Stolzer, Rob :: Mager, Gus

Gus Mager - Oily John the Detective - 1905 - John D. Rockefeller

Artist: Gus Mager (All)

1 Comment - 1,228 Views - 1 Like

Gus Mager - Oily John the Detective - 1905 - John D. Rockefeller Comic Art

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Additional Images:

Oily John the Detective - Printed Version

Oily John the Detective - Text Box

E.W. Kemble - Thomas Lawson

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Artwork Details

Title:	Gus Mager - Oily John the Detective - 1905 - John D. Rockefeller
Artist:	Gus Mager (All)
Media Type:	Pen and Ink
Art Type:	Comic Strip
For Sale Status:	NFS
Views:	1,228
Likes on CAF:	1 2
Comments:	1
Added to Site:	9/17/2018
Comic Art Archive:

Description

The intersection of comic art and history is one of the things that genuinely excites me about the hobby. Picking up this rare Gus Mager daily strip, Oily John the Detective, from October 2, 1905, is one of those weird little things that helps fuel my passion.

Oily John the Detective ran briefly, from September 20 to October 10, 1905. The strip was syndicated by William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal, and was a satire of John D. Rockefeller and Standard Oil. Hearst papers wrote of Rockefeller’s “hated corporation”, and the strips were no doubt an attempt to get under Rockefeller’s skin. This example features a few different characters: 1) The Small Dealer refers to those small oil and gas dealers who were subject to Standard Oil’s manipulation of the market, such as being able to drive down the cost of transporting oil and gas for themselves, below what others could pay without losing money. The Small Dealer in this image has a ball and chain of The System holding him prisoner; 2) The Oil Trust guard is pretty self-explanatory, maintaining control over his prisoner; 3) Thomas W. Lawson (more below) is seen presenting a copy of his “Frenzied Finance”, a muckraking classic, to be presented to the prisoner; 4) Ida Tarbell (more below), the noted investigative journalist whose expose helped lead to the break-up of Standard Oil; and 5) John D. Rockefeller himself, who keeps the Small Dealer trapped.

I believe that there were only 18 of these strips published, as the comic strip ran from Monday through Saturday. I know of only one other original from the series, from the day before this example, owned by a friend of mine. We now joke that we are like the Hunt brothers of the Oily John the Detective market.

Besides the original, I'm showing the printed version, as well as the text box that ran underneath the original, giving additional context to the strip.

The Cast of Characters:

John D. Rockefeller

Thomas W. Lawson (1857-1925) was a controversial Boston stock promoter and author. He is known for his attempts at stock reform, as well as amassing his wealth through dubious stock manipulations. “In 1904, Lawson's apparently copious ire was turned on Standard Oil founder John D. Rockefeller. Lawson had been a partner in a stock investment scheme that included a number of Standard Oil figures. The investment turned out to be a financially rewarding one, but similar to many stock-market plays of the time it involved several practices that were either illegal or unethical, if not both. Lawson wrote an insider's exposé in a series of magazine articles later collected under the title of Frenzied Finance that gained great notice, Lawson in the process effectively associating the various bad deeds with John D. Rockefeller.

As it turned out, Rockefeller himself never had any money in the partnership, nor any involvement at all. Lawson apparently knew this, at least at the time he wrote his "exposé," but that was not the message the public took away from his Frenzied Finance series. Muckraking anti-trust journalism was coming to a peak and Lawson's articles did Rockefeller no small amount of damage.” (http://www.cupinfo.com/en/photo-bmwoinny06.php)

Ida Tarbell (1857-1944) “Tarbell was, in effect, a young woman betrayed, not by a straying lover but by Standard Oil’s secret deals with the major railroads—a collusive scheme that allowed the company to crush not only her father’s business, but all of its competitors. Almost 30 years later, Tarbell would redefine investigative journalism with a 19-part series in McClure’s magazine, a masterpiece of journalism and an unrelenting indictment that brought down one of history’s greatest tycoons and effectively broke up Standard Oil’s monopoly. By dint of what she termed “steady, painstaking work,” Tarbell unearthed damaging internal documents, supported by interviews with employees, lawyers and—with the help of Mark Twain—candid conversations with Standard Oil’s most powerful senior executive at the time, Henry H. Rogers, which sealed the company’s fate.

She became one of the most influential muckrakers of the Gilded Age, helping to usher in that age of political, economic and industrial reform known as the Progressive Era. “They had never played fair,” Tarbell wrote of Standard Oil, “and that ruined their greatness for me.”

Tarbell is best known for her 1904 book, The History of the Standard Oil Company. The book was published as a series of articles in McClure's Magazine from 1902 to 1904. This one masterpiece of investigative journalism would bring about the dissolution of Standard Oil as a monopoly and lead to the Clayton Antitrust Act. Her book would also lead to the Hepburn Act in 1906 to oversee the railroads, the 1910 Mann-Elkins Act which gave the Interstate Commerce Commission power over oil rates, and the creation of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in 1914.

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About the Owner

	Rob Stolzer Premium Gallery Owner
Joined:	September 2004
Last Login:	September 2025
Ebay Id:	robart
Website:	https://freeassociationfunnies.com/
Country:	UNITED STATES
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Jeff Gorrell
Member Since 2017

1 - Posted on 9/17/2018

Wow! Rob, thank you for sharing the strip and the history behind it. It's a remarkable story and you tell it well. I always enjoy learning about illustration and comic strip art from you via your gallery.

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