Sketches in Crude-oil / Some accidents and incidents of the petroleum development in all parts of the globe

by John J. McLaurin

GRAINS OF THIRD SAND.

Many expressions coined in or about the oil-regions condense a page into a line. Not a few have the force of a catapult and the directness of a rifle-ball. Some may be quoted:

“A fat bank-account won’t fatten a lean soul.”—Charles Miller.

“The poorest man I know of is the man who has nothing but money.”—John D. Rockefeller.

“Don’t size up a man by the size of his wad.”—Peter O. Conver.

“Never be the mere echo of any man on God’s green earth.”—David Kirk.

“Take nobody’s dust in oil or politics.”—James M. Guffey.

“What’s oil to a man when his wife’s a widow.”—Edwin E. Clapp.

“Dad’s struck ile.”—Miss Anna Evans.

“The Standard is the octopus of the century.”—Col. J. A. Vera.

“It’s monopoly when you won’t divide with the other fellow.”—John D. Archbold.

“The Standard would swallow us without chewing.”—Samuel P. Boyer.

“Give us public officials who dare own their own souls.”—Lewis Emery.

“The man who won’t demand his rights should crawl off the earth.”—M. H. Butler.

“He’s only a corporation-convenience.”—James W. Lee.

“A railroad-pass is the price of some legislators.”—W. S. McMullan.

“I believe in a man who can say no at the right time.”—James H. Osmer.

“A sneer can kill more tender plants than a hard freeze.”—Edwin H. Sibley.

“Grease, grace and greenbacks are the boss combination.”—John P. Zane.

“Where are we now?”—Philip M. Shannon.

“Piety that won’t march all week isn’t worth parading on Sunday.”—Rev. Fred. Evans.

“A jimson-weed has more fragrance than some folks’ religion.”—Rev. John McCoy.

“The scythe of Time gathers no rust.”—Rev. N. S. McFetridge.

“Faith may see the fruit, but works knock the persimmons.”—Rev. J. Hawkins.

“Train your boy as carefully as your fifty-dollar pup.”—Frank W. Bowen.

“Who is the father of that child?”—Oil-City Derrick.

“Other curses are trifles compared with the curses that follow falling prices.”—J. C. Sibley.

“Hit the calamity-howler in the solar plexus.”—Patrick C. Boyle.

“Good character? A man doesn’t need a character to sell whisky.”—S. P. McCalmont.

“He thinks himself a little tin-godelmitey on wheels.”—Coleman E. Bishop.

“Just to be contrary he’d have a chill in Hades.”—David A. Dennison.

“That fellow’s so cold-blooded he sweats ice-water.”—John H. Galey.

“Think out your plan, then go and do it.”—Charles V. Culver.

“I pay for what I get.”—John McKeown.

“This Court will not be made a thumbscrew to squeeze any debtor.”—Judge Trunkey.

“A good many injunctions ought to be enjoined.”—Judge Taylor.

“We may safely assume that the Almighty knows all about it.”—James S. Myers.

“A flea may upset a mastiff.”—Stephen D. Karns.

“The city-water is as dirty as the dirty pool of politics.”—Samuel P. Brigham.

“Haven’t the producers played the fool long enough?”—George H. Nesbit.

“Tracts and missionaries are poor feed for the heathen.”—Alexander Cochran.

“Money is good only as it enables men to do good.”—J. J. Vandergrift.

“It takes dry-holes to test an operator’s moral fiber.”—Joseph T. Jones.

“I have tapped the mine.”—Edwin L. Drake.

“Give us dollar-oil and Klondyke can go to the devil.”—Chorus of Operators.

“That duffer is the ugliest bristle on the monopoly-hog.”—Peter Grace.

“I think more of my ‘belt-theory’ than of a thousand-barrel well.”—Cyrus D. Angell.

“First stop the drill, then you may pray for higher prices.”—T. T. Thompson.

“A cat in hell without claws is less helpless than the producers.”—Clarion Oilmen.

“Seventy-cent oil is a mustard-plaster that draws out all our vitality.”— Michael Murphy.

“The world is all right; it’s your liver that’s wrong.”—Roger Sherman.

“He washed his face and the disguise was perfect.”—Samuel L. Williams.

“I feel sorry for the poor fellow fifty-dollars; how sorry are you?”—Wesley Chambers.

“Hell is running over with souls lost for lack of sympathy on earth.”—Rev. J. Hart.

“Cigarettes and corsets kill off a good many fools.”—Albert P. Whitaker.

“Giving is a luxury no man can afford to miss.”—Dr. Albert G. Egbert.

“Lord, preserve our pastor, which is sailin’ on the ragin’ sea.”—Elder at Franklin.

“The best preparation for a good death is a good life.”—Rev. Thomas Carroll.

“Let me pipe the oil and I don’t care who drills the wells.”—Henry Harley.

“One well in the sand beats a hundred geological guesses.”—Wesley S. Guffey.

“Oil is the sap that keeps the tree of commerce in bloom.”—Marcus Hulings.

“Producers and oil-wells should have plenty of sand.”—Frederic Prentice.

“He hasn’t half the backbone of a printer’s towel.”—M. N. Allen.

“His ideas have the vigor of a mule’s hind legs.”—Robert L. Cochran.

“Damn a man who won’t stand up for a square deal.”—Robert B. Allen.

“He’s too big a mullet-head to say damn.”—John A. Steele.

“God has no use for the man a dry-hole knocks out.”—Daniel Cady.

“His good deeds are so far apart they die of loneliness.”—Charles Collins.

“He’s more kinds of a blamed fool than a whole lunatic asylum.”—David Armstrong.

“Too often the mean man is the man of means.”—Stephen W. Harley.

“If all Christians were like some Christians the church would be a rubbish-heap.”—Rev. Edwin T. Brown.

STANDARD BUILDING, 26 BROADWAY, NEW YORK.

XVIII.
THE STANDARD OIL-COMPANY.

Growth of a Great Corporation—Misunderstood and Misrepresented—Improvements in Treating and Transporting Petroleum—Why Many Refineries Collapsed—Real Meaning of the Trust—What a Combination of Brains and Capital has Accomplished—Men Who Built Up a Vast Enterprise that has no Equal in the World.

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“Speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate,

Nor set down aught in malice.”—Shakespeare.

“Not to know me argues yourself unknown.”—Milton.

“The keen spirit seizes the prompt occasion.”—Hannah Moore.

“Genius is the faculty of growth.”—Coleridge.

“Success affords the means of securing additional success.”—Stanislaus.

“Fortune, success, position, are never gained but by determinedly, bravely striking, growing, living to a thing.”—Townsend.

“The goal of yesterday will be the starting-point of to-morrow.”—Voltaire.

“Where the judgment is weak the prejudice is strong.”—Kate O’Hara.

“Amongst the sons of men how few are known

Who dare to be just to merit not their own.”—Churchill.

“Censure is the tax a man pays to the public for being eminent.”—Dean Swift.

“As though a rose should shut and be a bud again.”—John Keats.

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JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER.

Compared with a petroleum-sketch which did not touch upon the Standard Oil-Company, in different respects the greatest corporation the world has ever known, Hamlet with “the melancholy Dane” left out would be a masterpiece of completeness. Perhaps no business-organization in this or any other country has been more misrepresented and misunderstood. To many well-meaning persons, who would not willfully harbor an unjust thought, it has suggested all that is vicious, grasping and oppressive in commercial affairs. They picture it as a cruel monster, wearing horns and cloven-hoofs and a forked-tail, grown rich and fat devouring the weak and the innocent. Its motives have been impugned, its methods condemned and its actions traduced. If a man in Oildom drilled a dry-hole, backed the wrong horse, lost at poker, dropped money speculating, stubbed his toe, ran an unprofitable refinery, missed a train or couldn’t maintain champagne-style on a lager-beer income, it was the fashion for him to pose as the victim of a gang of conspirators and curse the Standard as vigorously and vociferously as the fish-wife hurled invectives at Daniel O’Connell.

Some folks display most wonderful agility

In their attempts to shift responsibility.

The reasons for this are as numerous as the sands of the sea. It is no new thing to shove upon other shoulders the burden that belongs properly to our own. In their fiery zeal to convict somebody people have been known to bark up the wrong tree, to charge the innocent with all sorts of offences and to get off their base entirely. Such people and such methods did not die out with the passing of the Salem witch-burners. The Standard was made the scape-goat of the evil deeds alleged to have been contemplated by the unsavory South-Improvement Company. That odious combine, which included a number of railroad-officials, oil-operators and refiners, disbanded without producing, refining, buying, selling or transporting a gallon of petroleum. “Politics makes strange bedfellows” and so does business. Among subscribers for South-Improvement stock were certain holders of Standard stock and also their bitterest opponents; among those most active in giving the job its death-blow were prominent members of the Standard Oil-Company. The projected spoliation died “unwept, unhonored and unsung,” but it was not a Standard scheme.

Envy is frequently the penalty of success. Whoever fails in any pursuit likes to blame somebody else for his misfortune. This trick is as old as the race. Adam started it in Eden, Eve tried to ring in the serpent and their posterity take good care not to let the game get rusty from disuse! Its aggregation of capital renders the Standard, in the opinion of those who have “fallen outside the breastworks,” directly responsible for their inability to keep up with the procession. Sympathizers with them deem this “confirmation strong as proof of Holy Writ” that the Standard is an unconscionable monopoly, fostered by crushing out competition. Such reasoning forgets that enterprise, energy, experience and capital are usually trump-cards. It forgets that “the race is to the swift,” the battle is to the mighty and that “Heaven is on the side with the heaviest artillery.” Carried to its logical conclusion, it means that improved methods, labor-saving appliances and new processes count for nothing. It means that the snail can travel with the antelope, that the locomotive must wait for the stage-coach, that the fittest shall not survive. In short, it is the double-distilled essence of absurdity.

Any advance in methods of business necessarily injures the poorest competitor. Is this a reason why advances should be held back? If so, the public could derive no benefit from competition. The fact that a man with meagre resources labors under a serious disadvantage is not an excuse for preventing stronger parties from entering the field. The grand mistake is in confounding combination with monopoly. By combination small capital can compete successfully with large capital. Every partnership or corporation is a combination, without which undertakings beyond individual reach would never be accomplished. Trunk railroads would not be built, unity of action would be destroyed, mankind would segregate as savages and the trade of the world would stagnate. Combinations should be regulated, not abolished. Rightful competition is not a fierce strife between persons to undersell each other, that the one enduring the longest may afterwards sell higher, but that which furnishes the public with the best products at the least cost. This is not done by selling below cost, but by diminishing in every way possible the cost of producing, manufacturing and transporting. The competition which does this, be it by an individual, a firm, a corporation, a trust or a combination, is a public benefactor. This kind of competition uses the best tools, discards the sickle for the cradle and the cradle for the reaper, abandons the flail for the threshing-machine and adopts the newest ideas wherever and whenever expenses can be lessened. To this end unrestricted combination and unrestricted competition must go hand-in-hand. A small profit on a large volume of business is better for the consumer than a large profit on a small business. The man who sells a million dollars’ worth of goods a year, at a profit of five per cent., will become rich, while he who sells only ten-thousand dollars’ worth can get a bare living. If the builder of a business of one-hundred-thousand dollars deserve praise, why should the builder of a business of millions be censured? Business that grows greater than people’s limited notions should not for that cause be fettered or suppressed. When business ceases to be local and has the world for its market, capital must be supplied to meet the increasing demand and combination is as essential as fresh air. Thus large establishments take the place of small ones and men acting in concert achieve what they would never attempt separately. The more perfect the power of association the greater the power of production and the larger the proportion of the product which falls to the laborer’s share. The magnitude of combinations must correspond with the magnitude of the business to be done, in order to secure the highest skill, to employ the latest devices, to pay the best wages, to invent new appliances, to improve facilities and to give the public a cheaper and finer product. This is as natural and legitimate as for water to run down hill or the fleet greyhound to distance the slow tortoise.

How has the Standard affected the consumer of petroleum-products? What has it done for the people who use illuminating oils? Has it advanced the price and impaired the quality? The early distillations of petroleum were unsatisfactory and often dangerous. The first refineries were exceedingly primitive and their processes simple. Much of the crude was wasted in refining, a business not financially successful as a rule until 1872, notwithstanding the high prices obtained. Methods of manufacture and transportation were expensive and inadequate. The product was of poor quality, emitting smoke and unpleasant odor and liable to explode on the slightest provocation. In 1870 a few persons, who had previously been partners in a refinery at Cleveland, organized the Standard Oil-Company of Ohio, with a capital of one-million dollars, increased subsequently to three-and-a-half millions. For years the history of refining had been mainly one of disaster and bankruptcy. A Standard Oil-Company had been organized at Pittsburg by other persons and was doing a large trade. The Cleveland Standard Refinery, the Pittsburg Standard Refinery, the Atlantic Refining Company of Philadelphia and Charles Pratt & Co. of New York were extensive concerns. Because of the hazardous nature and peculiar conditions of the refining industry, the need of improved methods and the manifold advantages of combination, they entered into an alliance for their mutual benefit. Refineries in the oil-regions had combined before, hence the association of these interests was not a novelty. The cost of transportation[transportation] and packages had been important factors in crippling the industry. Crude was barreled at the wells and hauled in wagons to the railroads prior to the system of transporting it by pipes laid under ground. Railroad-rates were excessive and irregular. Refiners who combined and could throw a large volume of business to any particular road secured favorable rates. The rebate-system was universal, not confined to oil alone, and possibly this fact had much to do with the combination of refiners afterwards known as the Standard Oil-Company.

Very naturally the Standard endeavored to secure the lowest transportation-rates. Quite as naturally railroad-managers, in their eagerness to secure the traffic, vied with each other in offering inducements to large shippers of petroleum. The Standard furnished, loaded and unloaded its own tank-cars, thereby eliminating barrels and materially cheapening the freight-service. This reduction of expense reduced the price of refined in the east to a figure which greatly increased the demand and gave oil-operations a healthy stimulus. Still more important was the introduction of improvements in refining, which yielded a larger percentage of illuminating-oil and converted the residue into merchantable products. Chemical and mechanical experts, employed by the combined companies to conduct experiments in this direction, aided in devising processes which revolutionized refining. The highest quality of burning-oil was obtained and nearly every particle of crude was utilized. Substances of commercial value took the place of the waste that formerly emptied into the streams, polluting the waters and the atmosphere. In this way the cost was so lessened that kerosene became the light of the nations. Consumers, whose dime now will buy as much as a dollar would before the “octopus” was heard of, are correspondingly happy.

Since consumers have fared so well, how about refiners outside the Standard? That smaller concerns were unable to compete with the Standard under such circumstances was no reason why the public should be deprived of the advantages resulting from concentration of capital and effort. Many of these, realizing that small capital is restricted to poor methods and dear production, either sold to the Standard or entered the combination. In not a few cases wide-awake refiners took stock for part of the price of their properties and engaged with the company, adding their talents and experience to the common fund for the benefit of all concerned. Others, not strong enough to have their cars and provide all the latest improvements, made such changes as they could afford to meet the requirements of the local trade, letting the larger ones attend to distant markets. Some continued right along and they are still on deck as independent refiners, always a respectable factor in the trade and never more active than to-day. Those who would neither improve, nor sell, nor combine, sitting down placidly and believing they would be bought out later on their own terms, were soon left far behind, as they deserved to be. Let it be said positively that the Standard, in negotiating for the purchase or combination of refineries, treated the owners liberally and sought to keep the best men in the business. A number who put up works to sell at exorbitant[exorbitant] prices, failing in their design, howled about “monopoly” and “freezing out” and tried to pass as martyrs. It is true hundreds of inferior refineries have been dismantled, not because they were frozen out by a crushing monopoly, but because they lacked requisite facilities. The refineries in vogue when the Standard was organized could not stay in business a week, if resurrected and revived. A team of pack-mules might as well try to compete with the New York Central Railroad as these early refineries to meet the requirements of the petroleum-trade at its present stage of perfection. They were “frozen out” just as stage-coaches were “frozen out” by the iron-horse or the sailing-vessel of our grandfathers’ time by the ocean-liner that crosses the Atlantic in six days. Every labor-saving invention and improvement in machinery throws worthy persons out of employment, but inventions and improvements do not stop for any such cause. Business is a question of profit and convenience, not a matter of sentiment. The manufacturer who, by an improved process, can save a fraction of a cent on the yard or pound or gallon of his output has an enormous advantage. Must he be deprived of it because other manufacturers cannot produce their wares as cheaply? Refining petroleum is no exception to the ordinary rule and a transformation in its methods and results was as inevitable as human progress and the changes of the seasons.

