Those who have once used fuel in this form are not likely to return to the crude and wasteful heating by coal. All the cities and large towns west of the Alleghanies are made disagreeable by bituminous coal smoke. The extent of this annoyance and its detraction from the pleasure of daily living cannot be exaggerated. The atmosphere is more or less vitiated, and the sky obscured, houses, furniture, clothing, are dirty, and clean linen and clean hands and face are not expected. All this is changed where gas is used for fuel. The city becomes cheerful, and the people can see each other. But this is not all. One of the great burdens of our Northern life, fire building and replenishing, disappears, house-keeping is simplified, the expense of servants reduced, cleanliness restored. Add to this that in the gas regions the cost of fuel is merely nominal, and in towns distant some thirty or forty miles it is not half that of coal. It is easy to see that this revolution in fuel will make as great a change in social life as in manufacturing, and that all the change may not be agreeable. This natural gas is a very subtle fluid, somewhat difficult to control, though I have no doubt that invention will make it as safe in our houses as illuminating gas is. So far as I have seen its use, the heat from it is intense and withering. In a closed stove it is intolerable; in an open grate, with a simulated pile of hard coal or logs, it is better, but much less agreeable than soft coal or wood. It does not, as at present used, promote a good air in the room, and its intense dryness ruins the furniture. But its cheapness, convenience, and neatness will no doubt prevail; and we are entering upon a gas age, in which, for the sake of progress, we shall doubtless surrender something that will cause us to look back to the more primitive time with regret. If the gas-wells fail, artificial gas for fuel will doubtless be manufactured.
I went up to the gas-fields of northern Ohio in company with Prof. Edward Orton, the State Geologist, who has made a study of the subject, and pretty well defined the fields of Indiana and Ohio. The gas is found at a depth of between 1100 and 1200 feet, after passing through a great body of shale and encountering salt-water, in a porous Trenton limestone. The drilling and tubing enter this limestone several feet to get a good holding. This porous limestone holds the gas like a sponge, and it rushes forth with tremendous force when released. It is now well settled that these are reservoirs of gas that are tapped, and not sources of perpetual supply by constant manufacture. How large the supply may be in any case cannot be told, but there is a limit to it. It can be exhausted, like a vein of coal. But the fields are so large, both in Indiana and Ohio, that it seems probable that by sinking new wells the supply will be continued for a long time. The evidence that it is not inexhaustible in any one well is that in all in which the flow of gas has been tested at intervals the force of pressure is found to diminish. For months after the discovery the wells were allowed to run to waste, and billions of feet of gas were lost. A better economy now prevails, and this wastefulness is stopped. The wells are all under control, and large groups of them are connected by common service-pipes. The region about Fostoria is organized under the North-western Gas Company, and controls a large territory. It supplies the city of Toledo, which uses no other fuel, through pipes thirty miles long, Fremont, and other towns. The loss per mile in transit through the pipes is now known, so that the distance can be calculated at which it will pay to send it. I believe that this is about fifty to sixty miles. The gas when it comes from the well is about the temperature of 32° Fahr., and the common pressure is 400 pounds to the square inch. The velocity with which it rushes, unchecked, from the pipe at the mouth of the well may be said to be about that of a minie-ball from an ordinary rifle. The Ohio area of gas is between 2000 and 3000 square miles. The claim for the Indiana area is that it is 20,000 square miles, but the geologists make it much less.
