Just after the election, and while on his way to Pittsburg, Ben picked up a copy of the Oil City Derrick, in which he read an announcement of his election. The train happened to be delayed by the breaking of a bridge, and our hero went into a neighboring farm house to obtain something to eat. This being furnished him, he fell into conversation with the farmer, and pointed out to him the paragraph in the Derrick.
“Think of it!” said Ben, with assumed indignation. “Such a man as Hogan elected burgess of Petrolia! Why, it’s a disgrace to the town—a libel upon the elective system!”
“That’s so,” returned the farmer. “I’ve heered a good deal about this Ben Hogan, and I should calculate he ought to be in jail instead of in office.”
“Of course he ought,” rejoined Ben. “Lynching would be too good for him!”
This sort of talk was continued for some time, Ben joining with the farmer in the opinion that Hogan ought to be hung up to the nearest tree.
A rosy-cheeked, but excessively verdant young girl, a daughter of the farmer, was very much taken with a diamond cross which our hero wore upon his shirt-front. She did not know what it was, but Ben told her, adding that it cost nineteen thousand dollars—it was worth perhaps seven hundred—and that it had been presented to him in Austria.
Altogether he made a deep impression upon the occupants of the farm house, and their surprise may be more readily imagined than described when, upon taking his departure, he presented them with his card, in the shape of a silver half dollar, upon which was engraved his name. The farmer was paralyzed with astonishment. Nor would he believe his senses until he had run after the train and been assured by the conductor that his visitor was really none other than the notorious Ben Hogan.
After his return to Petrolia, from this visit to Pittsburg, came the memorable thirty days “shut down” in the oil regions. The effect of this move, which was in fact a demand for an increase on the price of petroleum, was most disastrous to the oil interest. It resembled, on a smaller scale, the Black Friday, never to be forgotten in Wall street.
Seizing upon the excitement of the hour to promote his own interest, Ben issued a circular which was exceedingly rich and racy. He proceeded to declare that he was the owner of fifteen pumping wells, and that he fully agreed with other operators in the pressing necessity of an advance in prices. It was impossible, the circular said, for Mr. Hogan to produce his oil for less than five dollars a barrel. Indeed, considering the character of the oil obtained from his wells, even this was too small a sum.
Thousands of these circulars were distributed through the oil regions, and copies of them found their way all over the country. So neatly was it worded, that a great many swallowed the joke as gospel truth; and one man in addressing a public meeting astonished some of his hearers by saying: