior Albert B. Fall, knew a great deal about them, had contempt for the conservationists, including Daniels, and prepared to destroy the Daniels policy. The first step was to transfer control of the reserves from the Navy Department back to the Interior Department. This was done with Denby’s consent by an executive order of the President. The next step was to lease, secretly, the entire area of Teapot Dome to Harry Sinclair and the entire area of Reserve No. 1 (Elk Hills) to a California oil man named E. L. Doheny. Lesser interests such as the Honolulu Oil Company received liberal treatment in the form of leases on reserve No. 2. Having accomplished his main objectives in office, Secretary Fall resigned early in 1923 and accepted employment with Harry Sinclair.
An extensive, relentless inquiry was necessary before these facts and other sordid details could break into the headlines as “the Teapot Dome scandal.” Many people had a part in the exposures. But Senators Robert M. La Follette, John B. Kendrick, and Thomas J. Walsh were the main leaders. The first two started a Senate probe and then turned it over to Walsh in 1923. This lawyer from Montana began to study documents; he sought the advice of naval personnel and oil men; in October he started to cross-examine hundreds of witnesses.
From Raleigh, Josephus Daniels followed the Senate’s investigation with mounting interest. The naval oil reserves were at stake, and possibly his reputation as well. Daniels’ cooperation was important to the Senate investigators. He received a letter of inquiry from La Follette early in 1922 and replied with a review of his policies on petroleum while Secretary of the Navy. He emphasized that he had battled the oil propagandists and exploiters and with the help of Attorney General Gregory and others had kept the Navy’s oil in the ground.
As Senator Walsh assumed command of the probe, Daniels gave important, though not decisive, aid. He did not seem to realize the immensity of the scandal which was brewing. When Walsh appealed to the former Secretary to come to Washington for extended conversations, his answer was no. Business commitments, said Daniels, would detain him at least three weeks. But, from Raleigh, Daniels supplied Walsh with the names of naval officers who could help. Admiral R. S. Griffin, Commander H. A. Stuart, and others contributed important technical advice as well as moral support in the gruelling inquiry. Daniels frequently added his information and enthusiastic support through the mails. The conclusive and almost incredible evidence, however, came from those who testified that A. B. Fall was a much richer man in 1923 than he had been in 1920.
In January, 1924, the criminals, the weak, and the blind of the Harding administration were exposed to public view. By this time Harding had died and Calvin Coolidge weathered the storm. Pressure from all sides compelled A. B. Fall to confess that he had, in effect, accepted bribes from E. L. Doheny and Harry Sinclair before granting them leases on, Elk Hills and Teapot Dome respectively. The policy which had supplanted Daniels’ was not only of questionable legality and of dubious wisdom, it was corrupt!
Within a short time the Coolidge administration recognized the scandal and responded to public pressure for action. Edwin Denby resigned as Navy Secretary. Harry Daugherty, the Attorney General, was compelled to resign. President Coolidge also announced the appointment of two special prosecutors who, on approval of the Senate, instituted action to recover the oil reserves and punish the criminals who had violated them.
The fight, however, was by no means concluded. For one thing, politics crept in, both parties trying to make political capital for the coming election. Republicans were in the most danger, since the scandals had occurred under them. One of their defenses was that, actually, the Democrats had given Secretary Fall a precedent by leasing oil lands and that Daniels’ management of the reserves had been foolish. They asserted that Daniels was negligent in letting oil drain from government land into near-by private wells. He should have drilled more “off-set” wells after obtaining the power to do so in 1920. He could have saved about two and a half million barrels of oil for the Navy.
Senator Walsh and Daniels were disturbed by these charges. Walsh decided, nevertheless, that they were specious and that Fall was so thoroughly discredited there was no need to worry. But the charges persisted. At last Walsh decided to dispose of them once and for all. He asked Commander H. A. Stuart, formerly an oil expert in the Bureau of Engineering, to describe for publication the attitude and policies of former Secretary Daniels. Commander Stuart assented. In a letter of April 9, 1924, he gave a defense of Daniels which was all the more convincing because he recognized that his former chief was not incapable of error. As to the matter of leases, Stuart showed that Daniels gave them only to claimants who had producing wells according to the leasing act of February, 1920; there were two exceptions which Stuart explained—both of a defensive nature, necessary to protect the reserves against drainage. On the subject of drainage generally, Stuart admitted that Daniels might have erred by not authorizing more defensive drilling. But he commented: “To any of us who tried to get Mr. Daniels to loosen his hold on the reserves in cases where we considered it very essential to do defensive drilling it is highly amusing to see the apparent attempt to make him out as an ‘exploiter’ of the reserves.” And Stuart concluded: “I feel that there is not a single naval officer who had anything to do with the naval petroleum reserves during Secretary Daniels’s tenure of office who would not testify most emphatically that his attitude at all times was to keep as much oil in the ground as possible.”
Another charge hurled at both Daniels and Senator Walsh was that they had fathered the laws under which Fall’s leases were made. Walsh, it was true, had worked for leasing legislation. Moreover, he had usually sided with Lane and Senator Phelan in the long contest that terminated in 1920 and therefore had been pitted against Daniels. On the other hand Daniels could be attacked on the ground that he fathered the special act of June, 1920, under which the Teapot Dome frauds were perpetrated.
But Walsh and Daniels could and did make a strong defense. They argued that no law is better than its administrators; these laws had been passed on the assumption that honest officials would carry them put. And Republicans, not Democrats, were responsible for A. B. Fall’s behavior. Walsh admitted that he had labored for the general leasing act, but denied any special concern for oil men’s “relief.” He insisted also that the special act of June, 1920, was really the one through which Fall was able to make his deals and give them a color of legality. It had conferred “a wide discretion” on the Secretary of the Navy and was loosely framed. Senator Walsh therefore contributed to the assault on Daniels in defending himself. He hastened to add, however, that Daniels’ intentions were the best—namely, to protect the reserves—and that his high purposes were so generally recognized that the act of June had been accepted without opposition.
Daniels himself lashed out at his critics and justified his part in securing the adoption of the act of June, 1920. “If the Republican [National] Committee has any information that I leased or recommended leasing a single foot of naval reserve oil land when the oil could be retained in the ground, that information is manufactured. . . . The legislation was asked exclusively to conserve oil in the ground.” He averred that the power of “exchange” given in the law applied merely to exchange of crude oil for types of oil needed by the Navy, and that the Secretary could use no more than $500,000 in receipts from oil sales “for any purpose.” But Fall’s and Denby’s “illegal lease” obligated the Navy to exchange over $100,000,000 in oil for construction of tanks in which to store Navy oil and for other work. This was flagrant abuse of the statute.
Daniels, Senator Walsh, and the conservation policy were completely vindicated by 1929. The government’s suits ended successfully. Elk Hills and Teapot Dome were restored to the care of the Navy. One ironic development, however, was that Teapot Dome turned out to be a “dry” reserve. The Navy Department, as soon as it regained control, placed it in “caretaker” status, with some of its wells shut down temporarily, others permanently. Though the criminal suits were less successful than the civil, A. B. Fall went to jail for one year and Harry Sinclair had to serve a short sentence. Large fines also were exacted from Fall and the lessees. An earlier observation of Daniels’ was applicable: “even at the expense of a national humiliation” Americans had been warned. The lesson was to prove a vivid and lasting one.
With the reserves safe again, Daniels retained only a casual interest in them through the late ’twenties and ’thirties. As the Democratic editor of the Raleigh News and Observer, deeply interested in politics, he of course occasionally mentioned the oil reserves and the Harding scandals. After becoming Ambassador to Mexico in 1933, he had an opportunity to observe the oil situation from a new vantage point and his distrust of American oil companies, some of which operated in Mexico, seems to have deepened. In 1941 Daniels’ wife became ill and he was forced to give up his ambassadorship. But he returned to another job he loved—the management of his newspaper.
Soon the Raleigh editor found cause to sound an alarm about the oil reserves. This time the threat came from the Standard Oil Company of California. Because of pressure after 1941 to increase production for the nation at war the naval petroleum reserves seemed to be endangered, much as they had been in the First World War. The danger was apparent to Daniels and others after the Navy Department in November, 1942, negotiated a contract with Standard Oil for the development of Elk Hills in California— still fabulously rich. A wave of protests arose in 1943 that this deal smacked of “Teapot Dome.” Assistant Attorney General Norman M. Littell led the attack, terming the lease as bad as that of 1922 under Harding. It was invalid and illegal, he declared, and his ruling stuck. But a working arrangement continued; early in 1944 a new contract was made. Daniels considered the new agreement almost as bad as the first one. For more than a year he kept writing to his old friend and his former assistant in the Navy Department—now President—Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Daniels tried almost every argument on President Roosevelt and did not hesitate to invoke the bond of personal friendship. He recalled how they had fought together against exploiters in the Wilson period. At that time also, he reminded Roosevelt, there had been propaganda about a shortage of oil in California—but actually the companies at the very time were exporting it at high prices. These “birds” of the Standard Oil Company could not be trusted. His experience in Mexico added to his conviction of the Wilson years that there should be “no truce with the bear.” The “oleaginous and autocratic oil companies” could “run rings around too many public officials.” And the Navy would be “swallowed.” He worried because Ralph R. Davies, acting Petroleum Administrator for War, had been an officer of the Standard Oil Company. He cited the arguments of Representatives Jerry Voorhis of California and Carl Vinson of Georgia, which were in accord with his own. He feared another “Teapot Dome”; even if honest, the agreement might be exploitative, as were Fall’s leases. The alternative to this contract with Standard, he insisted, should be the same as always: the way to conserve was to conserve; keep the oil in the ground. Daniels realized that his blunt advice could easily injure feelings. He took care to assure “Franklin” of his continuing faith and support. But he said that, knowing how busy the President was with his war problems, he felt he must do his part to save the reserves.
