The "Abyssinian Treatment" Of Standard Oil

Performed by Theodore Roosevelt
Recorded September 22, 1912

What was really interesting in their testimony, however, was the sidelight it cast on their own motives and standard of propriety, and incidentally, an unwitting tribute to the attitude of my administration. If you will turn to Page 133 of the Record. (You can get the record, I will say incidentally, from your senator, unless he’s a stands-pat senator in which place, you probably can’t get it from him.) If you will turn to Page 133 of the Record, you will find where Mr. Archbold says, substantially, "Darkest Abyssinia can show nothing to compare with the treatment administered to the Standard Oil Corporation during the administration of President Roosevelt." In this instance, Mr. Archbold is testifying to what is quite correct. I did administer the Abyssinian treatment to the Standard Oil Corporation while I was president. I administered it because I thought The Standard Oil needed it. And if ever I am president again, and the Standard Oil or any other corporation acts as the Standard Oil then did, I’ll administer the Abyssinian treatment to it again. That’s why Mr. Archbold and Mr. Penrose are trying to beat me and to beat the Progressive party. You may notice that Mr. Archbold doesn’t complain that the present administration ever administered the Abyssinian treatment to the Standard Oil Company. Not a bit of it. Mr. Archbold has no fear that either the Democratic or Republican parties, if successful at the next election, would administer the Abyssinian treatment to the Standard Oil Corporation or to any other of the big law breaking trusts. Mr. Archbold knows that the Standard Oil could make its peace with, could come to an agreement with, the men who manage the Republican party or the men who manage the Democratic party, but he also knows that he could make no peace with the leaders of the Progressive party, and he could make no peace with the Progressive party itself because it is in very fact the party of the people of the United States. Again, on the next page of the testimony, you will find where Mr. Bliss is quoted by Mr. Archbold as saying that he had no influence with me. That he could not stop my proceedings at the time when, as Mr. Archbold says, I was engaged in administering the Abyssinian treatment to the Standard Oil Corporation.