I was listening to some old recordings and I heard a speech by Teddy about his treatment of Standard Oil. I am assuming it is some sort of anti-trust effort but I don't get the meaning or the etymology. Would love to know the details, context and the origin of the phrase.
During his presidency, the DoJ sued Standard Oil which ultimately caused the company to be broken up into 34 companies. John D. Archbold was at the time the VP of the company.
In 1912, there was a political scandal which involved Standard Oil gifting money to the Republican Party. When called to testify, Archbold said "Darkest Abyssinia can show nothing to compare with the treatment administered to the Standard Oil Corporation during the administration of President Roosevelt", a comment on the negative treatment the company received under Roosevelt's leadership.
In rebuttal to Archbold, Roosevelt referred the whole breakup of the company as the "Abyssinian Treatment".
Here is a newspaper article from Aug 29th, 1913 that talks about it briefly: https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1913&dat=19130829&id=4nYgAAAAIBAJ&sjid=cGcFAAAAIBAJ&pg=3069,298639&hl=en