Exhibition of models for a monument to the pioneer woman
(Statues Features Include: Mahonri Young, Jo Davidson, Bry...)
Statues Features Include: Mahonri Young, Jo Davidson, Bryant Baker, John Gregory, Wheeler Williams, Maurice Sterne, A. Stirling Calder, Mario Korbel, Arthur Lee, F. Lynn Jenkins, H.A. MacNeil, James E. Fraser
Ernest Whitworth Marland was an American lawyer, oil businessman and politican.
Background
Ernest Whitworth Marland was born on May 8, 1874 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He was the youngest of three children and only son of Alfred and Sarah (MacLeod) Marland. His mother, who also had five daughters by an earlier marriage, was a native of the Isle of Skye. His father, a grandson of Ernest Whitworth, a noted mathematician and head of Whitworth School for Boys in Manchester, was of English birth. Coming to the United States in 1862, Alfred Marland served briefly in the Confederate Army and then, after inventing an iron band for baling cotton, moved in 1864 to Pittsburgh, where he became a wealthy iron manufacturer. Known as an enlightened employer, he served in the state legislature and as a member of the Pittsburgh Select Council for twenty years. Ernest, an unathletic and pampered child, was groomed to be a "gentleman" and a future military leader or chief justice.
Education
Marland attended Thomas Hughes's Arnold School in Rugby, Tenn. , heralded as a bit of transplanted England, and Park Institute in Pittsburgh, graduating in 1891. After failing the physical examination for West Point, he entered law school at the University of Michigan. An indifferent student, known chiefly for his poker playing, he received the LL. B. degree in 1893.
Career
Upon his return home, finding that his father's business had failed in the depression, Marland worked in a law office, though he was still too young for admission to the bar. At twenty-one he opened his own firm and discovered the thrill and profit of land speculation as an appraiser of coal lands for the promoters James M. Guffey and John H. Galey. About 1900 he became general counsel for the Pittsburgh Securities and Guaranty Company, advancing to its presidency in 1903 and serving until its disintegration the following year. Concluding that there was coal in the panhandle of West Virginia, Marland organized, with himself as president, the Pittsburgh and West Virginia Coal Company. In 1906, while coring for coal, he struck oil, opening the Congo field. Additional wells of oil and gas quickly brought him a fortune estimated at $1, 000, 000, which he promptly lost in the panic of 1907. While living on borrowed money he dreamed of a new bonanza. Hearing about the new oil fields in Oklahoma, he set out in December 1908, armed with a letter of credit for a complete drilling outfit but with only enough cash for train fare and a month's board. Shortly afterward he and George L. Miller formed the 101 Ranch Oil Company to exploit a "perfect geological dome" Marland had discovered on Miller's property near Ponca City. The first well was dry; the next seven struck gas, for which there was little market. In 1910 Marland raised capital for another try from W. H. McFadden, a retired Carnegie Steel executive, and brought in a gusher in May 1911. The next year he opened the Blackwell field, and in subsequent years the Newkirk (1916), Petit (1919), and Burbank fields (1920); he was finally credited with the discovery of some eight fields in Oklahoma alone. By 1920 his interests extended to production in other states, and he had leases in Central America as well. He joined with Royal Dutch Shell in 1921 to create the highly successful Comar Oil Company to seek overseas production. In 1920 his various properties were combined and incorporated in Delaware as the Marland Oil Company, with headquarters in Ponca City, Okla.
