Torpedoing wells is a hazardous business. A professional well-shooter

must have nerves of iron, be temperate in his habits and keenly alive to

the fact that a careless movement or a misstep may send him flying into

space. James Sanders, a veteran employé of the Roberts Company, fired

six-thousand torpedoes without the slightest accident and lived for

years after his well-earned retirement. Nitro-Glycerine literally tears

its victims into shreds. It is quick as lightning and can’t be dodged.

The first fatality from its use in the oil-regions befell William

Munson, in the summer of 1867, at Reno. He operated on Cherry Run,

owning wells near the famous Reed and Wade. He was one of the earliest

producers to use torpedoes and manufactured them under the Reed patent.

A small building at the bend of the Allegheny below Reno served as his

workshop and storehouse. For months the new industry went along quietly,

its projector prospering as the result of his enterprise. Entering the

building one morning in August, he was seen no more. How it occurred

none could tell, but a frightful explosion shivered the building, tore a

hole in the ground and annihilated Munson. Houses trembled to their

foundations, dishes were thrown from the shelves, windows were shattered

and about Oil City the horrible shock drove people frantically into the

streets. Not a trace of Munson’s premises remained, while fragments of

flesh and bone strewn over acres of ground too plainly revealed the

dreadful fate of the proprietor. The mangled bits were carefully

gathered up, put in a small box and sent to his former home in New York

for interment. The tragedy aroused profound sympathy. Mentally, morally

and physically William Munson was a fine specimen of manhood, thoroughly

upright and trustworthy. He lived at Franklin and belonged to the

Methodist church. His widow and two daughters survived the fond husband

and father. Mrs. Munson first moved to California, then returned

eastward and she is now practicing medicine at Toledo, the home of her

daughters, the younger of whom married Frank Gleason.

The sensation produced by the first fatality had not entirely subsided

when the second victim was added to a list that has since lengthened

appallingly. To ensure comparative safety the deadly stuff was kept in

magazines located in isolated places. In 1867 the Roberts Company built

one of these receptacles two miles from Titusville, in the side of a

hill excavated for the purpose. Thither Patrick Brophy, who had charge,

went as usual one fine morning in July of 1868. An hour later a terrific

explosion burst upon the surrounding country with indescribable

violence. Horses and people on the streets of Titusville were thrown

down, chimneys tumbled, windows dropped into atoms and for a time the

panic was fearful. Then the thought suggested itself that the

glycerine-magazine had blown up. At once thousands started for the spot.

The site had been converted into a huge chasm, with tons of dirt

scattered far and wide. Branches of trees were lopped off as though cut

by a knife and hardly a particle could be found of what had so recently

been a sentient being, instinct with life and feeling and fondly

anticipating a happy career. The unfortunate youth bore an excellent

character for sobriety and carefulness. He was a young Irishman, had

been a brakeman on the Farmers’ Railroad and visited the magazine

frequently to make experiments.

On Church Run, two miles back of Titusville, Colonel Davison established

a torpedo-manufactory in 1868. A few months passed safely and then the

tragedy came. With three workmen—Henry Todd, A. D. Griffin and William

Bills—Colonel Davison went to the factory, as was his practice, one

morning in September. A torpedo must have burst in course of filling,

causing sad destruction. The building was knocked into splinters,

burying the occupants beneath the ruins. All around the customary

evidences of havoc were presented, although the sheltered position of

the factory prevented much damage to Titusville. The mangled bodies of

his companions were extricated from the wreck. while Colonel Davison

still breathed. He did not regain consciousness and death closed the

chapter during the afternoon. This dismal event produced a deep

impression, the extinction of four lives investing it with peculiar

interest to the people of Oildom, many of whom knew the victims and

sincerely lamented their mournful exit.

Dr. Fowler, the seventh victim, met his doom at Franklin in 1869. He had

erected a magazine on the hill above the Allegheny Valley depot, in

which large quantities of explosives were stored. With his brother

Charles the Doctor started for the storehouse one forenoon. At the

river-bridge a friend detained Charles for a few moments in

conversation, the Doctor proceeding alone. What happened prior to the

shock will not be revealed until all secrets are laid bare, but before

Charles reached the magazine a tremendous explosion launched his brother

into eternity. A spectator first noticed the boards of the building

flying through space, followed in a moment by a report that made the

earth quiver. The nearest properties were wrecked and the jar was felt

miles away. Careful search for the remains of the poor Doctor resulted

in a small lot of broken bones and pieces of flesh, which were buried in

the Franklin cemetery. It was supposed that the catastrophe originated

from the Doctor’s boots coming in contact with some glycerine that may

have leaked upon the floor. This is as plausible a reason as can be

assigned for a tragedy that brought grief to many loving hearts. The

Doctor was a genial, kindly gentleman and his cruel fate was universally

deplored.

[Illustration: WILLIAM A. THOMPSON.]

William A. Thompson, of Franklin, left home on Tuesday morning, August

thirteenth, 1870, carrying in his buggy a torpedo to be exploded in a

well on the Foster farm. John Quinn rode with him. At the farm he

received two old torpedoes, which had been there five or six weeks,

having failed to explode, to return to the factory. Quinn came up the

river by rail. Thompson stopped at Samuel Graham’s, Bully Hill, got an

apple and lighted a cigar. On leaving he said: “Good-bye, Sam, perhaps

you’ll never see me again!” Five minutes later an explosion was heard on

the Bully-Hill road, a mile from where Dr. Fowler had met his doom.