Over-production is justly chargeable with the low price of crude that wafted many producers into bankruptcy. Regardless of the inexorable laws of supply and demand, operators drilled in Bradford and Butler until forty-million barrels were above ground and the price fell to forty cents. Time and again the wisest producers sought to stem the tide by stopping the drill, which started with renewed energy after each brief respite. With the stocks bearing the market the dropping of crude to a price that meant ruin to owners of small wells was as certain as death and taxes. Gold-dollars would be as cheap as pebbles if they were as plentiful. Forty-million barrels of diamonds stored in South Africa would bring the glistening gems to the level of glass-beads. The Standard, through the National-Transit Company, erected thousands of tanks to husband the enormous surplus, which the world could not consume and would not have on any terms. Hosts of operators were kept out of the sheriff’s grasp by this provision for their relief, using their certificates as collateral during the period of extreme depression. The richest districts were drained at length, consumption increased and production declined, stocks were reduced and prices advanced. Then a number of oil-operators, foremost among whom were some of the men whom the Standard had carried over the grave crisis, thought the National-Transit was making too much money storing crude and tried to secure legislation that was hardly a shade removed from confiscation. The legislature refused to pass the bills, the company voluntarily reduced its charges and the agitation subsided. Thousands of producers sold or entered large companies, into whose hands a good share of the development has fallen, mainly because of the great expense of operating in deep territory and the wisdom of dividing the risk attendant upon seeking new fields. Operators who had to retire were “frozen out” by excessive drilling, nothing more and nothing less!

The highest efficiency in all fields of economical endeavor is obtained by the greatest degree of organization and specialization of effort. To attack large concerns as monopolies, simply because they represent millions of dollars under a single management, is as stupid and unjust as the narrow antagonism of ill-balanced capitalists to organized labor. If organized capital means better methods, greater facilities and improved processes, organized labor means better wages, greater recognition and improved industrial conditions. Hence both deserve to be encouraged and both should work in harmony. The Standard Oil-Company established agencies in different states for the sale of its products. As the business grew it organized corporations under the laws of these states, to carry on the industry under corporate agencies. Manufactories were located at the seaboard for the export-trade. It was easier and cheaper to pipe crude to the coast than to refine it at the sources of supply and ship the varied products. Thus the refining of export-oil was done at the seaboard, just as iron is manufactured at Pittsburg instead of at the ore-beds on Lake Superior. The company aimed to open markets for petroleum by reducing the cost of its transportation and manufacture and bettering its quality. It manufactured its own barrels, cans, paints, acids, glue and other materials, effecting a vast saving. On January second, 1882, the forty persons then associated in the Standard owned the entire capital of fifteen corporations and a part of the stock of a number of others. Nine of these forty controlled a majority of the stocks so held, and it was agreed on that date that all the stocks of the corporations should be placed in the hands of these nine as trustees. The trustees issued certificates showing the extent of each block of stock so surrendered, and agreed to conduct the business of the several corporations for the best interests of all concerned. This was the inception of the Standard Oil-Trust, the most abused and least understood business-organization in the history of the race.

The Standard Trust, which demagogues lay awake nights coining language to denounce, did not unite competing corporations. The corporations were contributory agencies to the same business, the stock owned by the individuals who had built up and carried on the business and held the voting power. These individuals had combined not to repress business, but to extend it legitimately, by allying various branches and various corporations. The organization of the Trust was designed to facilitate the business of these corporations by uniting them under the management[management] of one Board of Trustees. This object was business-like and laudable. It had no taint of a scheme to “corner” a necessity of life and elevate the price at the expense of the masses. On the contrary, it was calculated to enlarge the demand and supply it at the minimum of profit. For ten years the Standard Trust continued in existence, dissolving finally in 1892. During this term its stockholders increased from forty to two thousand. Many of the most skillful refiners and experienced producers joined the combination and were retained to manage their properties. Each corporation was managed as though independent of every other in the Trust, except that the rivalry to show the best record stimulated them to constant improvement. Whatever economy one devised was adopted by all. The business was most systematic and admirably managed in every detail, running as harmoniously as the different parts of a watch. Clerks, agents and employés who could save a few hundred dollars purchased Trust Certificates and thus became interested in the business and gains. If it is desirable to multiply the number who enjoy the profits of production, how can it be done better than through ownership of stock in industrial associations? The problem of co-operation and profit-sharing can be solved in this way. The Standard Trust was a real object-lesson in economics, which illustrated in the fullest measure the benefits of an association in business that affected consumers and producers of a great staple alike favorably.

Misrepresentation is as hard to eradicate as the Canada thistle or the English sparrow. Once fairly set going, it travels rapidly. “A lie will travel seven leagues while Truth is pulling on its boots.” The Standard is the target at which invidious terms and bitter invective have been hurled remorselessly, often through downright ignorance. Although reputable editors might be misled, in the hurry and strain of daily journalism, to give currency to deliberate falsehoods against corporations or capitalists, reasonable fairness might be expected from the author of a pretentious book. Henry D. Lloyd, of Chicago, last year published “Wealth Against Commonwealth,” an elaborate work, which is devoted mainly to an assault upon the Standard Oil-Company. The book, notable for its distortion of facts and suppression of all points in favor of the corporation it assails, caters to the worst elements of socialism. The author views everything through anti-combination glasses and, like the child with the bogie-man, sees the monopoly-spook in every successful aggregation of capital. He confounds the South-Improvement Company with the Standard and charges to the latter all the offenses supposed to lie at the door of the organization that died at its birth. One thrilling story is cited to show that the Standard robbed a poor widow. The narrative is well calculated to arouse public resentment and encourage a lynching-bee. It has been repeated times without number. Within the past month two Harrisburg ministers have referred to it as a startling evidence of the unscrupulous tyranny of the Standard millionaires. To make the case imposing Mr. Lloyd informs mankind that the husband of this widow had been “a prominent member of the Presbyterian church, president of a Young Men’s Christian Association and active in all religious and benevolent enterprises.” After his death she continued the business until she was finally coerced into selling it to the Trust at a ruinously low price—a mere fraction of its actual value. Mr. Lloyd states her hopeless despair as follows:

“Indignant with these thoughts and the massacred troop of hopes and ambitions that her brave heart had given birth to, she threw the letter—a letter she had received from the Standard regarding the sale of her property—into the fire, where it curled up into flames like those from which a Dives once begged for a drop of water. She never reappeared in the world of business, where she had found no chivalry to help a woman save her home, her husband’s life-work and her children.”

Is this harrowing statement true? The widow continued the business four years after her husband’s death. Competition increased, prices tumbled, the margin of profit was constantly narrowing, new appliances simplified refining-processes and the widow’s plant was no longer adapted to the business. She sold for sixty-thousand dollars, the Standard paying twice the sum for which a refinery better suited to the purpose could be constructed. Foolish friends afterwards told her she had sold too low and the widow wrote a severe letter to the president of the Standard. The company had bought the property to oblige her and at once offered it back. She declined to take it, or sixty-thousand dollars in Standard stock, evidently realizing that the refinery had lost its profit-earning capacity and that even the new management might not be able to make it pay. This will serve to illustrate the unfairness of “Wealth Against Commonwealth,” which has been widely quoted because of its presumed reliability and the high standing of the publishers. Yet this story of imaginary wrong has been worked into speeches, sermons and editorials of the fiercest type! In its treatment of the widow the Standard was truly magnanimous. Few business-men would consent to undo a transaction and have their labor for naught, simply because the other party had become dissatisfied. Possibly Mr. Lloyd would not be as generous if there was any profit in the transaction. If the Standard cut prices to ruin the widow and other competitors, would not oil have gone up again when they were disposed of? No such upward movement occurred. The widow disappeared. Many small refineries disappeared. Monopoly railroad-contracts, if such ever existed, have disappeared, but the price of refined-oil has been falling steadily for twenty years, declining from an average of nineteen cents a gallon in 1876 to five cents in 1895. The potent fact in this connection is that the Standard has continued to make profits with the declining price of oil. This conclusively demonstrates that the decline was due to economic improvements in the productive methods and not to a malicious cut to ruin a widow or anybody else, as Mr. Lloyd assumes. Otherwise a profit accompanying the fall in price would have been impossible and the Standard would have been sold out by the sheriff long years ago.

All the dealers in slander from Lloyd down to the chronic kicker who has attempted to make money by annoying the Standard have played the Rice case as a trump-card. According to their version, Mr. Rice was an angelic Vermonter, whose success inspired the Standard with devilish enmity and it determined to compass his ruin. Rice had operated at Pithole and at Macksburg and owned a small refinery at Marietta. It was alleged that the Cleveland & Marietta Railroad discriminated against him, doubling his freight-charge and giving the Standard a drawback on all the oil that went over the road. This was an iniquitous arrangement, entered into by the receiver of the road and cancelled by the Standard whenever a report of what was done reached New York. Mr. Rice had paid two-hundred-and-fifty dollars wrongfully, the money was at once refunded and Mr. Rice did not harass the company into buying his twenty-thousand dollar refinery for half a million. This will serve as an example of the dishonest misstatements that had wrought lots of good people up to white heat. The sins of the trusts may be very scarlet and very numerous, but economic literature should not pollute the sources of information and the foundations of public opinion.

An oft-repeated story is that the Standard owes its success to railway-discriminations. In proof of this the testimony of A. J. Cassatt is quoted. The testimony, published in a congressional investigation-report, shows that granting rebates was then the custom of railway-companies. Largely the same rebates were granted to all who shipped over the railways. Special to the Standard was payment of a joint freight-rate over pipe-line and railroad. A large rebate was given for one summer to all shippers by rail to equalize low rates by canal, of which many shippers took advantage. The only discriminatory rebate received by the Standard was ten per cent. for equalizing its large shipments over three trunk-lines, shipping exclusively by rail, even when water-rates were cheaper, furnishing terminal facilities and exempting the roads from loss by fire or accident. Courts in England and this country have very properly held that railways have the right to carry for less rates under such circumstances. Many wise men are of the same opinion. Subsequently it was developed that, while the short-lived agreement existed, the Standard’s strongest competitors were getting lower rates of freight than it was paying! Why do the Lloyd brand of critics ignore this pointed fact?

Another favorite story is that some officers of the Standard were convicted of burning a rival refinery. As all know who ever took the trouble to investigate, they were indicted for conspiracy to injure a rival. The counts in the indictment embraced the enticing away of an employé, the bringing of suits to prevent infringement of patents and the serious charge of inciting an employé to burn the works. When all the evidence on the part of the State was in, the court directed the discharge of every person connected with the Standard.[Standard.] There was not a scintilla of evidence against them. Two of the indicted persons were convicted of conspiracy, but they were not connected with the Standard,[Standard,] and never owned a share of Standard stock. The majority of the jurymen made affidavits that they found the convicted persons guilty only of enticing away an employé. The employé thus enticed had first been enticed from the works of the convicted parties and induced to reveal the secret processes by which a valuable lubricating-oil was manufactured. The best citizens of Rochester certified that the men convicted were men of unimpeachable honor, while the men who testified against them were quite the reverse. The whole affair was a wicked plot to blacken the character of men who stood and who still stand as high as any in Rochester. The court, satisfied of their innocence of any grave offence, inflicted merely a nominal fine.

Many of the attacks in a well-known work by a leading socialist against the Standard are made up of court-cases. The accusations are copied, the moving speeches of plaintiffs’ attorneys are printed; but all else is omitted, except that the case was decided in favor of the Standard. The inference is left to be drawn, or the charge is made openly, that the court was corrupt. Had the evidence of both sides been given, there would be no more room for such an inference than for a pretty maiden’s small brother in the parlor when her best young man is about to pop the momentous question. The rustic divine, weak in his spelling and strong in his opposition to the feminine style of coiling the hair in a huge knot, had better grounds for declaring the Scripture endorsed his view of the fashion. Reading the familiar passage, “let him that is on the housetop not come down to take anything out of his house,” he based his terrific sermon on this dismembered clause of the verse: “Top not, come down.”

One instance may be noted briefly. A Pennsylvania office-holder, whose unworthy motives an investigation exposed, charged that the Standard had defrauded the State of millions of taxes. The case was ably tried before an upright judge and the allegation found to be utterly baseless. Then the judge was charged with corruption. The case was taken to the highest court of the State, which affirmed the decision of the court below. At once the Supreme Court and the Attorney-General, who conducted the case for the State with signal ability, were accused of rank corruption. Perhaps the greatest surprise is that they were not charged with an attempt to get even with Moses by breaking all the commandments at one lick. An investigation committee, appointed by the Legislature, went fully into all the facts and allegations and reported that the case had been ably and fairly tried and correctly decided. It only remained to charge the legislative committee with corruption, which was done with great promptitude and emphasis. Yet every lawyer knows that the case of Pennsylvania against the Standard Oil-Company is a leading case on the subject of taxation of foreign corporations, establishing correct principles which, since its decision, the Supreme Court of the United States has affirmed.

In another case a respectable old man conceived the idea that he had solved the problem of continuous distillation of oil, an invention which would very much cheapen the product and be worth millions to refiners. The Standard aided him in his experiments until convinced they were unsuccessful. He became crazed on the subject and brought suit, alleging he had been prevented from demonstrating his discovery. The case was tried and the baseless suit dismissed, with as little injury to the poor man’s feelings as possible. This incident figures in histories written to fire the popular heart in the war against wealth, accompanied by pictures of a soulless corporation and an insane old man, calculated to draw hot tears and inflame public indignation to a dangerous pitch. Of course the readers are supposed to infer that the court was corrupted and justice grossly outraged. And so the changes are rung along the whole line; but the Standard, regardless of malevolent assaults and villainous distortions of facts, goes right on with its business of furnishing the world with the best light in the universe.

Russian competition, the extent and danger of which most people do not begin to appreciate, was met and overcome by sheer tenacity and superior generalship. The advantages of capable, courageous, intelligent concentration of the varied branches of a great industry were never manifested more strongly. Deprived of the invincible bulwark the Standard offered, the oil-producers of Pennsylvania, New York, West Virginia, Ohio and Indiana would have been utterly helpless. The Muscovite bear would have gobbled the trade of Europe and Asia, driving American oil from the foreign markets. Local consumption would not have exhausted two-thirds of the production, stocks of crude would have piled up and the price would have fallen proportionately. Instead of ranking with the busiest, happiest and most prosperous quarters of the universe, as they are to-day, the oil-regions of five states would have been irretrievably ruined, dragging down thousands of the brightest, manliest, cleverest fellows on God’s footstool! Instead of bringing a vast amount of gold from England, France and Germany for petroleum produced on American soil, refined by American workmen paid American wages and exported by an American company in American vessels, the trade would have been killed, the cash would have stayed across the waters and the country at large would have suffered incalculably! These are things to think of when some cheap agitator, with a private axe to grind, a mean spite to gratify or a selfish object to attain, raises a howl about monopoly and insists that the entire creation should “damn the Standard!”

When the history of this wonderful century is written it will tell how an American boy, born in New York sixty years ago, clerked in a country-store, kept a set of books, started a small oil-refinery at Cleveland and at forty was the head of the greatest business in the world. This is, in outline, the story of John D. Rockefeller’s successful career. Yesterday, as it were, a youth with nothing but integrity, industry and ambition for capital—a pretty good outfit, too—to-day he is one of the half-dozen richest men in Europe or America. Better than all else, integrity that is part and parcel of his moral nature, industry that finds life too fruitful to waste it idly and ambition to excel in good deeds as well as in business are his rich possession still. Gathering the largest fortune ever accumulated in twenty-five years has not blunted his fine sensibilities, dwarfed his intellectual growth, stifled his religious convictions or absorbed his whole being. Increasing wealth brought with it a deep sense of increasing responsibility and he is honored not so much for his millions as for the use he makes of them. Even in an age unrivalled for money-getting and money-giving, Mr. Rockefeller’s keen foresight, executive ability and wise liberality have been notably conspicuous. His faith in the future of petroleum and his desire to benefit humanity he has shown by his works. Believing in the power of united effort to develop an infant-industry, his genius devised the system of practical co-operation that developed into the Standard Oil-Trust, against which prejudice and ignorance have directed their fiercest fire. Believing in education, his magnificent endowment of Chicago University—eight to ten-million dollars—ranks him with the foremost contributors to the foundation of a seat of learning since schools and colleges began. Believing in fresh air for the masses, he donated Cleveland a public park and a million to equip it superbly. Believing in spiritual progress, he builds churches, helps weak congregations and aids in spreading the gospel everywhere. Believing in the claims of the poor, his charities amount to hundreds-of-thousands of dollars yearly, not to encourage pauperism and dependence, but to relieve genuine distress, diminish human suffering and put struggling men and women in the way to improve their condition. He has differed from nearly all other eminent public benefactors by giving freely, quietly and modestly during his active life, without seeking the popular applause his munificence could easily obtain.