The speculation in real estate caused by this discovery has been perhaps without parallel in the history of the State, and, as is usual in such cases, it is now in a lull, waiting for the promised developments. But these have been almost as marvellous as the speculation. Findlay was a sleepy little village in the black swamp district, one of the most backward regions of Ohio. For many years there had been surface indications of gas, and there is now a house standing in the city which used gas for fuel forty years ago. When the first gas-well was opened, ten years ago, the village had about 4500 inhabitants. It has now probably 15,-. 000, it is a city, and its limits have been extended to cover an area six miles long by four miles wide. This is dotted over with hastily built houses, and is rapidly being occupied by manufacturing establishments. The city owns all the gas-wells, and supplies fuel to factories and private houses at the simple cost of maintaining the service-pipes. So rapid has been the growth and the demand for gas that there has not been time to put all the pipes underground, and they are encountered on the surface all over the region. The town is pervaded by the odor of the gas, which is like that of petroleum, and the traveller is notified of his nearness to the town by the smell before he can see the houses. The surface pipes, hastily laid, occasionally leak, and at these weak places the gas is generally ignited in order to prevent its tainting the atmosphere. This immediate neighborhood has an oil-field contiguous to the gas, plenty of limestone (the kilns are burned by gas), good building stone, clay fit for making bricks and tiles, and superior hard-wood forests. The cheap fuel has already attracted here manufacturing industries of all sorts, and new plants are continually made.
I have a list of over thirty different mills and factories which are either in full operation or getting under way. Among the most interesting of these are the works for making window-glass and table glass. The superiority of this fuel for the glass-furnaces seems to be admitted.
Although the wells about Findlay are under control, the tubing is anchored, and the awful force is held under by gates and levers of steel, it is impossible to escape a feeling of awe in this region at the subterranean energies which seem adequate to blow the whole country heavenward. Some of the wells were opened for us. Opening a well is unscrewing the service-pipe and letting the full force of the gas issue from the pipe at the mouth of the well. When one of these wells is thus opened the whole town is aware of it by the roaring and the quaking of the air. The first one exhibited was in a field a mile and a half from the city. At the first freedom from the screws and clamps the gas rushed out in such density that it was visible. Although we stood several rods from it, the roar was so great that one could not make himself heard shouting in the ear of his neighbor. The geologist stuffed cotton in his ears and tied a shawl about his head, and, assisted by the chemist, stood close to the pipe to measure the flow. The chemist, who had not taken the precaution to protect himself, was quite deaf for some time after the experiment. A four-inch pipe, about sixty feet in length, was then screwed on, and the gas ignited as it issued from the end on the ground. The roaring was as before. For several feet from the end of the tube there was no flame, but beyond was a sea of fire sweeping the ground and rioting high in the air—billows of red and yellow and blue flame, fierce and hot enough to consume everything within reach. It was an awful display of power.
We had a like though only a momentary display at the famous Karg well, an eight-million-feet well. This could only be turned on for a few seconds at a time, for it is in connection with the general system. If the gas is turned off, the fires in houses and factories would go out, and if it were turned on again without notice, the rooms would be full of gas, and an explosion follow an attempt to relight it. This danger is now being removed by the invention of an automatic valve in the pipe supplying each fire, which will close and lock when the flow of gas ceases, and admit no more gas until it is opened. The ordinary pressure for house service is about two pounds to the square inch. The Karg well is on the bank of the creek, and the discharge-pipe through which the gas (though not in its full force) was turned for our astonishment extends over the water. The roar was like that of Niagara; all the town shakes when the Karg is loose. When lighted, billows of flame rolled over the water, brilliant in color and fantastic in form, with a fury and rage of conflagration enough to strike the spectator with terror. I have never seen any other display of natural force so impressive as this. When this flame issues from an upright pipe, the great mass of fire rises eighty feet into the air, leaping and twisting in fiendish fury. For six weeks after this well was first opened its constant roaring shook the nerves of the town, and by night its flaming torch lit up the heaven and banished darkness. With the aid of this new agent anything seems possible.
The feverishness of speculation will abate; many anticipations will not be realized. It will be discovered that there is a limit to manufacturing, even with fuel that costs next to nothing. The supply of natural gas no doubt has its defined limits. But nothing seems more certain to me than that gas, manufactured if not to be the fuel of the future in the West, and that the importance of this economic change in social life is greater than we can at present calculate.