Graham and others hurried to the spot. The body of Thompson, horribly

mutilated, was lying fifty feet from the road, the left arm severed

above the elbow and missing. The horse and the fore-wheels of the buggy

were found a hundred yards off, the wounded animal struggling that

distance before he fell. The body and hind-wheels of the vehicle were in

splinters. One tire hung on a tree and a boot on another. The main

charge of the torpedo had entered the victim’s left side above the hip

and the face was scarcely disfigured. Mr. Thompson was widely known and

esteemed for his social qualities and high character. He was born in

Clearfield county, came to Franklin in 1853, married in 1855 and met his

shocking fate at the age of thirty-nine. His widow and a daughter live

at Franklin.

Thus far the losses of human life were occasioned by the explosion of

great quantities of the messengers of death. The next instance

demonstrated the amazing strength of Nitro-Glycerine in small parcels, a

few drops ending the existence of a vigorous man at Scrubgrass, Venango

county, in the summer of 1870. R. W. Redfield, agent of a

torpedo-company, hid a can of glycerine in the bushes, expecting to

return and use it the following day. While picking berries Mrs. George

Fetterman saw the can and handed it to her husband. Thinking it was

lard-oil, which Nitro-Glycerine in its fluid state resembles closely,

Fetterman poured some into a vessel and sent it to his wells. It was

used as a lubricant for several days. Noticing a heated journal one

morning, Fetterman put a little of the supposed oil on the axle, with

the engine in rapid motion. A furious explosion ensued, tearing the

engine-house into splinters and partially stunning three men at work in

the derrick. Poor Fetterman was found shockingly mangled, with one arm

torn off and his head crushed into jelly. The mystery was not solved for

hours, when it occurred to a neighbor to test the contents of the

oil-can. Putting _one drop_ on an anvil, he struck it a heavy blow and

was hurled to the earth by the force of the concussion. The can was a

common oiler, holding a half-pint, and probably not a dozen drops had

touched the journal before the explosion took place. Fetterman was a man

of remarkable physical power, weighing two-hundred-and-thirty pounds and

looking the picture of health and vigor. Yet a quarter-spoonful of

nitro-glycerine sufficed to usher him into the hereafter under

circumstances particularly distressing.

In the fall a young man lost his life almost as singularly as Fetterman.

He attended a well at Shamburg, seven miles south of Titusville. The

well was torpedoed on a cold day. To thaw the glycerine a tub was filled

with hot water, into which the cans were put. When sufficiently thawed

they were taken out, the glycerine was poured into the shell and the

torpedoing was done satisfactorily. The tubing was replaced in the well

and the young pumper went to turn on the steam to start the engine,

carrying a pair of tongs with him. He threw the tongs into the tub of

water. In an instant the engine-house was demolished by a fierce

explosion. The luckless youth was killed and his body mangled. A small

amount of glycerine must have leaked from the cans while they were

thawing, as the result of which a soul was hurried into the presence of

its Maker with alarming suddenness.

In August of 1871 Charles Clarke started towards Enterprise, a small

village in Warren county, ten miles east of Titusville, with a lot of

glycerine in a vehicle drawn by one horse. The trip was destined never

to be accomplished. By the side of a high hill a piece of very rough

road had to be traveled. There the charge exploded. Likely some of the

liquid had leaked over the buggy and springs and been too much jolted.

The concussion was awful. Pieces of the woodwork and tires were carried

hundreds of yards. Half of one wheel lodged near the top of a large tree

and for many rods the forest was stripped of its foliage and branches.

Part of the face, with the mustache and four teeth adhering, was the

largest portion of the driver recovered from the debris. The horse was

disemboweled and to numerous trees lots of flesh and clothing were

sticking. From the ghastly spectacle the beholders turned away

shuddering. The handful of remains was buried reverently at Titusville,

crowds of people uniting in the last tribute of respect to “Charlie,”

whose youth and intelligence had made him a general favorite.

A case similar to Thompson’s followed a few weeks after, near

Rouseville. Descending a steep hill on his way from torpedoing a well on

the Shaw farm, William Pine was sent out of the world unwarned. He had a

torpedo-shell and some cans of glycerine in a light wagon drawn by two

horses. No doubt, the extreme roughness of the road exploded the

dangerous freight. The body of the driver was distributed in minute

fragments over two acres and the buggy was destroyed, but the horses

escaped with slight injury, probably because the force of the shock

passed above them as they were going down the hill. Pine had a

premonition of impending disaster. When leaving home he kissed his wife

affectionately and told her he intended, should he return safely, to

quit the torpedo-business forever next day. He was an industrious,

competent young man, deserving of a better fate.

In October of the same year Charles Palmer was blown to pieces at the

Roberts magazine, near Titusville, where Brophy died two years before.

With Captain West, agent of the company, he was removing cans of

glycerine from a wagon to the magazine. He handled the cans so

recklessly that West warned him to be more careful. He made thirteen

trips from the wagon and entered the magazine for the fourteenth time.

Next instant the magazine disappeared in a cloud of dust and smoke,

leaving hardly a trace of man or material. West happened to be beside

the wagon and escaped unhurt. The horses galloped furiously through

Titusville, the cans not taken out bounding around in the wagon. Why

they did not explode is a mystery. Had they done so the city would have

been leveled and thousands of lives lost. Palmer paid dearly for his

carelessness, which was characteristic of the rollicking, light-hearted

fellow whose existence terminated so shockingly.

