We started off in the morning in our riding clothes for a two days’
trip across the oil fields. There is no railway, and one might almost
say there are no roads to take one over the 80 kilometers to the little
“boom oil town” of Zacamixtle where the oil wells are.
Happily it was dry and hot when we started off, passing first of all
through the camps and tanks of the Huesteca Oil Company, which is
Doheny’s. Wherever the Huasteca has oil stations the roads in that
vicinity are good, and the houses of the engineers and employees are
well built and nicely situated, lawned and planted, in strong contrast
to the surrounding jungle, and the Indian grass huts and their squalor.
Every twenty kilometers along the way, there is a camp, most of these
are built by the Foundation Company, a firm that builds railways, that
lays pipelines, or restores Cathedrals. There seems to be in fact no
building job in the world that the Foundation Company does not take on!
At these camps there are steam heated coils to heat the oil and thin
it so that it passes more readily through the pipe line and gigantic
pumps to urge it along its course. All of which was a great surprise to
me, as I thought the oil flowed by gravity from the wells to the tank
ships! Our road displayed at intervals rows of pipes of various sizes,
mostly belonging to separate companies, and the spirit of competition
was in the atmosphere even of the jungle. Here and there where a pipe
had leaked, a black oil pool had oozed through to the surface. In
places, such a leakage had rotted the road and made it impassable, so
that one had to drive in a detour through the shrub. We went through
every kind of scenery, but the woods, of which there were miles and
miles, were luxuriantly tropical. I never saw such a variety of
flowers, and bush. There were gnarled tall trees on the stems of which
scarlet orchids had seeded themselves, and from the branches of which
dry grey moss hung down in long festoons. This moss is a particular
industry for the peasants, who use it to stuff their mattresses. We
lunched at Camp 80, in a wooden mosquito-protected building, where the
primitive, hardworking Americans gave of their hospitality. The roads
having been indescribable, and the car ill sprung, the day sweltering
hot, we were tired and hungry. Dick humiliated me by complaining loudly
that the omelette was only “skin” and had no inside. It certainly was
not the omelette of a French chef, and I was surprised that Dick knew
what an omelette should be like. He is shaping into the proverbial
Englishman, who cares what he eats. After lunch I gave him a lecture on
manners, and on the art of accepting hospitality, threatening as I did
so not to take him with me on my next trip to Russia!
At 4:30 we dined, washed and rested before pushing onto Zacamixtle.
This bit of the trip in the dark was the roughest of all. The roads
were worse and wet. We got stuck in a village street, the mud being
above the axle, and up hill. We had to be pulled out by another car.
For miles one could see the flaring sky and one expected to come upon
the wells at the crest of each hill, yet ever there seemed to be
another hill between us and the lighted sky. Finally, at a bend in the
road, we came upon the full glory of it. Great flares 10 or 12 feet
high rising from standards, where they have burned day and night for
years. This being the method of disposing of the superfluous gases,
which might so easily be put to a useful purpose. But with the wild
scramble to make money out of the liquid “black gold” no one has time
to think of utility or waste, or even of organization. There is no
fraternity in “the fields,” no sense of comradeship, no co-operation,
no idea of spending anything on the bit of land that has given so much.
There prevails one idea, and that of making as much gold as possible in
the shortest space of time, and getting away with it.
These hillsides in the dusk with their silhouettes of drilling towers,
of palm trees and grass thatched bamboo huts, added to which the sickly
smell of oil, have furnished palaces to men who once had nothing and
diamond crowns to women, and given them the power of kings and queens.
The mud and chaos, the breathless energy and human striving, have
enriched men and women beyond all dream.
But today, the world being saturated in the blood of bankrupting war,
the demand for oil has enormously subsided, nor can the price be paid.
The golden liquid has sunk temporarily to an eighth of its value of
eight months ago. Nevertheless there is no respite in the oil fields.
