my way and dug in for a long, hard fight. Why? Well, I
suppose there were several reasons. First of all, I was an
outsider. I’d had little or no experience in the heady
atmosphere of board rooms.
“Paul Getty should stay where he belongs—on a drilling
rig” a Tide Water director supposedly snorted when told I
was buying the company’s stock right and left. I fear there
were others on the board even less kindly disposed toward
me and my ambitions.
I’d studied Tide Water’s or
ganization and operations
carefully and recommended that the company make certain
changes and practice certain economies. These
recommendations, apparently too radical to suit the
conservative directors, caused considerable resentment.
I’d also concluded that much of Tide Water’s refining
plant was obsolescent and would soon be obsolete. I
believed the company should make provisions for
modernization and replacement, but management was
reluctant to make capital expenditures during the business
slump. The directors called it
“necessary caution.” I viewed
it as short-sighted and dangerous penny-pinching.
By 1933, Getty interests owned nearly 260,000 Tide
Water shares—a block too large to be ignored. I was elected
to the company’s board, but it was a hollow victory. I was
only one among many, and the other directors were still
ranged solidly against me and my proposals. I continued to
buy Tide Water stock. Proxy fights, lawsuits and
countersuits ensued. Injunctions, restraining orders and
writs flew in blizzards.
By late 1937, Getty interests owned enough stock to
obtain a voice in management. Three years later, we held
1,734,577 shares—a shade over one fourth the voting stock,
and many changes I proposed were being implemented. By
1951, I held enough Tidewater stock to have numerical con-
trol. ( B y then, the “Associated” had been dropped from the
company name and “Tide Water” contracted into a single
word.) Two years later, with a
ll but one director elected by
Getty interests, the campaign was finally over. Today, Tide-
water’s assets exceed $800,000,000.
In 1938, I turned momentarily from the oil business and
bought the Hotel Pierre in New York City, purchasing it for
$2,350,000, less than one fourth its original (1929-1930)
cost. Later, I bought several hundred acres of land in
Acapulco, Mexico, where I eventually built the Pierre
Marques Hotel on Revolcadero Beach. These, contrary to
reports which have me owning a string of hotels, are the
only ones I own.
In 1937, as part of the Tide Water campaign, I obtained
control of a firm known as the Mission Corporation. Among
Mission’s holdings was a 57-percent interest in the Skelly
Oil Company, a major oil firm with headquarters in Tulsa,
Oklahoma. Thus, almost as a windfall, I acquired the
controlling interest in a comp
any with a 1937 net income of
$6,400,000— and which, today, has more than
$330,000,000 in assets.
But this is not the whole story. Among Skelly Oil’s sub-
sidiaries was the Spartan Aircraft Corporation, a Tulsa
concern engaged since 1928 in manufacturing aircraft and
training pilots and navigators. I paid my first visit to the
Spartan plant on December 7, 1939. Its aircraft-manufac-
turing operations were rather limited; there were only some
60 workers employed in the factory. The pilot training
school was much more active. It was, in fact, the largest
private flying school in the U.S.
I’d just returned from a trip to Europe, which was
already at war. I was convinced that the United States
would eventually have to throw its weight into the war
against the Axis. Consequently, I felt Spartan Aircraft
would have an increasingly important role in the nation’s
defense program—but I could not guess then how very
important it was destined to be.
Two years to the day after my first visit to Spartan, the
Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and the United States was
at war. It was in that same month that my beloved mother
died. It was a heavy blow. Although I was by then almost
50, I felt the loss as keenly as though I had still been a
youngster.
War news filled the newspapers. I had not been allowed
to serve in World War One, and I now hoped for the chance
to serve in the second world conflict. I had studied celestial
navigation and had owned—at various times in my life—
three yachts, the largest a 260-foot, 1500-tonner with a
crew of 45. On the basis of this, I volunteered for service in
the United States Navy. To my chagrin, I was politely but
firmly informed that the Navy
didn’t have much use for a
middle-aged businessman unless he was willing to take a
routine, shore-based administrative job. After exhausting
all other avenues, I obtained an interview with Navy
Secretary Frank Knox and pleaded my case. I told him I
wanted a Navy commission and sea duty.
“You qualify for a commission as an administrative or
supply officer,” Secretary Knox declared. “But sea duty is
out of the question.” He paused and studied me closely. “I
understand you hold a large interest in the Spartan
Aircraft Corporation,” he said after a moment. I agreed that
I did.
“The Armed Forces must have every aircraft factory in
large-scale production as soon as possible,” he told me. “The
most important service you can render the war effort is to
drop all your other business interests and take over direct
personal management of Spartan.”
I arrived in Tulsa as the working president of Spartan in
February 1942. There was a tremendous amount to be done
and very little time in which to do it. Manufacturing facili-
ties—including factory space—had to be expanded,
machinery and tools obtained
, engineers and technicians
recruited and workers hired and trained by the thousands.
Despite bottlenecks, shortages and setbacks, peak
production was attained in less than 18 months.
I remained in active and direct charge of Spartan’s
operations throughout the War. Before it ended, the
Spartan flying school was training as many as 1700
fledgling aviators at a time. By V-J Day, the Spartan
factory—employing more than 5500 workers at the peak—
had turned out a vast array of airplane parts and
components on subcontracts
from major aircraft firms.