This thrilling adventure decided Captain West, who lived at Oil City, to

engage in pursuits more congenial to himself and agreeable to his

devoted family. He was finely educated, past the meridian and streaks of

gray tinged his dark hair and beard. In November he torpedoed a well for

me on Cherry Run. The shell stuck, together we drew it up, the Captain

adjusted the cap and it was then lowered and exploded successfully. At

parting he shook my hand warmly and remarked: “This is the last torpedo

I shall put in for you. My engagement with the company will end next

week. Good-bye. Come and see me in Oil City.” Three days later he went

to shoot a well at Reno, saying to his wife at starting: “This will wind

up my work for the company.” Such proved to be the fact, although in a

manner very different from what the speaker imagined. The shell was

lowered into the well, but failed to explode and the Captain concluded

to draw it up and examine the priming. Near the surface it exploded,

instantly killing West, who was guiding the line attached to the

torpedo. He was hurled into the air, striking the walking-beam and

falling upon the derrick-floor a bruised and bleeding corpse. He had,

indeed, put in his last torpedo. The main force of the explosion was

spent in the well, otherwise the body and the derrick would have been

blown to atoms. A tear from an old friend, as he recounts the tragic

close of an honorable career, is due the memory of a man whose sterling

qualities were universally admired.

Early in 1873 two young lives paid the penalty at Scrubgrass. On a

bright February morning “Doc” Wright, the torpedo-agent, stopped at the

station to send a despatch. The message sent, he invited the

telegraph-operator, George Wolfe, to ride with him to the magazine, a

mile up the river. The two set out in high spirits, two dogs following

the sleigh. Hardly ten minutes elapsed when a dreadful report terrified

the settlement. From the magazine on the river-bank a light smoke

ascended. Two rods away stood the trembling horse, one eye torn from its

socket and his side lacerated. Beside him one dog lay lifeless.

Fragments of the cutter and the harness were strewn around

promiscuously. Through the bushes a clean lane was cut and a large

chestnut-tree uprooted. A deep gap alone remained of the magazine and

scarcely a particle of the two men could be found. Dozens of splintered

trees across the Allegheny indicated alike the force and general

direction of the concussion. A boot containing part of a human foot was

picked up fifty rods from the spot. Wright’s gold-watch, flattened and

twisted, was fished out of the Allegheny, two-hundred yards down the

stream, in May. The remains, which two cigar-boxes would have held, were

interred close by. A marble shaft marks the grave, which Col. William

Phillips, then president of the Allegheny-Valley Railroad, enclosed with

a neat iron-railing. It is very near the railway-track and the bank of

the river, a short distance above Kennerdell Station. The disaster was

supposed to have resulted from Wright’s using a hatchet to loosen a can

of glycerine from the ice that held it fast. A pet spaniel, which had a

habit of rubbing against his legs and trying to jump into his arms,

accompanied him from his boarding-house. The animal may have diverted

his attention momentarily, causing him to miss the ice and strike the

can. The horse lived for years, not much the worse except for the loss

of one eye. Wright and Wolfe were lively and jocular and their sad fate

was deeply regretted. Many a telegram George Wolfe sent for me when

Scrubgrass was at full tide.

One morning in April of 1873 Dennis Run, a half-mile from Tidioute,

experienced a fierce explosion, which vibrated buildings, upset dishes

and broke windows long distances off. It occurred at a frame structure

on the side of a hill, occupied by Andrew Dalrymple as a dwelling and

engine-house. He was a “moonlighter,” putting in torpedoes at night to

avoid detection by the Roberts spotters, and was probably filling a

shell at the moment of the explosion. It knocked the tenement into

toothpicks and killed Dalrymple, jamming his head and the upper portion

of the trunk against an adjacent engine-house, the roof of which was

smeared with blood and particles of flesh. One arm lay in the small

creek four-hundred feet away, but not a vestige of the lower half of the

body could be discovered. A feeble cry from the ruins of the building

surprised the first persons to reach the place. Two feet beneath the

rubbish a child twenty months old was found unhurt. Farther search

revealed Mrs. Dalrymple, badly mangled and unconscious. She lingered two

hours. The little orphan, too young to understand the calamity that

deprived her of both parents, was adopted by a wealthy resident of

Tidioute and grew to be a beautiful girl. Thousands viewed the sad

spectacle and followed the double funeral to the cemetery. It has been

my fortune to witness many sights of this description, but none

comprised more distressing elements than the sudden summons of the

doomed husband and wife. Mrs. Dalrymple was the only woman in the

oil-region whom Nitro-Glycerine slaughtered.

Is there a sixth sense, an indefinable impression that prompts an action

without an apparent reason? At Petrolia one forenoon something impelled

me to go to Tidioute, a hundred miles north, and spend the night. Rising

from breakfast at the Empire House next morning, a loud report, as

though a battery of boilers had burst, hurried me to the street. Ten

minutes later found me gazing upon the Dalrymple horror. Was the cause

of the impulse that started me from Petrolia explained? An hour sufficed

to help rescue the child from the debris, inspect the wreck, glean full

particulars and board the train for Irvineton. Writing the account for

the Oil-City _Derrick_ at my leisure, Postmaster Evans was on hand with

a report of the inquest when the evening-train reached Tidioute. The

Tidioute _Journal_ didn’t like the _Derrick_ a little bit and the sight

of a young man running from its office towards the train, with copies of

the paper—not dry from the press—attracted my attention. Mr. Evans said

two Titusville reporters had come over during the day. A newspaper-man

clearly relishes a “scoop” and it struck me at once that the _Journal_

was rushing the first sheets of its edition to the Titusville delegates.

Squeezing through the jam, A. E. Fay, of the _Courier_, and “Charlie”

Morse, of the _Herald_, were pocketing the copies handed them by the

_Journal_ youth. Fay laughed out loud and said: “Well, boys, I guess the

_Derrick’s_ left this time!” A pat on the shoulder and my hint to “guess

again” fairly paralyzed the trio. The conductor shouted “all aboard” and

the train moved off. Dropping into the seat in front of Fay, his

annoyance could not be concealed. It relieved him to hear me tell of

coming through from the north and ask why such a crowd had gathered at

Tidioute. He told a fairy-story of a ball-game and his own and Morse’s

visit to meet a friend! A wish for a glance at the Tidioute paper he

parried by answering: “It’s yesterday’s issue!” Fay was a good fellow

and his clumsy falsifying would have shamed Ananias. Keeping him on the

rack was rare sport. Clearly he believed me ignorant of the

torpedo-accident. The moment to undeceive him arrived. A big roll of

manuscript held before his eyes, with a “scare-head” and minute details

of the tragedy, prefaced the query: “Do you still think the _Derrick_ is

badly left?” Many friends have asked me: “In your travels through the

oil-region what was the funniest thing you ever saw?” Here is the

answer: The dazed look of Fay as he beheld that manuscript, turned red

and white, clenched his fists, gritted his teeth and hissed, “Damn you!”

