In the fall of 1865 Henry Harley began a_Sketches in Crude-oil Some accidents and incidents of the petroleum development in all parts of the globe

to Shaffer, the terminus of the Oil-Creek Railroad. Teamsters cut the

pipes, burned the tanks and retarded the work seriously. An armed patrol

arrested twenty of the ring-leaders, dispersed the mob and quelled the

riot. The line—two-inch tubing of extra weight—handled oil

expeditiously, a pump at Benninghoff forcing six to eight-hundred

barrels a day into the tanks at Shaffer. The system was a public

improvement, personal interest had to yield and four-hundred teams left

the region the week Harley’s line pumped its first oil. Abbott and

Harley owned an interest in the Pithole line and secured control by

purchasing Jonathan Watson’s claim, to run it in connection with the

Benninghoff line. They organized the firm of Abbott & Harley and

operated both lines several months. At Miller Farm they constructed

iron-tanks and loading-racks, which enabled two men to load a train of

oil-cars in a few hours. Avery & Hedden laid a line from Shamburg to

Miller Farm, establishing a station on the highest point of the Tallman

farm and running the oil to the railroad by gravity. Abbott & Harley

supplemented this with a branch from the Pithole line at the crossing of

Cherry Run. Crude was a good price, operators prospered and Miller Farm

became a busy place. Railroads extended to the region and pipe-lines

pumped oil directly from the wells to the cars or refineries. In the

fall of 1867 Abbott & Harley acquired control of the Western

Transportation Company, the only one empowered by the Legislature to

pipe oil to railway-stations. Under its charter they combined the

Western and their own two lines as the Allegheny Transportation Company.

The first board of directors, elected in January of 1869, consisted of

Henry Harley, president; W. H. Abbott, secretary; Jay Gould, J. P.

Harley and Joshua Douglass. T. W. Larsen was appointed treasurer and

William Warmcastle—genial, capable “Billy” Warmcastle—general

superintendent. Jay Gould purchased a majority of the stock in 1868 and

appointed Mr. Harley general oil-agent of the Atlantic & Great Western

and Erie Railroads. In 1871 the Commonwealth Oil and Pipe Company was

organized in the interest of the Oil-Creek Railroad. Harley contrived to

effect a combination and reorganize the Allegheny and the Commonwealth

as the Pennsylvania Transportation Company, with a capital of nearly

two-million dollars and five-hundred miles of pipes to Tidioute,

Triumph, Irvineton, Oil City, Shamburg, Pleasantville and Titusville,

centering at Miller Farm. Among the stock-holders were Jay Gould, Thomas

A. Scott, William H. Kemble, Mrs. James Fisk and George K. Anderson. The

new enterprise absorbed a swarm of small lines and was considered the

acme of pipe-line achievement.

[Illustration: W. H. ABBOTT. PIPE-LINE AT MILLER FARM IN

1866. HENRY HARLEY.]

William Hawkins Abbott was a Connecticut boy, an Ohio merchant at

twenty-five and a visitor to the Drake well in February of 1860. He

remained two days, paid ten-thousand dollars for three one-eighth

interests in farms below the town and two days after William Barnsdall

struck a fifty-barrel well on one of the properties. He located at

Titusville, established a market for crude in New York, shipped

extensively and in the fall of 1860, with James Parker and William

Barnsdall as partners, began the erection of the first complete refinery

in the oil-region. To convey the boilers and stills from Oil City,

whither they were shipped from Pittsburg by water, was a task greater

than the labors of Hercules. The first car-load of coal ever seen in

Titusville Mr. Abbott laid down in the fall of 1862. He opened a

coal-yard and superintended the refinery. Oil fluctuated at a rate

calculated to make refiners bald-headed. In January of 1861 Abbott paid

ten dollars a barrel for crude and one-twenty-five in March. In October

of 1862 Howe & Nyce stored five-hundred barrels of crude on the first

railroad-platform at Titusville, selling it to Abbott at two-sixty a

barrel, packages included. In January of 1863 Abbott sold the oil from

the same platform for fourteen dollars and in March the same lot—it had

never been moved—brought eight dollars. Thirty days later Abbott bought

it again at three dollars a barrel and refined it. He was interested in

the Noble well, bought a large share in the Pithole and Miller Farm

Pipe-Line and in 1866 formed a partnership with Henry Harley. He

contributed largely to the Titusville and Pithole plank-road and all

local enterprises likely to benefit the community. His generosity was

comprehensive and discerning. He donated a chapel to the Episcopal

congregation, projected the Union & Titusville Railroad and was a most

exemplary, public-spirited citizen. To give bountifully was his delight.

He bore financial disaster heroically and labored incessantly to save

others from loss. At seventy-two he is patient and helpful to those

about him, his daily life illustrating his real worth and illumining the

pathway of his declining years.

Born in Ohio in 1839 and graduated from the Rensselaer Polytechnic

Institute as a civil-engineer in 1858, Henry Harley supervised the

construction of the Hoosac Tunnel until the war and settled at Pittsburg

in 1862 as active partner of Richardson, Harley & Co. The firm had a

large petroleum commission-house and Harley removed to Philadelphia in

1863 to manage its principal branch. He purchased large tracts in West

Virginia which did not meet his expectations, withdrew from the

commission-firm and in the latter part of 1865 built his first

pipe-line. He was the confidential friend of Jay Gould and James Fisk,

whose support placed him in a position to organize the Pennsylvania

Transportation Company. For years Harley swam on the topmost wave and

was a high-roller of the loftiest stripe. Henry Villard was not more

magnetic. He told good stories, dealt out good cigars, knew champagne

from seltzer and had no trace of the miser in his intercourse with the

world. He lived at Titusville in regal style and made “the grand tour of

Europe” in 1872. He was on intimate terms with railroad magnates, big

politicians and Napoleons of finance. The Pipe-Line Company got into

deep waters, prosecutions and legal entanglements crippled it and Henry

Harley tumbled with the fabric his genius had reared. He drifted to New

York, was a familiar figure around Chautauqua several seasons and died

in 1892. His widow lives in New York and his brother George, a popular

member of the Oil-City Oil-Exchange, died last year.

In November of 1865 the Oil City & Pithole Railroad Company began a

railroad between the two towns, pushing the work with such energy that

the first train from Pithole to Oil City was run on March tenth, 1866.

Vandergrift & Forman equipped the Star Tank-Line to carry oil in

tank-cars and laid the Star Pipe-Line from West Pithole to Pithole to

connect with the railroad. An unequivocal success from the start, this

pipe-line has been regarded as the real beginning of the present system

of oil-transportation. The lower oil-country enlarged the field for

pipe-line stations. Lines multiplied in Venango, Clarion, Armstrong and

Butler. Some of these were controlled by Vandergrift & Forman, who

brought the business to a high standard of perfection. Each district had

one or more lines running to the nearest railroad. The Pennsylvania

Transportation Company secured a charter in 1875 to construct a line to

the seaboard. Nothing was done except to build more lines in the

oil-region. The number grew continually. Clarion had a half-dozen, the

Antwerp heading the list. Parker had a brood of small-fry and Butler was

net-worked. It was the fashion to talk of trunk-lines, call public

meetings, subscribe for stock and—let the project die. Dr. Hostetter,

the Pittsburg millionaire of “Bitters” fame, built the Conduit Line from

Millerstown to the city of smoke and soot. The Karns, the Relief and

others ran to Harrisville. Every fellow wanted a finger in the pipe-line

pot-pie. A war of competition arose, rates were cut, business was done

at heavy loss and the weaker concerns went to the wall. The companies

issued certificates or receipts, instead of paying cash for crude

received by their lines. When the producer ran oil into the

storage-tanks of some companies he was not certain the certificates

given him in return would have any value next day. He must either use

the lines or leave the oil in the ground. The necessity of combining the

badly-managed competitive companies into a solid organization was

urgent. The Union Pipe-Line Company acquired a number of lines and

operated its system in connection with the Empire Line. Under the act of

1874 Vandergrift & Forman organized the United Pipe-Lines, into which

numerous local lines were merged. The first grand step had been taken in

the direction of settling the question of oil-transportation for all

time.

The advantages of the consolidation quickly commended the new order of

things to the public. The United Lines erected hundreds of iron-tanks

for storage and connected with every producing-well. Needless pipes and

pumps and stations were removed to be utilized as required. The best

appliances were adopted, improving the service and diminishing its cost.

Uniform rates were established and every detail was systematized.

Captain Vandergrift, president of the United Lines, was ably assisted in

each department. Daniel O’Day, a potent force in pipe-line affairs,

developed the system to an exact science. He learned the

shipping-business from the very rudiments in the great Empire Line. His

thorough knowledge, industry and practical talent were of incalculable

value to the United Lines. He possessed in full measure the qualities

adapted especially to the expansion and improvement of the giant

enterprise. He had the skill to plan wisely and the ability to execute

promptly. His sagacity and experience foresaw the magnificent future of

the system and he laid the foundations of the United Lines broad and

deep. To-day Daniel O’Day is a master-spirit of the pipe-line world, a

millionaire and vice-president of the National Transit Company, which

transports nine-tenths of the oil produced in the United States. He has

risen by personal desert, without favoritism or partiality. His

elevation has not subtracted one whit from the manly character that

gained him innumerable friends in the oil-region.

[Illustration:

DANIEL O’DAY

J R CAMPBELL EDWARD HOPKINS.

PUMPING OIL FROM TROUTMAN WELL.

]

Edward Hopkins, first manager of the United Pipe-Lines, was an efficient

officer and died young. John R. Campbell has been treasurer from the

incorporation of the lines in 1877. Born in Massachusetts and graduated

from Rev. Samuel Aaron’s celebrated school at Norristown, he served his

apprenticeship in the Baldwin Locomotive Works and manufactured

printing-inks in Philadelphia, with William L. and Charles H. Lay as

partners. In March of 1865 he visited the oil-region and in August

removed to Oil City. He acquired oil-interests, published the _Register_

and was treasurer for the receiver of the Oil City & Pithole Railroad

Company. In 1867 he became book-keeper for Vandergrift & Lay, afterwards

for Captain Vandergrift and later for Vandergrift & Forman, who

appointed him treasurer of their pipe-lines in 1868. He retained the

position in the United Lines and he is still treasurer of that division

of the National Transit Company. To Mr. Campbell is largely due the

accurate and comprehensive system of pipe-line accounts now universally

adopted. He aided in devising negotiable oil-certificates, reliable as

government bonds and convertible into cash at any moment. He enjoys to

the fullest extent the confidence and esteem of his associates and is

treasurer of a dozen large corporations. He was president term after

term of the Ivy Club, one of the finest social organizations in

Pennsylvania, and a liberal promoter of important enterprises. His

abiding faith in Oil City he manifests by investing in manufactures and

furthering public improvements. Active, helpful and popular in business,

in society and in the church, no eulogy could add to the high estimation

in which John R. Campbell is held wherever known.

The enormous production of the Bradford field, the increased distances

and the construction of lines to the sea presented new and difficult

problems. A natural increase in size led to a demand for pipe of better

quality, for heavier fittings and improved machinery. The largest line

prior to Bradford’s advent was a four-inch pipe from the Butler field to

Pittsburg, in 1875. Excepting this and three-inch lines to Raymilton and

Oil City, none of the main lines exceeded twelve miles in length. Many

were gravity-lines and others used small tubing and light pumps. The

greater quantities and longer distances in the northern district—the oil

also congealed at a higher temperature and was harder to handle than the

product of the lower fields—required greater power, larger pipes and

increased facilities. The first six-inch line was laid from Tarport to

Carrollton in the spring of 1879. Two four-inch lines had preceded it

and a four-inch line from Tarport to Kane was completed the same season,

five six-inch lines following later. The first long-distance line, a

five-inch pipe from Hilliards—near Petrolia—to Cleveland, was completed

in the summer of 1879. Trunk-lines to the eastern coast were begun in

1879-80. The trunk-line to Philadelphia starts at Colegrove, McKean

county, and extends two-hundred-and-thirty-five miles—six-inch pipe—with

a five-inch branch of sixty-six miles from Millway to Baltimore.

Starting at Olean, two six-inch lines were paralleled to Saddle River,

N.J. They separated there, one connecting with the refineries at Bayonne

and the other going under the North and East Rivers to Hunter’s Point,

on Long Island. The New-York line is double under the Hudson—one pipe

inside another, with tight-fitting sleeve-joints. The ends of the

jacket-pipe were separated twelve inches to permit the enclosed pipe to

be screwed home. The sleeve was then pushed over the gap and the space

between the pipes filled with melted lead. The line is held in place by

two sets of heavy chains, parallel with and about twenty feet from the

pipe, one on each side. At intervals of three-hundred feet a guide-chain

connects the pipe with the lateral chains and beyond each of these

connections an anchor, weighing over a ton, keeps the whole in place.

The completion of this part of the line was an engineering triumph not

much inferior to the laying of Cyrus W. Field’s Atlantic Cable.

The United Pipe-Lines Association moved forward steadily, avoiding the

pitfalls that had wrecked other systems. It bought or combined the

Oil-City, Antwerp, Union, Karns, Grant, Conduit, Relief, Pennsylvania,

Clarion and McKean divisions of the American-Transfer, Prentice, Olean,

Union Oil-Company’s at Clarendon, McCalmont at Cherry Grove and smaller

lines, covering the oil-region from Allegany to Butler. The United owned

three-thousand miles of lines, thirty-five-million barrels of

iron-tankage and one-hundred-and-eighteen local pump-stations. Even

these extraordinary resources were strained by the overflowing demand.

Bradford was the Oliver Twist of the region, continually crying for

“More!” Ohio and West Virginia entered the race and required facilities

for handling an amazing amount of oil. To meet any contingency and

secure the advantages of consolidation in the states producing oil the

National-Transit Company increased its capital to thirty-two-million

dollars. The company held the original charter granted to the

Pennsylvania Company under the act of 1870. In 1880 it absorbed the

American-Transfer Company, an extensive concern. On April first, 1884,

it acquired the plant and business of the United Lines, thus ranking

with the most powerful corporations in the land.

Men entirely familiar with the minutest details of oil-transportation

and storage guided the National Transit. Captain Vandergrift was

influential in the management until his retirement from active duty in

1892. President C. A. Griscom was succeeded by Benjamin Brewster and he

by H. H. Rogers, the present official head of the company. John Bushnell

was secretary, Daniel O’Day general manager, and James R. Snow general

superintendent. Skillful, practical and keenly alive to the necessities

of the oil-region, they were not kid-gloved idlers whose chief aim was

to draw fat salaries. Mr. Rogers made his mark on Oil Creek in pioneer

times as a forceful, intelligent, progressive business-man. He had

brains, earnestness, integrity and industry and rose by positive merit

to the presidency of the greatest transportation-company of the age. He

is a first-class citizen, a liberal patron of education and an apostle

of good roads. He endows schools and colleges, abounds in kindly deeds

and does not forget his experiences in Oildom. Daniel O’Day—clever and

capable, “whom not to know is to argue one’s self unknown”—who has not

heard of the plucky, invincible vice-president of the National Transit

Company? Everybody admires the genial, resolute son of Erin whose clear

head, willing hands, strong individuality and sterling qualities have

raised him to a position Grover Cleveland might covet. James R. Snow

invented a pump so perfect that oil would fairly flow up hill for a

chance to pass through the machine. From their Broadway offices Rogers,

O’Day and Snow direct by telephone and telegraph the movements of

regiments of employés in Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia and Indiana.

They are in direct communication with every office of the company, every

purchasing-agency, every pump-station on the trunk-lines and every

oil-producing section of four states. No army Napoleon, Wellington or

Grant commanded was better officered, better disciplined, better

equipped and better managed than the grand army of National-Transit

pipe-men. If “poets are born, not made,” what shall be said of the

wide-awake solvers of the problem of rapid transit for oil—the

pipe-liners who, combining the maximum of efficiency with the minimum of

cost, have placed a great staple within reach of the lowliest dwellers

beneath the Stars and Stripes? Candidly, is “the best in the shop” too

good for them?

No man has contributed more to the development of the oil-industry,

alike as a producer, refiner and transporter, than Captain J. J.

Vandergrift. His active connection with petroleum goes back to pioneer

operations, widening and expanding constantly. By his energy,

perseverance, uprightness and masterly traits of character he attained

prominence in all branches of the oil-business. His wonderful success

was not due to any caprice of fortune, but to stability of purpose,

patient application and honorable methods. Vigor and decision

supplemented the keen foresight that discovered the amazing

possibilities of petroleum as an article of universal utility. He

believed in the future of oil and shaped his course in accordance with

the broadest ideas. Allied with George V. Forman, clear-headed, quick to

plan and execute, the firm took a leading part in producing and carrying

oil. Vandergrift & Forman constructed the Star Pipe-Line and equipped

trains of tank-cars to convey crude from Pithole to Oil City. They

drilled hosts of wells in Butler county and built the Fairview

Pipe-Line, which finally crystallized with numerous others into the

United Pipe-Lines Association and the gigantic National-Transit Company.

The firm of H. L. Taylor & Co., of which they were members, originated

the Union Oil-Company. Vandergrift & Forman, Vandergrift, Pitcairn & Co.

and Vandergrift, Young & Co. consolidated as the Forest Oil-Company,

which holds the foremost place in the production of oil. Mr. Forman

operated in Allegany and McKean, developing large tracts of territory on

the Bingham and Barse lands. He resided at Olean and established the

finest stock-farm in the Empire State. Removing to Buffalo to engage in

banking, he organized the Fidelity Trust-Company and erected for its use

a palatial structure in the heart of the city. Under his presidency the

Fidelity is a power in the world of finance. Shrewd, prompt and

far-seeing, George V. Forman is richly dowered with the qualities of

business-leadership. His influence in the oil-country was not limited to

one corner or district or locality. He has enjoyed the pleasure of

making money and the greater pleasure of giving liberally. He is “a man

who thinks it out, then goes and does it.”

[Illustration:

PIPE LINE STATION.

CAPT. J. J. VANDERGRIFT.

OIL TANK CARS.

GEO. V. FORMAN.

]

Born at Pittsburg in 1827, at fifteen Jacob Jay Vandergrift chose the

pathway that naturally opened before him and entered the

steamboat-service, then the chief medium of intercommunication between

his native city and the west. In ten years he rose from cabin-boy to

captain. He introduced the method of towing coal-barges that has since

been employed in the river-traffic. The innovation attracted wide

attention and gave a great impetus to mining in the Pittsburg

coal-fields. Captain Vandergrift was steamboating on the Ohio when the

war broke out and owned the staunch Red Fox, which the government

chartered and lost near Cairo. He transported oil down the Allegheny,

was concerned in West-Virginia wells—the Confederates destroyed them—and

removed to Oil City in 1863 to oversee his shipping-business, with

Daniel Bushnell as his first partner in producing oil. He organized the

firms out of which grew the Union, the Forest, the Washington

Oil-Company and the United Oil and Gas Trust. He was president of the

Forest and the Washington and a leading promoter of the Anchor

Oil-Company. The success of these great companies was owing largely to

his peculiar ability as an organizer and manager of important

enterprises. Other individuals and corporations produced oil profitably,

but to Vandergrift & Forman the marvelous advance in modes of

transportation is mainly attributable. They piped and railroaded oil

from Pithole, extended their lines through the different fields, devised

many improvements, perfected the methods of handling the product and

developed the system that has eliminated jaded horses, wooden-barrels,

mud-scows, slow freights and the thousand inconveniences of early

transportation. Captain Vandergrift’s sturdy integrity and wise

forethought planned the open, clear-cut manner in which his pipe-lines

conducted business. Throughout their entire existence he was president

of the United Pipe-Lines and of the United Division of the

National-Transit after the consolidation in 1884. Their splendid record

is an unqualified tribute to his business-skill and rare sagacity. He

found the region hampered by an expensive, tedious method of moving oil

and left it a transportation-system that serves the industry as no other

on earth is served. He substituted the steam-pump for the wearied mule,

the iron-artery for the roads of bottomless mire and the huge cistern of

boiler-plate for the portable tank of wooden staves that leaked at every

pore. To Oil City he was a munificent benefactor. He projected the

Imperial Refinery, with a capacity of fifteen-thousand barrels a week,

by the sale of which he became a stockholder and officer of the Standard

Oil-Company. He aided in establishing the Boiler-Works, the

Barrel-Works, river-bridges, manufactories, churches and public

improvements. He paid his workmen the highest wages, befriended the

humble toiler and assisted every worthy object. The poor blessed his

beneficent hand and all classes revered the modest citizen whose

unostentatious deeds of kindness no party, race, color or creed could

for one moment restrict.

Very naturally, one thus interested in a special product and its

industries must be identified with its finance. Captain Vandergrift

founded the Oil-City Trust-Company, one of the leading banking

institutions of the state, and was prominent in organizing the

Oil-Exchange, the Seaboard-National Bank of New York and the Argyle

Savings-Bank at Petrolia. Removing to Pittsburg in 1881, he founded the

Keystone Bank and the Pittsburg Trust-Company—nine-hundred-thousand

dollars paid-up capital and four-millions deposits—and was unanimously

elected president of both. He provided spacious quarters for the

Oil-Exchange and established it on a sound basis. He erected the massive

Vandergrift Building on Fourth avenue, in which the National-Transit

Company, the Forest, the South-Penn, the Pennsylvania, the Woodland and

other oil-companies are commodiously housed. The owner occupies a suite

of offices on the second floor and the Pittsburg Trust-Company has its

bank on the ground floor of the granite structure. He also erected the

Conestoga Building, which has seven-hundred elegant offices, and the

Imperial Power-Building, with factory-construction and the latest

electric-motors throughout. In 1882 he organized the Pennsylvania

Tube-Works—eight-hundred-thousand dollars capital—to manufacture all

kinds of wrought-iron pipe. The output was so excellent that the capital

was increased to two-millions and the plant doubled. The works turn out

pipe from one-eighth inch to twenty-eight inches, the smallest and

largest sizes in the world. The Apollo Steel-Company, which he also

capitalized in 1885 at three-hundred-thousand dollars, has likewise

trebled its plant and enlarged its capital to two-millions. The Penn

Fuel-Company, the Bridgewater Gas Company, the Natural-Gas Company of

West Virginia, the Chartiers Natural-Gas Company, the United Oil and Gas

Trust, the Toledo Natural-Gas Company, the Fort-Pitt Natural-Gas Company

and a number more were incorporated by Captain Vandergrift. They

represent many millions of capital and have performed inestimable

service in developing the fuel that proved a veritable philosopher’s

stone to the iron-industries of Western-Pennsylvania. As in petroleum,

from the days of spring-poles and bulk-barges and pond-freshets down

through all the changes of the most remarkable industrial development

the world has ever seen, so Captain Vandergrift has been a pioneer, a

guide and a leader in natural-gas. His hand has never been off the helm,

nor has he ever grudged an atom of the energy bestowed upon the

cherished pursuits of his busy life.

Forty miles north-east of Pittsburg, on a beautiful bend of the

Kiskiminetas River, the new town of Vandergrift has been laid out, under

the direction of Frederick Law Olmsted. It is located on a plot one mile

square, two miles below Apollo, the gentle slope overlooking the valley

and the river for leagues. Its residents will have within easy reach of

simple thrift what luxurious people enjoy in large cities at great

expense. They will have clean air and water and breathing-room, green

leaves and flowers and grass, paved streets and sewers and electricity,

parks and walks and drives, shade-trees and lawns and pleasant homes,

for Vandergrift will be the model town of Pennsylvania. The company is

paying sixty-thousand dollars a month at Apollo in wages and the big

works at Vandergrift will employ thrice as many men. At first the bulk

of the town will be the habitations of those employed by and associated

with the company. After a little others will note its advantages and

desire to share them. Provision will be made this year for an immediate

population of several thousand, with the means of living comfortably,

families owning their homes and controlling their own pursuits. The town

is not to be a fad, a hobby, or a visionary Utopia, but a good place for

men to live in, for the founder to use his money, for the world to look

at and learn from. These banks and business-blocks, pipe-lines and

refineries, mills and factories and the town that bears his name are

enduring monuments to the enterprise and wisdom of a man who recognizes

the responsibilities of wealth in his investments, in his works of

philanthropy and in his gifts to the children of misfortune.

Captain Vandergrift’s home in Allegheny City is a center of good cheer

and genial hospitality. The host is the same kindly, companionable

gentleman by his own hearth, in his office or on the street. He casts

the lead of memory into the stream of the past and talks entertainingly

of the old days on the Ohio, the Allegheny and Oil Creek. He is never

too much engaged to welcome a comrade of his early years. He has not

lost touch with men or the spirit of sympathy with the struggling and

unsuccessful. His trials and vicissitudes, equally with his triumphs and

successes, have strengthened his moral fiber, his manly courage and his

nobility of character. Doubtful plans and purposes have had no place in

his policy. Strict honesty and fairness have governed his conduct and

respected the rights and privileges of his fellows. He has been quick to

discover and reward talent, to grasp the details and possibilities of

business and to mature plans for any emergency. Money has not shriveled

his soul and narrowed him to the prayer of selfishness: “Give _me_ this

day _my_ daily bread.” He prefers straightforwardness to a pedigree

running back to the Mayflower. He realizes that golden opportunities for

good are not traveling by a time-table and that men will not journey

this way again to repair omissions and rectify mistakes. He knows that

he who does right will be right and feel right. He does not lay aside

his sense of justice, his love of fair-play, his earnest convictions and

his desire to benefit mankind with his Sunday clothes. He believes that

principle which is not exercised every day will not keep sweet a week.

