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In spite of such setbacks, Standard has been able to convince a good part of the world that its brand of free enterprise brings tangible results. That, rather than oil production, is Standard's No. 1 problem in the Middle East. Standard has been a good salesman of U.S. free enterprise in Venezuela. This year, thanks to record spending of $115,000,000 by Standard's Creole Petroleum in new developments, Venezuelans will pocket more wages than ever. And though the leftists still grumble of imperialism, they grudgingly admire Standard's super-efficient operation, its gleaming laboratories, the work camps, schools and hospitals (250,000 patients were treated in them last year). Typical improvement: illiteracy among Creole's 15,000 workers is only 12% compared to about 50% for the whole of Venezuela. Standard puts back into the country much of the profits it takes out. Its uplift is mixed with the dollars & cents knowledge that raising the standard of living of its employees makes better workers out of them.
House of the Lion. In Arabia, the job of raising the wretchedly low standard of living is an Atlantean one. But a start has already been made by Aramco in showing the tangible benefits of free enterprise. At Dhahran and Bahrein, Aramco has erected neat little villages of air-conditioned houses for its U.S. employees, and has also built houses for its Arabian workers.
Many of the workers are also getting their first sight of modern schools and hospitals (non-employees are also treated) and their first taste of many foods. At Al Kharj, surface wells have actually made 3,000 desert acres bloom like the rose in the first of Ibn Saud's irrigation projects, supervised by Aramco. The job of keeping the sheiks placated is not so difficult; their royalties do that. But Aramco, Standard and all the companies in the East know that their fate depends to a great extent on their popularity with the masses. In the complexity of politics, where a speech in London causes a pipeline to be blown up at Haifa, the companies know that they must stand on their own reputations. The best foreign policy is one made on the scene.
Americans call the corner of Arabia they are developing "the land of Wajid Mafi" (the land of plenty of nothing). Almost everything needed for development must be brought in. But the Arabians, whose eyes bulge at the oil companies' riches and who call on the companies for everything from autos to Coca-Cola, refer to Aramco in the words of an old proverb: "In the house of the lion there is always plenty of meat." The job of Standard and its companions in the Middle Eastern adventure will be to see that in the land of nothing there is meat for all.
*So called because members of I.P.C. simply drew a red line around a map taking in most of the old Ottoman Empire. *Jersey and Socony claim that the Red Line Agreement was abrogated when France's Vichy government became an "enemy."