Stanisław Szczepanowski (1846–1900) – visionary, reformer, positivist

“Let all of you who are willing to give your life for your homeland, not die, but live and work, and through life according to the teachings of our seer, accomplish a hundred times more benefit than with the most heroic death. Focused strength and noble purpose will immediately create both the trust in the effectiveness of your own work and faith that it is possible to lift oneself from the current quagmire, and with a changed spirituality, we will also be freed from the bounds of tight templates and trivial fears that restrict public life and do not allow the use of even those resources that have been tried for a long time by other nations.” (S. Szczepanowski, Nędza Galicji w cyfrach i program energicznego rozwoju gospodarstwa krajowego (The poverty of Galicia in numbers and a program for dynamic development of domestic economy), Lwów 1888)

Collecting diplomas

The history of the Polish oil industry mentions only two of its pioneers: Ignacy Łukasiewicz, whom it calls the “creator of the oil industry”, and Stanisław Szczepanowski, whom it describes as “the pioneer in the development of oil mining.” You can also call him the man who ignited the Galician oil fever.

Stanisław Szczepanowski was born in 1846 in Kościan in Greater Poland, died in 1900 in the German spa in Nauheim, and was buried in the Lychakiv Cemetery in Lviv. He was the son of Władysław Szczepanowski, an engineer and a patriotic refugee from Wielkopolska (Prussian partition), who in 1868-1874 built the railway lines Lviv – Stryi and Stryi – Stanyslaviv in Galicia.

After graduating from a gymnasium in Chełmno (1854-1857) and the real school in Vienna (1857-1862), he assisted his father in the construction of the railway in Banat (1862-1864). Then he took up technical studies at the Vienna Polytechnic, which he continued while working (1864-1867). He also completed chemical and economic studies at the École Centrale des Arts et Manufactures in Paris (1867-1869). He also studied chemical technology and economics in London (1869-1871), where he was awarded the title of engineer upon graduation. He was also interested in the humanities and intensely practiced sports: gymnastics, horse riding, swimming and alpine tourism.

Collecting experiences

After completing his studies, he started working at the London laboratory of the Biedermann family, and then during the years 1870-1879 he worked for the India Office. Among other things, he dealt with new, experimental spinning technologies tested in Manchester. As part of his work, he was exposed to various innovations, observed the dynamic development of the industry in France, England, Scotland and Wales and analysed the operation mechanisms of these economies. During this time, he devoted a lot of attention to studying the tax systems of various countries and wrote articles on the subject for the Times. During this period, he developed an irrigation plan for central India for the purposes of cereal cultivation and cotton plantations, a production plan and an investment plan for the expansion of roads and railways in the region. Although Szczepanowski never visited India, basing his proposals only on the reading of about 1000 reports concerning India Company , the effects of the investments carried out according to his ideas exceeded all expectations and contributed to the reduction of hunger in this region.

Szczepanowski wanted to make use of those experiences in Galicia, a region whose  problems he was interested in during the time of his studies in Vienna (in 1865 together with his friends Jan Franke, Ignacy Skrochowski and Alfred Zgórski he founded the Ognisko association, tasked with analysing the social and economic relations in Galicia).

In 1877, he obtained British citizenship and was invited to go on a business trip to India with the current heir to the throne, Prince of Wales, later British King Edward VII. Szczepanowski refused. He chose Galicia, for which he left in 1879 to search for oil and with a socio-economic mission. Galicia was then the poorest, but also the most self-governing area under the control of the invaders. Szczepanowski believed that the oil industry would be the key to the social and economic development of Galicia.

The breakthrough discovery in Słoboda Rungurska and the Galician black gold rush

In 1879 Szczepanowski arrived in Galicja with a modest personal budget and a loan obtained from his family. He came across extremely rich crude oil deposits in Słoboda Rungurska very quickly. The reason for his rapid success could have been his accurate personnel decisions – over the years 1880 – 1895 the chief director of his oil companies was an experienced oilman, Mikołaj Fedorowicz, who was able to point out oil deposits to his boss. Szczepanowski established an oil mine in Słodoba Rungurska near Kolomyia. He conducted drilling using modern methods: already in 1879, he carried out impact drilling, steam drilling and obtained about 100 barrels of crude oil a day from the borehole Jadwiga. In subsequent years, Szczepanowski was equally lucky: he discovered new deposits, and the extraction of the raw material was so dynamic that there occurred problems with its storage. Słoboda soon became the largest oil mine in Galicia – at that time as much as 60 percent of Galician oil was mined there.