The story of J. J. Vandergrift’s life and labor is told wherever the

flame of natural-gas glows in the white heat of a furnace or the gleam

of an oil-lamp brightens a happy home.

Somehow we all feel sure, boys, that when the game is o’er—

When the last inning’s play’d, boys, this side the other shore—

We’ll hear the Umpire say, boys: “The Captain’s made a score.”

Few persons have any conception of the labor and capital involved in

storing and transporting petroleum. Only those familiar with the early

methods can appreciate fully the convenience and economy of the

pipe-line system. It puts the producer in direct communication with the

carrier and a market at all seasons, regardless of high or low water,

rain or storm, mud or dust. The tanks at his wells are connected with

the pipe-line by one or more of the two-inch feeders that spider-web the

producing-country. Small pumps force the crude, when the location of the

well prevents running it by gravity, from these tanks into a

receiving-tank of the line, whence it can be piped into the trunk-lines

or a storage-tank as desired. The producer who wishes his oil run

notifies the nearest office or agent of the company—usually this

requires about two minutes by wire—a gauger measures the feet and inches

of fluid in the tank, opens the stop-cock, turns the stream into the

line and, presto, change! the job is done. The gauger measures the oil

left at the bottom of the tank, gives the producer a receipt for the

difference between the two gauges and reports the result to the central

station of that section of the field. There tables of the measurements

of every tank in the locality are at hand, properly labeled and

numbered. The right table shows at a glance the amount of oil in barrels

corresponding to the feet and inches the gauger reports having run and

the producer is credited accordingly, just like a depositor in a bank.

These reports are summed up at a certain hour and the company learns

precisely how much oil has been received each day. By a similar process

the shipments are recorded and the exact quantity in the custody of the

company is known at the close of the day’s business. Runs and shipments

are published daily and a monthly synopsis is posted, in compliance with

the laws of Pennsylvania. The producer can leave his oil in the line,

subject to a slight charge for storage after thirty days, or sell it

immediately. He can take certificates or acceptances of one thousand

barrels each, payable on demand in crude-oil at any shipping-point in

the oil-region. These certificates, good as gold and negotiable as

certified checks, the holder can use as collateral to borrow money, sell

at sight or stow away if he looks for an advance in prices. It is not

Hobson’s choice with him. In an hour from the time of notifying the

office his oil may be run, the amount figured up, the sale made and the

currency in the owner’s pocket. He has not tugged and perspired loading

it in wagons or on cars, worn out his patience and his team and his

profanity driving it through an ocean of mud, or risked the chances of a

jam and a wreck ferrying it on the bosom of a pond-freshet. Nor has he

put up one penny for the service of the pipe-line, which collects twenty

cents a barrel when the oil is delivered to the purchaser. The company

is not a holder of oil on its own account, except what it necessarily

keeps to offset evaporation and sediment, acting merely as a

common-carrier between the producer and the refiner. The system is the

perfection of simplicity, accuracy and cheapness.

Pipe-lines are the natural outgrowth of the petroleum-business, which

could no more get along without them than could the commerce of the

world without railroads and steamships. The movement of a thousand

barrels of crude in early times was a task of great magnitude, costly,

time-consuming and perplexing. Sometimes barrels were not to be had, the

water was too shallow for boating or the mud too deep for teaming. Often

a big well wasted half its product and gorged transportation, harassing

the soul and depleting the purse of the luckless owner. Fancy attempting

to handle a hundred-thousand barrels a day with the primitive

appliances! Whew! You might as well try to cart off Niagara in kegs.

Butler and McKean rushed wells by the hundred every week, swelling the

production extravagantly. The supply was enormously in excess of the

demand. Operators wouldn’t stop drilling and the surplus oil had to be

cared for in some way. The United Lines and the National-Transit Company

spent millions of dollars to provide adequate facilities. Not only was

the vast output to be taken from the wells, but a large percentage must

be stored. To pipe a hundred-and-forty-thousand barrels a day was a

grand achievement, even without the burden of husbanding much of the

stuff for weeks, months and years. A wilderness of iron-tanks—thirty to

forty thousand barrels each—went up at Olean, Oil City, Raymilton,

Parker and distributing points. Stocks increased and tanks multiplied

until forty-million barrels were piled up! Think of the mountains of

pipe, the acres of iron-plates, the legions of workmen and the stacks of

cash all this required. Six pipes were laid to New York and the

Tidewater Company built a six-inch line to New Jersey. The trunk-lines

of the National-Transit alone are five-thousand miles in length, besides

which the Tidewater and the United-States pipe oil eastward.

Fifty-thousand barrels of crude a day flow through these underground

arteries to the refineries at Hunter’s Point, Bayonne and Philadelphia.

Other thousands are piped to Baltimore, Buffalo, Cleveland, Pittsburg

and refineries in the oil-region. The pipe used in transporting crude

would girdle the earth twice and leave a long string for extra-measure.

Truly “these be piping times.”

McDonald gushers poured out their floods, but the National-Transit and

Mellon Lines were on deck with pumps and pipes that snatched the

contents of the tanks and whirled them to the sea. John McKeown’s

leviathan at Washington electrified the neighborhood by starting at

three-hundred barrels an hour, with only three small tanks to hold the

product. It filled the first in forty minutes. Superintendent Glenn

Braden set up a pump in thirty minutes more that would empty the tank in

a half-hour. All night it was nip and tuck between the spouter and the

pump, big Goliath and puny David. The pump won, the oil was safe in the

line and not a drop spilled! West-Virginia’s geysers burst forth and the

Southern Trunk-Line—three-hundred miles of eight-inch and six-inch

pipe—linked Morgantown to Philadelphia. Lima tried to drown Ohio in

crude and an eight-inch line quietly dumped the deluge into Chicago.

Part of it fired the half-mile row of boilers at the Columbian

Exposition, with not a cinder, a speck of ashes or a whiff of smoke to

dim the lustrous flame of fuel-oil. Indiana, the home of some pretty big

statesmen, some pretty big oil-territory and “the Hoosier Schoolmaster,”

had a surfeit of crude which the pipe-lines bore to the huge refinery at

Whiting, to Cleveland and the Windy City. Thus the development of new

fields, remote from railroads, has been rendered possible.

Trunk-lines require pipe of extra weight, manufactured expressly for the

purpose from wrought-iron, lap-welded, cut into lengths of eighteen feet

and tested to a pressure of two-thousand pounds to the square inch.

Pumping-stations, supplied with powerful machinery, are located at

suitable points, generally twenty-five to thirty miles apart. The

stations on the National-Transit trunk-lines usually comprise a

boiler-house forty feet square, built of brick and roofed with

corrugated iron, lighted by electricity and containing seven or eight

tubular boilers of eighty to one-hundred horse-power. For greater safety

from fire the immense pumps are in a separate brick-building. The

largest pumps are triple-expansion crank and fly-wheel engines, the

invention of John S. Klein, superintendent of the company’s

machine-shops at Oil City. Each of these giants can force

twenty-five-thousand barrels of oil a day through three six-inch pipes

from one station to the next. A low-duty engine is run when the

main-pump is stopped for repairs or any cause. At each station two or

more storage-tanks—thirty to thirty-five thousand barrels apiece—are

provided. One receives the oil from the preceding station while the pump

is emptying the other into the receiver at the station beyond. The

movement is incessant. Night and day, never tiring and never resting,

the iron-arteries throb and pulsate with the greasy liquid that rushes

swiftly a yard beneath the surface, duplicate machinery obviating the

necessity of delay or interruption. Five or six boilers are fired at

once and two are held in reserve, in case of accident. Loops are laid

around some of the stations, that a pump may send the oil two or three

times the average distance and the total disability of a station not

blockade the line. When lofty hills are surmounted the pressure on the

pump reaches twelve to fifteen-hundred pounds. Independent

telegraph-lines connect the stations with one another and the

main-offices. The engineers handle the key and click messages expertly.

The lines are patrolled regularly to detect leaks, although the system

of checking from tank to tank makes it impossible for a serious break to

pass unnoticed. To clear the incrustations of paraffine, especially in

cold weather, a scraper or “go-devil” is sent through the pipes. The

best of these instruments—a spindle with a ball-and-socket-joint near

its center to follow the bends of the pipe, fitted with steel-blades set

radially and kept in position by three arms in front and rear—was

devised by Mr. Klein. Oblique vanes, put in motion by the running oil,

rotate the spindle and the blades scrape the pipe as the “go-devil” is

propelled forward. A catch-box is placed at the end of each division and

the queer traveler can be closely timed. The great battery of boilers,

the huge engine-pumps—one on the Lima-Chicago line weighs a hundred

tons—the electric-plants and the intricate maze of steam-pipes and

water-pipes suggest the machinery of an ocean-steamship.

If the railroad is “the missionary of punctuality,” as Robert Burdette

concisely expresses it, surely the pipe-line is the messenger of

efficiency. With wondrous speed and unfailing certainty it conveys

crude-oil from the wells to the refineries in or out of the region,

climbing hills, descending ravines, fathoming rivers and traversing

plains and forests. Methods of refining have kept pace with progress in

transportation. The smoky, dangerous, inconvenient kettle-still of the

pioneer on Oil Creek has given place to the mammoth refinery of to-day,

with its labor-saving appliances, its hundreds of skilled employés and

its improved processes. Instead of the ill-smelling, sputtering,

explosive mixture of earlier years, the world now receives the

water-white kerosene that burns as steadily and safely as a wax-taper.

Seventy tank-vessels carry it over the seas to Europe, Asia and Africa.

It is delivered at your house in neat cans, or the grocer will sell it

by the pint, quart, gallon or barrel. The light is pure as heaven’s own

sunshine, grateful to the eye and beautifying to the home. No other

substance approaches petroleum in the number and utility of its

products. Long years of patient research and experiment have extracted

from it one-hundred-and-fifty articles of value in art, science,

mechanics and domestic economy. It supplies healing-salves, ointments,

cosmetics, soaps, dainty toilet-accessories and—oh, girly Vassar

girls—chewing-gum! Refuse tar and scum are converted into lamp-black and

coarse lubricants. Scarcely a particle of it goes to waste. Noxious

gases and poisonous acids no longer pollute the air and the streams

around refineries, offending human nostrils and killing helpless fish.

The amazing vastness of its development is equalled only by the

marvelous variety of petroleum’s commercial uses.

At every stage of its journey from the hole in the ground to the abode

of the purchaser of kerosene, oil is handled with a view to the best

results. The pipe-line relieves the producer from worry and fatigue and

a large outlay, furnishing him prompt service and a cash market at his

own door every business-day in the year. It enables the refiner to fill

the consumer’s lamp at a trifling margin above the price of crude. For

seventy cents a barrel—less than half it cost formerly to haul it a

mile—the line collects oil from the wells, pumps it into the trunk-lines

and delivers it in New York. Contrast this charge with the four, five,

eight or ten dollars exacted in the days of boats and wagons, barrels

and tank-cars and endeavor to figure the saving to the public wrought by

the pipe-lines, to say nothing of greater convenience and expedition.

The existing transportation-system may be a monopoly, but the country is

hungry for more monopolies of the same sort. If it be monopoly to bring

order out of chaos, to build one strong enterprise from a dozen

weaklings, to consolidate into a grand corporation a score of feeble

lines and reduce freight-rates seventy-five to ninety-five per cent.,

the National-Transit Company is the rankest monopoly of the century. It

practices the kind of monopoly that converts a row of tottering shanties

into a stately business-block. It is guilty of furnishing storage solid

as the Rock of Gibraltar to the men who drilled oil down to forty cents

a barrel and tiding them over the period of excessive production. This

is the brand of monopoly that keeps industry alive, that supplies

foreign nations with an American product and benefits humanity. If Van

Syckle, Abbott and Harley were plucky and courageous in braving the

wrath of four-thousand teamsters, how much more brain and brawn, muscle

and money, dollars and sense were needed to lay trunk-lines that sent

ten-thousand tank-cars to the junk-pile and diminished the revenues of

railroads millions of dollars annually! The owners of these lines have

grown rich, as they ought to do, because for every dollar of their

winnings they have saved producers and consumers of petroleum ten.

