The Lamp - ExxonMobil

2008 marks 90th year
for The Lamp publication
In 1918, the strains of growth
and rapid change were being
felt throughout Standard Oil
Company (New Jersey).
The company’s assets had
nearly doubled to $700 million
in six years, mainly due to an
increased focus on building its
oil-supply base in the United
States and overseas. With the
naming of Walter Teagle as president
in 1917, the company’s
expansion had accelerated.
Meanwhile, as the “war to
end all wars” raged on, Jersey
Standard continued to run its production,
refining and transportation
operations at full throttle. The
effort eventually would provide
one-fourth of the total petroleum
requirements of the United States
and its allies in World War I.
Despite the heightened activity,
Jersey Standard managed
to achieve dramatic change on
yet another front. The company
and refinery employees in early
1918 negotiated one of the
most progressive benefits/laborrelations
packages of that time.
It included proposals recommended
by industrial relations
pioneer Clarence Hicks, who
along with Teagle supported an
eight-hour workday.
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Story by Mike Long
Today, The Lamp has a readership
of more than 650,000 who look to
the magazine for information about
ExxonMobil and the energy industry.
Lighting The Lamp
With change “busting out all
over” at Jersey, the company
recognized it needed a formal
avenue for keeping employees
informed. While president of
Jersey’s Imperial Oil Limited
affiliate in Canada, Teagle had
launched the Imperial Oil Review
in 1915. He valued how the
magazine with its company news
and information had helped build
employee morale. After becoming
president of Jersey, Teagle
invited Imperial Oil Review Editor
Victor Ross, a former Toronto
Globe financial writer, to come
to the company’s 26 Broadway
headquarters in New York to
help him “light The Lamp.”
The editorship was soon
turned over to Northrop Clarey,
former financial editor of The New
York Times. However, Teagle
served as The Lamp’s ex officio
editor-in-chief, generating article
ideas, offering copy edits and dictating
editorial topics.
Volume 1, Number 1 of The
Lamp, published in May 1918,
outlined Teagle’s original objective
for the magazine, that it
cultivate “a spirit of fellowship
and cordial cooperation” among
employees. But he also envi-
Since its founding, more than 400 issues – and some
12,000 pages of articles – have been published.
sioned a much wider purpose,
that its “rays will reach everyone
interested directly or indirectly in
the fortunes of the company,”
allowing “no shadows of misconception
nor suspicion to endure,”
and that “it will prove to be a
lighthouse in the uncharted seas
of the future.”
The public takes notice
That wider purpose soon began
to bear fruit. Investors, shareholders,
government officials, teach-
ers, librarians, newspaper editors
and other nonemployees increasingly
looked to the magazine as
a reliable source of information
about the company and the international
petroleum industry.
While the magazine continued
to cover benefits issues and local
news of direct interest to employees,
stories titled “Why Gasoline
Now Costs More” and “Increasing
Crude Supply” (topics that lately
have recaptured the public’s
attention) had wide appeal, partic