Szczepanowski’s successes brought about a real oil fever. Entrepreneurs eager for quick profits began to buy out plots adjacent to Szczepanowski’s mine and carry out unregulated exploitation of the deposits. This forced the entrepreneur to increase the rate and intensity of drilling.

Pots, barrels, rail cars – mining achievements of Szczepanowski

After returning to Galicia, Szczepanowski began to intensively apply the knowledge and experience gained during his studies and work in Great Britain. In 1880 – one year after arrival – he started the first mining plant in Słoboda Rungurska, and two years later – the pioneer Society for the Exploitation of Oil and Earth wax in Słoboda. In 1881, he married a daughter of a Lviv notary, Helena Wolska. This happily married couple had two sons (Witold and Stanisław Wiktor) and four daughters (Maria and Wanda, the names of the other ones are unknown).

Szczepanowski’s breakthrough investment was the largest and most modern refinery in Pechenizhyn (1883), which used the latest American technology – Carrigan’s apparatus. Next to the refinery, Szczepanowski located kerosene tanks (50 and 30-cistern capacity) and crude oil tanks (35 and 20-cistern capacity). A thirty-cistern oil tank was also constructed in Słoboda Rungurska. The refinery processed crude oil extracted by Szczepanowski and also provided processing services to other entrepreneurs. At that time, the refinery in Pechenizhyn was the third largest refinery in Europe. The pioneer’s activities were imitated by other entrepreneurs (including Wolfarth and the French Union of Petroleum Industries); they invested in tanks and set up their own oil refineries.

In 1884 Szczepanowski met William Henry McGarvey, who had arrived in Galicia with a new, so-called Canadian drilling system. However, no cooperation occurred, because Szczepanowski considered Canadian technology to be too expensive. (History was supposed to confirm the effectiveness of the method proposed by the Canadian: Szczepanowski searched unsuccessfully for oil in Bytkiv in Bohorodchany district. A little later, McGarvey, using his methods, discovered abundant deposits there).

In subsequent years, Szczepanowski set up and operated smaller mines near Krosno (Równe, Wietrzno), Gorlice (Siary) and Stryi (in Verkhnie Synovydne).

The peak of Szczepanowski’s investment achievements was the construction of the oil pipeline from Słoboda Rungurska to Pechenizhyn in 1887, and the discovery of large oil reserves in Schodnica in 1888. Deep wells drilled by Szczepanowski’s employees turned out to be more efficient than in other known centres and gave the oilman even over dozen oil wagons a day. The growing scale of production contributed to investments in new tanks (one of them contained as many as 104 cisterns) and pipelines (to Mraźnica and a fifteen-kilometre pipeline to Boryslav).

The outcome of Szczepanowski’s breakthrough discoveries in Słoboda Rungurska and Schodnica was the collapse of oil import from the Caucasus, which was processed by Austro-Hungarian refineries. The increase in the supply of Galician oil brought about a situation in which Galician refineries (e.g. Glinik, Bóbrka, Pechenizhyn) used their entire processing capacity to process the local, more profitable raw material.

Subsequent discoveries made by Galician oilmen in Boryslav, Bitków and Tustanowice made Galicia the third oil mining centre in the world, after the United States and Russia.

Social responsibility of the oil industry

In Słoboda Rungurska, Szczepanowski not only developed a business on a scale unprecedented in Galicia but also paid attention to the social dimension of his activity. He took care of his workers – he built housing estates of wooden and brick residential houses for them, initiated the activity of cooperative shops and community centres, where he lectured and trained his employees to improve their professional competence. He set up a miner’s relief fund, which constituted social security for workers, as well as a savings union and a small hospital.

He also promoted the idea of ​​cooperative business through the weekly “Pomoc Własna”, which he founded in Kolomyia. He was also a publisher and editor of the “Ekonomista Polski” magazine and the president of the Polish Pedagogical Society. With the well-known poet Adam Asnyk, he also founded the Society of Popular Schools in 1891, involved in educating the rural population.