Pipe-line certificates afforded an excellent medium for speculation. The

commodity they represented was subject to fluctuations of five to fifty

per cent., which made it particularly fascinating to speculators in

stocks. Oil-exchanges were established at Oil City, Titusville, Parker,

Bradford, Pittsburg, New York, Philadelphia and elsewhere. In a single

year the clearances exceeded eleven-billion barrels. Bulls and bears

reveled in excitement and brokers had customers from every quarter of

the country. The forerunner of these institutions was “the Curbstone

Exchange” at Oil City in 1870. The bulk of the buying and selling was

done in front of Lockhart, Frew & Co.’s office, Centre street, near the

railroad track. Producers, dealers and spectators would congregate on

the sidewalk, discuss the situation, tell stories and buy or sell oil.

The group in the illustration includes a number of well-known citizens.

Most of them have left Oil City and not a few have gone from earth.

Acquaintances will recognize Dr. Knox, John Mawhinney, James Mawhinney,

John D. Archbold, Dr. Baldwin, A. H. Bronson, P. H. Judd, L. D. Kellogg,

A. E. Fay, George Porter, Edward Higbee, William M. Williams, John W.

Austin, J. M. Butters, Joseph Bates, George W. Parker, William H.

Porterfield, Charles W. Frazer, Edward Simmons, Samuel H. Lamberton,

James H. Magee, Isaac Lloyd and William Elliott. Charles Lockhart and

William Frew were pioneer refiners at Pittsburg and heavy buyers of

crude at Oil City. William G. Warden entered into partnership with them

and established the great Atlantic Refinery at Point Breeze. In 1874 the

refineries controlled by Warden, Frew & Co. consolidated with the

Standard Oil-Company of Ohio, forming the nucleus of the Standard

Oil-Trust. Mr. Warden built the Gladstone, the first large

apartment-house in Philadelphia, and died in April of 1895. He married a

daughter of Daniel Bushnell and was one of the most enterprising and

charitable citizens of Pennsylvania. His surviving contemporaries are

old in reminiscences of Oil Creek and the days when pipe-lines and

oil-certificates were unguessed probabilities.

[Illustration: OIL CITY “CURBSTONE EXCHANGE” IN 1870.]

Trades were made in offices, at wells, on streets, anywhere and

everywhere. Purchasers for Pittsburg, Baltimore and Philadelphia

refiners started brokerage in 1868, on a commission of ten cents a

barrel from buyers and five from sellers. The Farmers’ Railroad,

completed to Oil City in 1867, brought so many operators to town that a

car was assigned them, in which they bought and sold “spot,” “regular”

and “future oil.” There were no certificates, no written obligations, no

margins to bind a bargain, but everything was done on honor and no man’s

word was broken. “Spot oil” was to be moved and paid for at once,

“regular” allowed the buyer ten days to put the oil on the cars and

“future” was taken as agreed upon mutually. Large lots frequently

changed hands in this passenger-car, really the first oil-exchange. The

business increased, an exchange on wheels had manifest disadvantages and

in December of 1869 it was decided to effect a permanent organization.

Officers were elected and a room was rented on Centre street. It removed

to the Sands Block in 1871, to the Opera-House Block in January of 1872

and to a temporary shed next the Empire-Line office in the fall, when

South-Improvement complications dissolved the organization. For about

fifteen months hotels, streets, or offices sufficed for accommodations.

In February of 1864 the exchange was reorganized, with George V. Forman

as president, and occupied quarters in the Collins House four years.

Gradually rules were adopted and methods introduced that brought about

the system afterwards in vogue. In April of 1878 the formal opening of

the splendid Oil-Exchange Building took place. The structure contained

offices, committee-rooms, telegraph-lines, reading-rooms and all

conveniences for its four-hundred members. H. L. Foster, now of Chicago,

was president term after term. The late H. L. McCance, secretary for

years, was a first-class artist, with a skill for caricature worthy of

Thomas Nast. Some of the most striking cartoons pertaining to oil were

the work of his ready pencil. F. W. Mitchell & Co. inaugurated the

advancing of money on certificates, their bank’s transactions in this

line ranging from one to four-million dollars a day. The application of

the clearing-house system in 1882 simplified the routine and facilitated

deliveries. The volume of business was immense, the clearances often

amounting to ten or fifteen-million barrels a day. Only the New York and

the San Francisco stock-exchanges surpassed it. If speculation were

piety, everybody who inhaled the air of Oil City would have been saved

and the devil might have put up his shutters. During rapid fluctuations

the galleries would be packed with men and women who had “taken a flyer”

and watched the antics of the bulls and bears intently. Fortunes were

gained and lost. Many a “lamb” was shorn and many a “duck” lamed. It was

a raging fever, a delirium of excitement, compressing years of ordinary

anxiety and haste into a week. Now the exchange is deserted and

speculative trade in oil is dead. Part of the big building is a

clothier’s store and offices are rented for sleeping-apartments. Myer

Lowentritt, Stewart Simpson, “Eddie” Selden, Samuel Justus and a

half-dozen others are seen occasionally, but days pass without a

solitary transaction, the surging crowds have vanished and activity is a

dream of bygone years.

Parker had a lively oil-exchange when the Armstrong and Butler fields

were at their height. The most prominent men in speculative trade lived

in the town or were represented in the exchange. Thomas B. Simpson was a

large operator. George Darr was agent of Daniel Goettel, who once

engineered the greatest bull-movement in the history of oil and was

supposed to have “cornered” the market. Charles Ball and Henry Loomis

earned sixty-thousand dollars brokerage a year and died within a month

of each other. Trade slackened and expired. The boys shifted to Bradford

and Pittsburg and a constable sold the building to satisfy Mrs. W. H.

Spain’s claim for ground-rent! The five-thousand-dollar library and the

costly pictures, dust-covered and neglected, sold for a trifle and went

to South Oil City. A jollier, bigger-hearted crowd of fellows than the

members of the Parker Exchange never played a practical joke or helped a

poor sufferer out of “a deuce of a fix.”

The Bradford Oil-Exchange started on January first, 1883, with

five-hundred members and a forty-thousand-dollar building. Five-hundred

others, with Hon. David Kirk as president, organized the Producers’

Petroleum-Exchange and erected a spacious brick-block, occupying it on

January second, 1884. Both exchanges whooped it up briskly, both have

subsided and the buildings are stores and offices. Titusville’s handsome

exchange, on the site of the American Hotel, has gone the same road.

Captain Vandergrift built the Pittsburg Oil-Exchange, the finest of them

all, fitting it up superbly. A bank and offices have succeeded the

festive dealers in crude. From the Mining-Stock Exchange, the

Miscellaneous Security Board and several more of similar types the

New-York Consolidated Stock and Petroleum Exchange developed a huge

concern, with twenty-four-hundred members and a lordly building—erected

in 1887—on Broadway and Exchange Place. The membership was the largest

in the country, with the exception of the Produce Exchange, and the

business in oil at times exceeded the transactions of the Stock

Exchange. Seats sold as high as three-thousand dollars. Charles G.

Wilson has been president since the organization of the Petroleum and

Stock Board, which absorbed the National Petroleum Exchange—L. H. Smith

was its president—and in 1885 adopted the elongated name that has

burdened it eleven years. Oil is not mentioned once a week, because the

stocks have declined to a skeleton and the certificates represent

scarcely a half-million barrels. Philadelphia had an exchange of lesser

degree and a score of oil-region towns sharpened their appetite for

speculation by establishing branch-concerns and bucket-shops. The almost

entire disappearance of the speculative trade is not the least

remarkable feature of the petroleum-development.

[Illustration: JOSEPH SEEP.]

Since the elimination of exchanges producers generally sell their oil in

the shape of credit-balances. For their convenience the Standard

Oil-Company has established purchasing-agencies throughout the region.

The quantity of crude to the credit of the seller on the pipe-line books

is ascertained from the National-Transit office, a check is given and

all the trouble the producer has is to draw his money from the bank. It

is handier than a pocket in a shirt, easier than rolling off a log in a

mill-pond, and the happy “victim of monopoly” goes on his way rejoicing

after the manner of Philip’s converted eunuch. If he reside at a

distance, be sojourning at Squedunk or in London, traveling with the

Czar or showing the Prince of Wales a good time, a message to the agency

will deliver his oil to Harry Lewis and the cash to his own order in a

twinkling. The whole chain of purchasing-agencies is managed by Joseph

Seep, whose headquarters are at Oil City. The Standard has the knack of

selecting A-1 men for responsible positions—men who are not misfits,

square pegs in round holes or small potatoes in the hill. Among the

capable thousands who represent the great corporation none is better

adapted to his important place than the head of the purchasing-agencies.

He has the tact, the experience, the knowledge of human-nature and the

strength of character the position demands. For twenty-five years he has

purchased crude for the company, up Oil Creek, at Oil City and down the

Allegheny. You may not belong to his church or his party, you may differ

from him on silver and woman-suffrage, you may even call the Standard an

“octopus”—Col. J. A. Vera first did this at a meeting near St.

Petersburg in 1874—and wish to turn its picture to the wall, but you

like “Joe” Seep for his candor, his manliness, his admirable blending of

suavity and firmness. He hails from the succulent blue-grass of

Kentucky, combines Southern ease and Northern vigor, lives at Titusville

and enjoys his wealth. It would strain Chicago’s convention-hall to hold

his legions of friends. His heart and his purse are alike generous. He

produces oil, buys oil, ships oil and “pays the freight” on

three-fourths of the oil handled in Oildom. He and George Lewis and

Harry Lewis—“match ’em if you can”—have bought enough oil to fill a sea

on which the navies of the world might race and leave room for the Yale

crew that crew too soon. Seep and the Lewises are the gilt-edged stripe

of men who don’t drop banana-skins on the sidewalk to trip up a neighbor

or squirm with envy because somebody else has a streak of good-luck.

When Seep’s last shipment has been made, the account is closed and the

Recording Angel’s ledger shows his big credit-balance, St. Peter will

“throw the gates wide open,” bid him welcome and never think of

springing the old gag: “Not for Joseph, not for Joe!”

Sudden shifts in the market brought queer experiences in the days of

wild oil-speculation, enriching some dabblers and impoverishing

others. Stories of gains and losses were printed in newspapers,

repeated in Europe and exaggerated at home and abroad. A bull-clique

at Bradford, acting upon “tips from the inside,” dropped

four-hundred-thousand dollars in six months. An Oil-City producer

cleared three-hundred-thousand one spring, loaded for a further rise

and was bankrupted by the frightful collapse Cherry Grove ushered in.

A Warren minister risked three-thousand dollars, the savings of his

lifetime, which vanished in a style that must have taught him not to

lay up treasures on earth. A Pittsburg cashier margined his own and

his grandmother’s hundred-thousand dollars. The money went into the

whirlpool and the old lady went to the poor-house. A young Warrenite

put up five-hundred dollars to margin a block of certificates, kept

doubling as the price advanced and quit fifty-thousand ahead. He

looked about for a chance to invest, but the craze had seized him and

he hazarded his pile in oil. Cherry Grove swept away his fortune in a

day. A Bradford hotel-keeper’s first plunge netted him a hundred

dollars one forenoon. He thought that beat attending bar and haunted

the Producers’ Exchange persistently. He mortgaged his property in

hope of calling the turn, but the sheriff raked in the pot and the

poor landlord was glad to drive a beer-wagon. Such instances could be

multiplied indefinitely. Hundreds of producers lost in the maelstrom

all the earnings of their wells, while the small losers would be like

the crowd John beheld in his vision on Patmos, “a great company whom

no man can number.” Wages of drivers, pumpers, drillers, laborers and

servant-girls were swallowed in the quicksands of the treacherous sea.

Of course there were many winners and many happy strokes of fortune. In

1876 Peter Swenk, of Ithaca, N. Y., purchased through a Parker broker

ten-thousand barrels at two dollars and left orders to buy five-thousand

more should the market break to one-seventy-five. Returning home, he was

taken violently ill and the market suddenly fell forty cents, five cents

below his margins. The day was stormy and Swenk could obtain no reports

except from Oil City, where the break was eight cents greater than at

Parker. The storm saved Swenk, although he did not know it for months,

by crippling the wires and shutting off communication between Oil City

and Parker the last hour of business. Concluding the margins were

exhausted and the broker had sold the oil to save himself, Swenk went

west to start anew. Weeks after his departure his Ithaca friends

received urgent telegrams from the broker at Parker. They forwarded the

messages, which informed him that, as the market stood, he was worth

nineteen-thousand dollars and would be wise to sell. Swenk wired to

close the whole matter and started for Parker. The market jumped another

peg just before the order to sell arrived and Swenk received

twenty-two-thousand dollars profits. He paid the broker double

commission, returned home and bought a splendid farm. The faithful

broker who managed this singular deal is now virtually a pauper at

Bradford and a slave of rum. Last time we met he staggered up to me, his

eyes bleared and his clothing in tatters, pressed my hand and said:

“Gimme ten cents; I’m dying for a drink!”

