NITRO-GLYCERINE LETS GO.
When in 1846 a patient European chemist hit upon a new compound by mixing fuming nitric-acid, sulphuric-acid and glycerine in certain proportions, he didn’t know it was loaded. Glycerine is a harmless substance and its very name signifies sweetness. Combining it with the two acids changed the three ingredients materially. The action of the acids caused the glycerine to lose hydrogen and take up nitrogen and oxygen. The product, which the discoverer baptized Nitro-Glycerine, appeared meek and innocent as Mary’s little lamb and was readily mistaken for lard-oil. It burned in lamps, consuming quietly and emitting a gentle light. But concussion proved the oily-looking liquid to be a terrible explosive, more powerful than gun-cotton, gunpowder or dynamite. For twenty years it was not applied to any useful purpose in the arts. Strangely enough, it was first put up as a homœopathic remedy for headache, because a few drops rubbed on any portion of the body pained the head acutely. James G. Blaine was given doses of it on his death-bed. An energetic poison, fatalities resulted from imbibing it for whisky, which it resembles in taste. After a time attention was directed unexpectedly to its explosive qualities. A small consignment, sent to this country as a specimen, accidentally exploded in a New-York street. This set the newspapers and the public talking about it and wondering what caused the stuff to go off. Investigation solved the mystery and revealed the latent power of the compound, which had previously figured only as a rare chemical in a half-score foreign laboratories. Miners and contractors gradually learned its value for blasting masses of rock. Five pounds, placed in a stone-jar and suspended against the iron-side of the steamer Scotland, sunk off Sandy Hook, cut a fissure twelve feet long in the vessel. A steamship at Aspinwall was torn to atoms and people stood in mortal terror of the destructive agent. Girls threw away the glycerine prescribed for chapped lips, lest it should burst up and distribute them piecemeal over the next county. Their cotton-padding or charcoal-dentifrice was as dangerous as the glycerine alone, which is an excellent application for the skin. A flame or a spark would not explode Nitro-Glycerine readily, but the chap who struck it a hard rap might as well avoid trouble among his heirs by having had his will written and a cigar-box ordered to hold such fragments as his weeping relatives could pick from the surrounding district. Such was the introduction to mankind of a compound that was to fill a niche in connection with the production of petroleum.
Paraffine is the unrelenting foe of oil-wells. It clogged and choked some of the largest wells on Oil Creek and diminished the yield of others in every quarter of the field. It incrusts the veins of the rock and the pipes, just as lime in the water coats the tubes of a steam-boiler or the inside of a tea-kettle. How to overcome its ill effects was a question as serious as the extermination of the potato-bug or the army-worm. Operators steamed their wells, often with good results, the hot vapor melting the paraffine, and drenched them with benzine to accomplish the same object. A genius patented a liquid that would boil and fizz and discourage all the paraffine it touched, cleaning the tubing and the seams in the sand much as caustic-soda scours the waste-pipe of a sink or closet. These methods were very limited in their scope, the steam condensing, the benzine mixing with the oil and the burning fluid cooling off before penetrating the crevices in the strata any considerable distance. Exploding powder in holes drilled at the bottom of water-wells had increased the quantity of fluid or opened new veins and the idea of trying the experiment in oil-wells suggested itself to various operators. In 1860 Henry H. Dennis, who drilled and stuck the tools in the first well at Tidioute, procured three feet of two-inch copper-pipe, plugged one end, filled it with rifle-powder, inserted a fuse-cord and exploded the charge in presence of six men. The hole was full of water, oil and bits of rock were blown into the air and “the smell of oil was so much stronger that people coming up the hollow noticed it.” The same year John F. Harper endeavored to explode five pounds of powder in A. W. Raymond’s well, at Franklin. The tin-case holding the powder collapsed under the pressure of the water and the fuse had gone out. William Reed assisted Raymond and W. Ayers Brashear, who had expected James Barry—he put up the first telegraph-line between Pittsburg and Franklin—to fire the charge by electricity. Reed developed the idea and invented the “Reed Torpedo,” which he used in a number of wells. A large crowd in 1866 witnessed the torpedoing of John C. Ford’s well, on the Widow Fleming farm, four miles south of Titusville. Five pounds of powder in an earthen bottle, attached to a string of gas-pipe, were exploded at two-hundred-and-fifty feet by dropping a red-hot iron through the pipe. The shock threw the water out of the hole, threw out the pipe with such force as to knock down the walking-beam and samson-post, agitated the water in Oil Creek and “sent out oil.” Tubing was put in, the old horse worked the pump until tired out and the result encouraged Ford to buy machinery to keep the well going constantly. This was the first successful torpedoing of an oil-well! The Watson well, near by, was similarly treated by Harper, who had brought four bottles of the powder from Franklin and was devoting his time to “blasting wells.” For his services at the Ford well he received twenty dollars. Harper, William Skinner and a man named Potter formed a partnership for this purpose. They torpedoed the Adams well, on the Stackpole farm, below the Fleming, putting the powder in a glass-bottle. The territory was dry and no oil followed the explosion. In the fall of 1860 they shot Gideon B. Walker’s well at Tidioute. Five torpedoes were exploded in 1860 at Franklin, Tidioute and on Oil Creek. Business was disturbed over the grave political outlook, oil was becoming too plentiful, the price was merely nominal and the torpedo-industry languished.