John Osborne, a youth well-known and well-liked, in July of 1874 drove a

buckboard loaded with glycerine down Bear-Creek Valley, two miles below

Parker. The cargo let go at a rough piece of road in a woody ravine,

scattering Osborne, the horse and the vehicle over acres of tree-tops.

The concussion was felt three miles. Venango, Crawford, Warren and

Armstrong counties had furnished nearly a score of sacrifices and Butler

was to supply the next. Alonzo Taylor, young and unmarried, went in the

summer of 1875 to torpedo a well at Troutman. The drop-weight failed to

explode the percussion-cap and Taylor drew up the shell, a process that

had cost Captain West his life and was always risky. He got it out

safely and bore the torpedo to a hill to examine the priming. An instant

later a frightful explosion stunned the neighborhood. Taylor was not

mangled beyond recognition, as the charge was giant-powder instead of

Nitro-Glycerine. Nor was the damage to surrounding objects very great,

owing to the tendency of the powder to expend its strength downward.

This was the only torpedo-fatality of the year, the number of casualties

having induced greater caution in handling explosives.

One of the first persons to reach the spot and gather the remains of

William Pine was his friend James Barnum, who died in the same manner at

St. Petersburg eighteen months later. Barnum was the Roberts agent in

Clarion county. On February twenty-third, 1876, he drove to Edenburg for

three-hundred pounds of glycerine, to store in the magazine a mile from

St. Petersburg. A fearful concussion, which the writer can never forget,

broke hundreds of windows and rocked houses to their foundations at six

o’clock that evening. To the magazine, on a slope sheltered by trees,

people hastened. A huge iron-safe, imbedded in a cave dug into the hill,

was the repository of the explosives. Barnum had tied his team to a

small tree and must have been taking the cans from the wagon to the

safe. A yawning cavity indicated the site of the magazine. Both horses

lay dead and disemboweled. The biggest piece of the luckless agent would

not weigh two pounds. One of his ears was found next morning a half-mile

away. The few remnants were collected in a box and buried at Franklin. A

wife and several children mourned poor “Jim,” who was a lively, active

young man and had often been warned not to be so careless with the

deadly stuff. Mrs. Barnum heard the explosion, uttered a piercing shriek

and ran wildly from her house towards the magazine, sure her husband had

been killed.

W. H. Harper, who received a patent for improvements in torpedoes, went

to his doom at Keating’s Furnace, two miles from St. Petersburg, in July

of 1876. Drawing an unexploded shell from a well, precisely as West and

Taylor had done, he stooped down to examine the priming. The contents

exploded and drove pieces of the tin-shell deep into his flesh and

through his body. How he survived nine days was a wonder to all who saw

the dreadful wounds of the unlucky inventor.

McKean county supplied the next instance. Repeated attempts were made to

rob a large magazine on the Curtis farm, two miles south of Bradford.

Incredible as it may seem, the key-hole of the ponderous iron-safe in

the hillside was several times stuffed with Nitro-Glycerine and a long

fuse and a slow match applied to burst the door. None of these foolhardy

attempts succeeding, on the night of September fifteenth, 1877, A. V.

Pulser, J. B. Burkholder, Andrew P. Higgins and Charles S. Page, two of

them “moonlighters,” it is supposed tried pounding the lock with a

hammer. At any rate, they exploded the magazine and were blown to

fragments, with all the gruesome accompaniments incident to such

catastrophes. That men would imperil their lives to loot a safe of

Nitro-Glycerine in the dark beats the old story of the thief who essayed

to steal a red-hot stove. In this case retribution was swift and

terrible, but a magazine at St. Petersburg was broken open and plundered

successfully.

Seventeen days later J. T. Smith, of Titusville, who had charge of a

magazine on Bolivar Run, four miles from Bradford, lost his life

experimenting with glycerine. Col. E. A. L. Roberts and his nephew, Owen

Roberts, stood fifty yards from the magazine as Smith was thrown into

the air and frightfully mangled. They escaped with slight bruises, a

lively shaking up and a hair-raising fright.

The summer of 1878 was a busy season in the northern field. Foster-Brook

Valley was at the hey-day of activity, with hundreds of wells drilling

and well-shooters very much in evidence. Among the most expert men in

the employ of the Roberts Company was J. Bartlett, of Bradford. He went

to Red Rock, an ephemeral oil-town six miles north-east of Bradford, to

torpedo a well in rear of the McClure House, the principal hostelry.

Although Bartlett’s recklessness was the source of uneasiness, he had

never met with an accident and was considered extremely fortunate. It

was a rule to explode the cans that had held the glycerine before

pouring it into the shell. Bartlett torpedoed the well, piled wood

around the empty cans and set it on fire. He and a party of friends

waited at the hotel for the cans to explode. The fire had burned low and

Bartlett proceeded to investigate. He lifted a can and turned it over,

to see if it contained any glycerine. The act was followed by an

explosion that shook every house in the town and shattered numberless

windows. Bartlett’s companions were knocked senseless and the shooter

was blown one-hundred feet. When picked up by several men, who hurried

to the scene, he presented a horrible sight. His clothing was torn to

ribbons and his body riddled by pieces of tin. The right arm was off

close to the shoulder and the right leg was a pulp. He was removed to a

boarding-house and died in great agony three hours after.