A big spurt in April of 1895 temporarily revived interest in

oil-speculations. Again the exchange at Oil City was thronged. Exciting

scenes of former years were renewed as the price climbed ten cents a

clip. It was refreshing after the long stagnation to see the pool once

more stirred to its depths. From one-ten on April fourth the price

strode to two-eighty on April seventeenth. Certificates were scarce and

credit-balances were snapped up eagerly. A few big winnings resulted,

then the reaction set in, the spasm subsided and matters resumed their

customary quietude. Connected with this phenomenal episode the papers in

May told this breezy tale of “Bailey’s Jag Investment:”

“C. J. Bailey, of Parkersburg, drew seventy-five-hundred dollars out

of the Commercial Bank of Wheeling as the earnings of a

three-hundred-dollar investment, made involuntarily and unknowingly.

Bailey is a traveling salesman. A little less than a month ago he made

a trip through the West-Virginia oil-fields. At Sistersville he got in

with a crowd of oil-men, with the result that next day he had a big

head, a very poor recollection of what had happened and was

three-hundred dollars short, according to his memorandum-book. He

wisely decided that the less publicity he gave his loss the better it

would be and kept still. On Friday he was coming to Wheeling on the

Ohio River Railroad, when a stranger approached him with:

“‘You are J. C. Bailey, I believe.’

“‘Yes,’ replied Bailey.

“‘Well, you will find seven-thousand-five-hundred dollars to your credit

in the Commercial Bank at Wheeling,’ replied the stranger. ‘I put it

there day before yesterday and was about to advertise for you.’

“Bunco was the first thought of Bailey; but as the stranger did not ask

for any show of money and talked all right, he asked for an explanation.

It turned out that the stranger was one of the men with whom Bailey had

been out in Sistersville. He was also secretary and treasurer of an

oil-company, which had struck a rich well in the back-country pool two

weeks before. Bailey, while irresponsible, had put three-hundred dollars

into the company’s capital-stock, on the advice of his friends. Meantime

the well had been drilled, coming in a gusher of three-thousand barrels

a day, one-tenth of which belonged to Bailey on his three-hundred-dollar

investment. Bailey came to Wheeling, went to the bank and found the

money awaiting him. He drew five-thousand dollars to send to his wife.

Bailey’s good fortune is not over yet, for the well is a good producer

and the company holds large leases, on which several more good wells are

sure to be drilled.”

What of the brokers and speculators? They are scattered like chaff. A

thousand have “gone and left no sign.” President Foster, of the Oil City

Exchange, an accomplished musician, traveler and orator, is a Chicagoan.

John Mawhinney, John S. Rich—the fire at Rouseville’s burning-well

nearly destroyed his sight—H. L. McCance, George Cornwall, Wesley

Chambers, Dr. Cooper, A. D. Cotton, T. B. Porteous, Isaac Reineman, I.

S. Gibson, Charles J. Fraser, W. K. Vandergrift, B. W. Vandergrift, B.

F. Hulseman, Charles Haines, Michael Geary, Patrick Tiernan, “Shep”

Moorhead, Melville, McCutcheon, Fullerton Parker, George Harley, Marcus

Brownson and a host of other familiar figures will nevermore be seen in

any earthly exchange. “Jimmy” Lowe—he was a telegrapher at first—Arthur

Lewis, M. K. Bettis, George Thumm, I. M. Sowers and a dozen more drifted

to Chicago. “Dick” Conn, “Sam” Blakeley, Wade Hampton, “Rod” Collins,

Major Evans, Col. Preston and Charles W. Owston are residents of New

York. “Tom” McLaughlin buys oil for the Standard at Lima. “Ajax” Kline

is dissecting the Tennessee field for the Forest Oil-Company. “Cal”

Payne is Oil-City manager of the Standard’s gas-interests. “Tom”

Blackwell is in Seep’s purchasing-agency. John J. Fisher is flourishing

at Pittsburg. “Charley” Goodwin holds the fort at Kane. Daniel Goettel

and W. S. McMullan are running a large lumber-plant in Missouri. O. C.

Sherman is a Baptist preacher and Jacob Goettel fills a Methodist

pulpit. Frank Ripley and “Fin” Frisbee are heavy-weights in Duluth

real-estate. C. P. Stevenson, the leading Bradford broker, dwells at his

ease on a plantation in North Carolina. B. F. Blackmarr lives at

Meadville and “Billy” Nicholas is a citizen of Minneapolis. Some are in

California, some in Alaska, some in Florida, some in Europe and two or

three in India. Go whither you may, it will be a cold day if you don’t

stumble across somebody who belonged to an oil-exchange or had a cousin

whose husband’s brother-in-law knew a man who was acquainted with

another man who once saw a man who met an oil-broker. It is sad to think

how the capital fellows who juggled certificates at Oil City, Parker and

Bradford have thinned out and the pall of obliteration has been spread

over the exchanges.

“So fallen! So lost! the light withdrawn

Which once they wore,

The glory of their past has gone

Forevermore!”

[Illustration: FIRST STEEL OIL-TANK STRUCK BY LIGHTNING, AT TITUSVILLE,

JUNE 11, 1880.]

A pretty girl might as well expect to escape admiring glances as

petroleum to escape a fire occasionally. “Uncle Billy” Smith’s lantern

ignited the first tank at the Drake well and a long procession has

followed in its smoky trail. The lantern-fiend has been a prolific cause

of oil-conflagrations, boiling-over refinery-stills have not been slack

in this particular, the cigarette with a fool at one end and a spark at

the other has done something in the same line, but lightning is the

champion tank-destroyer. The result of an electric-bolt and a tank of

inflammable oil engaging in a debate may be imagined. At first tanks

were covered loosely with boards or wooden roofs. The gas formed a vapor

which attracted lightning and kept up a large production of fires each

season. One vicious stroke cremated sixty tanks of oil at the Atlantic

Refinery in 1883. In July and August of 1880, a quarter-million barrels

of McKean crude went up by the lightning-route. On June eleventh, 1880,

a flash collided with the first _steel-tank_ on which lightning had ever

experimented and set the oil blazing. The tank was on a hill-side

three-hundred feet from the west bank of Oil Creek, at Titusville.

Several houses and the Acme Refinery, located between it and the stream,

were consumed. While the burning oil flowed down the hill a sheet of

solid flame covered ten acres. Bursting tanks, exploding stills and

burning oils were an unpleasant premonition of the red-hot hereafter

prepared for the wicked. The fire raged three days with the fury of the

furnace heated sevenfold to give Shadrack, Meshach and Abed-nego a

roast. The Titusville Battery checked it somewhat by cannonading the

tanks with solid shot, which made holes that let the oil run into the

creek. This plan was tried successfully in Butler and McKean. The old

log-house that sheltered the generations of Campbells on the site of

Petrolia met its fate by the firing of Taylor & Satterfield’s

twenty-thousand-barrel tank on the hill above, which fell a prey to

lightning. Three tanks opposite the mouth of Bear Creek, below Parker,

stood together and burned together, the one singed by Jupiter’s shaft

setting off its mates. The scene at night was of the grandest,

multitudes gathering to watch the huge waves of flame and dense clouds

of smoke. As the oil burned down—just as it would consume in a lamp—the

tank-plates would collapse and the blazing crude would overflow.

Thousands of barrels would pour into the Allegheny, covering the water

for a mile with flame and painting a picture beside which a volcanic

eruption resembled the pyrotechnics of a lucifer-match. Many tanks were

burned prior to the use of close iron-roofs, which confine the gas and

do not offer special inducements to “the artillery of heaven” to score a

hit. Of late years such fires have been rarities. All oil in the

pipe-line to which the burned tank belonged was assessed to meet the

amount lost. This was known as General Average, as unwelcome in oil as

General Apathy in politics, General Depression in business, General

Dislike in society or General Weyler in Cuba.

George B. Harris, a pioneer refiner, died at Franklin in January of

1892, aged sixty years. A member of the firm of Sims & Co., he built the

first or second refinery in Venango county, near the lower end of

Franklin. He prospered for years, but reverses swept away his fortune

and he was poor when death closed the scene.

A party of young men from New England started a refinery on Oil Creek in

the sixties. Their industry, correct habits and attention to business

attracted favorable notice. Mr. Trefts, of machinery fame, one day

observed to a friend: “You mark my words; some day these young men will

be rich and their names shall be a power in the land. I know it will be

so from their industry and good habits.” This assertion was prophetic.

The young man at the head of that modest firm of young men was H. H.

Rogers, now president of the National-Transit Company. Speaking of his

election as supervisor of streets and highways at Fair Haven, a New-York

paper indulged in this facetious pleasantry regarding Mr. Rogers:

“The people of Fair Haven have done well. No man in New York or

Massachusetts has had more experience with bad roads than Mr. Rogers, or

has met with more success in subduing them. When he first engaged in the

petroleum-business on Oil Creek the highways there were rarely navigable

for anything on wheels, but were open to navigation by flat-boats most

of the year. There was something in the mud of the oil-country at that

time which was sure death to the capillary glands. Hairless horses and

mules were in the height of fashion. When Mr. Rogers arrived on the

strange scene, poling his way up to the hotel on a sawlog, he was at

once chosen road-supervisor. In a neat speech, which is still extant,

Mr. Rogers thanked the oil-citizens for the confidence reposed in him

and then went to work. In the first place, he refined the mud of the

highways, taking from it all the merchantable petroleum and converting

the residue into stove-polish of an excellent quality. In the next

place, he constructed pipe-lines, through which the oil was conveyed,

thus keeping it out of the middle of the road, and to-day there is a

boulevard along Oil Creek that is hardly surpassed by the Appian Way.

Horses are again covered with hair and happiness sits smiling at every

hearthstone. The people of Fair Haven have a superintendent of streets

to whom they can point with pride.”

Dr. J. W. James, of Brady’s Bend, who drilled some of the first wells

around Oil City and was largely interested in the Armstrong and Bradford

fields, in 1858 had a plant near Freeport for extracting coal-oil from

shale. At a cost of twelve cents a gallon it produced crude-petroleum,

which the company refined partially and sold at a dollar to

one-twenty-five. The oil obtained from the rocks by drilling and that

distilled from the shale were the same chemically. Dr. James read

medicine with Dr. F. J. Alter, who constructed a telegraph Morse

journeyed from the east to see before perfecting his own device. Dr.

Alter’s line extended only from the house about the small yard and back

to his study. Full of enthusiasm over its first performance, he cried

out to his student, young James: “I believe I could make this thing work

a distance of six miles!” Bell’s first telephone—a cord stretched

between two apple-trees in an orchard at Brantford, Canada—was equally

simple and its results have been scarcely less important.

John J. Fisher bought the first thousand barrels of oil in the new

exchange at Oil City, on April twenty-third, 1878. Probably the largest

purchase was by George Lewis, who took from a syndicate of brokers a

block of two-hundred-thousand barrels. The first offer was

fifty-thousand, increasing ten-thousand until it quadrupled, with the

object of having Lewis cry: “Hold! Enough!” Lewis wasn’t to be bluffed

and he merely nodded at each addition to the lot until the other fellow

weakened, the crowd watching the pair breathlessly. “Sam” Blakeley, the

most eccentric genius in the aggregation, once bid at Parker for a

million barrels. Nobody had that quantity to sell and he advanced the

bid five cents above the quotations. There was not a response and he

offered a million barrels five cents below the ruling price, toying with

the market an hour as if it were a foot-ball. He played for big stakes,

but none knew who backed him. Coming to Oil City, he reported the market

for the _Derrick_ and cut up lots of shines. One morning he looked glum,

oil had tumbled and “Sam” hired an engine to whirl him to Corry. By

nightfall he landed in Canada and his oil was sold to square his account

in the clearing-house. An hour after his flight William Brough came up

from Franklin to take the oil and carry “Sam” over the drop. In the

afternoon a sudden rise set in, which would have left Blakeley

twenty-thousand dollars profit had he stayed at his post! That was the

time “Sam” didn’t do “the great kibosh,” as he phrased it. For years he

has been hanging around New York. He was one of the boys distinguished

as high-rollers and extinguished before the shuffle ended.

Telegraph-operators and messenger-boys at the oil-exchanges learned to

note the movements of leading speculators and profit thereby. Some of

them, with more hope of gain than fear of loss, beginning in a small way

by risking a few dollars in margins, coined money and entered the ring

on their own account. “Jimmy” Lowe, one of the biggest brokers at Parker

and Oil City, slung lightning for the Western-Union when the Oil-City

Exchange needed the services of twenty operators and scores of

messenger-boys. Among the latter was “Jim” Keene, the Franklin broker.

