The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power

by Daniel Yergin

When Warren G. Harding, chosen as the Republican candidate because among other reasons he “looked like a President,” won the White House in 1920, he sought, like any good politician, to appeal to both sides in the resource debate, celebrating “that harmony of relationship between conservation and development.” But, in selecting Senator Albert B. Fall from New Mexico to be Secretary of the Interior, Harding could hardly disguise his choice of development over conservation. Fall was a successful and politically powerful rancher, lawyer, and miner—“the frontiersman, the rough and ready, two-fisted fighter,” said one magazine, “who looks like an old-time Texas sheriff and is said to have handled a gun in his younger days with all the speed and accuracy of a Zane Grey hero.” Fall’s “belief in the unrestrained disposition of the public lands was as typically Western as his black, broad-brimmed Stetson hat and his love of fine horses.” Those on the other side of the debate saw Fall differently. He was described as a member of the “exploitation gang” by one leading conservationist. “It would have been possible to pick a worse man for Secretary of the Interior,” the conservationist added, “but not altogether easy.” Fall succeeded in wresting control of the naval oil reserves away from the Navy Department and placing it in the Interior Department. The next step would be to lease the reserves to private companies. His activities had not gone unnoticed. In the spring of 1922, just bef...