William F. Kingsbury advertised in 1860 that he would “put blasts in oil-wells to increase their production.” He torpedoed a well in 1861 on the island at Tidioute, using a can of powder and a fuse, which ignited perfectly. Mark Wilson and L. G. Merrill lectured on electricity in 1860-61, traveling over the country and exhibiting the principle of “Colt’s Submarine Battery,” by which “the rock at any distance beneath the surface of the earth may be rent asunder, thereby enabling the oil to flow to the well.” Frederick Crocker in 1864 arranged a torpedo to be dropped into a well and fired by a pistol-cartridge inserted in the bottom of the tin-shell. About thirty torpedoes were exploded from 1860 to 1865, all of them in wells filled with water, which served as tamping. Erastus Jones, James K. Jones and David Card exploded them in wells at Liverpool, Ohio. Joseph Chandler handled two or three at Pioneer and George Koch fired one of his own construction in May of 1864. Mr. Beardslee—he struck a vein of water by drilling a hole five feet and exploding a case of powder at the bottom of a well in 1844, near Rochester, N. Y.—came to the oil-region and put in a score of shots in 1865. As long ago as 1808 the yield of water in a well at Fort Regent was doubled by drilling a small hole and firing a quantity of powder. A flowing-well on the lease beside the Crocker stopped when the latter was torpedoed and was rigged for pumping. It pumped “black powder-water,” showing that the torpedo had opened an underground connection between the two wells, the effects of the explosion reaching from the Crocker to its neighbor. William Reed made a can strong enough to resist the pressure of the water, let it down the Criswell well on Cherry Run in 1863, failed to discharge it by electricity and exploded it by sliding a hollow weight down a string to strike a percussion-cap.
Notwithstanding these facts, which demonstrated that the yield of oil and water had been increased by exploding powder hundreds of feet under water, in November of 1864 Col. E. A. L. Roberts applied for a patent for “a process of increasing the productiveness of oil-wells by causing an explosion of gunpowder or its equivalent at or near the oil-bearing point, in connection with superincumbent fluid-tamping.” He claimed that the action of a shell at Fredericksburg in 1862, which exploded in a mill-race, suggested to him the idea of bombarding oil-wells. However this may be—it has been said he was not at Fredericksburg at the date specified in his papers—the Colonel furnished no drawings and presented no application for Letters Patent for over two years. He constructed six of his torpedoes and arrived with them at Titusville in January of 1865. Captain Mills permitted him to test his process in the Ladies’ well, near Titusville, on January twenty-first. Two torpedoes were exploded and the well flowed oil and paraffine. Reed, Harper and three or four others filed applications for patents and commenced proceedings for interference. The suits dragged two years, were decided in favor of Roberts and he secured the patent that was to become a grievous monopoly.