He and John Bleakley often received fifty cents or a dollar for

delivering a message to “Johnnie” Steele, who stopped at the Jones House

and flew high during his visits to Oil City. Steele and Seth Slocum

would dash through the mud on their black chargers, dressed in the

loudest style and sporting big diamonds. These halcyon times have passed

away and the oil-exchanges have departed. “The glories of our mortal

state are shadows.”

In January of 1894 the Producers’ and Refiners’ Oil-Company erected an

iron-tank on the hill south-east of Titusville. Lightning destroyed the

tank and its contents in May. The second tank was built on the spot in

October and on June twelfth, 1895, lightning struck a tree beside it.

The burning tree fired the gas and the tank and oil perished. The site

is still vacant, the company deciding not to give the electric fluid a

chance for a third strike.

George W. N. Yost, who died in New York last year, was once the largest

oil-buyer and shipper in the region. He lived at Titusville and removed

to Corry, where he built the Climax Mower and Reaper Works, a church, a

handsome residence and blocks of dwellings. Patents of different kinds

recouped losses in manufacturing. With Mr. Densmore, of Meadville, he

brought out the caligraph. Yost sold to his partner and developed the

Yost Typewriter, organized the American Writing-Machine Company and

fitted up the shops at Bridgeport, Connecticut, used to manufacture

Sharp’s rifles during the border-troubles in Kansas. Mr. Yost was a man

of striking personality and unflagging energy. He became a strong

spiritualist and believed a medium, to whom he submitted completely, put

him in communication with his dead relatives and recorded their thoughts

on his typewriter.

The men of the oil-region have ever been noted for their commercial

honor. It passed into a proverb—“honor of oil.“ The spirit of the

saying, “his word is as good as his bond,” has always been lived up to

more closely in Oildom than in any other section of the country. The

force of business-obligation ran high in the exchanges and among the

early dealers in crude. Transactions involving hundreds-of-thousands of

dollars occurred every day, without a written bond or a scrap of paper

save a pencil-entry in a memorandum-book. Certificates were borrowed and

loaned in this way and the idea of shirking a verbal contract was never

thought of. The celerity with which property thus passed from man to man

was one of the striking features of business in the bustling world of

petroleum. And the record is something to be proud of in these days of

embezzlements, defalcations, breaches of trust and commercial deviltry

generally.

The average tank-steamer carries about two-million gallons of oil in

bulk across the Atlantic. In addition to this fleet of steamers, scores

of sailing vessels, under charter of the Orient, France, Italy and

foreign countries, load cases and barrels of refined-oil for transport

to European ports. American wooden-ships are chartered sometimes to

convey oil to Japan. Thus Russian competition is met through the

instrumentality of pipe-lines to the coast and transportation by water

to points many thousand miles away from the wells that produced the oil.

The production of crude-petroleum in the United States in 1895,

according to the statistics compiled for the Geological Survey by Joseph

D. Weeks, was fifty-three-million barrels, valued at fifty-eight-million

dollars. For 1894 the figures were fifty-million barrels and

thirty-five-million dollars respectively. All districts except West

Virginia and New York shared in the increase. The total

production from the striking of the Drake well in 1859 to

the end of 1895 was seven-hundred-and-ten-million barrels.

Five-hundred-and-seventeen-million barrels of this enormous aggregate

represent the yield of the Pennsylvania and New-York oil-fields. Who

says petroleum isn’t a big thing?

At Pittsburg you can easily gather a little group of men, such as

Charles Lockhart and Captain Vandergrift, who recall the time when the

Tarentum petroleum was termed “a mysterious grease.” They had a hand in

handling it when the oil had no commercial name. They watched Samuel M.

Kier’s efforts to give it a commercial name and a marketable value. They

saw it run to waste at first, they remember paying a dollar a gallon for

it and can tell all about Drake’s visit to Tarentum. They hold their

breath when they think of the gold that changed hands in Venango county

after “Uncle Billy” Smith bored the seventy-foot hole below Titusville,

of the wonderful spread of operations and the dazzling progress of the

commodity once despised. They noted the flow of petroleum toward

Europe—how forty casks were sent to France in 1860 as a curiosity and

thirty-nine-hundred in 1863 as a commercial venture. They have seen this

“mysterious grease,” that used to flow into the Pennsylvania Canal,

light the world from the Pyramids of Egypt to the salons of Paris, from

the shores of Palestine to the Chinese Wall. They have seen the four

salt-and-oil wells at Tarentum and the solitary oil-well at Titusville

multiplied into a hundred-thousand holes drilled for petroleum and a

production almost beyond calculation. Do the gentlemen composing this

little group occupy a position dramatic in the marvelous events they

review? Is petroleum freighted with interest and a touch of romance at

every step of its passage from the well to the lamp?

MERELY DROPPED IN.

To big oil-wells a man may be a claimant,

From the sand-rock take in enormous payment,

Yet all he gets on earth is food and raiment.

The good well is the humble bee

With honey on its wings;

The dry-hole is the bumble-bee

That buzzes loud and stings.

Oilmen who run in debt, despite their rapid talk,

Not very often come out faster than a walk.

Uneasy lies the face that wears a frown;

No wonder, at the rate crude-oil goes down.

“What are your favorite books?” the gushing damsel cried;

“Bank-books and pocket-books,” the oilman quick replied.

Idle gossip? Oh, no, that isn’t right,

For gossip keeps on working day and night,

Beating a flowing oil-well out of sight.

The driller mutter’d, as he stagger’d with unsteady gait,

“There is no evil mixture here, I took my whisky straight.”

Of all uncertain kinds of biz

An oilman’s most uncertain is;

To-day, perhaps, his anguish’d soul

Laments because of a dry-hole;

He tries again, and who can tell

But he may strike a flowing-well?

Sound money? Yes indeed; no oilman has a doubt

The coin that jingles is the “soundest” money out.

Who with himself is satisfied

Wants little here below;

He has a small excuse for pride,

For if the third-sand once he tried

He might find a poor show.

The fabric of the clothing may not wear a little bit,

But the clothier’s fabrications will outlast Berea grit.

“Pay as you go.” We will, for all the oilmen know

All men _must_ pay the debt of nature as they go.

The gusher and the duster

May be on one town-plot,

Angels and devils muster

Upon the self-same lot,

And sobs and smiles may cluster

Like flies on one bald spot.

Rare goodness and tough badness

May come from the same shank,

Twin-links of grief and gladness

Be issued by one bank,

For tears of joy and sadness

Still flow from the same tank.

“A rolling stone gathers no moss,” for trying junctures

May some wildcatters fit;

But then it is the rolling wheel that gathers punctures,

Which makes the old saw nit.

Be not a spouting well that keeps an endless flow;

It isn’t always wise to tell all that you know,

But all you tell be mighty sure it’s truly so.

“Young Luckyboy made fifty-thousand plunks

From one small can of crude,”

The oilman said, while silence lay in chunks;

“I pray don’t think me rude”—

A list’ner spoke—“It strikes me you’re a man

Must practice on the lyre.”

The oilman smil’d: “His rich aunt used the can

To hurry up the fire!”

He put the glycerine to thaw, the water was too hot,

The stuff let go; it was the man, and not the well, was shot.

“No!” said the oilman’s daughter, when young Dudelet sought her hand,

“You may have lots of money, but you haven’t got the sand.”

Why are proof-readers needed, those careless printers’ terrors?

Because our first impressions are often full of errors.

[Illustration: A CLUSTER OF PIONEER EDITORS.]

COL. LEE M. MORTON.

W. H. LONGWELL.

WARREN C. PLUMER.

COL. J. T. HENRY.

WALTER R. JOHNS.

MAJOR W. W. BLOSS.

J. H. BOWMAN.

L. H. METCALFE.

C. E. BISHOP.

HENRY C. BLOSS.

COL. M. N. ALLEN.

XVI.

THE LITERARY GUILD.

CLEVER JOURNALISTS WHO HAVE CATERED TO PEOPLE OF THE

OIL-REGIONS—NEWSPAPERS AND THE MEN WHO MADE THEM—CULTURED WRITERS,

POETS AND AUTHORS—NOTABLE CHARACTERS PORTRAYED BRIEFLY—SHORT

EXTRACTS FROM MANY SOURCES—A BRIGHT GALAXY OF TALENTED

THINKERS—WORDS AND PHRASES THAT WILL ENRICH THE LANGUAGE FOR ALL

TIME.

----------

“And a small drop of ink * * * makes thousands, perhaps millions,

think.”—_Byron._

“Literature is the immortality of speech.”—_Wilmott._

“News, the manna of a day.”—_Green._

“They whom truth and wisdom lead can gather honey from a

word.”—_Cooper._

“Thoughts that breathe and words that burn.”—_Gray._

“Reading maketh a full man.”—_Bacon._

“The pen is mightier than the sword.”—_Lytton._

“Every worthy citizen reads a newspaper and owns the paper he

reads.”—_Beecher._

“His verse is lusty as a trooper’s oath.”—_Viscount Valrose._

“Thus men ascend to the stars.”—_Virgil._

“Hath thy toil o’er books consumed the midnight-oil?”—_Gay._

“Books are * * * the only men that speak aloud for future times to

hear.”—_Mrs. Browning._

“Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand

bayonets.”—_Napoleon._

“He was the interpreter of Nature, dipping his pen into Mind.”—_Suidas._

----------

[Illustration: REV. HARRY LEIGH YEWENS.]

Thirty-seven years have had their entrances and their exits since Col.

Drake’s little operation on Oil Creek played ducks and drakes with

lard-oil lamps and tallow-dips. That seventy-foot hole on the flats

below Titusville gave mankind a queer variety of things besides the best

light on “this grain of sand and tears we call the earth.” With the

illuminating blessing enough wickedness and jollity were mixed up to

knock out Sodom and Gomorrah in one round. The festive boys who painted

the early oil-towns red are getting gray and wrinkled, yet they smile

clear down to their boots as they think of Petroleum Centre, Pithole,

Babylon, or any other of the rapid places which shed a lurid glare along

in the sixties. The smile is not so much on account of flowing wells and

six-dollar crude as because of the rollicking scenes which carmined the

pioneer-period of Petroleum. These were the palmy days of unfathomable

mud, swearing teamsters, big barrels, high prices, abundant cash and

easy morals, when men left their religion and dress-suits “away out in

the United States.” The air was redolent of oil and smoke and

naughtiness, but there was no lack of hearty kindness and the sort of

charity that makes the angels want to flap their wings and give “three

cheers and a tiger.” Even as the city destroyed by fire from heaven

boasted one righteous person in the shape of Lot, whose wife was turned

into a pillar of salt for being too fresh, so the busy Oil-Dorado had a

host of capital fellows, true as steel, bright as a dollar and

“quicker’n greas’d lightnin’!” Braver, better, nobler, squarer men never

doffed a tile to a pretty girl or elevated a heavy boot to the

coat-tails of a scoundrel. About the well, on the streets, in stores and

offices could be found gallant souls attracted from the ends of the

world by glowing pictures—real oil-paintings—of huge fortunes gained in

a twinkling. Ministers, lawyers, doctors, merchants, soldiers,

professors, farmers, mechanics and members of every industry were

neither few nor far between in the exciting scramble for “the root of

all evil.”

[Illustration:

WILL S. WHITAKER. ROBERT LACY COCHRAN.

ALBERT PAWLING WHITAKER.

]

To keep matters straight and slake the thirst for current literature

newspapers were absolutely necessary. Going back to 1859, the eventful

year that brought petroleum to the front, Venango county had three

weeklies. The oldest of these was the _Spectator_, established at

Franklin in 1849, by Albert P. Whitaker. At the goodly age of

seventy-eight he wielded a vigorous pen and died in February, 1897. A

zealous disciple of Izaak Walton and Thomas Jefferson, he could hook a

fish or indite a pungent editorial with equal dexterity. He was an

encyclopedia of political lore and racy stories. His _Spectator_ was no

idle spectator of passing incidents. In 1851 Col. James Bleakley,

subsequently a prosperous producer and banker, secured an interest,

selling it in 1853 to R. L. Cochran, who soon became sole proprietor and

published the paper seven years. Mr. Cochran took an active part in

politics and agriculture and exerted wide influence. A keen, incisive

writer and entertaining talker, with the courage of his convictions and

the good of the public at heart, his sterling qualities inspired

confidence and respect. Probably no man in Northwestern Pennsylvania had

a stronger personal following. The _Spectator_ flourished like a prize

sunflower under his tactful management. It printed the first “oil

report,” giving a list of wells drilling and rigs up or building in the

spring of 1860. Desiring to engage in banking, R. L. Cochran sold the

paper to A. P. Whitaker, its founder, and C. C. Cochran. The latter

retiring in 1861, Whitaker played a lone hand three years, when the two

Cochrans again purchased the establishment. A. P. Whitaker and his son,

John H., a first-class printer, bought it back in 1866 and ran the

concern four years. Then the elder Whitaker once more dropped out,

returning in 1876 and resuming entire control a year later, which closed

the shuttlecock-changes of ownership that had been in vogue for

twenty-five years. Will S. Whitaker, an accomplished typo and twice the

nominee of his party for mayor, had long assisted his father in

conducting the staunch exponent of unadulterated Democracy. Col.