Among these were: 5800 sets of elevators, ailerons and
rudders for B-24 bombers; 2500 engine-mount sets for P-47
fighters; Curtiss dive-bomber cowlings by the hundreds;
Douglas dive-bomber control surfaces by the thousands;
wings for Grumman Wildcat fighters; tail booms for
Lockheed P-38 pursuits. Spartan also produced N-l primary
trainers on prime contract.
Spartan’s production record brought high
commendations from the Armed Forces—tributes to the
efficiency and loyalty of the men and women who’d worked
for the firm and who did their part in helping to win the
War. I stayed on at Spartan until 1948 to nurse the firm
through the pangs of reconversion to peacetime production
of house trailers. Then once more I went back to my first
and greatest business love— oil.
My oil companies were prospering and were larger and
more active than ever before, but it was time for additional
expansion. Vast demands had been made on America’s oil
reserves by the War, and post-War petroleum consumption
was rising sharply throughout the world. Oil prospectors
were fanning out—to Canada, Central and South America,
Africa and the Middle East—searching for new oil sources.
Instinct, hunch, luck—call it what you will—told me the
Middle East was the most promising locale, the best bet, for
oil exploration. I had almost obtained an oil concession in
the Middle East in the 1930s,
but had allowed my chance to
go by. Now I decided to seek a concession to prospect and
drill there and make up for the opportunity I had lost. In
February 1949, Getty interests obtained a 60-year
concession on a half interest in the so-called Neutral Zone,
an arid, virtually uninhabited and barely explored desert
region lying between Saudi Arabia and Kuwait on the
Persian Gulf.
The concession was granted by His Majesty, Ibn Saud,
king of Saudi Arabia. In immediate consideration for the
right to explore and drill for oil in the Neutral Zone, the
Saudi Arabian Government received $12,500,000. It was a
gargantuan risk and many people in the petroleum
industry once again openly predicted I would bankrupt my
firms and myself.
Four years and $18,000,000 were needed before we
brought in our first producing well in the Neutral Zone.
But, by 1954, I could relax and enjoy a private last laugh at
the expense of those who had prophesied my ruin. The
Neutral Zone has proved to be one of the world’s most
valuable oil properties. Well after well has come in and
petroleum geologists conservatively estimate proven
reserves in place in the region covered by my concession to
exceed 13 billion barrels!
With this tremendous reserve and with producing wells
in the Middle East and elsewhere bringing up millions of
barrels of crude oil annually, it has been necessary to
expand even further in other directions. The companies
have had to build and buy additional refineries to handle
the enormous crude-oil production. Pipelines, storage
facilities, housing projects for workers and innumerable
other installations and facilities have been built or are
abuilding.
A $200,000,000 Tidewater Oil
Company refinery was
completed at Wilmington, Delaware, in 1957. Another
Tidewater refinery near San Francisco has been
modernized at a cost of $60,000,000. There is a new 40,000-
barrel-a-day refinery in Gaeta, Italy, and another with a
20,000-barrel-a-day capacity in Denmark.
In 1954 and 1955, construction began on the first
vessels in a fleet of supertankers. Several of these have
been completed and are now in operation. This tanker-
construction program is proceeding apace. Tonnage afloat
and now under construction exceeds 1,000,000 deadweight
tons. Among the ships are truly giant supertankers
displacing upwards of 70,000 tons.
The Getty interests have recently built spanking new
office buildings in Los Angeles, California; Tulsa,
Oklahoma; and New York City—at a cost approaching
$40,000,000. Regardless of what they produce, plants and
businesses owned by Getty interests are orientated to
steady expansion. Management is constantly seeking ways
and means to increase output, and large-scale projects are
under way to develop new products and to find new
applications and uses for old ones. By no means the least of
the activities in which the companies are engaged are oil
and mineral explorations, which are being conducted
energetically on four continents.
This, then, is the story of how I chose my road to success
and how I traveled it from my wildcatting days in the Okla-
homa oil fields, of how I’ve built my business and made my
fortune. To it, I would like to add a brief, highly personal—
and mildly rueful—footnote.
For years I had managed—at least on the whole—to
avoid personal publicity. Or rather, since I did nothing
either to seek or evade it,
I suppose it would be more
accurate to say that personal publicity avoided me. This
state of peaceful near-ano
nymity ended suddenly and
forever in October 1957, when
Fortune
magazine
published an article listing the wealthiest people in the
United States. My name head
ed the list, and the article
labeled me a billionaire and “The Richest Man in America.”
Subsequently, other publications gave me the even more
grandiloquent title of “The Richest Man in the World.”
Since then, I’ve been besieged by requests to reveal
exactly how much money I have. I’m seldom believed when
I reply in all honesty that I do
n’t know, that there is no way
I
can
know. Most of my wealth is invested in the
businesses I own or control; I make no claims about the
extent of my wealth and I really don’t care how rich I am.
Today, the companies are thriving, and they’re carrying
out ambitious programs for further expansion. My primary
concern and main interest lie in making certain that these
companies continue to grow so that they can provide more
employment and produce more goods and services for the
benefit of all. M y associates and I are convinced that the
over-all economic trend is up and that despite the alarums
and fears plaguing our era, the world is on the threshold of
a prosperity greater than any in its history.