Szczepanowski’s successes in promotion

Like his predecessors, Szczepanowski put a lot of effort into promoting his ventures. He participated in industrial exhibitions in Przemyśl in 1882 and in Kraków in 1887. He received awards for outstanding stratigraphic sections, drilling logs, geological maps of Słoboda Rungurska elaborated by his colleague Mikołaj Fedorowicz or kerosene from the refinery in Pechenizhyn. In 1894, the presentation of the drilling rig caused a sensation, since it had drilled as much as 500 meters during the exhibition.

Descent from the oil peak

Szczepanowski had developed his ventures on an unprecedented scale in Galicia. The significance of his discoveries and activities was described by another outstanding oilman from Siary near Gorlice, Władysław Długosz:

“Before Szczepanowski had discovered Słoboda Rungurska, petroleum was measured with a pot, since Słoboda we had counted the production in barrels (barrel = 150 kg), and since Szczepanowski discovered Schodnica, we have only used wagons in our accounts”.

Unfortunately, the spectacular investment impetus was not accompanied by full control over legal and financial issues. Szczepanowski lost the shares in his investments. His political commitment and critical attitude towards the conservative aristocracy which ruled Galicia could have contributed to that.

Although Szczepanowski cooperated with excellent innovators such as Wacław Wolski (inventor of the eccentric bit and hydraulic ram) or Kazimierz Odrzywolski, his investments did not generate capital return in a sufficiently short time. In the mine in Schodnica, record quantities of raw material began to be extracted just after Szczepanowski had lost it. In 1894, the governor of Galicia, Prince of Baden, forced him to return part of the debt and sell the mining plot in Schodnica for a million Austro-Hungarian guldens to the Viennese Anglobank. Only a year later, in 1895, the same mining plot was worth 15 million Austro-Hungarian guldens! In 1899, Szczepanowski’s debts exceeded 5 million crowns, and the attempts to save his business by the Galician Savings Union failed in an atmosphere of scandal. Its president was then Franciszek Zima, a former January insurgent and a friend of Szczepanowski from the times of his residence in England. According to Stanisław Borzym, the president gave excessive loans to Szczepanowski against all the by-laws, because “… he had always believed in his lucky star, and treated the risk of an illegal loan almost as a patriotic conspiracy against the servile-minded preservers governing Galicia, a conspiracy aimed at keeping the local industry in Polish hands.” Szczepanowski was defended at the time by Henryk Sienkiewicz, Bolesław Prus and Tadeusz Miciński. He was acquitted of all charges by the court, but the glory days of this oilman were gone forever. With his finances and health condition ruined, he went to the resort in German Bad Nauheim. The reason for the entrepreneur’s downfall could also be seen in a phenomenon that Szczepanowski himself diagnosed precisely: “Oil hypnotised even sober Lviv bankers and only a few words sufficed to obtain quite a high loan.”

From entrepreneur to politician

Szczepanowski developed  not only business and social ventures in Galicia, but also political activity. When his oil business started bringing profits, Szczepanowski became involved in politics. Initially, he tried to support activities for the development of the new oil industry. He fought for the reduction of railway tariffs for the carriage of mineral oil products and taxes imposed on the oil industry. He called for tax exemption of the oil industry for 10 years, so that it could develop (such solutions had already been introduced in the United States and Russia). At that time, Julian Dunajewski, the then Minister of Treasury was his stern opponent. Nevertheless, Szczepanowski still fought for at least a  reduction of the indirect tax on kerosene, which amounted to 6.5 guldens per 100 kg of kerosene and burdened the poorest. His political activity won him a large group of voters. In 1886 he was elected as a conservative party deputy to the Viennese parliament from the constituency in Stryi. He was a member of parliament until 1897. His great achievement in 1887 was the reduction of railway tariffs for industrial products (including kerosene) and agriculture, which stunted the economic development of Galicia. During the years 1896–1898 he also worked towards the creation of the Academy of Mining in Kraków and expanding the scope of mining studies at the Lviv Polytechnic.

In 1889, a year after the publication of his book Nędza Galicji w cyfrach i program energicznego rozwoju gospodarstwa krajowego (The poverty of Galicia in numbers and a program for dynamic development of domestic economy), he became a member of the Diet of Galicia and Lodomeria. He criticized the imperial government for treating Galicia as a colony – a source of raw materials and recruits. He advocated an increase in capital investment for Galicia and the need for systemic changes – decentralization and increasing its autonomy.

