Parker had a lively oil-exchange when the Armstrong and Butler fields were at their height. The most prominent men in speculative trade lived in the town or were represented in the exchange. Thomas B. Simpson was a large operator. George Darr was agent of Daniel Goettel, who once engineered the greatest bull-movement in the history of oil and was supposed to have “cornered” the market. Charles Ball and Henry Loomis earned sixty-thousand dollars brokerage a year and died within a month of each other. Trade slackened and expired. The boys shifted to Bradford and Pittsburg and a constable sold the building to satisfy Mrs. W. H. Spain’s claim for ground-rent! The five-thousand-dollar library and the costly pictures, dust-covered and neglected, sold for a trifle and went to South Oil City. A jollier, bigger-hearted crowd of fellows than the members of the Parker Exchange never played a practical joke or helped a poor sufferer out of “a deuce of a fix.”
The Bradford Oil-Exchange started on January first, 1883, with five-hundred members and a forty-thousand-dollar building. Five-hundred others, with Hon. David Kirk as president, organized the Producers’ Petroleum-Exchange and erected a spacious brick-block, occupying it on January second, 1884. Both exchanges whooped it up briskly, both have subsided and the buildings are stores and offices. Titusville’s handsome exchange, on the site of the American Hotel, has gone the same road. Captain Vandergrift built the Pittsburg Oil-Exchange, the finest of them all, fitting it up superbly. A bank and offices have succeeded the festive dealers in crude. From the Mining-Stock Exchange, the Miscellaneous Security Board and several more of similar types the New-York Consolidated Stock and Petroleum Exchange developed a huge concern, with twenty-four-hundred members and a lordly building—erected in 1887—on Broadway and Exchange Place. The membership was the largest in the country, with the exception of the Produce Exchange, and the business in oil at times exceeded the transactions of the Stock Exchange. Seats sold as high as three-thousand dollars. Charles G. Wilson has been president since the organization of the Petroleum and Stock Board, which absorbed the National Petroleum Exchange—L. H. Smith was its president—and in 1885 adopted the elongated name that has burdened it eleven years. Oil is not mentioned once a week, because the stocks have declined to a skeleton and the certificates represent scarcely a half-million barrels. Philadelphia had an exchange of lesser degree and a score of oil-region towns sharpened their appetite for speculation by establishing branch-concerns and bucket-shops. The almost entire disappearance of the speculative trade is not the least remarkable feature of the petroleum-development.
JOSEPH SEEP.
Since the elimination of exchanges producers generally sell their oil in the shape of credit-balances. For their convenience the Standard Oil-Company has established purchasing-agencies throughout the region. The quantity of crude to the credit of the seller on the pipe-line books is ascertained from the National-Transit office, a check is given and all the trouble the producer has is to draw his money from the bank. It is handier than a pocket in a shirt, easier than rolling off a log in a mill-pond, and the happy “victim of monopoly” goes on his way rejoicing after the manner of Philip’s converted eunuch. If he reside at a distance, be sojourning at Squedunk or in London, traveling with the Czar or showing the Prince of Wales a good time, a message to the agency will deliver his oil to Harry Lewis and the cash to his own order in a twinkling. The whole chain of purchasing-agencies is managed by Joseph Seep, whose headquarters are at Oil City. The Standard has the knack of selecting A-1 men for responsible positions—men who are not misfits, square pegs in round holes or small potatoes in the hill. Among the capable thousands who represent the great corporation none is better adapted to his important place than the head of the purchasing-agencies. He has the tact, the experience, the knowledge of human-nature and the strength of character the position demands. For twenty-five years he has purchased crude for the company, up Oil Creek, at Oil City and down the Allegheny. You may not belong to his church or his party, you may differ from him on silver and woman-suffrage, you may even call the Standard an “octopus”—Col. J. A. Vera first did this at a meeting near St. Petersburg in 1874—and wish to turn its picture to the wall, but you like “Joe” Seep for his candor, his manliness, his admirable blending of suavity and firmness. He hails from the succulent blue-grass of Kentucky, combines Southern ease and Northern vigor, lives at Titusville and enjoys his wealth. It would strain Chicago’s convention-hall to hold his legions of friends. His heart and his purse are alike generous. He produces oil, buys oil, ships oil and “pays the freight” on three-fourths of the oil handled in Oildom. He and George Lewis and Harry Lewis—“match ’em if you can”—have bought enough oil to fill a sea on which the navies of the world might race and leave room for the Yale crew that crew too soon. Seep and the Lewises are the gilt-edged stripe of men who don’t drop banana-skins on the sidewalk to trip up a neighbor or squirm with envy because somebody else has a streak of good-luck. When Seep’s last shipment has been made, the account is closed and the Recording Angel’s ledger shows his big credit-balance, St. Peter will “throw the gates wide open,” bid him welcome and never think of springing the old gag: “Not for Joseph, not for Joe!”