President Roosevelt did not succumb to Daniels’ pleas. In fact, he seems to have become irritated. At first he responded in a way indicatihg he did not know exactly what was going on. Daniels, he thought in July, 1943, was “absolutely right,” and the “whole thing” was stopped in Elk Hills. Soon, however, he justified the second contract with Standard and enclosed communications from Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox intended to do the same thing. The gist of their arguments was that the need for oil was great, total production from Elk Hills would be regulated carefully according to the current need, and the Navy would be in full control of the situation.
Daniels never gave up the fight. In June 1944, he abandoned direct assaults for the moment by writing to his “Dear Boss” that, if necessary, “everything must be sacrificed” to win the war. In September he expressed great pleasure at Attorney General Francis Biddle’s actions to destroy cartels and managed to drag in the Standard Oil Company: “After the last war we failed to destroy these cartels, and they were exercised through contracts with the Standard Oil and like monopolistic companies.” Several days later he wrote “bravo” to Roosevelt’s own declaration on the dangers of monopoly. And finally in a volume of his autobiography, written in 1946, Daniels noted how the oil interests had worked up a scare trying “to get the Navy oil.” Nevertheless, at the time of his writing, the second contract with Standard continued.
Daniels probably was unduly alarmed over the second contract; it seems to have been a satisfactory one against which there were few objections in years to come. It had been made, as Norman Littell remarked, under pitiless publicity—unlike the first contract; “sheer embarrassment made Standard reasonable in negotiations.” On the face of it, however, there was a real question as to whether the United States government should cooperate so closely with a giant oil company to the inevitable disadvantage of independent companies. Then too, the Standard Oil Company of California had a reputation as an exploitative and monopolistic, outfit. Daniels’ agitation is easy to understand. Along with others, he had performed a service by his warnings that led in 1944 to a second and better plan for Elk Hills.
In summary, the name of Josephus Daniels rightly belongs with those of Theodore. Roosevelt, Gifford Pinchot, Robert M. La Follette, and George Norris—fighters for wise use of the public lands. It may be said against Daniels that his enthusiasm for the Navy and for conservation sometimes carried him to extremes. But his basic premise was sound: that the Navy had to have oil and that the national supply might run low. He was honest, hard-working, idealistic, far-sighted, devoted to the public interest. He came to Washington in 1913 and quickly mastered the technicalities of the oil land question. For good reasons he suspected big oil companies of being monopolistic and even corrupt, unreliable for cheap supplies of oil. He formulated a constructive plan for Navy control and development of its own petroleum reserves. And yet Daniels was not uncompromising. His attitude on the Swanson plan in 1917 and the general leasing bill of 1920 shows that he sympathized with legitimate Western pleas for development of their resources. Daniels’ ideas have prevailed on the whole. Naval petroleum reserves still are in existence and still are rich in oil. History is likely to deal kindly with this phase of Josephus Daniels’ career.
*Three manuscript collections have been used extensively: Woodrow Wilson Papers, Thomas James Walsh Papers, and Josephus Daniels Papers. All are in the Manuscripts Division Library of Congress, Washington, D. C. The Calvin Coolidge Papers and Charles Evans Hughes Papers, in the same place, were examined. One typewritten source of value was compiled in 1937 by R. G. Trade, the Chief Petroleum Engineer of the Navy, and a copy is in the Daniels Papers, box 264. Considerable use was made of the author’s unpublished Ph.D. thesis, “Senator Walsh of Montana, 1918- 1924,” completed in 1952 for the University of North Carolina. Among the general works, the most valuable is John Ise, The United States Oil Policy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1928). A new volume is E. Louise Peffer, The Closing of the Public Domain, 1900- 50 (Stanford University Press: Stanford, California, 1951); this study is critical of Daniels and other conservationists in a way that does not comport with the findings in the present paper.