Stories of hapless “moonlighters” scattered to the four winds of heaven

were recounted frequently. Their business, done largely under cover of

darkness, was exceptionally dangerous. The “moonlighter” did not haul

his load in a wagon openly by daylight. He would place two ten-quart

cans of glycerine in a meal-sack, sling the bag over his shoulder and

walk to the scene of his intended operations, generally at night. One

evening in the spring of 1879 a “moonlighter” named Reed appeared at Red

Rock, somewhat intoxicated and bearing two cans of glycerine in a bag.

He handled the bag in a style that struck terror to the hearts of all

onlookers, many of whom remembered poor Bartlett. It was unsafe to wrest

it from him by force and the Red-Rockers heaved a sigh of relief when he

started to climb the hill leading to Summit City. Scores watched him,

expecting an accident. At a rough spot Reed stumbled and the cans fell

to the ground. A terrific explosion shook the surrounding country. A

deep hole, ten feet in diameter, was blown in the earth and houses in

the vicinity were badly shaken. The explosion occurred directly under a

tree. When an attempt was made to gather up Reed’s remains the greater

portion of the body was in the tree, scraps of flesh of various sizes

hanging from its branches. The concussion passed above Red Rock, hence

the damage to property was small. Reed was dispersed over an acre of

brush, a fearful illustration of the incompatibility of whisky and

Nitro-Glycerine.

W. O. Gotham, John Fowler and Harry French went to their usual work at

Gotham’s Nitro-Glycerine factory, near Petrolia, on the morning of

October twenty-seventh, 1878. An explosion during the forenoon tore

Fowler to shreds, mutilated French shockingly and landed Gotham’s dead

body in the stream with hardly a sign of injury. Petrolia never

witnessed a sadder funeral-procession than the long one that followed

the unfortunate three to the tomb. Gotham had a family and was widely

known; the others were strangers, far from home and loved ones.

On February twentieth, 1880, James Feeney and Leonard Tackett started in

a sleigh with six cans under the seat to torpedo a well at Tram Hollow,

eight miles east by north of Bradford. The sleigh slipped into a rut on

a rough side-hill and capsized. The glycerine exploded, throwing Tackett

high in the air and mangling him considerably. Feeney lay flat in the

rut, the violence of the shock passing over him and covering him with

snow and fence-rails. His face was scorched and his hearing destroyed,

but he managed to crawl out, the first man who ever emerged alive from

the jaws of a Nitro-Glycerine eruption. He is still a resident of

Bradford. A dwelling close to the scene was wrecked, the falling timbers

seriously injuring two of the inmates.

At two o’clock on the morning of December twenty-third, 1880, a powerful

concussion startled the people of Bradford from their slumbers, caused

by a glycerine-explosion just below the city-limits. Alvin Magee was

standing over the deadly compound, which had been put in a tub of hot

water to thaw. Usually the subtle stuff is stored in a cold place, to

congeal or freeze until needed. Magee and the derrick were blown into

space, only a few bits of flesh and bone and splintered wood remaining.

His two companions were in the engine-house and got off with severe

bruises and permanent deafness. Two men named Cushing and Leasure were

killed the same way in January, at a well near Limestone. Cushing came

to see the torpedo put into the well and was standing near the

engine-house, into which Leasure had just gone, when the accident

occurred. The glycerine was in hot water to thaw and a jet of steam

turned on, with the effect of sending it off prematurely. Cushing’s body

did not show a mark, his death probably resulting from concussion, while

Leasure was torn to fragments.

E. M. Pearsall, of Oil City, died on July fourteenth, 1880, from the

effect of burns a few hours before. In company with two other men he

went to torpedo one of his wells on the Clapp farm. The tubing had been

drawn out and a large amount of benzine poured into the hole. The

torpedo was exploded, when the gas and benzine took fire and enveloped

the men and rig in flames. The clothes of Pearsall, who was nearest to

the derrick, caught fire and burned from his body. His limbs, face and

breast were a fearful sight. His intense suffering he bore like a hero,

made a will and calmly awaited death, which came to his relief at nine

o’clock in the evening. Pearsall was dark-haired, dark-eyed, slender,

wiry and fearless.

[Illustration: PLUMER MITCHELL.]

J. Plumer Mitchell—we called him “Plum”—worked for me on the

_Independent Press_ at Franklin in 1879-80. Everybody liked the bright,

genial, capable young man who set type, read proof, wrote locals,

solicited advertisements and won golden opinions. He married and was the

proud father of two winsome children. Meeting me on the street one day

shortly after quitting the _Press_, we chatted briefly.

“I am through with sticking type,” he said.

“What are you driving at now?”

“Torpedoing wells. I started on Monday.”

“Well, be sure you get good pay, for it’s risky business, and don’t

furnish a thrilling paragraph for the obituary-column.”

“I shall do my best to steer clear of that. Good-bye.”

That was our last meeting. He met the fate that overtook West, Taylor

and Harper, shooting a well at Galloway. The shattered frame rests in

the cemetery and the widow and fatherless daughters of the lamented dead

reside at Franklin. Poor “Plum!”

T. A. McClain, an employé of the Roberts Company, was hauling

two-hundred quarts of glycerine in a sleigh from Davis Switch to Kinzua

Junction, on February fourteenth, 1881. The horses frightened and ran

off. The sleigh is supposed to have struck a stump and the cargo

exploded. Hardly a trace of McClain could be found and a bit of the

steel-shoeing was the only part of the sleigh recovered. Obliteration

more complete it would be difficult to imagine.

The most destructive sacrifice of life followed on September seventh.