Mr. Rockefeller is a strict Baptist, a regular attendant at church and prayer-meeting, a teacher in the Sunday-school and a staunch advocate of aggressive Christianity. His advancement to commanding wealth has not changed his ideas of duty and personal obligation. He realizes that the man who lives for himself alone is always little, no matter how big his bank-account. He and his family walk to service or ride in a street-car, with none of the trappings befitting the worship of Mammon rather than the glory of God. Earnest, positive and vigorous in his religion as in his business, he takes no stock in the dealer who has not stamina or the profession of faith that is too destitute of backbone to have a denominational preference. The president of the Standard Oil-Company impresses all who meet him with the idea of a forceful, decisive character. He looks people in the face, his eyes sparkle in conversation and he relishes a bright story or a clever narration. You feel that he can read you at a glance and that deception and evasion in his presence would be utterly futile. The flatterer and sycophant would make as little headway with him as the bunco-steerer or the green-goods vendor. His estimate of men is rarely at fault and to this quality some measure of the Standard’s success must be attributed. As if by instinct, its chief officer picked out men adapted to special lines of work—men who would not be misfits—and secured them for his company. The capacity and fidelity of the Standard corps are proverbial. Whenever Mr. Rockefeller wishes to enjoy a breathing-spell at his country-seat up the Hudson or on his Ohio farm, he leaves the business with perfect confidence, because his lieutenants are competent and trustworthy and the machine will run along smoothly under their watchful care. He has not accumulated his money by wrecking property, but by building up, by persistent improvement and by rigidly adhering to the policy of furnishing the best articles at the lowest price. Fair-minded people are beginning to understand something of the service rendered the public by the man who stands at the head of the petroleum-industry and more than any other is the founder of its commerce. He has invested in factories, railroads and mines, giving thousands employment, developing the resources of the country and adding to the wealth of the nation. He is human, therefore he sometimes errs; he is fallible, therefore he makes mistakes, but the world is learning that John D. Rockefeller has no superior in business and that the Standard Oil-Company is not an organized conspiracy to plunder producers or consumers of petroleum. It is time to dismiss the idea that ability to build up and maintain a large business is discreditable, that marvellous success is blameworthy and that business-achievements imply dishonesty.

William Rockefeller, who resembles his brother in business skill, is a leader in Standard affairs and has his office in the Broadway building. He was a member of the first Board of Trustees and bore a prominent part in organizing and developing the Oil-Trust. He is largely interested in railroads, belongs to the best clubs, likes good horses and contributes liberally to worthy objects. The Standard folks don’t lock up their money, loan it on mortgages at extravagant rates, spend it in Europe or try to get a gold squeeze on the government. They employ it in manufactures, in railways, in commerce and in enterprises that promote the general welfare.

From the days of the little refinery in Cleveland, the germ of the Standard, Henry M. Flagler and John D. Rockefeller have been closely associated in oil. Samuel Andrews, a practical refiner and for some time their partner, retired from the firm with a million dollars as his share of the business. The organization of the Standard Oil-Company of Cleveland was the first step towards the greater Standard Oil-Company of which all the world knows something. Its growth surprised even the projectors of the combination, who “builded better than they knew.” Mr. Flagler devotes his time largely to beneficent uses of his great wealth. He recognizes the duty of the possessor of property to keep it from waste, to render it productive and to increase it by proper methods. A vast tract of Florida swamp, yielding only malaria and shakes[shakes], he has converted into a region suited to human-beings, producing cotton, sugar and tropical fruits and affording comfortable subsistence to thousands of provident settlers. He has transformed St. Augustine from a faded antiquity into a modern town, with the magnificent Ponce de Leon Hotel, paved streets, elegant churches, public halls, and all conveniences, provided by this generous benefactor at a cost of many millions. He has constructed new railroads, improved lines built previously, opened interior counties to thrifty emigrants and performed a work of incalculable advantage to the New South. He and his family attend the West Presbyterian Church, of which the Rev. John R. Paxton, formerly of Harrisburg, was pastor until 1894. Mr. Flagler is of average height, slight build and erect figure. His hair is white, but time has not dealt harshly with the liberal citizen whose career presents so much to praise and emulate.

JOHN D. ARCHBOLD.

John D. Archbold, vice-president of the Standard Oil-Company and its youngest trustee during the entire existence of the Oil-Trust, has been actively connected with petroleum from his youth. No man is better known and better liked personally in the oil-regions. From his father, a zealous Methodist minister, and his good mother, one of the noble women to whom this country owes an infinite debt of gratitude, he inherited the qualities of head and heart that achieved success and gained multitudes of friends. A mere lad when the reports of golden opportunities attracted him from Ohio to the land of petroleum, he first engaged as a shipping-clerk for a Titusville refinery. His promptness, accuracy, and pleasant address won him favor and promotion. He soon learned the whole art of refining and his active mind discovered remedies for a number of defects. Adnah Neyhart induced him to take charge of his warehouse in New York City for the sale of refined-oil. His energy and rare tact increased the trade of the establishment steadily. Mr. Rockefeller met the bright young man and offered him a responsible position with the Standard. He was made president of the Acme Refining Company, then among the largest in the United States. He improved the quality of its products and was entrusted with the negotiations that brought many refiners into the combination. He had resided at Titusville, where he married the daughter of Major Mills, and was the principal representative of the Standard in the producing section. When the Trust was organized he removed to New York and supervised especially the refining-interest of the united corporations. His splendid executive talent, keen perception, tireless energy and honorable manliness were simply invaluable. Mr. Archbold is popular in society, has an ideal home, represents the Standard in the directory of different companies and merits the high esteem ungrudingly bestowed by his associates in business and his acquaintances everywhere.

CHARLES PRATT.

The personal traits and business-successes of Charles Pratt, an original member of the Standard Trust, were typical of American civilization. The son of poor parents in Massachusetts, where he was born in 1830, necessity compelled him to leave home at the early age of ten and seek work on a farm. He toiled three years for his board and a short term at school each winter. For his board and clothes he next worked in a Boston grocery. His first dollar in money, of which he always spoke with pride as having been made at the work-bench, he earned while learning the machinist-trade at Newton, in his native state. With the savings of his first year in the machine-shop he entered an academy, studying diligently twelve months and subsisting on a dollar a week. Then he entered a Boston paints-and-oil store, devoting his leisure hours to study and self-improvement. Coming to New York in 1851, he clerked in Appleton’s publishing-house and later in a paint-store. In 1854 he joined C. T. Reynolds and F. W. Devoe in a paints-and-oil establishment. Petroleum refining became important and the partners separated in 1867, Reynolds controlling the paints-department and Charles Pratt & Co. conducting the oil-branch of the business. The success of the latter firm as oil-refiners was extraordinary. Astral-oil was in demand everywhere. The works at Brooklyn, continuous and surprising as was their expansion, found it difficult to keep pace with the consumption. The firm entered into the association with the Cleveland, Pittsburg and Philadelphia companies that culminated in the Standard Oil-Trust, Mr. Pratt holding the relation of president of the Charles-Pratt Manufacturing Company. He lived in Brooklyn and died suddenly at sixty-three, an attack of heart-disease that prostrated him in his New-York office proving fatal in three hours. For thirty years he devoted much of his time to the philanthropies with which his name will be perpetually identified. He built and equipped Pratt Institute, a school of manual arts, at a cost of two-million dollars. He spent a half-million to erect the Astral Apartment Buildings, the revenue of which is secured to the Institute as part of its endowment. He devoted a half-million to the Adelphia Academy and a quarter-million towards the new edifice of Emanuel Baptist Church, of which he was a devout, generous member. His home-life was marked by gentleness and affection and he left his family an estate of fifteen to twenty-millions. Charles Pratt was a man of few words, alert, positive and unassuming, sometimes blunt in business, but always courteous, trustworthy and deservedly esteemed for liberality and energy.

Jabez A. Bostwick, a member of the Standard Trust from its inception, was born in New York State, spent his babyhood in Ohio, whither the family moved when he was ten years old, and died at sixty-two. His business-education began as clerk in a bank at Covington, Ky. There he first came into public notice as a cotton-broker, removing to New York in 1864 to conduct the same business on a larger scale. He secured interests in territory and oil-wells at Franklin in 1860, organized the firm of J. A. Bostwick & Co. and engaged extensively in refining. The firm prospered, bought immense quantities of crude and increased its refining capacity extensively. Mr. Bostwick was active in forming the Standard Oil-Trust and was its first treasurer. He severed his connection with his oil-partner, W. H. Tilford, who also entered the Standard Oil-Company. Seven years before his death he retired from the oil-business to accept the presidency of the New York & New England Railroad. He held the position six years and was succeeded by Austin Corbin. Injuries during a fire at his country-seat in Mamaroneck caused his death. The fire started in Frederick A. Constable’s stables, in rear of Mr. Bostwick’s. Unknown to his coachman, who was pushing behind it, Mr. Bostwick seized the whiffletrees of a carriage. Suddenly the vehicle swerved and the owner was violently jammed against the side of the stable. The coachman saw his peril and pulled the carriage back. Mr. Bostwick reeled forward, his face white with pain and sank moaning upon a buckboard. “Don’t leave me, Mr. Williams,” he whispered to his son’s tutor, “I fear I am badly hurt.” The sufferer was carried to the house, became unconscious and died in ten minutes, surrounded by members of his household and his neighbors. In 1866 Mr. Bostwick married a daughter of Ford Smith, a retired Cincinnati merchant, who removed to New York during the war. They had a son and two daughters. The daughters married and were in Europe when their father met his tragic fate. The widow and children inherited an estate of twelve millions. Mr. Bostwick was liberal with his wealth, giving largely without ostentation. Forrest College, in North Carolina, and the Fifth Avenue Baptist Church of New York were special recipients of his bounty, while his private benefactions amounted to many thousands yearly. He was strict almost to sternness in his dealings, preferring justice to sentiment in business.

These were the six trustees of the Standard Oil-Trust as first constituted of whom the world has heard and read most. Many of the two-thousand stock-holders of the Standard Oil-Company are widely known. Benjamin Brewster, president of the National-Transit Company, retired with an ample fortune. His successor, H. H. Rogers, the present head of the pipe-line system, is noted alike for business-sagacity and sensible benefactions. The great structure at No. 26 Broadway, the largest office-building in New York occupied by one concern, is the Standard headquarters. Each floor has one or more departments, managed by competent men and all under supervision of the company’s chief officials. From the basement, with its massive vaults and steam-heating plant, to the roof every inch is utilized by hundreds of book-keepers, accountants, stenographers, telegraphers, clerks and heads of divisions. Everything moves with the utmost precision and smoothness. President Rockefeller has his private offices on the eighth floor, next the spacious room in which the Executive Committee meets every day at noon for consultation. Mr. Flagler, Mr. Archbold and Mr. Rogers are located conveniently. The substantial character of the building and the business-like aspect of the departments impress visitors most favorably. There is an utter absence of gingerbread and cheap ornamentation, of confusion and perplexing hurry. The very air, the clicking of the telegraph-instruments, the noiseless motion of the elevators and the prompt dispatch of business indicate solidity, intelligence and perfect system. From that building the movements of a force of employés, numbering twice the United States army and scattered over both hemispheres, are directed. The sails of the Standard fleet whiten every sea, its products are marketed wherever men have learned the value of artificial light and its name is a universal synonym for the highest development of commercial enterprise in any age or country.

Business-men recall with a shudder the frightful stringency in 1893. All over the land industries drooped and withered and died. Raw material, even wool itself, had no market. Commerce languished, wages dwindled, railroads collapsed, factories suspended, and myriads of workmen lost their jobs. Merchants cut down expenses to the lowest notch, loans were called in at a terrible sacrifice, debts were compromised at ten to fifty cents on the dollar, the present was dark and the future gloomy. The balance of trade was heavily against the United States. Government securities tumbled and a steady drain of gold to Europe set in. The efforts of Congress, the Treasury Department and syndicates of bankers to stem the tide of disaster were on a par with Mrs. Partington’s attempt to sweep back the ocean with a sixpenny-broom. Amid the general demoralization, when the nation seemed hastening to positive ruin, one splendid enterprise alone extended its business, multiplied its resources and was largely instrumental in restoring public confidence.

The Standard Oil-Company, unrivalled in its equipment of brains and skill and capital, not merely breasted the storm successfully, but did more than all other agencies combined to avert widespread bankruptcy. Through the sagacity and foresight of this great corporation crude oil advanced fifty per cent., thereby doubling and trebling the prosperity of the producing sections, without a corresponding rise in refined. By this wise policy, which only men of nerve and genius could have carried out, home consumers were not taxed to benefit the oil-regions and the exports of petroleum-products swelled enormously. As the result, while the American demand increased constantly, millions upon millions of dollars flowed in from abroad, materially diminishing the European drainage of the yellow metal from this side of the Atlantic. The salutary, far-reaching effects of such management, by reviving faith and stimulating the flagging energies of the country, exerted an influence upon the common welfare words and figures cannot estimate. Petroleum preserved the thread of golden traffic with foreign nations.

SAMUEL C.T. DODD.

Hon. Samuel C.T. Dodd, one of the ablest lawyers Pennsylvania has produced, is general solicitor of the Standard and resides in New York. His father, the venerable Levi Dodd, established the first Sunday-school and was president of the second company that bored for oil at Franklin, the birthplace of his son in 1836. Young Samuel learned printing, graduated from Jefferson College in 1857, studied law with James K. Kerr and was admitted to the Venango Bar in August of 1859. His brilliant talents, conscientious application and legal acquirements quickly won him a leading place among the successful jurists of the state. During a practice of nearly twenty-two years in the courts of the district and commonwealth he stood in the front rank of his profession. He served with credit in the Constitutional Convention of 1873, framing some of its most important provisions. He traveled abroad and wrote descriptions of foreign lands so charming they might have come from Washington Irving and N. P. Willis. His selection by the Standard Oil-Trust in 1881 as its general solicitor was a marked recognition of his superior abilities. The position, one of the most prominent and responsible to which a lawyer can attain, demanded exceptional qualifications. How capably it has been filled the records of all legal matters concerning the Standard abundantly demonstrate. Mr. Dodd’s profound knowledge of corporation-law, eminent sense of justice, forensic skill, rare tact and clear brain have steered the great company safely and honorably through many suits involving grave questions of right and millions of money. The papers he prepared organizing the Standard Trust have been the models for all such documents since they left his desk. Terse logic, sound reasoning, pointed analysis and apposite expression distinguish his legal opinions and arguments, combining the vigor of a Damascus blade with the beauty of an epic. He is a delightful conversationalist, sincere friend and prudent counsellor, kindly, affable and thoroughly[thoroughly] upright. His home, brightened by a loving wife and devoted family, is singularly happy. Amid the cares and anxieties incident to professional life he has cultivated his fine literary-taste, writing magazine-articles and wooing the muses at intervals of leisure only too far apart. He has the honor of writing the first poem on petroleum that ever appeared in print. It was a rich parody on Byron’s “Isles of Greece” and was published in the spring of 1860, as follows:

The land of Grease! the land of Grease!

Where burning Oil is loved and sung;

Where flourish arts of sale and lease,

Where Rouseville rose and Tarville sprung;

Eternal summer gilds them not,

But oil-wells render dear each spot.

The ceaseless tap, tap of the tools,

The engine’s puff, the pump’s dull squeak,

The horsemen splashing through the pools

Of greasy mud along the Creek,

Are sounds which cannot be suppress’d

In these dear Ile-lands of the Bless’d.

Deep in the vale of Cherry Run

The Humboldt Works I went to see,

And sitting there an oil-cask on

I found that Grease was not yet free;

For busily a dirty carl

Was branding “bonded” on each barrel.

I sat upon the rocky brow

Which o’erlooks Franklin—far-famed town;

A hundred derricks stood below

And many a well of great renown;

I counted them at break of day,

And when the sun set where were they?

They were still there. But where art thou,

My dry-hole? On the river-shore

The engine stands all idle now,

The heavy auger beats no more;

And must a well of so great cost

Be given up and wholly lost?

’Tis awful when you bore a well

Down in the earth six-hundred feet,

To find that not a single smell

Comes up your anxious nose to greet;

For what is left the bored one here?

For Grease a wish; for Grease a tear!

Must I but wish for wells more bless’d?

Must I but weep? No, I must toil!

Earth, render back from out thy breast

A remnant of thy odorous oil!

If not three-hundred, grant but three

Precious barrels a day to me.

What! silent still? and silent all?

Ah no! the rushing of the gas

Sounds like a distant torrent’s fall

And answers, bore ahead, you ass,

A few feet more; you miss the stuff

Because you don’t go deep enough!