The oil can be stored, the oil producers can afford to wait. So new
towers grow up, new holes are bored. Down into the bowels of the earth
1800 feet below sea level the great metal shaft is drilled with the
full force of its 4,000 pounds weight until it bores through into the
illusive river of oil that flows way down. Albeit in the harbor a
few ships only await its flow to carry it to the four corners of the
earth, the oil is being caught and caged, forced, heated, pumped and
rushed along as before. In fact, more pipe lines and more giant tanks
are being hurriedly built, so that the oil can wait in store until the
markets of the world have recovered. So they hurry, hurry, bore and
build and store, for the “day” of oil will come again as surely as the
sun rises over the mountains. Has not Lloyd George said what he will
do to the British coal miners now on strike, when he has accumulated
and organized oil for fuel as a coal substitute? The world needs oil,
will always need oil, will need more and more oil, oil crude and oil
refined. So get it, keep it, hold it,--hurry....
But how do the pipes, the boilers, the tanks and the camps, the
provisions and the materials get to the fields? What is this
super-human effort to achieve the seemingly impossible? Why is there
not a pause for breath, a respite from the rush, why is there no
co-operation among the companies? There is so much fraternity among
workers, why not among employers? A very few months and just a little
of this quickly made gold would suffice to achieve a common road for
the common welfare, or to build a railway, and obviate this struggle
of hired humans to extricate machinery from a bog. Here for instance,
is a small stretch of road, called “private.” It can close its gates
to a dozen cars that have struggled and bumped and sweated through
miles of morass. It is called the Aguila, because that company built
it, and when it rains they close the gate to preserve the roads’
condition. What then--? Aguila’s cars can get through, but the Corona,
Dutch Shell, Mexican and others can well go back and struggle through
a longer hellish way. It was ten o’clock of the night when we made
Zacamixtle, and a room was given to us in the staff house. A little
clean bare wooden room, with a thin screen partition between us and
the noisy card playing party on the other side. Two beds, for Dick,
Louise and myself. I left them and went out to see the town. I went in
a car, escorted and protected. The town looked like the Chinese towns
I have seen in pictures. Some wooden sheds, some open stores, thatched
bamboo huts and in one street there was life,--the rest was dark. We
looked into saloons whence came the sound of music. In one there was
a gambling table and a crowd, we passed on. The other was more full
of sound and movement. We went in, took the table that was offered
us, and ordered drinks. In breeches and boots I was conspicuous, the
other women being half naked half-castes. The men were tall, strong,
clear-featured American boys, in big sombrero’s, blue shirts open at
the throat, breeches, mud and oil bespattered, and revolver in belt.
They danced a perfect fox trot, to music by four men on an instrument
that looked like a spinet, but sounded like a xylophone. A man came up
to our table and asked me if I was from Minneapolis. I was about to
explain that I came from London, and had never seen Minneapolis when my
protector intervened sharply with a rebuke that made the Minneapolis
man apologize and retreat. I was rather resentful at his being so
summarily snubbed, for after all he had, as he said, thought he had met
me in Minneapolis. Another man at the next table, drinking his beer out
of the bottle, tipped it up for the last dregs, and as he did so turned
round to me and when the bottle was drained said “Hullo!” He wasn’t
very sober and I disregarded him. Suddenly my protector went up to him
threateningly and there were words. As the evening advanced the scene
became indescribable. There were Mexicans and there were Chinese in the
saloon, and fragments of the conversation are unrepeatable. The two
best dressed women in the room became conspicuous. The one in scarlet
chiffon, who leaning against the wall had slept, heavily drugged, woke
up bad tempered, and took off her white slipper to beat the man on the
head who spoke to her. The one in pink chiffon sang noisily as she
sat on a man’s knee. There was a white cotton stocking kept up by a
mauve garter, and a hiatus of brown skin between the stocking and the
chiffon dress. All the women with white shoes were mud covered and
trodden on. Our chauffeur sat at our table, and attached to himself a
highly painted, cynical faced broad-bosomed dancer. She joined us and
her conversation with him was translated to me in an undertone. At one
o’clock there being scarce any one sober in the room, and the chiffon
gowns having caught their prey and left, we left too.
My impression as I look back, in spite of all the dirt and drunkenness,
is of young Americans of fine material, hard working and full of grit
and infinitely superior to their conditions of life. These are the men
and such are their surroundings, who give their best years for the
benefit of the oil shareholders.