Bolt from the Sun

Oil men last week were treated to one of those dramatic surprises that their industry so often produces, so dearly loves. Gasoline prices had dropped about 3-c- along the Atlantic seaboard. No profit remained in refining. It looked as if crude prices were bound to fall (TIME, Oct. 3). Then the Texas Railroad Commission ordered a 13% reduction in the State's output. It seemed that a price cut could be averted for a while.

Suddenly, without warning, old Sun Oil Co. announced it would pay from 10-c- to 12-c- a bbl. more for Texas crude. Oilmen watched tensely, recalling that last April Continental Oil made a similar upping of 15-c- when conditions did not seem to warrant it and that every other major company followed. Soon after Sun's announcement a number of independents upped prices. They included Barnsdall,

Pure Oil. Shell, Consolidated, Texas and Gulf. White Eagle and Magnolia, subsidiaries of Socony-Vacuum, fell in line. The directors of the American Petroleum Institute, meeting in Excelsior Springs, Mo., expressed their approval. But the industry's spirit was dampened when Standard of New Jersey remained ominously silent and Standard of Indiana came out with the flat announcement : ''Conditions do not warrant even the present prices. . . . The Indiana company is sincerely desirous of seeing producers receive a satisfactory price for crude. But it is convinced that an advance in the face of present conditions would simply provide leeway for further abuses and delay progress toward permanent recovery" When oil was booming, when wildcat wells were going down by the thousand, when the first great pipelines were still pencil marks on engineers' maps, when promoters were swearing that they would checkerboard the States of Texas and Oklahoma with their leases, when low-laden tankers from Trinidad, Tampico and Maracaibo could not bring the crude in fast enough, you never heard much about Sun Oil Co. If it was mentioned at the Tulsa Club, where engineers in khaki pants and tall boots fingered field maps with bankers in tailor-made clothes, people were inclined to smile. The Sun was a fine old company. But it just did not fit into oil's new tempo.

Some people thought the trouble was with the Sun's management. They were Philadelphians. They went to the opera and concerts, belonged to the oldest clubs. They were solidly and securely wealthy. They had a fortune that was built upon natural gas in the dark ages of oil, the dark ages of the Titusville period, ante Rockefeller and ante Standard. It was difficult to picture these Philadelphians in the new order of things. The gods of the new independents were the Phillips Brothers, dashing Harry Ford Sinclair and his quieter brother Earle, Pennsylvania-born William Grove Skelly, cocky Wirt Franklin, lavish Ernest Whitworth Marland. Joshua S. Cosden who would bet on anything.

The Philadelphians who run and control Sun Oil are the Pews (not to be confused with Philadelphia's Pughs). Joseph Newton Pew founded the business in 1886, 27 years after the famed Titusville gusher came in, by buying natural gas properties. In 1894 the company purchased a refinery at Toledo. In the late 1890's when the Spindle Top field of South Texas was brought in. Sun acquired large leaseholds.

Sun's chief Pew now is the founder's son, John Howard Pew, 50, who serves as president. His brother, Joseph Newton Pew Jr., is a vice president as is his nephew Arthur Edmund Pew and his first cousin James Edgar Pew. Together they dominate the six-man board of directors. They all live in smart Ardmore. President Pew's chief outside interest is Grove City College (Presbyterian) which his father founded and over whose trustees he presides.

Under the present Pews the Sun has been managed carefully. Lack of publicity more than anything else has kept it to the background in the industry's news. When new fields have been opened, Sun has gone quietly about acquiring leases. Its holdings in Venezuela come to hundreds of thousands of acres. In the East Texas field it owns about 7% of the total acreage. Eight tank steamers and seven motorships transport its oil from Texas to Marcus Hook, about 17 mi. southwest of Philadelphia. There Sun owns 525 acres upon which stands a large refinery (40,000 bbl. a day), a plant that makes barrels and kegs for Sun and the trade. Shipbuilding yards and big dry-docks are at Chester. Pa.

Most of the industry's big new tankers are Sun-built and the Sun yards turned out the new Seatrains (TIME, Oct. 17) which carry a mile of loaded freight cars. In 1930 the company began operating a gasoline pipe-line from Marcus Hook to Cleveland, running through Pittsburgh and Youngstown and branching north to Syracuse. The company claims to be the first to develop a high grade antiknock gasoline solely through improvement in cracking processes, as contrasted to the addition of chemicals. Sure of the merits of their Sun Oils and Sunoco gasolines, the Pews have never put out "fighting brands" to meet cheap competition. The company owns or controls 500 filling stations and supplies 11,000 others. Maintaining 1929's payrolls despite low prices has far from wiped out Sun's earning power. Last year's net income was $3,107,000 against an average for the past five years of $5,375,000.

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