DURING the twentieth century oil has brought so much money to the
Southwest that the proceeds from cattle have come to look like tips.
This statement is not based on statistics, though statistics no doubt
exist--even on the cost of catching sun perch. Geological, legal, and
economic writings on oil are mountainous in quantity, but the human
drama of oil yet remains, for the most part, to be written. It is odd
to find such a modern book as Erna Fergusson's _Our Southwest_ not
mentioning oil. It is odd that no book of national reputation comes off
the presses about any aspect of oil. The nearest to national notice on
oil is the daily report of transactions on the New York Stock Exchange.
Oil companies subsidize histories of themselves, endow universities with
money to train technicians they want, control state legislatures and
senates, and dictate to Congress what they want for themselves in income
tax laws; but so far they have not been able to hire anybody to write
a book about oil that anybody but the hirers themselves wants to read.
Probably they don't read them. The first thing an oilman does after
amassing a few millions is buy a ranch on which he can get away from
oil--and on which he can spend some of his oil money.
People live a good deal by tradition and fight a good deal by tradition
also, voting more by prejudice. When one considers the stream of cow
country books and the romance of mining living on in legends of lost
mines and, then, the desert of oil books, one realizes that it takes
something more than money to make the mare of romance run. Geology and
economics are beyond the aim of this _Guide_, but if oil money keeps on
buying up ranch land, the history of modern ranching will be resolved
into the biographies of a comparatively few oilmen.
BOATRIGHT, MODY C. _Gib Morgan: Minstrel of the Oil Fields_. Texas
Folklore Society, Austin, 1945. Folk tales about Gib rather than
minstrelsy. OP.
BOONE, LALIA PHIPPS. _The Petroleum Dictionary_, University of Oklahoma
Press, Norman, 1952. "More than 6,000 entries: definitions of technical
terms and everyday expressions, a comprehensive guide to the language of
the oil industry."
CAUGHEY, JOHN WALTON. _Gold Is the Cornerstone_ (1948). Adequate
treatment of the discovery of California gold and of the miners.
_Rushing for Gold_ (1949). Twelve essays by twelve writers, with
emphasis on travel to California. Both books published by University of
California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles.
CENDRARS, BLAISE. _Sutter's Gold_, London, 1926. OP.
CLARK, JAMES A., and HALBOUTY, MICHEL T. _Spindletop_, Random House, New
York, 1952. On January 10, 1901, the Spindletop gusher, near Beaumont,
Texas, roared in the oil age. This book, while it presumes to record
what Pat Higgins was thinking as he sat in front of a country store,
seems to be "the true story." The bare facts in it make drama.
DE QUILLE, DAN (pseudonym for William Wright). _The Big Bonanza_,
Hartford, 1876. Reprinted, 1947. OP.
DOBIE, J. FRANK. _Coronado's Children_, Dallas, 1930; reprinted by
Grosset and Dunlap, New York. Legendary tales of lost mines and buried
treasures of the Southwest. _Apache Gold and Yaqui Silver_, Little,
Brown, Boston, 1939. More of the same thing.
EMRICH, DUNCAN, editor. _Comstock Bonanza_, Vanguard, New York, 1950.
A collection of writings, garnered mostly from West Coast magazines and
newspapers, bearing on mining in Nevada during the boom days of Mark
Twain's.
{illust. caption = Tom Lea, in _Santa Rita_ by Martin W. Schwettmann
(1943)}
_Roughing It_. James G. Gally's writing is a major discovery in a minor
field.
FORBES, GERALD. _Flush Production: The Epic of Oil in the
Gulf-Southwest_, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1942.
GILLIS, WILLIAM R. _Goldrush Days with Mark Twain_, New York, 1930. OP.
GLASSCOCK, LUCILLE. _A Texas Wildcatter_, Naylor, San Antonio, 1952.
The wildcatter is Mrs. Glasscock's husband. She chronicles this player's
main moves in the game and gives an insight into his energy-driven
ambition.
HOUSE, BOYCE. _Oil Boom_, Caxton, Caldwell, Idaho, 1941. With Boyce
House's earlier _Were You in Ranger?_, this book gives a contemporary
picture of the gushing days of oil, money, and humanity.
LYMAN, GEORGE T. _The Saga of the Comstock Lode_, 1934, and _Ralston's
Ring_, 1937. Both published by Scribner's, New York.
MCKENNA, JAMES _A. Black Range Tales_, New York, 1936. Reminiscences of
prospecting life. OP.
MATHEWS, JOHN JOSEPH. _Life and Death of an Oilman: The Career of E. W.
Marland_, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1951. Mature in style
and in interpretative power, John Joseph Mathews goes into the very life
of an oilman who was something else.
RISTER, C. C. _Oil! Titan of the Southwest_, University of Oklahoma
Press, Norman, 1949. Facts in factual form. Plenty of oil wealth and
taxes; nothing on oil government.
SHINN, CHARLES H. _Mining Camps_, 1885, reprinted by Knopf, New York,
1948. Perhaps the most competent analysis extant on the behavior of the
gold hunters, with emphasis on their self-government. _The Story of the
Mine as Illustrated by the Great Comstock Lode of Nevada_, New York,
1896. OP. Shinn knew and he knew also how to combine into form.
STUART, GRANVILLE. _Forty Years on the Frontier_, Cleveland, 1925.
Superb on California and Montana hunger for precious metals. OP.
TAIT, SAMUEL W. _Wildcatters: An Informal History of Oil-Hunting in
America_, Princeton University Press, 1946. OP.
TWAIN, MARK. _Roughing It_. The mining boom itself.