Bleakley passed away in 1884, leaving a fine estate as a monument of his

successful career. He built the Bleakley Block, founded the

International Bank, served as City Councilman and was partner in 1842-4

of John W. Shugert in the publication of the _Democratic Arch_, noted

for aggressiveness and sarcasm. John H. Whitaker died in Tennessee years

ago. R. L. Cochran was killed in June, 1893, on his farm in Sugarcreek

Township, by the accidental discharge of a gun. The paper began regular

“oil-reports” in 1862, prepared by Charles C. Duffield, now of

Pittsburg, who would go up the Allegheny to Warren and float down in a

skiff, stopping at the wells. P. J. Donahoe is the present editor and

proprietor.

[Illustration: J. HARRISON SMITH.]

[Illustration: EDWIN W. SMILEY.]

[Illustration: J. HOWARD SMILEY.]

Charles Pitt Ramsdell, a school-teacher from Rockland Township, started

the _American Citizen_ at Franklin in 1855. Sent to the Legislature in

1858, he sold the healthy chick to William Burgwin and Floyd C.

Ramsdell, removed to Delaware and settled in Virginia a few years before

his lamented death from wounds inflicted by an enraged bull. J. H. Smith

acquired Ramsdell’s interest in 1861. The new partners made a strong

team in journalistic harness for three years, selling in 1864 to Nelson

B. Smiley. He changed the title to _Venango Citizen_. Mr. Burgwin

reposes in the Franklin cemetery. Mr. Smith carries on the book-trade,

his congenial pursuit for three decades, and is a regular contributor to

the religious press. Alexander McDowell entered into partnership with

Smiley, buying the entire “lock, stock and barrel” in 1867. His former

associate studied law, practiced with great credit and died at Bradford.

Major McDowell, now a banker at Sharon—the number of Venango editors who

blossomed into financiers ought to stimulate ambitious quill-drivers—was

a daisy in the newspaper-lay. His liberality and geniality won hosts of

warm friends. He tried his hand at politics and was chosen

Congressman-at-Large in 1892, with Galusha A. Grow as running-mate, and

Clerk of the House in 1895. A prime joker, he bears the blame—if it be

blameable to have done so—of introducing Pittsburg stogies to guileless

members of Congress for the fun of seeing the victims cut pigeon-wings

doing a sea-sick act. Col. J. W. H. Reisinger purchased the outfit in

1869, guiding the helm skilfully fifteen months. April first—the day had

no special significance in this case—1870, E. W. Smiley, the present

owner and cousin of Nelson B., succeeded Reisinger. The Colonel located

at Meadville, where he has labored ably in the journalistic field for a

quarter-century. Mr. Smiley steered his craft adroitly, usually “bobbing

up serenely” on the winning side. He is a shrewd Republican worker and

for twenty years has filled a Senate-clerkship efficiently. What he

doesn’t know about the inside movements of state and local politics

could be jumped through the eye of a needle. His right-bower in running

the _Citizen-Press_—the hyphenated name was flung to the breeze in

1884—is his son, J. Howard Smiley, a rising young journalist. The paper

toes the mark handsomely, has loads of advertising and does yeoman

service for its party. The _Daily Citizen_, the first daily in Oildom,

expired on the last day of 1862, after a brief existence of ten issues.

A fit epitaph might be Wordsworth’s couplet:

“Since it was so quickly done for,

Wonder what it was begun for.”

Later newspaper ventures at Franklin were refreshingly plentiful. In

January, 1876, Hon. S. P. McCalmont launched _The Independent Press_

upon the stormy sea of journalism. It was a trenchant, outspoken,

call-a-spade-a-spade advocate of the Prohibition cause, striking

resolutely at whoever and whatever opposed its temperance platform. Mr.

McCalmont wrote the editorials, which bristled with sharp, merciless,

unsparing excoriations of the rum-traffic and its aiders and abettors.

The paper was worthy of its name and its spirited owner. Neither

truckled for favors, cringed for patronage or ever learned to “crook the

pregnant hinges of the knee where thrift may follow fawning.” Beginning

life a poor boy, S. P. McCalmont toiled on a farm, taught school,

devoured books, read law and served in the Legislature. For nearly fifty

years he has enjoyed a fine practice which brought him well-earned

reputation and fortune. Ranking with the foremost lawyers of the state

in legal attainments and professional success, he does his own thinking,

declines to accept his opinions at second-hand and is a first-rate

sample of the industrious, energetic, self-reliant American. By way of

recreation he works a half-dozen farms, a hundred oil-wells, a big

refinery and a coal-mine or two. James R. Patterson, Miss Sue Beatty and

Will. S. Whitaker held positions on the _Press_. Mr. Patterson is

farming near Franklin and Mr. Whitaker managed the _Spectator_. Miss

Beatty, a young lady of rare culture, was admitted to the bar recently.

[Illustration: S. P. M’CALMONT.]

The Independent Press-Association bought the _Press_ in 1879. This

influential body comprised twelve stockholders, Hon. William R.

Crawford, Hon. C. W. Gilfillan, Hon. John M. Dickey, Hon. Charles

Miller, Hon. Joseph C. Sibley, Hon. S. P. McCalmont, Hon. Charles W.

Mackey, James W. Osborne, W. D. Rider, E. W. Echols, B. W. Bredin and

Isaac Reineman, whom a facetious neighbor happily termed “the twelve

apostles, limited.” They enlarged the sheet to a nine-column folio,

discarded the bourgeois skirt with long-primer trimmings for a tempting

dress of minion and nonpareil and engaged J. J. McLaurin as editor. H.

May Irwin, the second editor under the new administration, filled the

bill capably until the _Press_ and the _Citizen_ buried the hatchet and

blended into one. Mr. Irwin is not excelled as an architect of graceful,

felicitous paragraphs on all sorts of subjects, “from grave to gay, from

lively to severe.” He possesses in eminent degree the enviable faculty

of saying the right thing in the right way, tersely, pointedly and

attractively. The _Press_ was a model of neatness, newsiness and

thorough editing, with a taste for puns and plays on words that added

zest to its columns.

[Illustration: H. BEECHER KANTNER.]

[Illustration: JAMES B. BORLAND.]

[Illustration: JAMES B. MUSE.]

James B. Borland’s _Evening News_ appeared in February, 1878, as an

amateur-daily about six by nine inches. The small seed quickly grew to a

lusty plant. James B. Muse became a partner, enlargements were

necessary, and to-day the News is a seven-column folio, covering the

home-field and deservedly popular. Muse retired in 1880, H. May Irwin

buying his share and editing the wide-awake paper in capital style.

_Every Evening_, a creditable venture by Frank Truesdell, E. E.

Barrackman and A. G. McElhenny, bloomed every evening from July, 1878,

to the following March. H. B. Kantner, a versatile specimen, hatched out

the _Morning Star_, Franklin’s only morning daily, in 1880. It shone

several months and then set forever and ever. Kantner drifted to

Colorado. The _Herald_, the _Penny Press_ and _Pencil and Shears_

wriggled a brief space and “fell by the wayside.” Samuel P. Brigham, an

aspiring young lawyer, edited the one-cent _Press_ and stirred up a

hornet’s nest by fiercely assailing the water-works system and raising

Hail Columbia generally. He is at the head of a newspaper in the Silver

State.

The third weekly Venango boasted in 1859 was the _Allegheny-Valley

Echo_, published at Emlenton by Peter O. Conver, a most erratic,

picturesque genius. Learning the printing-trade in Franklin, the

anti-slavery agitation attracted him to Kansas in 1852. He established a

paper at Topeka, which intensified the excitement a man of Conver’s

temperament was not calculated to allay, and it soon climbed the golden

stair. Other experiments shared the same fate, going to the dogs in

short metre. Conver roamed around the wild, woolly west several years,

returned to Venango county and perpetrated the _Echo_ in the fall of

1858. At intervals a week passed without any issue, which the next

number would attribute to the sudden departure of the “jour,” the

non-arrival of white paper, or the absence of the irrepressible Peter on

a convivial lark. Sparkling witticisms and “gems of purest ray”

frequently adorned the pages of the sheet, although sometimes

transgressing the rules of propriety. It was the editor’s habit to set

up his articles without a manuscript. He would go to the case and put

his thoughts into type just as they emanated from his fertile brain.

Poetry, humor, satire, invective, comedy, pathos, sentiment and

philosophy bunched their hits in a medley of clean-cut originality not

even “John Phœnix” could emulate. The printer-editor had a fund of

anecdotes and adventures picked up during his wanderings and an off-hand

magnetism that insured his popularity. His generosity was limited only

by his pocket-book. Altogether he was a bundle of strange

contradictions, “whose like we shall not look upon again,” big-hearted,

impatient of denial, heedless of consequences, indifferent to praise or

blame, sincere in his friendships and with not an atom of sham or

hypocrisy in his manly fiber. He enlisted in the Fourth Pennsylvania

Cavalry when the war broke out, serving gallantly to the close of the

struggle at Appomattox.

[Illustration: JACOB WENK.]

[Illustration: COL. J. W. H. REISINGER.]

[Illustration: SAMUEL P. BRIGHAM]

R. F. Blair, who had taken the _Echo_ in 1861, disposed of it in 1863 to

J. W. Smullin, by whom the materials were removed to Oil City. Walter L.

Porter’s _Rising Sun_, W. R. Johns’ _Messenger_, Needle & Crowley’s

_Register_, P. McDowell’s _News_, Col. Sam. Young’s _Telegraph_, Hulings

& Moriarty’s _Times_ and Gouchler Brothers’ _Critic_ in turn flitted

across the Emlenton horizon. E. H. Cubbison exploited the _Home News_ in

1885 and it is still holding the fort.

Getting back from the war safe and sound, Conver pitched his tent at

Tionesta in 1866 and generated the _Forest Press_. Its peculiar

motto—“The first and only paper printed in Forest county and about the

only paper of the kind printed anywhere”—indicated the novel stripe of

this unique weekly. The crowning feature was its department of

“Splinters,” which included the weird creations of the owner’s vivid

fancy. The _Press_, after running smoothly a dozen years, did not long

survive its eccentric, gifted proprietor, who answered the final

roll-call in the spring of 1878, meeting death unflinchingly. He wrote a

short will and asked Samuel D. Irwin, his trusted adviser, to prepare

his obituary, “sense first, nonsense afterwards.” The _Bee_, which Col.

Reisinger hived in 1867, sipped honey a season and flew away. J. B.

Muse’s _Vindicator_ and Jacob Wenk’s _Republican_ occupy the field. Mrs.

Conver left Tionesta and died in the west. Hosts of old friends who knew

and understood Peter O. Conver will be glad to see his characteristic

portrait, from a photograph treasured by Judge Proper, and “a nosegay of

culled flowers” from his inimitable _Press_, “rugged as a jog over a

stubble-field:”

[Illustration: PETER O. CONVER.]

“That marble slab has arrived at last. Our own beautiful slab, with its

polished surface, was manufactured expressly to our order, on which to

impose the forms of the Forest _Press_, a fit emblem and unmistakable

evidence of the almost unparalleled success of an enterprise started in

the very hell of the season and circumstances on a one-horse load of

old, good-for-nothing, worn-out, rotten and “bottled” material, taken in

payment, etc., and a will to succeed. After we shall have fulfilled our

mission through the _Press_ and have done with the things of earth, that

same slab can be used by the weeping “devils” on which to dance a

good-bye to us and our sins, after which they may inscribe with burning

charcoal on its polished surface, in letters of transient darkness:

‘Here

lies

Pete.

The

old

cuss

dead.’

“Our mother was a Christian, the best friend we had, and the name of her

truant son—your servant—was the last she uttered. We are not a

Christian, but when convinced we should be we will be. Never intend to

marry or die, if we can help it. In brief, we are a white Indian.”

“A promissory-note is tuning the fiddle before the performance.”