In vain! in vain! Pull up the tools!

Fill high the cup with lager-beer!

Leave oil-wells to the crazy fools

Who from the East are flocking here.

See at the first sight of the can

How hurries each red-shirted man!

Fill high the cup with lager-beer!

The maidens in their promenade

Towards my lease their footsteps steer

To see if yet my fortune’s made;

But sneers their pretty faces spoil

To find I have not yet struck oil.

Place me in Oil Creek’s rocky dell,

Though mud be deep and prices high;

There let me bore another well

And find petroleum or die.

No more I’ll work this dry-hole here;

Dash down that cup of lager-beer.

One of those few and rare occasions upon which John D. Rockefeller is prevailed upon to address an audience was last March in New York, at a social gathering of the Young Men’s Bible Class of the Fifth-Avenue Baptist-Church. Much that he said was extremely interesting. In laying down many excellent precepts he brought forth several lessons from the experiences of his early life. By references to his first ledger, as he called it, which was nothing more than a small paper-covered memorandum-book, he explained how he managed to save money even on a small salary. The little book contained the first items of his receipts and expenditures when he first began to earn money. To judge from the care with which he handled this reminder of his early struggles, Mr. Rockefeller was in earnest when he intimated that it would require a fortune to purchase it. His address, purely informal and conversational, was warmly applauded by his hearers and commended by the press. Its practical wisdom and the light it throws upon the early life of a most successful man entitle it to careful preservation. Mr. Rockefeller said, as reported by the New-York Tribune:

Let me say that it gives me a great deal of pleasure to be here to-night. Although I cannot make you a speech, I have brought with me to show you young men a little book—a book, I think, which may interest you. It is the first ledger I kept. I was trained in business affairs and how to keep a ledger. The practice of keeping a little personal ledger by young men just starting in business and earning money and requiring to learn its value is, I think, a good one. In the first struggle to get a footing—and if you feel as I did I am sorry for you, although I would not be without the memory of that struggle—I kept my accounts in this book, also some memoranda of little incidents that seemed to me important. In after-years I found that book and brought it to New York. It is more than forty-two years since I wrote what it contains. I call it Ledger A, and now I place the greatest value upon it. I have thought that it would be a little help to some of you young men to read one or two extracts from this ledger. [Mr. Rockefeller then produced from his pocket, carefully enveloped in paper-wrapping, the ledger to which he referred, and continued his remarks]:

When I found this book recently I thought it had no cover, because it had writing upon its back. I had utilized the cover to write upon. In those days I was economical, even with paper. When I read it through it brought to my mind remembrances of the care with which I used to record my little items of receipts and disbursements, matters which many of you young men are rather careless over. I believe it is a religious duty to get all the money you can fairly and honestly; to keep all you can and to give away all you can. I think that is a problem that you are all familiar with. I have told you before what pleasure this little book gives me. I dare not let you read it through, because my children, who have read it, say that I did not spell tooth-brush correctly. [Laughter.] But you know we have made great progress in our spelling and I suppose some changes have taken place since those days. [Renewed laughter.] I have not seen this book for twenty-five years. It does not look like a modern ledger, does it? But you could not get that book from me for all the modern ledgers in New York, nor for all that they would bring. It almost brings tears to my eyes when I read over this little book, and it fills me with a sense of gratitude that I cannot express. It shows largely what I received and what I paid out during my first years of business. It shows that from September twenty-sixth, 1855, until January first, 1856, I received $50. Out of that I paid my washerwoman and the lady I boarded with, and saved a little money to put away. I am not ashamed to read it over to you.

Among other things I find that I gave a cent to the Sunday-school every Sunday. That is not a very large sum, is it? But that was all the money I had to give for that particular object. I was also giving to several other religious objects. What I could afford to give I gave regularly, as I was taught to do, and it has been a pleasure to me all my life to do so.

I had a large increase in my revenue the next year. It went up to $25 a month. I began to be a capitalist and, had I regarded myself then as we regard capitalists now, I ought to have felt like a criminal because I had so much money. But we had no trusts or monopolies then. [Laughter.] I paid my own bills and always had a little something to give away, and the happiness of saving some. In fact, I am not so independent now as I was then. It is true I could not secure the most fashionable cut of clothing. I remember I bought mine then of a Jew. [Laughter.] He sold me clothing cheap, clothing such as I could pay for, and it was a great deal better than buying clothing that I could not pay for. I did not make any obligations I could not meet. I lived within my means, and my advice to you young men is to do just the same.

Dr. Faunce has just told you that all young men who come to this church are welcome and are never asked to whom they belong or where they came from. But there is just one question I would like to ask. I would like to know how many of you come from the city and how many come from the country. (Mr. Rockerfeller asked, as a personal favor, if all those present in the room who came from the country would raise their right hand. Fully three-quarters of the number did so.) Now, what a story that tells!

To my mind there is something unfortunate in being born in a city. You have not had the struggles in the city that we have had who were reared in the country. Don’t you notice how the men from the country keep crowding you out here—you who have wealthy fathers? These young men from the country are turning things around and are taking your city. We men from the country are willing to do more work. We were prepared by our experience to do hard work. I remember a little time ago I was in the country and saw a carpenter placing mineral-wool under the roof of a city servant’s bedroom, so that the man should not feel the heat of the summer or hear the patter of the rain-drops on the roof. I could not at the time help recalling the experience of my boyhood, when I slept under a roof. While I could not see the shingles, I remember I could peep through the cracks in them. It was pretty hot in the summer up there, too, I can tell you. But I think I was better for all that sort of experience, for having been reared in the country in that sturdy, practical way, and my heart is sometimes full of sadness as I contemplate the condition of the number of young fellows in this city whom I happen to know well.

They are in the embarrassing position that their fathers have great sums of money, and those boys have not a ghost of a chance to compete with you who come from the country and who want to do something in the world. You are in training now to shortly take the places of those young men. I suppose you cannot realize how many eyes are upon you and how great is the increasing interest that is taken in you. You may not think that, when you are lonely and find it difficult to get a footing. But it is true that, in a place like this, true interest is taken in you. When I left the school-house I came into a place similar to this, where I associated with people whom it was good to know. Nothing better could have happened to me.

I spoke just now of the struggle for success. What is success? Is it money? Some of you have all the money you need to provide for your wants. Who is the poorest man in the world? I tell you, the poorest man I know of is the man who has nothing but money—nothing else in the world upon which to devote his ambition and thought. That is the sort of man I consider to be the poorest in the world. Money is good if you know how to use it.

Now, let me leave this little word of counsel for you. Keep a little ledger, as I did. Write down in it what you receive, and do not be ashamed to write down what you pay away. See that you pay it away in such a manner that your father or mother may look over your book and see just what you did with your money. It will help you to save money, and that you ought to do. When I spoke of a poor man with money I spoke against the poverty of that man who has no affection for anything else, or thought for anything else but money. That kind of a man does not help his own character, nor does he build up the character of another.

Before I leave you I will read a few items from my ledger. I find in looking over it that I was saving money all this time, and in the course of a few years I had saved $1,000. Now, as to some of my expenses. I see that from November twenty-fourth, 1855, to April, 1856, I paid for clothing $9.09. I see also, here, another item which I am inclined to think is extravagant, because I remember I used to wear mittens. The item is a pair of fur-gloves, for which I paid $2.50. In the same period, I find I gave away $5.58. In one month I gave to foreign-missions ten cents; to the mite-society thirty cents, and there is also a contribution to the Five-Points Mission. I was not living then in New York, but I suppose I felt that it was in need of help, so I sent up twelve cents to the mission. Then to the venerable teacher of my class I gave thirty-five cents to make him a present. To the poor people of the church I gave ten cents at this time. In January and February following I gave ten cents more and a further ten cents to the foreign-missions. Those contributions, small as they were, brought me into direct contact with philanthropic work, and with the beneficial work and aims of religious institutions, and I have been helped thereby greatly all my life. It is a mistake for a man who wishes for happiness and to help others to wait until he has a fortune before giving to deserving objects. [Great applause.]

And this exemplary citizen, who in his youth and poverty formed the habit of systematic benevolence, who befriends the poor, who dispenses charity with a bountiful hand, who helps young men better their condition, who gives millions for education and religion, who believes in the justice of God and the rights of man, who has woven the raveled skeins of a weakened industry into the world’s grandest business-enterprise, assassins of character picture as a cold-blooded oppressor, a base conspirator, a “devourer of widows’ houses,” an abettor of larceny and instigator of arson! “Oh, Shame! where is thy blush?”

Although the Standard pays the highest wages in the world and has never had a serious strike in its grand army of forty-thousand men, not one cent of a reduction was ordered during the panic. No works stopped and no employés were turned adrift to beg or starve. On the contrary, improvements and additions were made continually, the force of workmen was augmented, cash was paid for everything bought, no claims remained unsettled and nobody had to wait an hour for money justly due. These are points for the toiling masses, whom prejudice against big corporations sometimes misleads, to understand and consider before accepting the creed that wealth and dishonor are synonymous, that each is the creature of the other and both are twin-links of the same sausage.

A WELL-SHOOTER.

The Oil-City Blizzard, itself as lively as a glycerine-explosion, in a spasm of dynamite-enthusiasm loaded up and fired off this eccentricity:

Pat Magnew was a shooter bold,

Who handled glycerine;

And though he had no printing-shop

He ran a magazine.

And while he had a level head,

And business plenty found,

’Most ev’ry job he undertook

He ran into the ground.

He never claimed expert to be,

But what he did was right,

And when he shot a well, you see,

He did it “out of sight.”

He seemed to like his daily toil,

Its dangers did not fear;

He’d help his patrons to find oil,

And then he’d disappear.

Sometimes he shot wells with a squib,

When at the proper level;

Sometimes when he had been to church,

He shot with a go-devil.

He always had a great tin-shell

Beside him on the seat,

Had horses good and drove like—well,

No moss grew on their feet.

And when he drove along the road,

And that was every day,

Wise people all, who knew his load,

Gave him the right of way.

His wife once said: “I greatly fear

That you will yet be blown

To atoms, if you don’t, my dear,

Let well enough alone.”

“Some day there’ll be a thunder-sound;

And scattered far and near,

O’er hill and dale and all around,

Will be my husband dear.”

Replied Magnew: “I call to mind—

His words are nowise sickly—

That Billy Shakespeare once remarked:

‘’Twere well it were done quickly.’

“And I’ll be blown,” continued Pat,

“If I didn’t want it known,

That I’d rather be by dynamite

Than by a woman blown.”

THE OLD YEAR DONE IN OIL.

Old Year! transported by fast freight,

With neither drawback nor rebate,

How odd it seems to quote thee “late!”

Old Year! since thou wert struck, alas!

What surface shows have men let pass—

They promised oil and yielded gas!

Old Year! test-wells of crude that smelt,

But had no sand like snows would melt.

Few always drill straight on the belt!

Old Year! thy option has expired,

Certificates have been retired

And royalty in full required.

Old Year! thy territory’s played,

Pipage and storage-charges paid,

Tanks emptied and delivery made.

Old Year! a twelvemonth pump’d thee dry,

Now tools and cable are laid by,

Engine and derrick idle lie.

Old Year! developments are o’er,

The paraffine has clogg’d each pore

And thou shalt operate no more.

Old Year! lease out and rig in dust,

Time on thy boiler, left to rust,

Writes the producer’s motto: “Bu’st!”

And when it comes our turn to be

Immediate shipment o’er life’s sea,

Old Year! we’ll put a call for thee!

THE CANINE’S DOOM.

When the Oil-City Derrick had its circus with the Allegheny-Valley Railroad it fell to my lot to write up most of the incidents of the conflict. Occasionally a bit of doggerel like this hit the popular fancy:

Moses had a great big dog,

His hair was black as jet,

And everywhere that Moses went

That pup was sure to get.

One day, upon the Valley Road

When Moses went to ride,

The faithful canine follow’d close

And sat down by his side.

But when the train to Scrubgrass got

The daily wreck occurr’d,

The cars cavorted down the bank

Without one warning word.

Sad was that hapless puppy’s fate—

So mangled, burn’d and drown’d,

Not a bologna could be made

From all the fragments found!

How the Price of Oil Affects the Producer.
When Oil is 70 Cents.
When Oil is $3.
When Oil is $5.

XIX.
JUST ODDS AND ENDS.

How Natural-Gas Played Its Part—Fire and Water Much in Evidence—Changes in Methods and Appliances—Deserted Towns—Peculiar Coincidences and Fatalities—Railroad Episodes—Reminiscences of Bygone Scenes—Practical Jokers—Sad Tragedies—Lights and Shadows Intermingle and the Curtain Falls Forever.

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“Variety’s the very spice of life.”—Cowper.

“Fuss and feather, wind and weather, varied items strung together.”—Oil City Derrick.

“Laugh when we must, be candid when we can.”—Pope.

“‘A picker-up of unconsidered trifles’

From many sources facts and fancies rifles.”—Anonymous.

“Every house should have a rag-bag and a general storeroom.”—Miss Parloa.

“A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men.”—Holmes.

“Let days pass on, nor count how many swell

The episode of life’s hack chronicle.”—Lytton.

“Fond memory brings the light of other days around me.”—Anonymous.

“Close up his eyes and draw the curtain close.”—Shakespeare.

“Fare thee well! and if forever, still forever fare thee well.”—Byron.

Hard coal and dry wood as good fuel may pass,

But can’t hold a candle to natural gas.—Original.

“Half light, half shadow, let my spirit sleep.”—Tennyson.

“Side by side may we stand at the same little door when all’s done.”—Owen Meredith.

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Natural-gas, the cleanest, slickest, handiest fuel that ever warmed a heart or a tenement, is the right bower of crude-petroleum. It is the one and only fuel that mines, transports and feeds itself, without digging every spoonful, screening lumps, carting, freighting and shoveling into the stove or furnace. Getting it does not imperil the limbs and lives of poor miners—the most overworked and underpaid class in Pennsylvania—in the damp and darkness of death-traps hundreds of feet beneath the surface of the ground. You drill a hole to the vital spot, lay a pipe from the well to the home or factory, turn a stop-cock to let out the vapor, touch off a match and there it is—the brightest, cleanest, steadiest, hottest fire on earth. Not a speck of dust, not an atom of smoke, not a particle of cinder, not a taint of sulphur, not a bit of ashes vexes your soul or tries your temper. There is no carrying of coal, no dumping of choked grates, no waiting for kindling to catch or green wood to burn, no scolding about sulky fires, no postponement of heat because the wind blows in the wrong direction. Blue Monday is robbed of all its terrors, the labor of housekeeping is lightened and husbands no longer object to starting the fire on cold mornings. A nice blaze may be let burn all night in winter and kept on tap in summer only when needed. It is lighted or extinguished as readily as the gas-jet in the parlor. It melts iron, fuses glass, illumines mills and streets, broils steaks to perfection and does away with many a fruitful source of family-broils. It saves wear and tear of muscle and disposition, lessens the production of domestic quarrels, adds to the pleasure and satisfaction of living and carries the spring-time of existence into the autumn of old age. Set in a dainty metal frame, with background of asbestos and mantel above, its glow is cheerful as the hickory-fire in the hearth. It gives us the ingle-nook modernized and improved, the chimney-corner brought down to date. It glides through eighty-thousand miles of pipes in Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Indiana and New York and employs a hundred-million dollars to supply it to people within reach of the bounteous reservoirs the kindly earth has treasured all through the centuries. If it be not a blessing to humanity, the fault lies with the folks and not with the stuff. The man who spouts gas is a nuisance, but the well that spouts gas is something to prize, to utilize and be thankful for. Visitors to the oil-region or towns near enough to enjoy the luxury, beholding the beauty and adaptability of natural-gas, may be pardoned for breaking the tenth commandment and coveting the fuel that is Nature’s legal-tender for the comfort and convenience of mankind.

The pretty town of Fredonia, in New York state, three miles from Lake Erie and forty-five south-west of Buffalo, enjoys the distinction of first using natural-gas for illuminating purposes. It is a beautiful place, famous for fine roads, fine scenery and fine vineyards. Canodonay Creek, a small but rapid stream, passes through it to the lake. Opinions vary as to the exact date when the gas was utilized, some authorities making it 1821, others 1824 and a few 1829. The best information fixes it at 1824, when workmen, in tearing down an old mill, observed bubbles on the water that proved to be inflammable. The hint was not lost. A company bored a hole one-inch-and-a-half in diameter into the limestone-rock. The gas left its regular channel, climbed the hole, lighted a new mill and was piped to a hundred houses in the village at a cost of one-fifty a year for each. The flame was large and strong and for years Fredonia was the only town in America lighted by “nature-gas.” A gasometer was constructed, which collected eighty-eight cubic feet in twelve hours. The inhabitants didn’t keep late hours. A mile nearer Lake Erie many gas-bubbles gamboled on the stream. Efforts to convey the gas to the light-house at Dunkirk failed, as it was only half the weight of air and would not descend the difference in elevation.

