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.