At the height of its prosperity this was the largest independent oil company, controlling one-tenth of the world's supply and worth between eighty-five and one hundred million dollars. Marland made little distinction between private and corporate wealth, and his style of living attracted international attention. The expansion of his business, including a venture in manufacturing dirigibles, and his lavish mode of living strained his financial resources. In 1923 he gave stock to J. P. Morgan & Company of New York in return for a large loan. After placing Morgan men upon his board of directors, he agreed that management of the company would be vested in an executive committee, where the banking firm was also represented. This made possible continued growth, but at an unanticipated cost. As oil prices dropped in 1927 and 1928, Marland was unwilling to economize or retrench. The Morgans then took over operation of the company, making Marland virtually a pensioner as chairman of the board. He resigned in 1928, and Marland Oil, with retail sales outlets in every state and seventeen foreign countries in addition to its productive capacity, was merged with the Morgan-controlled Continental Oil Company. With the last of his fortune draining away, he attempted unsuccessfully in 1929 to organize another oil company. At the end of his term he announced for the governorship "because the financial and economic situation of my state is so grave and requires business leadership. " Marland promised if elected to bring the "New Deal" to Oklahoma, and using his pamphlet My Experience with the Money Trust as a campaign document, he won easily. Soon after his inaugural he proposed the formation of citizens' committees to study education, financial administration, public welfare, revenue and taxation, highways, natural resources, conservation, and law enforcement. He revealed that he had contracted with the Brookings Institution in Washington to furnish technical advice. He also proposed a sales tax to care for those dropped by federal relief agencies and a crude-oil tax to support a series of new boards for planning, flood control, housing, new industries, and highways. He promised to establish civil service, take the schools out of politics, give pensions to teachers, and retire the state debt. From the Oklahoma legislature Marland secured old-age pensions, exemption of homesteads from taxation, unemployment insurance, laws regulating industrial wages and hours, an increase in the gross production tax, a highway patrol, a state planning board, and state aid for weak schools, but not the governmental reorganization he desired. He launched the Grand River hydroelectric and flood control project, and was a prime mover in creation of the Interstate Oil Compact. Approved by six states and Congress in 1935, the Compact opened its headquarters in Oklahoma City with Marland as the first chairman. But his program made enemies. His legislature was called the "spending sixteenth, " and it was necessary to call out the state militia to enforce his decision to drill for oil on the capitol grounds. Despite increased taxation, the state debt mounted. By the end of his second year, eager to escape, Marland ran for the United States Senate, but he failed to get the anticipated support from Roosevelt and lost the runoff primary to Josh Lee. In 1938 he tried again, but this time the President stumped the state for Elmer Thomas. Marland left the governorship in January 1939 in dire personal straits. Once again he was unsuccessful in raising money for a new oil company. In 1940 he announced for Congress as a "constitutional Democrat, " but illness and financial pressure prevented his campaigning and he lost the nomination. Early in 1941 he was forced to sell his mansion and move to a small house on his former estate. He died of a heart ailment that fall at his home in Ponca City, Okla. , and was buried there in the Odd Fellows Cemetery.
Achievements
E. W. Marland was a pioneering oil man, starting the company that became Conoco, and Oklahoma's 10th governor. Marland lived a lavish lifestyle that made him well known as a social leader in Oklahoma. Marland showered Ponca City with gifts including a hospital, parks, and donations for civic improvements and to many charities. Perhaps the best known of those was the commissioning of the "Pioneer Woman Statue".
(Statues Features Include: Mahonri Young, Jo Davidson, Bry...)
Politics
As an admirer of Franklin D. Roosevelt, he then turned to politics. In 1932, running as a Democrat, he was elected Congressman from the normally Republican 8th Oklahoma District in a campaign in which he successfully identified his enemies, "the wolves of Wall Street, " with those of the people. In Washington he helped draft the stock exchange and securities law. In debates over the National Recovery Act he expressed his fear of corporate domination and sponsored bills to control the pipelines and "hot oil" and to assist the states in oil conservation programs.
Personality
Marland's interest in coal broadened to include oil after he heard of the spectacular strike at Spindletop, Texas, in 1901. He promptly began an intensive program of self-education in geology. He was later to attribute his success to the application of science and new technologies; a contemporary based it upon a "nose for oil and the luck of the devil. " Probably his greatest asset was complete self-assurance and a personality that inspired confidence. This short, plump, but handsome man "spent money like water. " For his town he endowed schools, hospitals, churches, and playgrounds, and he gave his employees excellent salaries, insurance policies, and stock bonuses. To the State of Oklahoma he gave Bryant Baker's famous statue "The Pioneer Woman. " For his family there was a sumptuously furnished mansion modeled after an English manor, a private railroad car, a luxurious yacht, a plantation in Mississippi, and two polo teams.
Quotes from others about the person
“The saga of the Marland family of Ponca City is perhaps the most intriguing story in the bold and exciting history of Oklahoma. ” - C. D. Northcutt
Connections
Marland married Mary Virginia Collins of Philadelphia on November 5, 1903. They had no children but later adopted his wife's niece and nephew, Lydie Miller Roberts and George Roberts. In 1926 she died. Early in 1928 he had the adoption of his daughter Lydie and on July 14 he married her.
Father:
Alfred Marland
Mother:
Sarah (MacLeod) Marland
adopted son:
George Roberts Marland
1897 - 1957
Wife:
Lydie Miller Roberts Marland
7 April 1900 - 5 July 1987
Was an American socialite.