A light-house at Erie was lighted by natural-gas in 1831, “the Burning Spring,” a sheet of water through which the vapor bubbled, furnishing the supply. A tower erected over the spring held the gas that accumulated during the day and wooden-pipes conveyed it at night to the light-house.

Dr. Charles Oesterlin, a young German physician, sixty years ago unpacked his pill-boxes and hung out his little sign at Findlay, in Northwestern Ohio. He was an expert geologist and mineralogist, but the flat Black Swamp afforded poor opportunities to study the rocks underlying the limestone. The young physician detected the odor of sulphuretted hydrogen in the town and along the banks of the Blanchard River. It puzzled him to guess the source of the odor. He spoke to the farmers, who smelled the stuff, knew nothing and cared less about its origin or properties. The Doctor searched for a sulphur-spring. In October of 1836 the solution came. A farmer was digging a well three miles from town. A spring was tapped and the water “boiled,” as the diggers expressed it. Debating what to do, they were called to supper, returned after dark and lighted a torch to examine the well. Holding the torch over the well an explosion startled them and a flame ascended that lasted for days. Nobody was seriously hurt, but all thought the devil had a finger in the pie. Dr. Oesterlin connected the incident with the odor and it confirmed his theory of a gas that would burn and might serve as fuel. At a stone-quarry he made a cone of mud over a fissure, covered it with a bucket and applied a light. When the Doctor picked himself up in an adjoining corn-field the bucket was still sailing north towards Toledo. Daniel Foster, another Findlay farmer, dug a well in 1838. Gas issued from the hole before water was seen. Foster had a practical mind. He inverted a copper-kettle over the hole, rigged a wooden pump-stock beneath the kettle, plastered around it with clay, joined more pump-stocks together, stuck an old gun-barrel in the end of the last one, lighted the gas in his kitchen and by means of the flame boiled water, roasted coffee and illumined the apartment. Then Dr. Oesterlin declared Findlay was right over a vast caldron of gas. People laughed at him, adhered to tallow-dips and positively refused to swallow such a dose. Petroleum-developments in Pennsylvania fortified his faith and he sought to interest the public in a company to “bore a hole twenty inches across.” Sinners in Noah’s day were less impervious. Business-men scoffed and declined to subscribe for stock. He tried again in 1864 and 1867 with the same result. A company was organized to manufacture coal-gas. He talked of the absurdity of making gas at Findlay as equal to setting up a manufactory of air or water. It was no use. At last the triumph of natural-gas in Pennsylvania was manifested too strongly for the obtuse Findlayites to ignore it. In 1884 the Doctor managed to enlist four-thousand dollars of capital and start a well in a grove a mile east of town, where the odor was pungent and gas flowing through a tile-pipe he planted in the ground burned for weeks. He watched the progress of the work with feverish anxiety. The hopes of fifty long years were to be grandly realized or dashed forever. Sleepless nights succeeded restless days as the veteran’s heart-beats kept time with the rhythmic churning of the drill. At five, six and seven-hundred feet morsels of gas quickened the expectations of success. At eleven-hundred feet, in the Trenton limestone, on November tenth, 1884, gas burst forth with terrific force. The well was drilled sixteen-hundred feet and encountered salt-water. It was plugged below the gas-vein, the gas was lighted, an immense flame shot up and for months a quarter-million feet a day burned in the open air. Findlay grew from five-thousand to fifteen-thousand population and manufacturing flourished. Dr. Oesterlin, slight of frame, infirm with age, his thin locks and beard white as snow, had waited fifty years for his vindication. It came when he had reached four-score, full, complete and overwhelming. He bore his honors meekly, lived to round out eighty-two and nowhere is it recorded that he even once yielded to the temptation of remarking: “I told you so!”

DR. CHAS. OESTERLIN SAMUEL SPEECHLY

Gas was used as fuel at pumping-wells on Oil Creek in 1862. It was first collected in “gas-barrels,” one pipe leading from the well to the receptacle and another from the barrel to the boiler. Many fires originated from the flame, when the pressure of gas was small, running back to the barrel and exploding it. A pumper at Rouseville, seated on a gas-barrel at such a moment, went skyward and may be ascending yet, as he never returned for his week’s wages. D. G. Stillwell, better known as “Buffalo Joe,” drilled a gasser in 1867 at Oil City, on the site of the Greenfield Lumber-Company’s office. He piped the gas to several houses, but the danger from constant changes of pressure led to its abandonment. This is the first authentic record of the use of “the essence of Sheol” for cooking food and heating dwellings. In 1883 the Oil-City Fuel-Supply Company laid a six-inch gas-line to wells at McPherson’s Corners, Pinegrove township, eight miles distant. The gas was produced from the second and third sands, at a depth of nine to ten-hundred feet and a pressure not exceeding two-hundred pounds to the square inch. In 1885 the late Samuel Speechly started a well on his farm near McPherson’s, intending to drill three-thousand feet in search of the Bradford sand. Oil-bearing strata dip twenty feet to the mile southward and Speechly believed the northern rocks existed far beneath the ordinary third-sand in Venango county. On April thirteenth, at nineteen-hundred feet, the drill penetrated what has since been called the “Speechly sand,” the most extraordinary and valuable fuel-sand as yet discovered. In this sand at three feet pressure[pressure] of gas became entirely too great to keep jerking the tools. The gas company leased the well and turned it into the line without being able to gauge it on account of the high volume. Speechly commenced a second well and the company, having previously laid a new ten-inch line to Oil City, constructed branches to Franklin and Titusville. The second well proved to be the largest to the present time, excepting the Big Moses in West Virginia. For a time it could not be controlled. The roar of the escaping gas could be heard for miles. Eventually it was tubed and the pressure was six-hundred pounds. Many wells in other fields have had greater pressure, but the large volume of the Speechly well made it a wonder. One day all the other wells connected with the main-line were discontinued from the line temporarily and the Jumbo turned in. The flow was sufficient to supply Oil City, Titusville and Franklin with all the gas required. Hundreds of wells have been drilled to the Speechly sand and the field now reaches from the southern part of Rockland township, Venango county, to Tionesta township, Forest county. It is about thirty miles long, with an average width of three miles, while the sand ranges in thickness from fifty to one-hundred feet. The pressure gradually diminishes. It requires constant drilling to keep up the supply, the Oil-City Company alone having about four-hundred wells.

Samuel Speechly died on Sunday night, January ninth, 1893, aged sixty-one, at his home in the gas-district bearing his name. His life was notably eventful, adventurous and fortunate. Born in England in 1832, at fourteen he began to learn locomotive-building and marine-engineering at Newcastle-on-Tyne. At twenty Robert Stephenson & Co. sent him to China to join a steamer engaged in the opium-trade. In 1855 he entered the service of the Chinese government to suppress piracy on the coast, and in 1857 started at Hong Kong the first engineering-business in the vast empire ruled by the pig-tailed Brother of the Sun. He visited America in 1872 and lived in Philadelphia. Wanting plenty of room, he went to Northwestern Pennsylvania, resided a year in Cranberry township, concluded to stay and settled on what subsequently became the famous Speechly farm. The well he drilled in 1885 had neither oil nor gas in the usual formations. Veteran operators advised him to abandon it, but Speechly entertained a notion of his own and the world knows the sequel. He was married in China in 1864 to Miss Margaret Galbraith, who survives him, with two daughters, Emily, born in China, and Adelaide, born in America. His widow and children occupy the old home on the farm.

Bishop Potter, stopping at Narrowsburg in 1854, noticed jets of gas exuding from the bank of the Delaware river at Dingman’s Ferry, forty miles above Easton, and published an article on the subject. A company in 1860 bored three wells, but the result was not encouraging, as politicians are the most gaseous bodies Northampton county has produced for thirty years. A gas-well at Erie attracted considerable attention in 1860 and was followed by a number more, which from a shallow depth yielded fuel to run several factories. East Liverpool, Ohio, put the product to practical use early in the seventies as a substitute for coal. The first well, drilled in 1860, caught fire and destroyed the rig. Geologists say natural-gas is the disembodied spirits of plants that grew in the sunshine of ages long before the foundations of the buried coal-measures were laid, so long ago shut up and forsaken by the light-hearted sun that it is a wonder they hadn’t forgotten their former affinity. But they hadn’t. They rushed out to the devouring kiss of their old flame at the first tap of the drill on their prison-house, like a foolish girl at the return of a fickle lover. They found Old Sol flirting with their younger sister, playing sweet to a lot of new vegetation. Before they had time to form a sewing-circle and resolve that all the male sex are horrid, they took fire with indignation at his fickleness and the tool-dresser’s forge and burst with a tremendous explosion. The fire was quenched and gas poured out of the pioneer-well fifteen years. Street-lamps were left burning all day, which was cheaper than to bother putting them out, and East Liverpool prospered as a hive of the pottery-industry. The celebrated well at East Sandy, Venango county, which gave birth to Gas City in 1869, burned a year with a roar audible three miles. Becoming partially exhausted, the fire was put out and the product was used for fuel at numerous wells. The famous Newton well, on the A. H. Nelson farm, was struck in May of 1872 and piped in August to Titusville, five miles south west. Its half-million cubic-feet per day supplied three-hundred firms and families with light and fuel. Henry Hinckley and A. R. Williams organized the company, one of the very first in Pennsylvania to utilize natural-gas on an extensive scale. The same year gas from the Lambing well was piped to Fairview and Petrolia. The Waugh well at Millerstown and the Berlin at Thompson’s Corners, Butler county, were the next big gassers. The great Delamater No. 2, near St. Joe, finished in 1874, for months was the biggest gas-well in the world. Its output was conveyed to the rolling-mills at Sharpsburg. The first gas-well in Butler county is credited to John Criswell, of Newcastle, who drilled for salt-water in 1840 near Centreville, struck a vein of the vapor at seven-hundred feet and fired it to heat his evaporating-pans.

At Leechburg and Apollo natural-gas has been used in puddling-furnaces since 1872. It will supply the huge mills at Vandergrift, the model town that is to be the county-seat of Vandergrift county, which the next Legislature will set off from Armstrong, Westmoreland and contiguous districts. It was the fuel of the cutlery-works at Beaver Falls from 1876 until the wells ceased producing in 1884. In 1875 Spang & Chalfant piped it from Butler to their mills in the suburbs of Pittsburg. Though Pittsburgers knew of its value in the oil-region for twenty years, they regarded it as a freak and not calculated to affect their interests favorably. Iron manufactured by its means was of superior quality, owing to the absence of sulphur and the intensity of the heat. In 1877 the Haymaker well opened the Murraysville gas-field, but that immense storehouse of potential energy lay dormant until Pew & Emerson piped the product to Pittsburg. In June of 1884 George Westinghouse, inventor of the air-brake and of various electric-appliances, struck a gas-well near his residence in Pittsburg. From that date the development was enormous. Wells producing from two to twenty-million cubic-feet a day were in order. The Philadelphia Company—Westinghouse was its president—alone tied up forty-thousand acres of gas-territory, drilled hundreds of wells and laid thousands of miles of pipes. Hon. James M. Guffey headed big corporations that supplied Wheeling, a portion of Pittsburg and dozens of smaller towns. The coal displacement in Pittsburg equaled thirty-thousand tons daily. Twenty and twenty-four-inch mains intersected the city. Iron, brass, steel and metal-working establishments consumed it. Glass-factories turned out by its aid plate-glass such as mankind had never seen before. The flaming breath of the new demon transformed the appearance and revolutionized the iron-manufacture of the Birmingham of America. The Smoky City was a misnomer. Soot and dirt and smoke and cinders disappeared. People washed their faces, men wore “biled shirts” and girls dressed in white. The touch of a fairy-wand could not have made a more resplendent change. Think of green grass, emerald hues, clear sunlight and clean walls in Pittsburg! At first timid folks feared to introduce it, because the pressure could not be regulated. All this has been remedied. The roaring, hissing monster that almost bursts the gauge at the well is tamed and subjugated to the meekness of a dove by valves and gasometers, which can reduce the pressure to a single ounce. Queer, isn’t it, that Pittsburg should be metamorphosed by natural-gas—the fires of hell as it were—into a city of delightful homes, an industrial paradise?

Gas-wells of high pressure were found in Ohio by thousands, as though striving to vie with the oil-wells which, beginning at Mecca in 1860 and ending at Lima, stocked up twenty-million barrels of crude. Over three-hundred companies were chartered in a year to supply every town from Cincinnati to Ashtabula. Natural-gas raged and blistered and for a term was the genuine “Ohio idea.” For thirty years wells at New Cumberland, West Virginia, have furnished fuel to burn brick. The same state has the biggest gassers in existence and lines to important cities are projected. If “the mountain won’t come to Mohammed, Mohammed must go to the mountain.” Indiana has gas and oil in four counties, with Gas City as headquarters and lots of fuel for houses and factories in Indianapolis and the chief cities. The Hoosiers have carried out the principle of Edward Eggleston’s Mrs. Means: “When you’re a-gittin’ git plenty, I say.” Illinois had a morsel of oil and gas in wells at Litchfield. Kentucky and Tennessee are blessed with “a genteel competence” and Kansas has not escaped. Michigan has gas-wells at Port Huron and St. Paul once boasted a company capitalized at a half-million. Buffalo inhaled its first whiff of natural-gas, piped from wells in McKean county, on December first, 1886. Youngstown was initiated next day, from wells in Venango. A Mormon company bored wells at Salt Lake, but polygamy was not supplanted by any odor more unsavory. In Canada gas is abundant and Robert Ferguson, now a well-to-do farmer near Port Sarnia, first turned it into an engine-cylinder as a joke on the engineer at the pump-station in Enniskillen township. Steam was low, the engineer was absent, Ferguson cut the pipe leading from the boiler, connected it with one from a gas-well near-by, opened the throttle and, to his astonishment, found the pressure greater than steam. Natural-gas, a gift worthy of the immortal gods, worthy of the admiration of Vulcan, worthy of the praise of poets and historians, the agent of progress and saver of labor, is not a trifle to be brushed off like a fly or dismissed with a contemptuous sneer.

Pittsburg iron-works and rolling-mills received natural-gas at about two-thirds the cost of coal. The coal needed to produce a ton of metal cost three dollars, the gas that did the same service cost one-ninety. Besides this important saving, the expense of handling the fuel, hauling away cinders and waiting for furnaces to heat or cool was avoided. Gas-heat was uniform, stronger, more satisfactory, could be regulated to any temperature, turned on at full head or shut off instantly. Thus Pittsburg possessed advantages that boomed its manufactories immensely and obliged many competitors less favored to retire. In this way the anomaly of freezing out men by the use of greater, cheaper heat was presented.

On March seventeenth, 1886, at Pittsburg, Milton Fisher, of Columbus, was the first person to be incinerated in a natural-gas crematory. In fifty minutes the body was reduced to a handful of white powder. The friends of the deceased pronounced the operation a success, but Fisher was not in shape to express his opinion.

A singular accident occurred near Hickory, Washington county, on the night of December fourth, 1886. Alfred Crocker, an employé of the Chartiers Gas-Company, had been at the tanks on the McKnight farm and was going toward the well. The connecting-pipe between the well and tank burst with terrible force, striking Crocker on the left leg, blowing the foot and ankle completely off and injuring him about the body. The explosion hurled the large gas-tank a hundred feet. The young man died next morning.

The steam tow-boat Iron City once grounded near the head of Herr’s Island, above Pittsburg. The stern swung around and caught on a pipe conveying natural-gas across the Allegheny river. In trying to back the vessel off the pipe broke, the escaping gas filled the hold and caught fire from the furnace. An explosion split the boat from stem to stern, blew off the deck and blew the crew into the river. The boat burned to the water’s edge.

Near Halsey, in the Kane field, James Bowser was standing on a gas-tank, while a workman was endeavoring to dislodge an obstruction in the pipe leading from the well. The removal of the obstruction caused the pent-up gas to rush into the tank with such force that the receptacle exploded, hurling Bowser high in the air. He alighted directly in front of the heavy volume of gas escaping through the broken pipe. Before he could be rescued he was denuded of all clothing, except one boot. His clothing was torn off by the force of the gas and his injuries were serious.

Workmen laying pipe to connect with the main at Grapeville were badly flustered one frosty morning. By mistake the gas was turned on, rushing from the open end with great force. It ploughed up the earth and pebbles and ignited, the flinty stones producing a spark that set the whole thing in a blaze. Gas-wells yield liberally at Grapeville, supplying the glass-works at Jeannette and houses at Johnstown, the farthest point east to which the vapor-fuel has been piped.