Views – criticism of the economy and political system in Galicia

His most far-reaching and most influential work was Nędza Galicji w cyfrach i program energicznego rozwoju gospodarstwa krajowego (The poverty of Galicia in numbers and a program for dynamic development of domestic economy), which sparked off a lively debate and indirectly contributed to the improvement of the condition of Galician economy. The book presented the socio-economic underdevelopment of Galicia. It was described by Szczepanowski as one of the poorest regions in Europe (comparisons stimulated imagination: life expectancy in Galicja was 27 years, while in England it was 40 years. The average annual income of an inhabitant of Galicia was 53 Rhine florins, whereas in England it was 450 guldens), additionally burdened with a huge bureaucracy, which consisted of an army of 80,000 officials absorbing 11 percent of the national product. Szczepanowski argued that bureaucracy and authoritarian power “quell all independence, individuality and originality and accustom the whole society to acting according to mechanical rules and regulations which exclude conduct on the grounds of one’s own judgement and sense of personal responsibility.” In his opinion, they may lead to socialism or communism, which he criticised. In what way? “…autocratic statesmen, striving to consolidate state omnipotence and to take over bureaucratic control over more and more affairs which in a healthy society should be handled by individuals themselves – they are actually apostles of socialism. They quell all independence, individuality and originality and accustom the whole society to acting according to mechanical rules and regulations which exclude conduct on the grounds of one’s own judgement and sense of personal responsibility. Having a society trained that way and a bureaucratic machine so omnipotent, it is just enough to change the helmsman of the vessel, and the ideal of the contemporary Socialists will have been achieved. ”

Recipe for development – the idea of ​​a civic society

According to Bolesław Prus, Szczepanowski, “looks at the mechanism of the society’s life, like a watchmaker scrutinises the mechanism of a watch, which appears complicated to laymen.” At the same time, Szczepanowski was shaped by the philosophical ideas of Karol Libelt, Bronisław Trentowski, August Cieszkowski, as well as the works of Polish national prophetic poets: Adam Mickiewicz, Juliusz Słowacki and Zygmunt Krasiński. On the basis of the above, the views of Szczepanowski, who was an enthusiastic supporter of the idea of ​​a civic society, took shape:

“Citizenship requires devotion to a public matter, getting rid of all that is vain and trivial; requires simplicity of life, nobility of the soul and the sublimity of thought. And yet without aspiring to this, you can no longer be a Pole, you can be a caricature of a Pole, a man who babbles thoughtlessly in Polish, but not a Pole in spirit and truth. The term “citizen” itself is at the same time a program and contains all social obligations. No language has a similar word. Neither the German Bürger, nor the French citoyen, nor the English citizen give the slightest impression of what a Polish “obywatel [citizen]”,”duch obywatelski [civic spirit]”,”działać po obywatelsku [act as a citizen]” means for every Pole. This idea being so universal, so deeply philosophical, so perfectly addressing the necessities of the era, is at the same time so common and well-known in Poland that every Pole, whether being a nobleman, a Jew, a peasant or a member of townsfolk will understand it immediately. ”

Inspirations:

• Brzozowski Stanisław, Stanisław Szczepanowski, [in:] Historia polskiego przemysłu naftowego (History of Polish oil industry), ed. Ryszard Wolwowicz, vol. 1, pp. 36–58, Brzozów–Kraków 1994.
• Koziar Jan, Stanisław Szczepanowski. Twórca polskiego przemysłu naftowego, wybitny przedstawiciel polskiej filozofii czynu (Stanisław Szczepanowski. The founder of Polish oil industry, eminent representative of the Polish philosophy of action), in: „Demokracja Finansowa. Solidaryzm Społeczny w Ekonomii i Polityce” 2009, No. 11.
• Łętocha Rafał, Przeciw nędzy. Stanisław Szczepanowski i jego wizje wyjścia z kryzysu, [in:] „Nowy Obywatel. Pismo na Rzecz Sprawiedliwości Społecznej”
• Szczepanowski Stanisław, Nędza Galicji w cyfrach i program energicznego rozwoju gospodarstwa krajowego (The poverty of Galicia in numbers and a program for dynamic development of domestic economy), Lwów 1888.
• Szczerbiński Jacek, Mógł być europejskim Rockefellerem. Stanisław Szczepanowski (He could have been a Polish Rockefeller. Stanisław Szczepanowski) (1846-1900)

source of the photos: Polona