Charles Rust, a Bradford shooter, drove to Sawyer City to torpedo a well

on the Jane Schoonover farm. It is alleged that Rust had domestic

trouble, wearied of life and told his wife when leaving that morning he

would never return. A small crowd assembled to witness the operation.

William Bunton, owner of several adjacent wells, Charles Crouse, known

as “Big Charlie the Moonlighter,” James Thrasher, tool-dresser, and Rust

were on the derrick-floor. Rust filled the first shell, fixed the

firing-head and struck the cap two sharp blows with his left hand. There

was a blinding flash, then a deafening report. Dust, smoke and missiles

filled the air. The derrick was demolished and pieces of board flew

hundreds of yards with the force of cannon-balls. One hit Crouse in the

center of the forehead and passed through the skull. His face was

terribly lacerated and the clothing stripped off his body. Bunton and

Thrasher were not mangled beyond recognition, while Rust was thrown a

hundred yards. His legs were missing, the face was battered out of the

semblance of humanity and not a vestige of clothing was left on the

mutilated trunk. Frederick Slatterly, a lad on his way to school, was

hit by a piece of the derrick, which ripped his abdomen and caused death

in three hours. Three boys walking behind young Slatterly were thrown

down and hurt slightly. Mr. Bunton gasped when picked up and lived five

minutes. He was an estimable citizen, an elder in the Presbyterian

church, intelligent and broad-minded. Thrasher and Crouse were

industrious workmen. Edward Wilson, a gauger, standing ten rods away,

was perforated by slivers and pieces of tin, his injuries confining him

to bed several months. Thomas Buton and John Sisley were at the side of

the derrick, within six feet of Rust, yet escaped with trifling

injuries. The tragedy produced a sensation, all the more fearful from

the belief of some who witnessed it that Rust intended to commit suicide

and in compassing his own death killed four innocent victims.

The Roberts magazine on the Hatfield farm, two miles south of Bradford,

blew up on the night of October thirteenth, 1881. Nobody doubted it was

the work of “moonlighters” attempting to steal the glycerine. Traces of

blood and minute portions of flesh on the stones and ties indicated that

two persons at least were engaged in the job. Who they were none ever

learned.

John McCleary, a Roberts shooter, had a remarkable escape on December

twenty-seventh, 1881. While filling the shell at a well near Haymaker,

in the lower oil-field, the well flowed and McCleary left the derrick.

The column of oil threw down the shell and the glycerine exploded

promptly, wrecking the derrick and tossing the fleeing man violently to

the ground. He rose to his feet as four cans on the derrick-floor cut

loose. McCleary was borne fifty feet through the air, jagged splinters

of tin and wood pierced his back and sides and he fell stunned and

bleeding. He was not injured fatally. Like Feeney, Buton and Sisley, he

survives to tell of his close call. Less fortunate was Henry W. McHenry,

who had torpedoed hundreds of wells and was blown to atoms near Simpson

Station, in the southern end of the Bradford region, on February fifth,

1883. His fate resembled West’s, Taylor’s, Harper’s and Mitchell’s.

In the summer of 1884 Lark Easton went to torpedo a well at Coleville,

seven miles southeast of Bradford. He tied his team in the woods,

carried some cans of glycerine to the well and left four in the wagon. A

storm blew down a tree, which fell on the wagon and exploded the

glycerine, demolishing the vehicle and killing one horse. It was a lucky

escape, if not much of a lark, for Easton.

A peculiar case was that of “Doc” Haggerty, a teamster employed to haul

Nitro-Glycerine to the magazine near Pleasantville. In December of 1888

he took fourteen-hundred pounds on his wagon and was seen at the

magazine twenty minutes before a furious explosion occurred. Pieces of

the horses and wagon were found, but not an atom of Haggerty. He had

disappeared as completely as Elijah in the chariot of fire. An

insurance-company, in which he held a five-thousand-dollar policy,

resisted payment on the ground that, as no remains of the alleged dead

man could be produced, he might be alive! Some pretexts for declining to

pay a policy are pretty mean, but this certainly capped the climax.

Experts believed the heat generated by the explosion was sufficient to

cremate the body instantaneously, bones, clothes, boots and all.

James Woods and William Medeller, two experienced shooters, were ushered

into eternity on December tenth, 1889, by the explosion of the Humes

Torpedo-Company’s magazine at Bean Hollow, two miles south of Butler.

They had gone for glycerine and that was the end of their mortal

pilgrimage. Six years later, on December fourth, 1895, at the same place

and in the same way, George Bester and Lewis Black lost their lives.

Bester was blown to atoms and only a few threads of his clothing could

be picked up. The lower part of Black’s face, the trunk and right arm

remained together, while other portions of the body were strewn around.

The left arm was in a tree three-hundred yards distant. Huge holes

marked the site of the two Humes magazines, a hundred feet apart. The

mangled horse lay between them, every bone in his carcass broken and the

harness cut off clean. The buggy was in fragments, with one tire wrapped

five times about a small tree. Not a board stayed on the boiler-house

and the boiler was moved twenty feet and dismantled. The factory,

two-hundred feet from the magazines, was utterly wrecked. The young men

left Butler early in the morning, Black going for company. The

supposition is that Bester was removing some of the cans from the shelf,

intending to take them out, and that he dropped one of them. About

seven-hundred pounds of glycerine were stored in one of the magazines

and a less amount in the other. George Bester was twenty-eight and had a

wife and two small children. He was industrious, steady and one of the

best shooters in the business. Black was twenty and lived with his

parents. The concussion jarred every house in Butler, broke windows and

loosened plaster in the McKean school-building, causing a panic among

the children.