J. S. Booker, an Ohio man, claimed to spot gas. His particular virtue lay in the muscles at the back of the neck, which rise up and irritate him in the presence of natural-gas. This is ahead of rheumatism as a rain-indicator. Booker’s own story is that an attack of asthma left him in a sensitive state, so that when he passes over a vein of gas the electricity runs through his legs, up his spine and knots the muscles of the neck. The story deserves credit for its rare simplicity. With the whole realm of fiction at his command, Booker chose only a few simple details and was content to pass current as a sort of human witch-hazel.

At Economy, where a hundred stand-pipes for natural-gas illuminate the streets, bugs and fruit-vermin were slaughtered wholesale. In the mornings there would be a fine carpet of bugs around every post. Chickens and turkeys would have a feast and a foot-race from the roosts to see which would get to the already-cooked breakfast first. The trees came out in bloom earlier and healthier than formerly, because the vermin were destroyed and the frosts kept from settling by the gas-lights, which burn constantly. As a promoter of vegetation natural-gas beats General Pleasanton’s blue-glass out of sight.

Samuel Randall, the Democratic statesman, visited the gas-wells at Murraysville with Hon. J. M. Guffey. From a safe distance the visitor threw a Roman candle at a huge column of vapor, which blazed quicker than a church-scandal, to Mr. Randall’s great delight. President and Mrs. Cleveland were afforded a similar treat by Mr. Guffey. The chivalrous host chartered a train and had a big well fired for the distinguished visitors. The lady of the White House was in ecstacies and the President evidently thought the novel exhibition knocked duck-shooting silly. Could a mind-reader have X-rayed his thinking-department it would likely have assumed this form: “Mr. Guffey, you have a tremendous body of gas here, but I have Congress on my hands!”

Eli Perkins lectured at St. Petersburg one night and next day rode with me through part of the district. He wanted points regarding natural-gas and smilingly jotted down a lot of Munchausenisms current in the oil-region. A week later he sent me a marked copy of the New-York Sun, with columns of delicious romance concerning gas-wells. Eli was no slouch at drawing the long-bow, but he fairly surpassed himself, Jules Verne and Rider Haggard on this occasion. His vivid stories of tools hurled by gas a thousand feet, of derricks lifted up bodily, of men tossed to the clouds and picturesque adventures generally were marvels of smooth, easy, fascinating exaggeration. Perhaps “if you see it in the Sun it’s so,” but not when Eli Perkins is the chronicler and natural-gas the subject.

“The Fredonia Gas-Light and Water-Works Company,” which obtained a special charter in 1856, was undoubtedly the first natural-gas company in the world. Its object was, “by boring down through the slate-rock and sinking wells to a sufficient depth to penetrate the manufactories of nature, and thus collect from her laboratories the natural-gas and purify it, to furnish the citizens with good cheap light.” The tiny stream of gas first utilized at the mill yielded its mite forty years. When Lafayette remained a night at Fredonia in 1824, on his triumphal visit to the United States, “the village-inn was lighted with gas that came from the ground.” The illustrious Frenchman saw nothing in his travels that interested and delighted him more than this novel illumination.

Col. J. A. Barrett, for many years a citizen of Illinois and law-partner of Abraham Lincoln, in 1886 removed to a tract of five-thousand acres on Tug Fork, near the quiet hamlet of Warfield. Gas issued from the soil and tradition says George Washington fired the subtle vapor at Burning Spring while surveying in West Virginia before the Revolution. Captain A. Allen, who pioneered the oil-business on Little Kanawha, leased the tract from Col. Barrett and struck a vast reservoir of gas at two-thousand feet.

John G. Saxe once lectured at Pithole and was so pleased with the people and place that he donated twenty-five dollars to the charity-fund and wrote columns of descriptive matter to a Boston newspaper. “If I were not Alexander I would be Diogenes,” said the Macedonian conqueror. Similarly Henry Ward Beecher remarked, when he visited Oil City to lecture, “If I were not pastor of Plymouth church I would be pastor of an Oil-City church.” The train conveying Dom Pedro, Emperor of Brazil, through the oil-regions stopped at Foxburg to afford the imperial guest an opportunity to see an oil-well torpedoed. He watched the filling of the shell with manifest interest, dropped the weight after the torpedo had been lowered and clapped his hands when a column of oil rose in the air. An irreverent spectator whispered: “This beats playing pedro.”

Daniel Fisher, ex-mayor of Oil City and chief of the fire-department, donned a new suit one day when oil-tanks abounded in the Third Ward. Hearing a cry of distress, he mounted a tank and saw a man lying on the bottom, in a foot of thick oil. He dropped through the hatchway, pulled up the victim of gas and with great difficulty dragged him up the small ladder into the fresh air. Of course, the new clothes were spoiled beyond hope of redemption. The man revived, said his name was Green, that he earned a living by cleaning out tank-bottoms and was thus employed when overcome by gas. Next day Fisher met Green, who thanked him again for saving his life, borrowed ten dollars and never repaid the loan or offered to set up a new suit of clothes.

“Brudders an’ sistern,” ejaculated a colored preacher, “ef we knowed how much de good Lawd knows about us it wud skeer us mos’ to deff.” A Franklin preacher once seemed to forget that the Lord was posted concerning earthly affairs, as he prayed thirty-six minutes at the exercises on Memorial Day. The sun beat down upon the bare heads of the assembled multitude, but the divine prayed right along from Plymouth Rock to the close of the war. Col. J. S. Myers, the veteran lawyer, presided. Great drops of perspiration rolled down his face, but he was like the henpecked husband who couldn’t get away and had to grin and bear it. He summed up the situation in a sentence: “I think ministers ought to take it for granted that the Almighty knows enough American history to get along nicely without having it prayed at Him by the hour!”

SCENE AT OIL CITY AFTER THE DISASTER ON JUNE 5, 1892.

Fire and water have scourged the oil-regions sorely. A flood in March of 1865 submerged Oil City, floated off hundreds of oil-tanks and small buildings and did damage estimated at four-millions of dollars. Fire in May of 1866 wiped out half the town, the loss footing up a million dollars. The most appalling disaster occurred on Sunday, June fifth, 1892. Heavy rains raised Oil Creek to such a height that mill-dams at Spartansburg and Riceville gave way, precipitating a vast mass of water upon Titusville during Saturday night. With a roar like thunder it struck the town. Sleepers were awakened by the resistless tide and drowned. Refineries and tanks of oil caught fire and covered acres of the watery waste with flames. Helpless men, women and children tottered and tumbled and disappeared, the death-roll exceeding fifty. The two elements seemed to strive which could work the greater destruction. Above Oil City a huge tank of benzine was undermined and upset on Friday morning. The combustible stuff floated on the creek, which had risen four feet over the floors of houses on the flats. The boiler-fire at a well near the Lake-Shore tunnel ignited the cloud of benzine. An explosion followed such as mortal eyes and ears have seldom seen and heard. The report shook the city to its foundations. A solid sheet of flame rose hundreds of feet and enveloped the flats in its fatal embrace. Houses charred and blazed at its deadly touch and fifty persons perished horribly. The sickening scene reminded me of the Johnstown carnage in 1889, with its miles of flooded ruins and dreadful blaze at the railroad-bridge. Whole families were blotted out. Edwin Mills, his wife and their five children died together. Heroic rescues and marvelous escapes were frequent. John Halladay Gordon saved forty people in his boat, rowing it amid the angry flames and swirling waters at imminent risk. The recital of brave deeds and thrilling experiences would fill a volume. That memorable Sunday was the saddest day Oil City and Titusville ever witnessed. The awful grandeur of the spectacle at both places has had no parallel.

Sweeping into the yards of a refinery at the upper end of Titusville, the water tore open a tank containing five-thousand gallons of gasoline. Farther down an oil-tank and a gasoline-tank were rent in twain. Water covered the streets and shut people in their houses. The gas-works and the electric-plant were submerged and the city was in darkness. At midnight a curious mist lay thick and dense and white for a few feet above the water. It was the gasoline vapor, a cartridge a half-mile long, a quarter-mile wide and two yards thick, with a coating of oil beneath, waiting to be fired. One arm of the mist reached into the open furnaces of the Crescent Works and touched the live coals on the grate. There was a flash as if the heavens had been split asunder. Then the explosion came and death and havoc reigned. And the horror was repeated at Oil City, until people wondered if the Day of Judgment could be more terrifying. The infinite pity and sadness of it all!

The burning of the Acme Refinery at Titusville, on June eleventh, 1886, entailed a loss of six-hundred-thousand dollars. It caught from a tank lightning had struck. By great efforts the railroad-bridge and the Octave Refinery were saved. The fire raged three days and nights, and the departments from Warren, Corry and Oil[Oil] City were called to render assistance. Hardly a town in the oil-regions has been unharmed by fire or flood, while many have been ravaged by both.

RUINS OF THE ACME REFINERY, TITUSVILLE, AFTER THE FIRE ON JUNE 1, 1880.

The fire that desolated St. Petersburg started in Fred Hepp’s beer-saloon. Hepp had a sign representing a man attempting to lift a schooner of lager as big as himself and remarking, “Oxcuse me ov you bleese.” The fire “oxcused” him from further exertion. Two destructive conflagrations almost eliminated Parker from the face of the earth. Karns City experienced three fiery visitations. In 1874 sixty-four buildings in the heart of town went up in smoke. Sixteen followed in September, 1876, the post-office and two largest stores figuring in the list. On March fifth, 1877, Mrs. F. E. Bateman, three children and a guest perished in the Bateman House. Bateman, one son and one guest were caught in the flames and burned fatally, dying in a few hours. Burning coals adhering to a chunk of a bursting boiler, on Cherry Run, near the Reed well, plunged into a tank of oil and started a frightful blaze. Acres of the valley, covered with derricks and tanks, flamed with the fury of a veritable hell. Men fled to the hills and no life was lost. A train of blazing tank-cars on the Allegheny-Valley Railroad, below Foster station, interrupted travel for many hours. The passenger-train from Pittsburg stopped and the passengers walked up the track to see the huge blaze. Thomas Bennett, the engineer, went a short distance ahead, when an iron-tank exploded with fearful violence, one piece striking Bennett in the breast and killing him instantly. David Ker was conductor of the train poor Bennett did not live to guide to its destination.

THOMAS MARTINDALE.

Thomas Martindale, who leads the retail-grocery trade, brought with him to Philadelphia twenty years ago the vim and energy that gained him fame and fortune in the oil-region. He clerked for years in a Boston dry-goods store, quit Massachusetts for Pennsylvania and landed at Oil City in 1869. He took the first job that offered—grubbing out a road to his wells for John S. Rich—used eyes and brain and soon knew how to “run engine.” Buying an interest in a grocery, his “Checkered Store” became noted for excellent wares and low prices. The “Blue Store,” larger and better, followed and was in turn succeeded by the “Mammoth.” Martindale sold to Steffee & Co., moved to Philadelphia and opened the first California store. It was a revelation to the citizens to get fruits and wines straight from the Pacific coast and they patronized him liberally. Partners were taken in, whom the head of the firm imbued with something of his own energy and magnetism. Active in politics and trade, wide-awake and public-spirited, many Philadelphians contend that the next mayor of the Quaker City shall spell his name Thomas Martindale. He is a trenchant writer and has published “Sport Royal,” an admirable work descriptive of hunting adventures in which he participated. The live merchant who caught the inspiration of five-dollar oil is sixteen ounces to the pound every time and every place.

“Never quarrel with a preacher or an editor,” said Henry Clay, “for the one can slap you from the pulpit and the other hit you in his paper without your getting a chance to strike back.” Col. William Phillips, president of the Allegheny-Valley Railroad, violated the Kentucky statesman’s wise maxim by making war on the Oil-City Derrick. He was building the Low-Grade division, from Red Bank to Emporium, and the main-line suffered. The track was neglected, decayed ties and broken rails were common and accidents occurred too frequently for comfort. The winter and spring of 1873 were fruitful of disaster. At Rockland an oil-train ran over the steep bank into the river, upsetting the passenger-coach at the rear. The oil caught fire, several passengers were burned to death and others were terribly injured. The railroad officials, acting under orders from headquarters, refused to give information to the crowd of frantic people who besieged the office at Oil City to learn the fate of friends on the train. To the last moment they denied that anything serious had happened, although passengers able to walk to Rockland Station telegraphed brief particulars. At last a train bearing some of the injured reached Oil City. Next morning the Derrick gave full details and criticised the management of the road severely for the bad condition of the track and the stupid attempt to withhold information. The heading of the article—“Hell Afloat”—enraged Col. Phillips. He and Superintendent J. J. Lawrence prepared a circular to the conductors, instructing them “to take up pass of C. E. Bishop or J. J. McLaurin whenever presented, collect full fare, prohibit newsboys from selling the Oil-City Derrick on the trains, not allow the paper to be carried except in the mails or as express-matter, and to report to the General Superintendent.” Conductor Wench, a pleasant, genial fellow, on my next trip from Parker looked perplexed as he greeted me. He hesitated, walked past, returned in a few moments and asked to see my pass. The document was produced, he drew a letter from his pocket and showed it to me. It was the order signed by Phillips and Lawrence. “That’s clear enough, here’s your fare,” was my rejoinder. It was agreed at the office to say nothing for a day or two. Doubtless Phillips and Lawrence thought the paper had been scared and would send a flag of truce. A big wreck afforded the opportunity to open hostilities. For months the war raged. The paper had a regular heading—“Another Accident on the Valley of the Shadow Road”—which was printed every morning. Accidents multiplied and travel sought other lines. Phillips threatened to remove the shops from South Oil City, his partners wished Bishop to let up, he refused and they bought his interest. Peace was proclaimed, the road was put into decent order and the Pennsylvania Railroad eventually secured it. The fight had no end of comical features. It worried Col. Phillips exceedingly and spread the reputation of the Derrick over the continent. The cruel war is over and Col. Phillips and Col. Lawrence journeyed to the tomb long years ago.

“Jim” Collins—he ought to be manager—is about the only one of the early conductors on the Allegheny-Valley Railroad still in the traces. His record of twenty-seven years shows capable, faithful attention to duty and care for the comfort and safety of passengers that has gained him the highest popularity. Superintendent “Tom” King, now vice-president of the Baltimore & Ohio, is among the foremost railroad-officials of the United States. His brother was crushed to death by the cars. Wench, the Taylors, Reynolds and Bonar have been off the road many years. Long trains of crude are also missing, some towns along the route have disappeared and the crowds of operators who formerly thronged the line between Parker and Oil City have vanished from the scene. David Kerr, whom Collins succeeded, went to Arkansas. John McGinnes, one of the bravest engineers who ever pulled a throttle, headed the railroad-strikers in 1877 and died six years ago. “Jim” Bonnar is in Chicago, Grant Thomas is train-dispatcher and “Dick” Reynolds superintends a Baltimore road. The Allegheny-Valley, extended to Oil-City in the winter of 1867-8, is different from what it was when the superintendent walked over the entire track every day and the president applied formally to the directors for authority to purchase a new lock for his desk.

The first railroad to enter Oil City was the Atlantic & Great Western, now of the Erie system, in 1866. Its first train crossed the mouth of Oil Creek on a track laid upon the ice. “Billy” Stevens and John Babcock were early conductors. Stevens went to Maine and Babcock died several years ago at Meadville, soon after completing a term as mayor of the city. The Farmers’ Railroad was finished in 1867, the Allegheny Valley in 1868 and the Lake-Shore in 1870. A short railroad up Sage Run conveyed coal from the Cranberry mines. On August fourth, 1882, the engineer—Frank Wright—lost control of a train on the down grade, one of the steepest in the state. He reversed the engine to the last notch and jumped, sustaining injuries that caused his death in four days. For two miles the track was torn up and coal-cars were smashed to splinters by running into a train of freight-cars at McAlevy’s Mills. Six men were killed outright and five died from their injuries next day.

The popular auditor of the New York Central, W. F. McCullough, was an Oil-City boy. His brother, James McCullough, is traveling-auditor of the New York, New Haven & Hartford; another brother, E. M. McCullough, is traveling bill-agent for the U. S. Steamship-Railway Company. They are sons of the late Dr. T. C. McCullough, who died at Oil City in 1896.

WILLIAM H. STEVENS.

FRANK THOMSON.

JOHN BABCOCK.