Sudden shifts in the market brought queer experiences in the days of wild oil-speculation, enriching some dabblers and impoverishing others. Stories of gains and losses were printed in newspapers, repeated in Europe and exaggerated at home and abroad. A bull-clique at Bradford, acting upon “tips from the inside,” dropped four-hundred-thousand dollars in six months. An Oil-City producer cleared three-hundred-thousand one spring, loaded for a further rise and was bankrupted by the frightful collapse Cherry Grove ushered in. A Warren minister risked three-thousand dollars, the savings of his lifetime, which vanished in a style that must have taught him not to lay up treasures on earth. A Pittsburg cashier margined his own and his grandmother’s hundred-thousand dollars. The money went into the whirlpool and the old lady went to the poor-house. A young Warrenite put up five-hundred dollars to margin a block of certificates, kept doubling as the price advanced and quit fifty-thousand ahead. He looked about for a chance to invest, but the craze had seized him and he hazarded his pile in oil. Cherry Grove swept away his fortune in a day. A Bradford hotel-keeper’s first plunge netted him a hundred dollars one forenoon. He thought that beat attending bar and haunted the Producers’ Exchange persistently. He mortgaged his property in hope of calling the turn, but the sheriff raked in the pot and the poor landlord was glad to drive a beer-wagon. Such instances could be multiplied indefinitely. Hundreds of producers lost in the maelstrom all the earnings of their wells, while the small losers would be like the crowd John beheld in his vision on Patmos, “a great company whom no man can number.” Wages of drivers, pumpers, drillers, laborers and servant-girls were swallowed in the quicksands of the treacherous sea.
Of course there were many winners and many happy strokes of fortune. In 1876 Peter Swenk, of Ithaca, N. Y., purchased through a Parker broker ten-thousand barrels at two dollars and left orders to buy five-thousand more should the market break to one-seventy-five. Returning home, he was taken violently ill and the market suddenly fell forty cents, five cents below his margins. The day was stormy and Swenk could obtain no reports except from Oil City, where the break was eight cents greater than at Parker. The storm saved Swenk, although he did not know it for months, by crippling the wires and shutting off communication between Oil City and Parker the last hour of business. Concluding the margins were exhausted and the broker had sold the oil to save himself, Swenk went west to start anew. Weeks after his departure his Ithaca friends received urgent telegrams from the broker at Parker. They forwarded the messages, which informed him that, as the market stood, he was worth nineteen-thousand dollars and would be wise to sell. Swenk wired to close the whole matter and started for Parker. The market jumped another peg just before the order to sell arrived and Swenk received twenty-two-thousand dollars profits. He paid the broker double commission, returned home and bought a splendid farm. The faithful broker who managed this singular deal is now virtually a pauper at Bradford and a slave of rum. Last time we met he staggered up to me, his eyes bleared and his clothing in tatters, pressed my hand and said: “Gimme ten cents; I’m dying for a drink!”
A big spurt in April of 1895 temporarily revived interest in oil-speculations. Again the exchange at Oil City was thronged. Exciting scenes of former years were renewed as the price climbed ten cents a clip. It was refreshing after the long stagnation to see the pool once more stirred to its depths. From one-ten on April fourth the price strode to two-eighty on April seventeenth. Certificates were scarce and credit-balances were snapped up eagerly. A few big winnings resulted, then the reaction set in, the spasm subsided and matters resumed their customary quietude. Connected with this phenomenal episode the papers in May told this breezy tale of “Bailey’s Jag Investment:”
“C. J. Bailey, of Parkersburg, drew seventy-five-hundred dollars out of the Commercial Bank of Wheeling as the earnings of a three-hundred-dollar investment, made involuntarily and unknowingly. Bailey is a traveling salesman. A little less than a month ago he made a trip through the West-Virginia oil-fields. At Sistersville he got in with a crowd of oil-men, with the result that next day he had a big head, a very poor recollection of what had happened and was three-hundred dollars short, according to his memorandum-book. He wisely decided that the less publicity he gave his loss the better it would be and kept still. On Friday he was coming to Wheeling on the Ohio River Railroad, when a stranger approached him with:
“‘You are J. C. Bailey, I believe.’[I believe.’]