Defeat Menaces Kaiser's Oil Plan.

New York Times 100 years ago today, November 15, 1912:
German Enthusiasm Over Monopoly Project Is Cooling Off and Opposition Grows.
REICHSTAG SEEMS HOSTILE
No American Protest Possible Yet, Say Emperor's Advisers, Who Doubt if One Is Ever Made.
Special Cable to The New York Times.
    BERLIN, Nov. 14.— Officials of the German Government will employ the next fortnight lobbying unremittingly for the passage of the bill to kill the Standard Oil Company's business in Germany by establishing a State petroleum monopoly. The bill passed the Federal Council after stubborn opposition on the part of the representatives of Hamburg, Bremen, and Lübeck, the chief seaports of the Fatherland, but its fate in the Reichstag is a matter of the gravest doubt.
    It is certain that the bill will not obtain a majority in its present form.
    The enthusiasm with which the project was greeted when it was first announced has cooled off considerably as a result of calm study, and the scheme now has as many foes as it has friends. The recent reports from Washington to the effect that the United States Government has already lodged a formal protest against the proposed eviction of the Standard Oil Company are groundless, according to an authorized statement, to The New York Times correspondent. The Reichstag will not reassemble until Nov. 26, and the oil monopoly bill will be one of the first measures submitted, but until it becomes a law America will have no standing in the premises and will not be in a position to make diplomatic representations of any kind.
    Ambassador Leishman has had many private conversations with the German authorities, and has probably left them in no doubt as to what the United States will do in certain contingencies. The German Government affects to think, however, that as the matter is a "purely internal question" America will hardly think it proper to make a diplomatic incident out of it. Back of all of the Government's purposes is the conviction that the Standard Oil Company's unpopularity at home will make it impossible to obtain Government support, especially from a Democratic administration.
    The chief complaint which the Germans themselves make against the oil monopoly plan is that it fails to take consumers sufficiently into consideration. The utmost skepticism prevails in regard to the possibility of meeting the German requirements without drawing heavily on the American Oil Trust. If Mr. Rockefeller's organization retaliates by declining to do business with the State monopoly, where, the Germans want to know, is the requisite oil to come from and what sort of famine prices will be demanded in the meantime?
    The Roman Catholic, the Centre, and the Social Democratic Parties are said to oppose the monopoly. They have between them enough votes in the Reichstag to defeat the bill.
    It is reported that the Standard's German branch is already negotiating with the Government for the sale of its fleet of ten or twelve huge tank steamers.