Hon. Thomas Struthers, of Warren, who died in 1892 at the age of eighty-nine, donated the town a public-library building that cost ninety-thousand dollars. He aided in constructing the Pennsylvania Railroad, built sections of the Philadelphia & Erie and Oil-Creek Railroads and the first railroad in California. He was the first manager of the Oil-Creek road. Frank Thomson, the capable president of the Pennsylvania Railroad, was also superintendent of the Oil-Creek. C. J. Hepburn, now residing in Harrisburg and permanently disabled as the result of an accident, held the same position for years. He was a thorough railroader, esteemed alike by the employés and the public for his efficient performance of duty. The old-time Oil-Creek conductors were lock-switch, steel-track and rock-ballast clear through. Gleason, postmaster at Corry a term or two, runs the Mansion House at Titusville. “Bill” Miller is on the Pacific coast. Mack Dobbins died at St. Louis and “By” Taylor has made his last trip. Barber lives at Buffalo. “Mike” Silk, who yanked oil-trains from Cherry Run, is a wealthy citizen of Warren. Selden Stone and “Pap” Richards are still on deck, the last of a coterie of as white railroad-men as ever punched pasteboard “in the presence of the passenjare.”

“We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths;

In feelings, not in figures on a dial.”

A. G. POST

J. J. YOUNGSON.

A. B. YOUNGSON.

Few railroaders are so widely and favorably known as A. B. Youngson. For twenty-three years he was locomotive-engineer on the Atlantic road. Every man, woman and child on the Franklin branch, between Meadville and Oil City, knew and liked the clever, competent man who sat in the cab and never neglected his duty. Seven years ago Mr. Youngson was appointed Assistant Grand Chief of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, a position his experience and geniality adapt him admirably to fill. His brother, J. J. Youngson, has been connected with the Atlantic road—now called the New York, Philadelphia & Ohio—for thirty years as superintendent of the water-works department of the system. A. G. Post, a veteran ever to be found at his post, is deservedly popular as a conductor. Peter Bowen, the trusty roadmaster, who used to keep the track in apple-pie order, years ago traveled the track “across the divide.” From President Thomas down to the humblest laborer the “Nypano” officials and employés are not excelled in efficiency, courtesy and manliness.

ANDREW CARNEGIE.

DAVID MCCARGO.

Andrew Carnegie, the colossus of the iron-trade, was a stockholder of the Columbia Oil-Company, which operated the Storey farm, on Oil Creek. The money he obtained from this source enabled him to gain control of the Braddock Steel-Works. Starting in life as a telegraph messenger-boy, he soon learned to manipulate the key expertly and was placed in charge of the railroad-office at Atlantic, Ohio. Thomas A. Scott, then superintendent of the Pittsburg Division of the Pennsylvania Railroad, engaged him as his clerk and operator. Scott established his headquarters at Altoona and promoted young Carnegie to the chief-clerkship. His shrewdness and fidelity won favor and advancement. He was appointed superintendent of the Pittsburg Division, and in 1864 selected David McCargo as his assistant. McCargo, who had been operator in the Commercial Telegraph office, superintended the Pennsylvania-Railroad telegraph-service. Robert Pitcairn, first an operator at Hollidaysburg, was transferred to Altoona, went thence to Fort Wayne with J. N. DuBarry, afterwards vice-president of the “Pennsy,” and returned about 1870 to succeed Carnegie on the Pittsburg Division. He is now one of the highest officials of the Pennsylvania and lives in Pittsburg. Mr. McCargo became General Superintendent of the Pacific & Atlantic Lines in 1868. In 1875 he was appointed General Superintendent of the Allegheny Valley Railroad. This responsible position he has held twenty-two years, greatly to the advantage of the road and the satisfaction of the public. Carnegie invested in oil and sleeping-car stock and enjoyed Col. Scott’s confidence. The railroad-king died and his clever clerk eventually controlled the steel plant ten miles east of Pittsburg. Now Andrew Carnegie bosses the steel-industry, owns the largest steel-plants in the world, manufactures massive armor-plate for war-ships—blow-holes blew holes in its reputation “once upon a time”—and has acquired forty or fifty-millions by the sweat of his workmen’s brows. He has parks and castles in Scotland, spends much of his time and cash abroad, coaches with princes and nobles and lets H. C. Frick fricasee the toilers at Braddock and Homestead. The Homestead riots, precipitated by a ruffianly horde of Pinkerton thugs, aroused a storm of indignation which defeated Benjamin Harrison for the presidency and elected Grover Cleveland on the issue of tariff-reform. Mr. Carnegie writes soul-stirring magazine articles on the duties of capital to labor and has established numerous public-libraries. He is stoutly built and exceedingly healthy. His enormous fortune may yet endow some magnificent charity.

“Oh! it is excellent to have a giant’s strength,

But it is tyrannous to use it like a giant.”

You may meet them at Oshkosh or Kalamazoo, in New York or Washington, around Chicago or San Francisco, about New Orleans or Mexico, but not a few men conspicuously successful in finance, manufactures, literature or politics have been mixed up with oil some time in their career. Commodore Vanderbilt, Jay Gould, James Fisk, Thomas A. Scott, John A. Garrett and A. J. Cassatt profited largely from their oil-interests. Mr. Cassatt, superintending the Warren & Franklin Railroad, acquired the knowledge of oil-affairs he turned to account in shaping the transportation-policy of the Pennsylvania Railroad. Besides the colossal gains of the Standard Oil-Company, petroleum won for such men as Captain J. J. Vandergrift, J. T. Jones, J. M. Guffey, John McKeown, John Galey, J. J. Carter, Charles Miller, Frederic Prentice, S. P. McCalmont, William Hasson, George V. Forman, Thomas W. Phillips, John Satterfield, H. L. Taylor, John Pitcairn, Theodore Barnsdall, E. O. Emerson, Dr. Roberts, George K. Anderson, Jonathan Watson, Hunter & Cummings, Greenlee & Forst, the Grandins, the Mitchells, the Fishers, the McKinneys, the Plumers, the Lambertons and a host of others from one to ten-millions apiece. Certainly coal, cotton or iron, or all three combined, can show no such list. Oil augmented the fortunes of Stephen Weld, Oliver Ames and F. Gordon Dexter, the largest in New England. It put big money into the pockets of Andrew Carnegie, William H. Kemble and Dr. Hostetter. To it the great tube-works, employing thousands of men, and multitudes of manufacturing-plants owe their existence and prosperity. Some of the brightest newspaper-writers in New York, Philadelphia and Chicago learned force and directness amid the exciting scenes of Oildom. Several are authors of repute and contributors to magazines. Grover Cleveland, while mayor of Buffalo, imbibed business-wisdom and notions of sturdy independence from his acquaintance with Bradford oil-operators. Governor Curtin was a large stockholder in oil-companies on Cherry Run and Governor Beaver may claim kin with the fraternity as the owner of oil-wells in Forest county. No member of Congress for a generation made a better record than J. H. Osmer, Dr. Egbert, J. C. Sibley, C. W. Stone and Thomas W. Phillips. Galusha A. Grow was president of the Reno Oil-Company. Mr. Sibley was tendered the second place on the Democratic ticket at Chicago and could have been nominated for president, instead of William J. Bryan, but for the stupid hostility of a Pennsylvania boss. More capable, influential members than W. S. McMullan, Lewis Emery, J. W. Lee, W. R. Crawford, William H. Andrews, Captain Hasson, Willis J. Hulings, Henry F. James and John L. Mattox never sat in the State Senate or the Legislature. And so it goes in every part of the country, in every profession, in every branch of industry and in every business requiring vigor and enterprise.

Michael Geary, whose death last year was a severe blow to Oil City, forcibly illustrated what energy and industry may accomplish. He was a first-class boiler-maker and machinist, self-reliant, stout-hearted and strong mentally and physically. In 1876 he started the Oil-City Boiler-Works in a small building, Daniel O’Day and B. W. Vandergrift furnishing the money and taking an interest in the business. O’Day and Geary became sole owners in 1882. The plant was enlarged, the tube-mills were added, acres of buildings dotted the flats and a thousand men were employed. Engines, tanks, stills, tubing, casing and boilers of every description were manufactured. The machinery comprised the latest and fullest equipment. The business grew amazingly. Joseph Seep was admitted to partnership and branch-offices were established in New York, Chicago, Pittsburg and at various points in the oil-producing states. The firm led the world as tank-builders, actually constructing one-third the total iron-tankage in the United States. Mr. Geary bought and remodeled the Arlington Hotel, fostered local enterprises and was a most progressive citizen. He died in the vigor of manhood. The splendid industries he reared and the high place he held in public esteem are his enduring monument.

“He had kept

The whiteness of his soul, and thus men o’er him wept.”

Since Christmas day of 1873, when they struck their first well at Millerstown, Showalter Brothers have been leading operators in the Butler field. Hon. Joseph B. Showalter, who has managed the firm’s[firm’s] affairs wisely, was born in Fayette County, taught school at sixteen, relinquished teaching for medicine, and was graduated in 1884 from the Baltimore College of Physicians and Surgeons. In 1886 he was elected to the legislature and to the state-senate two years later, making an excellent record in both bodies. Butler county nominated him for Congress, but Lawrence and Mercer combined in favor of J. J. Davidson. Dr. Showalter is a substantial citizen, in close touch with the people and worthy of the confidence reposed in him. Hon. M. L. Lockwood, for seven years a resident of Butler, represented Clarion county twice in the legislature and introduced the Free-Pipe Bill. Robert Lockwood, the founder of the family in America, came from England with Winthrop in 1630. Mr. Lockwood began oil-operations on Cherry Run in 1865, opposed the South-Improvement rascality zealously and was a member of the Producers’ Committee that secured the passage by Congress of the Interstate-Commerce Bill. He is largely interested in oil and manages a hundred wells for Tait & Patterson.

JOSEPH B. SHOWALTER.

In the days of oil-shipments by boat and teaming, before the advent of pipe-lines, Watson, Densmore & Co. handled large quantities of crude in barrels, hauling it from the wells to the nearest railroad-station. Daniel T. Watson, senior member of the firm, was born in Maine in 1806, learned harness-making, conducted a profitable store in New Hampshire and came to Oil Creek with James Densmore early in the sixties. He bought the oil and managed the shipping-business of the firm, which employed scores of teams to haul crude from wells at Shamburg and boat it from wells on the banks of Oil-Creek to the loading-tanks at Miller Farm. When the railroad reached Boyd Farm the firm opened a branch office at Pioneer and shipped east most of the oil produced on Bull, Pioneer and Benninghoff Runs, in the “blue cars” Watson, Densmore & Co. were the first to introduce. Clinton Rouderbush, afterwards well known in the exchanges, represented the firm in New York. Pipe lines ending primitive modes of transportation, Mr. Watson operated largely in the Pleasantville field, in connection with Benson & McKelvy, Lewis Emery and Samuel Q. Brown. He lived two years on the Morrison farm, removed to Minnesota in 1873 and died at Lakeland on July first, 1894. Mr. Watson was prominent in his day and did much to put oil-shipping on a solid basis.[basis.]

DANIEL T. WATSON.
JOEL DENSMORE.
WILLIAM DENSMORE.

JAMES DENSMORE.

EMMETT DENSMORE.

The Densmores lived on Woodcock Creek, twenty miles from Titusville, when the Drake well startled the quiet community. The father and his son Amos visited the well and soon contrived a metal-shoe to fix to a wooden-pipe to cheapen drilling. Emmett Densmore traversed the oil-region to sell the shoes, often walking forty miles a day. Jonathan Watson leased him land on the flats below Titusville, Amos had good credit and the pair put down a dry-hole with a spring-pole. They leased a piece of ground from James Tarr and drilled the Elephant well, so named from the “monster tank”—twenty-five hundred barrels—Amos constructed from pine-planks to hold the great flow of oil. The Elephant yielded hundreds of barrels daily and the other brothers—James, William and Joel—were invited to come into the partnership. Amos was given to invention and he made bulk-boats, the first tanks for storing crude and the first wooden-tanks—forty to fifty barrels each—for platform-cars. With Daniel T. Watson they shipped extensively until pipe-lines retired barrels, pond-freshets and bulk-boats permanently. The brothers sank many wells and acquired wealth. Amos, James and Joel have passed over to the better land. Amos and George W. N. Yost, once the largest oil-shipper, perfected the famous Densmore Type-Writer. James bought out the Remington Type-Writer. London is Emmett’s home and he has attained prominence as a physician. His wife, Dr. Helen Densmore, assists in his practice and has written a book in behalf of Mrs. Maybrick, whose imprisonment has aroused so much sympathy. William Densmore owns a big flour-mill and the Central Market at Erie. The Densmores possessed energy, genius and manliness that merited the success which rewarded their efforts in various lines of human activity.

ISAAC REINEMAN.

JOHN B. SMITHMAN.

T. PRESTON MILLER.

These early shipping-times developed many men of exceptional ability and character. T. Preston Miller was long a familiar figure on Oil Creek and at Franklin, as buyer for the Burkes and later for Fisher Brothers. “Pres” was generous, popular and most accommodating in his dealings. The snows of a dozen winters have blown over his grave in the Franklin cemetery. The late Isaac Reineman was another of Oil City’s trustworthy pioneers. He bought oil, operated in the lower districts with William M. Leckey, served three terms as prothonotary and died in January, 1893, from the effects of slipping on the icy porch the night before Christmas. He had charge of Captain Vandergrift’s oil properties in Washington county and, with Charles Ford, held blocks of land in West Virginia. Ford was found dead in bed last year. John B. Smithman, who came to the Creek to buy oil for John Munhall & Co., has been enriched by his operations in Venango county and the northern fields. He built a beautiful home in Oil City and overcame stacks of obstacles to give the town a street railway. He has provided a delightful park four miles down the Allegheny, built a steel bridge across the river and positively refused to be ruled off the track by any opposing element. “People do not kick a corpse.”

JOHN EATON.

Progression is the unchanging watchword of the petroleum-industry. The three-pole derrick of yore has given place to the plank-giant that soars eighty or ninety feet. The spring-pole is a shadowy memory. The first drilling-tools weighed ninety-eight pounds; a modern set weighs two tons. Instead of spending weeks to “kick down” a well a hundred feet, a thousand feet can be bored between Monday morning and Saturday night. Ten-horse portable engines and boilers are well-nigh forgotten. The first iron-pipe for tubing wells, butt-weld ready to burst on the slightest provocation, was manufactured in Massachusetts and sold for one dollar per foot. Now lap-weld tubing of the best material brings a dime a foot. So it is in methods of transportation and refining. Bulk-boats, leaky barrels and long hauls through fathomless mud are superseded by pipe-lines, which pump oil from the wells to New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Cleveland and Chicago. The rickety stills and dangerous devices of former times have yielded to the splendid refineries that utilize every vestige of crude and furnish two-hundred merchantable commodities. For much of this important advance in tools, appliances and machinery the great Oil-Well Supply-Company is directly responsible. From small beginnings it has grown to dazzling proportions. It is the only concern on earth with the facilities and capacity to manufacture everything needed to drill and operate oil-wells and artesian-wells and equip refineries. Its nine enormous plants at convenient points employ thousands of skilled workmen and acres of the latest machinery. They turn out every conceivable requisite in steel, iron, brass or wood, from engines and complete rigs to the smallest fittings. John Eaton, the founder and president of the company, may fairly claim to be the father of the well-supply trade. His connection with it dates back to 1861 and has continued ever since. He started business for himself in 1867 and the next year took up his abode in the oil-region. In 1869 he and E. H. Cole formed the partnership of Eaton & Cole, which the Eaton, Cole & Burnham Company of New York succeeded. Several rival firms organized the Oil-Well Supply Company, Limited, in 1878, with Mr. Eaton at its head. The present corporation succeeded the Limited Company in 1891. Mr. Eaton’s enterprise and experience are invaluable to the company. All new inventions adapted to wells or refineries are examined carefully and the most valuable purchased. Branch-offices and factories have kept pace with the spread of oil-developments. The Company’s wares find a market in every civilized land. Vice-President Kenton Chickering, first-class clear through, manages the large establishment at Oil City. Pittsburg is now Mr. Eaton’s home. He is genial and courteous always, prompt and sagacious in business, broad in his ideas and true to his convictions, and his Oil-Well Supply-Company is something to be proud of.

GEORGE KOCH.

George Koch, a native of Venango county and relative of the celebrated Dr. Koch of Germany, is a well-known inventor and writer. He began oil-operations in 1865, in 1873 formed a partnership with his brother and Dr. Knight, in 1880 organized the firm of Koch Brothers—William A., J. H. and George Koch—and was nominated three times for the legislature. He took an active part in the Producers’ Council, edited the Fern-City Illuminator and published a book of “Stray Thoughts.” He invented a torpedo for oil-wells, improved drilling-tools and well-appliances, patented a system of “Sectional Iron Tanks,” a “Rubber-Packing,” “Movable Store-Shelving” and other useful devices. Mr. Koch has just rounded the half-century mark, he lives in East Sandy and no man has done more to simplify the methods of sinking and operating wells.