W. N. Downing’s death, on January second, 1891, at the Victor

Oil-Company’s well, in the Archer’s Forks oil-field, near Wheeling, West

Virginia, was very singular. The glycerine used to torpedo the well the

previous day had been thawed in a barrel of warm water. Next day two of

the owners drove out to see the well and talk with Downing, who was

foreman of the company. On their way back to Wheeling they heard an

explosion, conjectured the boiler had burst and returned to the lease.

Mr. Downing’s body lay near where the barrel of water had stood. The

barrel had vanished and a large hole occupied its place. The victim’s

head was cut off on a line with the eyes. The only explanation of the

accident was that the glycerine had leaked into the barrel and a sudden

jar had caused the stuff to explode. Beside the well, in the

fence-corner, were twelve cans of glycerine not exploded. Downing lived

at Siverlyville, above Oil City, whither his remains were brought for

interment.

Letting a torpedo down a well at Bradford in September of 1877, a flow

of oil jerked it out, hurled the shell against the tools, which were

hanging in the derrick, and set off the nitro on the double quick. The

shooter jumped and ran at the first symptoms of trouble, the derrick was

sliced in the middle and set on fire. The rig burned and strenuous

exertions alone saved neighboring wells. The fire was a novelty in the

career of the explosive.

Occasionally Nitro-Glycerine goes off by spontaneous combustion without

apparent provocation. On December fifth, 1881, two of the employés

noticed a thin smoke rising from the top row of cans in the Roberts

magazine at Kinzua Junction. They retreated, came back and removed

eighty cans, observed the smoke increasing in density and volume and

decided to watch further proceedings from a safe distance.

Twelve-hundred quarts exploded with such vigor that the earth jarred for

miles and a big hole was ploughed in the rock. In November of 1885 the

Rock Glycerine-Company’s factory on Minard Run, four miles south of

Bradford, was wrecked for the fourth time. O. Wood and A. Brown were

running the mixture into “the drowning tank,” to divest it of the acid.

The process generates much heat and acid escaping from a leak in the

tank fired the wood-work. Wood and Brown and a carpenter in the

building, knowing their deliverance depended upon their speed, took

French leave. Samuel Barber, a teamster, was unloading a drum of acid in

front of the building and joined the fugitives in their flight. The

glycerine obligingly waited until the four men reached a safe spot and

then reduced the factory to kindling-wood. Barber’s horses and wagon

were not hurt mortally, the animals bleeding a little from the nose.

Next evening Tucker’s factory at Corwin Centre, six miles north-east of

Bradford, followed suit. Griffin Rathburn, who was making a run of the

fluids, fled for his life as the mass emitted a flame. He saved himself,

but the factory and a thousand pounds of the explosive went on an aërial

excursion.

In November, 1896, at Pine Fork, West Virginia, William Conn drove a

two-horse wagon to the magazine for glycerine to shoot a well. While

Conn was inside two men drove up with two horses. That moment the

magazine exploded with a report heard ten miles off. Only a piece of a

man’s foot was ever found. Thus three human beings, two wagons and four

horses were extinguished utterly.

On December twenty-third, 1896, a half-ton of glycerine blew up near

Montpelier, Indiana. Two men and two teams were the victims. The forest

was mowed down for hundreds of feet. Oak-trees three feet in diameter

were cut off like mullein-stalks. A steel-tire from one wagon was coiled

tightly around a small tree. One of the shooters was John Hickok, a

giant in stature. He was unusually cheerful that morning. He kissed his

wife and daughter good-bye and said, in answer to the query if he would

be home to dinner, “You know, Jennie, we are never sure of coming back.”

By the explosion of a magazine at Shannopin, eighteen miles from

Pittsburg, in January, 1897, two men and two girls were killed, one man

was injured, buildings were shattered and part of the public-school was

demolished. The concussion broke windows at Economy and Coraopolis and

was felt thirty miles distant.

On February twenty-fifth, 1897, a similar accident at the magazine three

miles west of Steubenville, Ohio, blew Louis Crary and Eugene Ralston

into bits too small to be gathered up. Both were in the frame building

containing the iron-safe that held the explosive when the whole thing

went into the air. At Celina, on April second, Cornelius O’Donnell and

John Baird perished, one finger alone remaining to prove they had ever

existed.

Near Wellsville, New York, on March third, three tons of the stuff let

go, probably from spontaneous combustion, leaving a yawning chasm where

the magazine of the Rock Glycerine-Company had been erected. Nobody was

near enough to be hurt. Next day John Pike and Lewis Washabaugh met

their fate at Orchard Park. Washabaugh went to the magazine to examine

its contents and the explosion occurred as he opened the door, tearing

him to pieces. Pike, who stood a hundred yards away, was killed

instantly. On March twenty-second, at the Farren farm, two miles from

Wellsville, six-hundred quarts of the compound sent Henry H. Youngs to

his death. His young wife heard the warning note and ran bareheaded

through the deep mud to the scene. Doctor Clark and Thomas Myers were

driving posts five hundred feet from the magazine when Youngs drove past

for his load. Myers wanted to leave the spot, fearing an accident, but

Clark laughed at him and they continued working. At nine o’clock Myers

stood upon a saw-horse mauling away at a post. Suddenly he was thrown

over and over, performing several somersaults. He soon realized that the

terrible explosion he feared had taken place. With bloody face, bruised

body and a limping gait he arose. Smoke ascended over the site of the

magazine. Man and horses and wagon were gone. Clark was slowly rolling

himself over the ground and groaning from an injury in the region of the

stomach. Both men gasped for breath. Scraps of clothing and shreds of

flesh were all that could be picked up.

C. N. Brown, manager of a torpedo-company, lost his life on April first

while shooting a well near Evans City, in Butler county. He had placed

part of the charge in the hole and was filling another shell on the

derrick-floor. Face and limbs were blown to the four winds, a portion of

skull dropping in the field. Brown was an expert shooter and a can

probably slipped from his hands to the floor so forcibly as to explode.

