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Rathbone got his interest in oil from his oilman father. Born in Parkersburg, W. Va., he served a short hitch in the Army before graduating from Lehigh University ('21), then went to work as an engineering draftsman in the Baton Rouge refinery of Standard Oil of Louisiana, a Jersey affiliate. He was made refinery manager when he was only 32, so impressed headquarters that four years later he was moved up to president of the affiliate.
ONE problem was the rabble-rousing Governor, Huey Long. To win votes, Huey taxed Standard so heavily that it shut down its Baton Rouge refinery. When 8,000 jobless workers assembled to march on the capital with pistols and hunting rifles, Long quickly suspended the tax. Later, Long suddenly boosted Standard's taxes $20 million, summoned Rathbone. When Long, always trying to infiltrate Standard, asked for a job for a pal, Rathbone insisted that he would take him for a 30-day trial, keep him only if he worked out well. Long canceled the tax on the spot (his man was a success, is now a Standard manager).
Rathbone's self-assured, calm efficiency and a record of building his subsidiary into a topnotch operating company won him the post of president of Esso Standard in 1944. He moved on to Jersey Standard's board of directors in 1949, became president in 1954, and took over as chairman of the executive committee and chief executive in 1960 when Eugene Holman resigned. "Getting along is the key to success," says Rathbone. "I've always been fortunate in being able to get people to work with me."
A 9-to-5:30 man who finds plenty of time to read history and detective stories, Rathbone also likes to work at carpentry and stonemasonry. Besides his $234,587 annual salary, he owns 16,510 shares of Jersey Standard stock (current value: $699,611) and has options to buy 10,000 more. He and his wife live alone (his two children are married) in a ten-room Tudor-style house in Summit, N.J., and have a 30-acre farm 25 miles outside Baton Rouge. There he changes pace from his favorite sport, golf (in the 90s), gets in some duck shooting in the nearby marshes.
Despite the oil surplus, Rathbone's Jersey Standard intends to spend about $900 million in 1961 on capital expenditures, biggest total in the last three years, and another $200 million to search for oil and gas. It is already spending 10% of its profits on research, and 25¢ of every research dollar on the promising field of petrochemicals. Out of this push in research and plant improvement, Jack Rathbone expects to come new economies and new products that will make Jersey Standard even better equipped to maintain its lead in the changing world of oil.