“A man suffering from dyspepsia sees nothing bright in the noonday-sun.

Another with a rusty liver looks upon a flower-garden as so many weeds.

Another with nerves at angles sees nothing lovely in the most beautiful

woman. Another with a disordered stomach can utter no word not tinged

with acid and fire.”

“Smiles are among the cheapest and yet richest luxuries of life. We do

not mean the mere retraction of the lips and the exhibition of two rows

of masticators—mastiffs, hyenas and the like amiabilities are proficient

in that. We do not mean the cold, formal smile of politeness, that plays

over the features like moonlight on a glacier—automatons and villains

can do that, but we mean the real, genial smile that breaks right out of

the heart, like a sunbeam out of a cloud, and lights up the whole face

and shines straight into another heart that loves it or needs it.”

“Ravishingly rich and gorgeous is our surrounding scenery smiling down

upon us in all the dying glory of these autumn days, like the summery

landscape in childhood’s dreams, impressed on the heart but not

described; like the soul-beam of a good old person passing away. View

all the grand and beautiful scenes of earth with the aid of

imagination’s pencil if you please, and them come to Tionesta in October

and behold the masterpiece. It is the finishing touch of beauty from the

Master Hand, imparting joy and faith and hope and resignation to the

heart of man, which no human pen or pencil may copy and combinations of

words have not been discovered to describe; in fact, we have almost come

to the conclusion that he who attempts it is a presuming fool, because

there’s no language in the dictionary or even invented by the poet to

that effect. But if we only live till the sun shines to-morrow, on such

another day as this, we’ll dig our potatoes, from which patch we can

obtain mountain views on every hand alongside of which the Rocky

Mountains would appear overgrown and unnatural and Alpine scenery

worn-out.”

“The first great damper that threw cold water on the Fourth of July was,

perhaps, the agitation of the temperance question; then the

Sunday-school celebrations gave a mortal blow to its ancient prestige

and glory, until now, alas! it has been entirely eclipsed. Bantlings of

the third generation are soaring aloft in place of the old gray bird,

niggers dancing jubas over the heads of their imperial masters and,

great heavens! the very whiskey that we drink at $3 to $7 a gallon in

mortal jeopardy. But, seriously speaking, we are in favor of every one

following the bent of his or her own inclination in celebrating things.

Next week will be our usual occasion for getting full, unless we should

accompany a very beautiful young lady hunting, in either of which events

the _Press_ may also have a celebration of its own and not appear in

public on any stage.”

“Lieut. Samuel D. Irwin is a rare, original genius, a companion of our

boyhood, whose life has been lively and stirring as our own in some

respects. He is also a candidate for District Attorney.”

“Some people don’t care much whether things go endwise or otherwise.”

“Next to a feast upon a seventeen-year-old pair of sweet lips, under

grapevines, by moon-light, is a foray upon a platter of beans, after

fishing for suckers all day.”

“One of the greatest bores in the world is he who will persistently

gabble about _himself_ when you want to talk about _yourself_.”

“Pay your debts and shame the devil for an old scoundrel.”

“Bright and fair as a Miss in her teens is this beautiful March morning.

All nature laughs with gladness. Forest feels glad, the streams sing a

glad song in their swim to the sea, Tionesta is glad and the big

greyhound Charley Holmes sent Major Hulings wags his sharp tail in token

of the gladness and gratitude he cannot otherwise express. He is a

gentlemanly, well-bred, $500 purp and got to have his meals regularly.”

“Do unto other men as you would have them do unto you and you wouldn’t

have money enough in two weeks to hire a shirt washed.”

“Many a preacher complains of empty pews when they are really not

emptier than the pulpit.”

“The man who can please everybody hasn’t got sense enough to displease

anybody.”

“To be good and happy kick up your heels and holler Hallelujah!”

“Rev. Brown will preach everybody to hell on the Tubb’s Run Flats, Lord

willing, next Sunday, between meals.”

On the twelfth of January, 1862, Walter R. Johns, who struck the

territory four weeks previously, issued the initial number of the

Oil-City _Weekly Register_, the first newspaper devoted especially to

the petroleum-industry, which it upheld tenaciously for five years. The

modest outfit, purchased second-hand at Monongahela City, was shipped to

Pittsburg by boat, to Kittanning by rail and to its destination by

wagons. The editor, publisher, proprietor and compositor—Mr. Johns

outdid Pooh-Bah by combining these offices in his own person—accompanied

the expedition to aid in extricating the wagons from mud-holes in which

they stuck persistently. In 1866 he retired in favor of Henry A. Dow &

Co., who fathered the _Daily Register_ and soon found the cake dough.

Farther on Mr. Johns was identified, editorially or in a proprietary

way, with the semi-weekly _Petrolian_ and the _Evening Register_, the

Parker _Transcript_, the Emlenton _Messenger_, the Lebanon _Republican_,

the Clarion _Republican-Gazette_ and the Foxburg _Gazette_. Writing with

great readiness and heartily in touch with his profession, he took to

literary work as a duck takes to water. He and the late Andrew Cone

prepared all the petroleum-statistics available in 1862, which, with the

gatherings of the years intervening, were published in 1869, under the

expressive title of “Petrolia.” From Clarion, his home for some years,

Mr. Johns returned to Oil City, doing valuable work for the _Derrick_

and the _Blizzard_. For seven years he has been employed by the

National-Transit Company to compile newspaper-clippings and

magazine-articles and arrange records of different kinds from every

quarter of the oil-regions. The duty is congenial and he fits the place

“like der paper mit der wall.” Mr. Johns is a son of Louisiana and a

hero of two wars. During the Mexican trouble he fought under Zachary

Taylor and Winfield Scott, was at the battles of Monterey and Buena

Vista and participated in the march from Puebla to the City of Mexico.

He served under General Grant in the “late unpleasantness.” The death of

his estimable wife several years ago was a terrible blow to the Nestor

of petroleum journalism, who has gained distinction as printer, editor,

author and soldier.

“Age sits with decent grace upon his visage

And worthily becomes his silver locks;

He bears the marks of many years well spent,

Of virtue, truth well tried and wise experience.”

With the plant of the defunct Emlenton _Echo_, which he had bought from

R. F. Blair and boated to Oil City, J. W. Smullin propelled the

_Monitor_ in 1863. O. H. Jackson, a sort of perambulatory

printing-office, and C. P. Ramsdell figured in the ownership at

different times. Jackson let go in the fall of 1864 and Jacob Weyand

bossed the ranch until it was absorbed by the Venango _Republican_, the

first out-and-out political newspaper in the settlement. Smullin farmed

in Cranberry township, dispensed justice as “’Squire” and died in 1894.

Of Jackson’s whereabouts nothing is known. He flaunted the _Sand-Pump_

at Oil City, the _Bulletin_ at Rouseville, the _Gaslight_ at

Pleasantville and ephemeral sheets at other points. The outfits of the

December, 1867, by Andrew Cone and Dr. F. F. Davis, into the weekly

_Times_. The paper was well managed, well edited and well sustained. A

syndicate of politicians bought it in 1870, to boom C. W. Gilfillan, of

Franklin, for Congress, and George B. Delamater, of Meadville, for

State-Senator in the Crawford district. A morning daily was tacked on.

L. H. Metcalfe, who lost a leg at Gettysburg, had editorial charge.

Thomas H. Morrison, of Pleasantville, officiated as manager, W. C.

Plumer presided as foreman and A. E. Fay acted as local news-hustler.

The daily died with the close of the campaign, a fire that destroyed the

establishment hurrying the dissolution. Metcalfe went back to Meadville

and was elected county-treasurer. Whole-souled, earnest and trustworthy,

he made and retained friends, wrote effectively and “served his day and

generation” as a good man should. The grass and the flowers have bloomed

above his head for nineteen years. Morrison entered politics, put in a

term faithfully as county-treasurer, studied law, practiced at Smethport

and was elected judge of the McKean-Potter district.

[Illustration:

ANDREW CONE.

MRS. CONE.

MISS THROPP.

]

Hon. Andrew Cone, to whose bounteous purse and willing pen the Venango

_Republican_ and the Oil-City _Times_ owed their continuance, was of

Puritan descent, nephew of the founder of Oberlin College, born in 1822,

reared on a New-York farm and married to a Maryland lady. His parents

dying, he removed to Michigan, lost his first and second wives by death,

and in 1862 settled at Oil City to superintend the United

Petroleum-Farms Association’s sale of building-lots. He named various

Oil-City streets, helped build the first Baptist church and labored for

temperance and local improvements. In 1868 he married Miss Mary Eloisa

Thropp, of Valley Forge, a cultured linguist and writer. Her brother,

Joseph E. Thropp, owns the iron-works at Everett and is married to the

late Colonel Thomas A. Scott’s eldest daughter. Her two sisters, Mrs.

George Porter and Miss Amelia Thropp, also reside at Oil City and are

gifted writers. Mr. Cone and W. R. Johns collected the data of

“Petrolia,” a perfect treasury of facts concerning oil, which the

Appletons published in 1869. Governor Hartranft appointed Mr. Cone to

represent the oil-regions at the Vienna Exposition in 1873. He served

four years with great fidelity as consul in Brazil and died in New York

on November seventh, 1880, as one to whom “Well done, good and faithful

servant,” is spoken through all the centuries. Mrs. Cone’s “Wild Flowers

of Valley Forge” will give an idea of the exquisite work of the Thropp

sisters, who are esteemed for their poetic talents and unselfishness:

Blest be the flowers that freely blow

In this neglected spot,

Anemone with leaves of snow

And blue Forget-me-not.

God’s laurels weave their classic wreath,

Their pale pink blossoms wave

O’er lowly mounds, where rest beneath

Our martyrs in their grave.

In white and gold the daisies shine

All o’er encampment hill;

There wild-rose and the Columbine

Lift glistening banners still.

Here plumy ferns, an emerald fringe,

Adorn our stream’s bright way;

And soft grass whence the violet springs,

With fragrant flowers of May.

Oh, there’s a spell around these blooms

Owned by no rarer flowers;

They blossomed on our soldiers’ tombs

And they shall bloom on ours.

To us, as to our sires, their tone

Breathes forth the same glad strain,

“We spring to life when winter’s gone,

And ye shall rise again.”

Uncultured ’round our path they grow,

Smile up before our tread

To cheer, as they did long ago

Our noble-hearted dead.

Arbutus in the sheltering wood

Sighs, “Here he came to pray,”

And Pansies whisper, “Thus we stood

When heroes passed away.”

Thus every wild-flower’s simple leaf

Breathes in my native vale,

To conscious hearts, some record brief,

Some true and touching tale.

Wealth’s gay parterre in glory stands:—

I own their foreign claims,

Those gorgeous flowers from other lands,

Rare plants with wondrous names.

Ye blossomed in our martyr’s field

Beneath the warm spring’s sun,

Sprung from the turf where lowly kneeled

Our matchless Washington.

Ye in our childhood’s garden grew,

Our sainted mother’s bowers;

My grateful heart beats high to you,

My own wild valley-flowers!

The collapse of the syndicate _Times_ terminated experimental dailies in

Oil City. Mr. Gilfillan, F. W. Mitchell, P. R. Gray and other

stockholders sold the good-will and smoking ruins to Sheriff H. H.

Herpst, who revived the weekly with Dr. Davis at the bellows. It was

rather weakly, notwithstanding the doctor’s excellent doses of leaded

pellets. Advertisers seemed a trifle shy and columns of blank space, by

no means nutritious pabulum, were not infrequent. Everybody favored a

newer, grander, bolder stride forward. The borough and suburbs had

attained the dignity of a city, an oil-exchange had been organized,

railroads were coming in and a paper of metropolitan scope was urgently

demanded. Usually men adapted to a particular niche turn up and the

traditional “long-felt want” is not likely to remain unfilled.

Coleman E. Bishop and W. H. Longwell landed in Oil City one summer

afternoon to “view the landscape o’er,” as good Dr. Watts phrased it.

They had heard the Macedonian cry and decided to size up the situation.

Bishop achieved greatness at Jamestown, N. Y., where he edited the

_Journal_, by attacking Commander Cushing, the naval officer who sank

the Confederate ram Merrimac, and kicking him down stairs when the

indignant marine invaded the sanctum to “horsewhip the editor and pitch

him out of the window.” Longwell, a brave soldier and sharp man of

affairs, had learned the ropes at Pithole and Petroleum Centre. A deal

was soon closed, material ordered and a building on Seneca street

rented, Herpst keeping an interest as silent partner.

Sketches in Crude-oil Some accidents and incidents of the petroleum development in all parts of the globe · 第 28 / 31 章

In the fall of 1865 Henry Harley began a pipe-line from Benninghoff Run