Col. L. H. Fassett is one of the honored veterans of the late war and a veteran operator in heavy oil. For nearly thirty years he has been a leader in the Franklin district, operating successfully and enjoying the esteem of all classes. He has a delightful home, is active in furthering good objects and doesn’t worry a particle when oil happens to drop a peg.

COL. L. H. FASSETT.

Twelve miles south-east of Pittsburg, on the Bedell farm, near West Elizabeth, the Forest Oil-Company is drilling the deepest well on the continent. It is down fifty-five-hundred feet, considerably more than a mile, and will be put to six-thousand at least. Geologists and scientists are much interested in[in] the strata and the temperatures at different depths. This is the deepest well ever attempted to be sunk with a cable, the one near Reibuck, Eastern Silesia, having been bored about seven-thousand feet with rotating diamond core-drills. T. S. Kinsey and his two sons, of Wellsburg, drilled a dry-hole forty-five-hundred feet in 1891, on Boggs’ Run, West Virginia, near Wheeling, for a local company. Think how progress has been marching on since Drake’s seventy-foot gopher-hole to render the Forest’s achievement possible! Surely petroleum-life is as full of promise as a bill-collector’s.

Hon. Thomas W. Phillips, the wealthy oil-producer, who declined to serve a third term in Congress, labored zealously to secure legislation that would settle differences between employers and employés by arbitration. He offered to pay a quarter-million dollars to meet the expense of a thorough Congressional inquiry into the condition of labor, with a view to the presentation of an authoritative report and the adoption of measures calculated to prevent strikes and promote friendly relations. When the suspension of drilling in the oil-region deprived thousands of work for some months, Mr. Phillips was especially active in effecting arrangements by which they received the profits upon two-million barrels of crude set apart for their benefit. The Standard Oil-Company, always considerate to labor, heartily furthered the plan, which the rise in oil rendered a signal success. This was the first time in the history of any business that liberal provision was made for workmen thrown out of employment by the stoppage of operations. What a contrast to the grinding and squeezing and shooting of miners and coke-workers by “coal-barons” and “iron-kings!” When you come to size them up the oil-men don’t have to shrink into a hole to avoid close scrutiny. They pay their bills, are just to honest toil, generous to the poor and manly from top to toe. They may not relish rheumatism, but this doesn’t compel them to hate the poor fellow it afflicts. As Tiny Tim observed: “God bless us every one!”

“Ivry gintleman will soon go horseback on his own taykittle” was the inspired exclamation of an Irish baronet upon beholding the initial trip of the first locomotive. Vast improvements in the application of power have been effected since Stephenson’s grand triumph, nowhere more satisfactorily than in the oil-regions. Producers who remember the primitive methods in vogue along Oil Creek can best appreciate the wonderful progress made during three decades. The tedious process of drilling wet-holes with light tools has gone where the woodbine twineth. Casing has retired the seed-bag permanently, and from the polish-rod to the working-barrel not the smallest detail remains unimproved. Having a portable engine and boiler at each well has given place to the cheaper plan of coupling a host of wells together, two men thus doing the work that once required twenty or thirty. Pipe-lines have superseded greasy barrels and swearing teamsters, and even tank-cars are following the flat-boats of pioneer times to oblivion. In short, labor-saving systems have revolutionized the business so completely that the fathers of the early styles would utterly fail to recognize their offspring in the petroleum-development as conducted now-a-days.

ROUSTABOUTS PREPARING TO CLEAN OUT A RUSSIAN OIL-WELL.

C. L. Wheeler, one of the earliest buyers of crude on Oil Creek in 1860 and first President of the Bradford Oil-Exchange, recently went to his eternal reward. Orion Clemens, brother of Mark Twain and once a writer for the Oil-City Derrick, died lately. Truly, the boys are “crossing the divide” at a rate it grieves the survivors to note.

The fine illustrations of oil-scenes in Russia are from the collection of photographs gathered by John Eaton, President of the Oil-Well Supply Company, during his visits to the dominions of the Czar. “Long may he wave!”

Crude sixty-five,

Well, sakes alive!

You seek rich spoil?

Don’t bore for oil.

’Mid Klondyke snow

You have more show

To score a hit

And save a bit.

Six-thousand wells drilled and ninety-six-thousand barrels of production per day represent oil-operations in Pennsylvania in 1897. To this enormous output Ohio and Indiana added fifty-three-thousand barrels a day and thirty-six-hundred wells.

To the indefatigable zeal and liberality of Rev. Thomas Carroll, for twenty-five years in charge of the parish, Oil City owes the erection of the finest church in Northwestern Pennsylvania. The beautiful edifice fitly crowns the summit of Cottage Hill. Its two lofty spires point heavenward and its altar is a marvel of exquisite taste and finish. An elegant parsonage stands on the adjacent lot, with the parochial school across the street. It is proposed to rebuild the schools, to supply a large hall and a convent and to provide every convenience for the various societies connected with the grand congregation. This idea is rendered possible by the splendid offer of Father Carroll to pay one-half the entire cost himself. The good work he has done for temperance, education, morality and religion cannot be estimated. He is distinguished by his catholic spirit, his broad charity, his unwearied philanthropy and his unswerving devotion to the right. No man has made a deeper, nobler impress upon any community in the oil-regions than the beloved pastor of St. Joseph’s. “Late may he return to Heaven!”

“Each man makes his own stature, builds himself;

Virtue alone outbuilds the Pyramids;

Her monuments shall last when Egypt’s fall.”

A host of changes, some pleasing and more unutterably sad, have the swift seasons brought. The scene of active operations has shifted often. The great Bradford region and the rich fields around Pittsburg and Butler have had their innings. Parker, Petrolia, St. Petersburg, Millerstown and Greece City have followed Plumer, Shaffer, Pioneer, Red-Hot and Oleopolis to the limbo of forsaken things. Petroleum Centre is a memory only. Rouseville is reduced to a skeleton. Not a trace of Antwerp, or Pickwick, or Triangle is left. Enterprise resembles Goldsmith’s “Deserted Village,” or Ossian’s “Balaclutha.” Tip-Top, Modoc, Troutman, Turkey City, St. Joe, Shamburg, Edenburg and Buena Vista have had their rise and fall. Fagundas has vanished. Pleasantville fails to draw an army of adventurous seekers for oleaginous wealth. Tidioute is an echo of the past and scores of minor towns have disappeared completely. For forms and faces once familiar one looks in vain. Where are the plucky operators who for a half-score years made Oil Creek the briskest, gayest, liveliest spot in America? Thousands are browsing in pastures elsewhere, while other thousands have crossed the bridgeless river which flows into the ocean of eternity.

Alas for sentiment! Nero proves to have been a humanitarian, a good man who was merely a bad fiddler. Henry the Eighth turns out to be a model husband, rather unfortunate in the loss of wives, but sweetly indulgent and only a trifle given to fall in love with pretty girls. William Tell had no son and shot no arrow at an apple on young Tell’s head. Now Charlotte Temple is a myth, the creation of an English novelist, with her name cut on a flat tombstone in Trinity Churchyard over a grave which originally bore a metal-plate supposed to commemorate a man! At this rate some historic sharp in the future may demonstrate that the oil-men were a race of green-tinted people governed by King Petroleum. Colonel Drake may be pronounced a figure of the imagination, the Standard a fiction, the South-Improvement Company a nightmare and the Producers’ Association a dream. Then some inquisitive antiquarian may come across a copy of “Sketches in Crude-Oil” stored in a forgotten corner of the Congressional library, and set them all right and keep the world running in the correct groove with regard to the grand industry of the nineteenth century.

“I stood upon Achilles’ tomb

And heard Troy doubted: time will doubt of Rome.”

A dry-joke tickles and a dry-hole scrunches. It’s a poor mule won’t work both ways, a poor spouter that can’t keep its owner from going up the spout, a poor boil in the pot that isn’t better than a boil on the neck, a poor chestnut on the tree that doesn’t beat a chestnut at a minstrel show and a poor seed that produces no root or herb or grain or fruit or flower. “Who made you?” the Sunday-school teacher asked a ragged urchin. “Made me? Well, God made me a foot long and I growed the rest!” And so the early operators on Oil Creek made the oil-development “a foot long” and it “growed the rest.” The tiny seed is a vigorous plant, the puling babe a lusty giant. Amid lights and shadows, clouds and sunshine, successes and failures, struggles and triumphs, starless nights and radiant days, petroleum has moved ahead steadily. Growth, “creation by law,” is ever going on in the healthy plant, the tree, the animal, the mind, the universe. We must go forward if the acorn is to become an oak, the infant a mature man, the feeble industry a sturdy development. Progress implies more of involution than of evolution, just as the oak contains much that was not in the acorn, and the oil-business in 1898 possesses elements unknown in 1859. Not to advance is to go backward in religion, in nature and in trade. “An absentee God, sitting idle ever since the first Sabbath, on the outside of the universe, and seeing it go,” is not a correct idea of the All-Wise Being, working actively in every point of space and moment of time. Stagnation means decay in the natural world and death in oil-affairs. The man who sits in the pasture waiting for the cow to come and be milked will never skim off the cream. The man who wants to figure as an oil-operator must bounce the drill and tap the sand and give the stuff a chance to get into the tanks. Still a youngster in years, the petroleum-colt has distanced the old nags. The sucker-rod is the pole that knocks the persimmons. The oil-well is the fountain of universal illumination. The walking-beam is the real balance of trade and of power. The derrick is the badge of enlightenment. Petroleum is the bright star that shines for all mankind and doesn’t propose to be snuffed out or shoved off the grass. Its past is known, its present may be estimated, but what Canute dare fence in its future and say: “Thus far shalt thou come and no farther?”

If there be friendly readers, as they reckon up the score,

Who find these random “Sketches” not a burden and a bore

Too heavy for digestion and too light for solemn lore—

Who find a grain of pleasure has been added to their store

By some glad reminiscence of the palmy days of yore,

Or tender recollection of the old friends gone before—

Who find some things to cherish and but little to deplore—

Good-bye, our voyage ended, we must anchor on the shore.

The last line has been written, all the labor now is o’er,

The task has had sweet relish from the surface to the core;

The sand-rock is exhausted, for the oil has drain’d each pore,

The derrick stands neglected and we cease to tread its floor;

My feet are on the threshold and my hands are on the door—

The pen falls from my fingers, to be taken up no more.

---

Transcriptions

Dedication (p. v)

To—

my neighbor and friend for many years, a man of large heart and earnest purpose

——Hon. Charles Miller——

Franklin. Pa.,

whose sterling qualities have achieved the highest [success] in life and won the confidence and esteem of his fellows, this Volume is

——Respectfully Dedicated.

---

Transcriber’s Note

The hyphenation of compound words can be variable. Where the hyphen occurs on a line or page break, it is retained or removed based on the most commonly used form.

Errors deemed most likely to be the printer’s have been corrected, and are noted here. The references are to the page and line in the original. The following issues should be noted, along with the resolutions.

[21.14]	27 years, 1 mo[n]th & 14 days.	Added.
[28.24]	a considerable flow[.]	Added.
[28.29]	Kanawha boatmen[t] and others.	Removed.
[29.21]	healing qualitie.	Restored.
[31.30]	When they regained conciousness	Added.
[35.44]	at a Na[u/n]cy-Hanks quickstep	Inverted.
[40.11]	State-Committe[e]	Added.
[41.2]	probaly near what is now Cuba, N. Y.	Added.
[47.45]	Lovely woman and Banquo’s ghost will not “down![’/”]	Replaced.
[52.4]	in thrilling narratives[.]	Added.
[53.45]	over to the court-house.[’/”]	Replaced.
[53.47]	and the village emptied itself	Removed.
[54.2]	No wonder Satan’s imps wailed sadly:[”]	Removed.
[58.35]	“Law, Jim Sickles![”] I tho’t	Removed.
[65.2]	the Highlanders at Lucknow[.]	Restored.
[78.3]	West and south-west the Octave Oil[-]Company has operated	Replaced.
[79.18]	sold the building to C. V. Culver for bank-purposes[.]	Restored
[81.34]	per foot to fifty cents[.]	Added.
[84.26]	Will[l]iam Raymond	Removed.
[91.6]	Captain Willia[n/m] Hasson	Replaced.
[95.25]	the h[f/i]gher type of passenger-locomotives	Replaced.
[97.52]	born at Friendship, N.Y[,,/.,] in 1850.	Replaced.
[102.7]	one-hundred-and forty[ /-]acres	Replaced.
[103.14]	were in the thic[h/k]est of the fray	Replaced.
[119.39]	[“]Wholly unclassable,	Added.
[121.3]	the days of “the middle passage[’/”]	Replaced.
[129.16]	[“]Vare vos dose oil-wells now?	Added.
[137.16]	five-thir[f/t]y-five a barrel[l]	Replaced/Removed.
[147.25]	touring the country and entertain[in]ing crowds	Removed.
[160.5]	who coolly remarked[;/:]	Replaced.
[160.13]	where his ancest[e/o]rs	Replaced.
[161.26]	Possib[l]y Br’er Elliott	Added.
[168.33]	the William Porter farm[,/.]	Replaced.
[169.3]	at eight-hundred-and-fifty[-/ ]feet, the Harmonial Well No. 1	Replaced.
[180.2]	marks the Chase House[,/.]	Replaced.
[191.15]	It does upset a man’s cal[c]ulations	Added.
[194.29]	missed opening the Sisterville field	Added.
[205.41]	velvet-cushions and pneumatic tires[./,]	Replaced.
[213.39]	Years of wating sharpened the appetite	Added.
[218.18]	Two narrow-g[ua/au]ge railroads	Transposed
[218.20]	Other narrow-g[ua/au]ges diverged to Warren	Transposed
[222.50]	will say that his success is undeserved[.]	Added.
[225.4]	rides ever taken on a narrow-g[ua/au]ge road resulted.	Transposed.
[241.34]	at the pit’s mouth free of all charges.[”]	Added.
[248.6]	The cross-roads collection of five[-/ ]houses	Replaced.
[249.49]	as he sur[y/v]eyed the latitude and longitude	Replaced.
[252.46]	Narrow-g[ua/au]ge railroads were built	Transposed
[257.25]	rushed into the store with a p[er/re]scription	Transposed.
[264.44]	slender build and nervous temperam[o/e]nt,	Replaced.
[267.33]	he visited the o[li/il]-region	Transposed.
[271.19]	Operat[e/o]rs were feeling	Replaced.
[275.41]	are we now?[’/”]	Replaced.
[280.42]	and next morning stopped al[r/t]ogether	Replaced.
[288.34]	scion of the mult[it]udinous Smith-family.	Added.
[309.43]	“Sam” also inagurated the custom	Added.
[318.42]	from the Noble & Del[e/a]mater well	Replaced.
[337.36]	“‘You are J. C. Bailey, I believe.’[”]	Removed.
[337.40]	advertise for you.’[”]	Removed
[338.49]	an unpleasant pr[o/e]monition of the red-hot hereafter	Replaced.
[349.1]	discarded the b[o]urgeois skirt	Added.
[358.32]	that ever edified a community[,/.]	Replaced.
[362.8]	“Life of Washington and the Signers of the Declaration of Independence.[”]	Added.
[365.4]	dissecting a supicious job	Added.
[366.8]	The Shakepearian parodies	Added.
[377.51]	and hy[p]notism.”	Added.
[378.15]	An[’] we hed formed a pardnership	Added.
[380.38]	Sisterville, the centre of activity in West Virginia,	Added.
[390.36a]	and medical aid summon[e]d.	Added.
[390.36b]	He remained unconcious two hours	Added.
[391.27]	To ensure co[n/m]parative safety	Replaced.
[393.5]	which Nit[r]o-Glycerine in its fluid state resembles closely,	Added.
[414.11]	under the manag[e]ment of one Board of Trustees	Added.
[411.38]	The cost of transpor[t]ation	Added.
[412.31]	to sell at ex[h]orbitant prices	Removed.
[416.32]	connected with the Standard[.]	Added.
[416.34]	not connected with the Standard[./,] and never owned	Replaced.
[419.47]	yielding only malaria and [shakes]	sic: snakes?
[424.6]	kindly, affable and thoroug[h]ly upright.	Added.
[432.22]	In this sand at three feet[ ]pressure of gas	sic: the?
[439.11]	Corry and [C/O]il City were called	Replaced.
[445.30]	who has managed the firm[’]s affairs wisely	Added.
[446.22]	on a solid basis[.]	Added.
[449.17]	scientists are much interested [l/i]n the strata	Replaced.