ANNIVERSARY NUMBER 1919 



129 



Edward Chesley 



UNCROWNED KING OF THE INFANT OIL INDUSTRY 



IN these ripping democratic days when it 

 is customary for crowned heads to gather 

 up their doll rags and hide themselves to 

 some secluded spot far from the haunts of 

 man, Edward Chesley would not give any- 

 body his heartfelt thanks to call him the oil 

 king of the Philippines. 



It might be all right to call him a master 

 electrician or a successful inventor or even 

 an organizing genius, but if anybody should 

 offer Chesley a crown because of his success 

 in the cocoanut oil business during the past 

 two years they would have as poor luck as 

 Mark Anthony did that time he was trying 

 to induce Caesar to decorate himself with 

 a golden hat in the market place in Rome. 



"No king stuff for me," Chesley would 

 say with modesty and decision. "I merely 

 was lucky in knowing something about oil 

 machinery at the moment when oil machinery 

 was the most important thing in the world 

 outside of big caliber guns!" 



And so, for want of an appropriate honor- 

 ary title to bestow on the most prosperous 

 oil man in the Philippines, we will simply 

 relate some of the remarkable things this 

 clever man has accomplished since gushers 

 of vegetable oil were located in the Philippine 

 cocoanut groves and men were running hyster- 

 ically up and down the Escolta in their 

 efforts to devise a way to box it or bottle it 

 or put it up in parcels of any kind to get it 

 to the United States where they needed it. 



Six years ago Chesley was an electrician 

 in the navy located at Cavite and they say- 

 that anybody at all could have a chew from 

 his plug of tobacco, for the asking. Knocked 

 around the place in overalls with a pair of 

 pliers shoved into his hip pocket and pieces 

 of insulation sticking to his raiment here 

 and there; and he didn't have any more 

 money left than the next one when pay day 

 came. When it came to the settling of those 

 little fifteen cent affairs on pay-day he was 

 in the thick of it. He could always shake 

 a guy down for six bits or whatever it was 

 because he always paid it back strictly on 

 time, and there you have one of the secrets 

 of the success that attended all his efforts 

 when the oil business began to hum. 



With no intimation that any introspective 

 mind might have that this man was to some 

 day be in danger of coronation as an oil 

 magnate when he went over to the Philippine 

 Vegetable Oil Co., then the first plant of the 

 kind in Manila, to help install the machinery 

 he being at that time a mechanic and electri- 

 cian of no small note. 



He installed the machinery, and made such 

 a success of the thing that, when the Visayan 

 Refining Co. was organized a few months 

 later, he was selected as the assistant engineer 

 as a matter of course, and he went from that 

 to Manufacturing Superintendent, still with 

 that pair of pliers protruding from his hip 

 pockets and things sticking to his overalls 

 here and there. 



It was here that the ability of this common- 

 place individual to make a machine earn its 

 pay was manifested in the most striking 

 instances. The expellers which were then 

 in use were wont to do about as they pleased 

 and Chesley could see that production was 

 lagging because of technical deficiencies in 

 these machines. He worked on the blamed 

 things and fussed with them night and day, 

 fitting new parts^into them that he__made 



himself in the machine shops. He ate his 

 lunches beside an expeller and, figuratively, 

 he took an expeller to bed with him at night 

 until he knew all of its fault and where they 

 could be remedied. 



Every expeller in use in the Philippines at 

 the present time embraces his inventions and 

 improvements and production at the Visayan 

 was nearly doubled by means of a few little 

 simple ideas that Chesley had put into action. 



Then he came to Manila and established 

 a mill of his own. This was a new sort of 

 thing for him. He could sit down and reason 

 with a piece of machinery until it would do 

 what he wanted it to do, but the task of 

 making people with capital see his schemes 

 was another sort of game, and, to tell the 

 truth, it was here that he nearly gave in. Still 

 a man with half an eye could see the logic 

 of his plan fora mill that would give a maxi- 

 mum of production for a minimum of expense, 

 and there were two men in Manila who had 

 a half an eye and then some. 



The Chesley, Conde Co., in which Chesley 

 had one-third interest, was the result of 

 Chesley's maiden effort at financiering, and 

 within a year each of the partners to the con- 

 cern had cleared more than a million and 

 on the strength of this success they bit off 

 a little more and chewed it too. The Chesley, 

 Conde Co. increased its capitalization and 

 incorporated as the Cristobal Oil Co. with a 

 capital of four millions, with the unassuming 

 man in the greasy overalls at its head. 



No matter what the manners of the times 

 permit us to dub this man, he certainly, from 

 that time on, had a finger in all the oil affairs 



that were worth it. He dipped into the Phil- 

 ippine Archipelago Oil Co. and when it sold 

 for PI ,200,000 to Carl W. Hamilton it had 

 not so much as turned a wheel. This property 

 is now known as the Rizal Refining Co. and 

 the organization that Chesley put into it 

 to begin with is a large part of the success it 

 has attained. 



Hamilton at the same time bought the 

 Holland American Oil Co. now called the 

 Philippine Refining Co. and Chesley's fingers 

 were in both of the Hamilton enterprises to 

 the extent of one quarter stock. 



So this man who had once gone among 

 his friends in quest of "two bits till pay day" 

 at Cavite could watch his mechanical devices 

 and his dollars working for him to the tune of 

 hundreds of thousands per year. A dozen 

 men were waxing wealthy through methods 

 which had been perfected just at the right 

 moment by Edward Chesley and nobody 

 begrudged the returns he was receiving for 

 his own part in the great oil adventure. 



There are very few lists of donations for the 

 many causes that the war has brought for- 

 ward which do not display the name of the 

 former humble electrician up close to the top 

 with figures opposite that would scare a 

 person. He is sponsor for all sorts of charities 

 and government loans and his philanthropies 

 cover the city of Manila. 



As assistant to the president of the Rizal 

 and Philippine Refining Company he has his 

 hands full and he is constantly at work on 

 some technical mechanical point that will 

 contribute to the greatest boom industry 

 that the Philippines have ever witnessed. 