A company was organized in New York to construct torpedoes and carry on the business extensively. Operators were rather sceptical as to the advantages of the Roberts method, fearing the missiles would shatter the rock and destroy the wells. The Woodin well, a dry-hole on the Blood farm, received two injections and pumped eighty barrels a day in December of 1866. During 1867 the demand increased largely and many suits for infringements were entered. Roberts seemed to have the courts on his side and he obtained injunctions against the Reed Torpedo-Company and James Dickey for alleged infringements. Justices Strong and McKennan decided against Dickey in 1871. Producers subscribed fifty-thousand dollars to break down the Roberts patent and confidently expected a favorable issue. Judge Grier, of Philadelphia, mulcted the Reed Company in heavy damages. Nickerson and Hamar, ingenious, clever fellows, fared similarly. Roberts substituted Nitro-Glycerine for gunpowder and established a manufactory of the explosive near Titusville. The torpedo-war became general, determined and uncompromising. The monopoly charged exorbitant prices—two-hundred dollars for a medium shot—and an army of “moonlighters”—nervy men who put in torpedoes at night—sprang into existence. The “moonlighters” effected great improvements and first used the “go-devil drop-weight” in the Butler field in 1876. The Roberts crowd hired a legion of spies to report operators who patronized the nocturnal well-shooters. The country swarmed with these emissaries. You couldn’t spit in the street or near a well after dark without danger of hitting one of the crew. Unexampled litigation followed. About two-thousand prosecutions were threatened and most of them begun against producers accused of violating the law by engaging “moonlighters.” The array of counsel was most imposing. It included Bakewell & Christy, of Pittsburg, and George Harding, of Philadelphia, for the torpedo-company. Kellar & Blake, of New York, and General Benjamin F. Butler were retained by a number of defendants. Most of the individual suits were settled, the annoyance of trying them in Pittsburg, fees of lawyers and enormous costs inducing the operators to make such terms as they could. By this means the coffers of the company were filled to overflowing and the Roberts Brothers rolled up millions of dollars.
The late H. Bucher Swope, the brilliant district-attorney of Pittsburg, was especially active in behalf of Roberts. The bitter feeling engendered by convictions deemed unjust, awards of excessive damages and numerous imprisonments found expression in pointed newspaper paragraphs. Col. Roberts preserved in scrap-books every item regarding his business-methods, himself and his associates. One poetical squib, written by me and printed in the Oil-City Times, incensed him to the highest pitch and was quoted by Mr. Swope in an argument before Judge McKennan. The old Judge bristled with fury. Evidently he regretted that it was beyond his power to sentence somebody to the penitentiary for daring hint that law was not always justice. He had not traveled quite so far on the tyrannical road as some later wearers of the ermine, who, “dressed in a little brief authority, play such fantastic tricks before high heaven as make the angels weep” and consign workingmen to limbo for presuming to present the demands of organized labor to employers! It is not Eugene V. Debs or the mouthing anarchist, but the overbearing corporation-tool on the bench, who is guilty of “contempt of court.”
The Roberts patent re-issued in June of 1873, perpetuating the burdensome load upon oil-producers. In November of 1876 suit was brought in the Circuit Court against Peter Schreiber, of Oil City, charged with infringing the Roberts process. Schreiber’s torpedo duplicated the unpatented Crocker cartridge and Roberts wanted his scalp. The case was contested keenly four years, coming up for final argument in May of 1879. Henry Baldwin and James C. Boyce, of Oil City, and Hon. J. H. Osmer, of Franklin, were the defendant’s attorneys. Mr. Boyce collected a mass of testimony that seemed overwhelming. He spent years working up a masterly defense. By unimpeachable witnesses he proved that explosives had been used in water-wells and oil-wells, substantially in the manner patented by Roberts, years before the holder of the patent had been heard of as a torpedoist. But his masterly efforts were wasted upon Justices Strong and McKennan. They had sustained the monopoly in the previous suits and apparently would not reverse themselves, no matter how convincing the reasons. Mr. Schreiber, wearied by the law’s interminable delays and thirty-thousand dollars of expenditure, decided not to suffer the further annoyance of appealing to the United-States Supreme Court. The great body of producers, disgusted with the courts and despairing of fair-play, did not care to provide the funds to carry the case to the highest tribunal and lock it up for years awaiting a hearing. The flood of light thrown upon it by Boyce’s researches had the effect of preventing an extension of the patent and reducing the price of torpedoes, thus benefiting the oil-region greatly. Mr. Boyce is now practicing his profession in Pittsburg. He resided at Oil City for years and was noted for his bright wit, his incisive logic, his profound interest in education and his social accomplishments.