Another swindle of the same sort is to have a tank filled with oil, and a pipe run through one of its supporting posts, and under ground into the well. The pumping machinery is kept at work, and it may be pumping, say, at the rate of one hundred barrels a day. But all the time that the pump is working, the oil is running into the well, and it may run in and be pumped out again and again. The operation is a simple one, and well calculated to deceive.
FRAUDULENT OIL COMPANIES.
A great many petroleum companies were organized at one time, which had no existence beyond the paper one that they had in New York and other cities. Some of these companies gave most brilliant promises. I remember one which printed a flaming prospectus, and announced that there was room on its territory for three thousand first-class wells. No one could doubt the truth of this assertion, but its territory happened to be on the top of a mountain, where three hundred thousand wells might have been sunk without finding a drop of oil. The projectors of this concern sold a great deal of stock, but I believe they never declared a dividend of a single dollar, or even took the trouble to sink a well. Their money was made by defrauding their patrons rather than by doing any work in an honest way. Millions of dollars were sunk in oil speculations whose investors never obtained any return whatever. The public heard of the wells that yielded enormously, but they never heard of the thousands of wells that never amounted to anything.
So great was the rage for oil speculation during the height of the fever, that a well would be sunk where there was the least chance or prospect of obtaining oil. Suppose a man found a spring of pure water; he might pour a gallon or so of oil on the surface, and then carelessly, and with apparent innocence, lead a stranger to the vicinity. The stranger soon smells the oil, examines the water, and buys the spring at a high price.
One day a farmer broke a kerosene lamp in his cellar. A few hours later he admitted a stranger who wanted to buy some potatoes. The stranger discovered the oil, forgot about the potatoes, and immediately opened negotiations for buying the house and the land on which it stood. He paid about three times as much as they were worth, and the farmer went away happy.
A man, who thought crude petroleum a good remedy for freckles, one day bathed his face in that article, and lay down to sleep. As he tells the story, he was waked in half an hour by a New York speculator who was trying to sink a shaft into his ear.
THE SPRING THAT FLOWED WHISKEY.
A story is told in California of a man owning a farm which he wanted to sell. He had heard of the petroleum dodge, and thought he would try the same plan in another way. So one day, when a lot of speculators from San Francisco were at his house, he poured a gallon of whiskey into a small spring, and then led the speculators in that direction. The farmer spoke of the spring, said that he made no use of it, as he had an abundance of water near his house. He had never observed the spring except to remark its peculiar color. He roused the curiosity of the strangers so that one of them tasted the water, winked at his neighbor, and stepped aside. Before night the farmer had sold his place at a high price, and the speculators had organized a company for supplying the California market with an excellent article of whiskey cocktail. But somehow their enterprise never succeeded.
The immense fortunes made from petroleum speculations were almost marvellous; a man might be poor to-day and worth a million dollars to-morrow. In the morning he could not raise enough money to buy a breakfast, and at noon his credit would be good for the purchase of a first-class steamship. A man might be working as a day laborer this week, and his wife would be taking in washing at a dollar a dozen. Six days later he would be a millionnaire clad in broadcloth and fine linen, and wearing a diamond like a calcium light, while his wife would be arrayed in silks of the most costly character, and wearing them as uneasily as a bull-dog wears a pair of trousers tied around his neck.
A good story is told of a woman one day selecting some diamonds in a jewelry store on Broadway. Two other women were standing near and observing her motions. One of them suggested to her friend, “Evidently shoddy.”