Thomas W. Phillips
He was attracted to the new petroleum industry, and after unsuccessful efforts to produce oil in Lawrence County, he went in 1861 to Oil Creek. Col. Edwin Drake [q.v.] had driven the first successful well in Oil Creek, two years before Mr. Phillips arrival. Here, with his three brothers, he engaged in oil production. The firm, at first, met with great success and the brothers disbursed their profits generously in religious and philanthropic benefactions. However, the panic of 1873, together with the discovery of new oil fields and the consequent fall in the price of oil, made a dramatic change from prosperity to adversity in their fortunes. The payment of their indebtedness, with interest, absorbed the next fourteen years of Phillips' life. In 1887 he was made president of the Producers' Protective Association, a secret organization of some two thousand oil men in thirty six local assemblies, organized primarily to combat the Standard Oil combination. At this time, he was one of the largest individual producers in the oil country. When in 1888 the association made an agreement with the Standard Oil Company to reduce production, Phillips insisted as a prerequisite to his assent that two million barrels of oil be set aside for the benefit of the drillers who would be thrown out of employment by the shutdown.
At the time of his death the T.W. Phillips Gas & Oil Company, of which he was president, owned 850 gas and oil wells, 900 miles of gas lines and valuable leaseholds of gas and oil lands in Pennsylvania.
Phillips' political career began with his association with James A. Garfield as close personal friend, confidant, and political advisor. When Garfield was nominated for the presidency in 1880, Phillips dropped all business and devoted his entire time to the canvass. It was at his suggestion, and with his assistance as author and financial backer, that during this campaign the first Republican Campaign Text Book was published. He was defeated as a candidate for Congress in 1890 but was successful in 1892 and was reelected in 1894. He voluntarily retired at the close of his second term.
While in Congress he had formulated plans for the appointment of an Industrial Commission to investigate questions pertaining to immigration, labor, agriculture, manufacturing and business, but the act authorizing its creation was not passed until 1898. President McKinley appointed him a member of the Commission and he had an important part in the preparation of its nineteen volumes of reports, which appeared in 1900 - 1902.
This service entailed four years of the hardest work of his laborious life. The adequacy of the investigation as well as the constructive character of the conclusions and recommendations presented were perhaps due more to his efforts, than to those of any other one man. The Bureau of Corporations was a direct result of this investigation, and the federal departments of labor and commerce carry forward the investigations which Phillips' inventive mind conceived and initiated.
In the midst of his business and political activities Phillips found time to continue his religious study and writing. In 1866, he was instrumental in forming the Christian Publishing Association for the purpose of issuing a weekly journal, the Christian Standard. To this paper, which soon made a name for itself under the editorship of Isaac Errett, [q.v.], he was a friend and contributor during the rest of his life. In 1905, in the seventieth year of his age, he published The Church of Christ, an exposition of the principles of the Disciples of Christ. He gave liberal financial support to Bethany and Hiram colleges, and was the virtual founder of Oklahoma Christian University, renamed Phillips University after he died. His name was also Given to Phillips Bible Institute, Canton, Ohio, opened after his death. He established ministerial loan funds at Bethany and Hiram colleges and at Drake, Phillips, and Eugene Bible universities. For many years he supported a missionary in the Northwest and the local state, and national Y.M.C.A. and Y.W.C.A had cause to remember him gratefully as a generous friend.
Death found him at New Castle, PA, busily engaged in writing an article on the Resurrection.
Phillips married, in 1862, Clarinda, daughter of David and Nancy Rebecca (Arter) Hardman. She died in 1866, and in 1870 he married her younger sister, Pamphila, who survived him. To the first marriage, two sons were born, and to the, second, three sons and a daughter.
The above is a literal quote from THE DICTIONARY OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHIES, |