He expected to quit the business that week.

Within sight of Marietta, Ohio, on August third, a wagon loaded with

nitro-glycerine dropped into a chuck hole in the road, setting off the

cargo. The driver, John McCleary, and the horses were scattered far and

wide. Half of a hoof was the largest fragment left of man or beast.

Thomas Martin, working on the road a hundred yards away, was hit by a

piece of the wagon and died instantly. John Williams, riding a horse

three-hundred yards beyond Martin, was pitched from his saddle and

painfully bruised.

Samuel Barber torpedoed George Grant’s well, in the middle of the town

of Cygnet, on September seventh. A heavy flow of gas and a stream of oil

followed. The gas caught fire from the boiler, a hundred yards back,

filling the air with a sheet of solid flame. Men, women and children

were burned badly in trying to escape. Barber, clad in oily clothing

that burned furiously, ran until he fell and was burned fatally. A store

and office were consumed and the multitude supposed all danger had

passed. Forty quarts of the explosive had not been taken from the

derrick. The terrific explosion killed five men outright, three others

expired in a few hours, nine houses were wrecked and every pane of glass

in town was broken. Eight months previously two men were killed at

Cygnet by the explosion of a magazine.

Warren VanBuren, of Bolivar, a noted shooter, has exploded

three-thousand torpedoes in oil-wells and is still in the business.

Three years ago two of his brothers worked with him. One of them tripped

on a gas-pipe and fell, while carrying a can of nitro-glycerine to his

wagon, with the usual result. All that could be found of his body was

placed in a cigar-box. The other brother retired from the business next

day, bought a fruit-farm, returned to the oil-country lately and he is

again pursuing his old vocation.

John Jeffersey, an Indian pilot, died at Tionesta in 1894. One dark

night he plunged into the Allegheny, near Brady’s Bend, to grasp a skiff

loaded with cans of glycerine that brushed past his raft. Jacob Barry

and Richard Spooner jumped from the skiff as it touched the raft,

believing an explosion inevitable, and sank beneath the waters. As

“Indian John” caught the boat he yelled: “Me got it him! Me run it him

and tie!” He guided the craft through the pitchy darkness and anchored

it safely. Had it drifted down the river a sad accident might have been

the sequel. Happily Americanite, quite as powerful and much safer, is

displacing nitro-glycerine.

Andrew Dalrymple, who perished at Tidioute, was at his brother’s well

ten minutes before the fatal explosion and said to the pumper: “I have

five-hundred dollars in my trousers and next week I’m going west to

settle on a farm.” Man and wife and money were blotted out ruthlessly

and the trip west was a trip into eternity instead.

Frequently loads of explosives are hauled through the streets of towns

in the oil-regions, despite stringent ordinances and lynx-eyed

policemen. Once a well-known handler of glycerine was arrested and taken

before the mayor of Oil City. He denied violating the law by carrying

the stuff in his buggy. An officer bore a can at arm’s length and laid

it tenderly on the floor. “Now, you won’t deny it?” interrogated the

mayor. “No,” replied the prisoner, “there seems to be a lot of it.” Then

he hit the can a vicious kick, sending it against the wall with a thud.

The spectators fled and the mayor tried to climb through the

back-window. The can didn’t explode, the agent put it to his lips, took

a hearty quaff and remarked: “Mr. Mayor, try a nip; you’ll find this

whisky goes right to the ticklish spot!”

Men in Ohio, West Virginia and Indiana have added to the dismal roll of

those who, leaving home happy and buoyant in the morning, ere the sun

set were dispersed over acres of territory. Yet all experiences with the

dread compound have not been serious, for at intervals a comic incident

brightens the page. Robert L. Wilson, a blacksmith on Cherry Run in

1869-70, was a first-class tool-manufacturer. Joining the Butler tide,

he opened a shop at Modoc. A fellow of giant-build entered one day,

bragged of his muscle as well as his stuttering tongue would permit and

wanted work. Something about the fellow displeased Wilson, who was of

medium size and thin as Job’s turkey, and he decided to have a little

fun at the stranger’s expense. He asked the burly visitor whether he

could strike the anvil a heavier blow than any other man in the shop.

The chap responded yes and Wilson agreed to hire him if he proved his

claim good. Wilson poured two or three drops of what looked like

lard-oil on the anvil and the big ’un braced himself to bring down the

sledge-hammer with the force of a pile-driver. He struck the exact spot.

The sledge soared through the roof and the giant was pitched against the

side of the building hard enough to knock off a half-dozen boards. When

he extracted himself from the mess and regained breath he blurted out:

“I t-t-told you I co-cou-could hi-hi-hit a he-he-hell of a b-bl-blow!”

“Right,” said Wilson, “you can beat any of us; be on hand to-morrow

morning to begin work.” The man worked faithfully and did not discover

for months that the stuff on the anvil was Nitro-Glycerine.

The farm-house of Albert Jones, three miles from Auburn, Illinois, was

demolished on a Sunday afternoon in November of 1885. Jones had procured

some Nitro-Glycerine to remove stumps and set the can on the floor of

the dining-room. After dinner the family visited a neighbor, locking up

the house. About three o’clock a thundering detonation alarmed the

Auburnites, who couldn’t understand the cause of the rumpus. A messenger

from the country enlightened them. The Jones domicile had been wrecked

mysteriously and the family must have perished. Excited people soon

arrived and the Joneses put in an appearance. The house and furniture

were scattered in tiny tidbits over an area of five-hundred yards. Half

the original height of the four walls was standing, with a saw-tooth and

splintered fringe all around the irregular top of the oblong. Two beds

were found several hundred yards apart, in the road in front of the

house. A sewing-machine was buried head-first in the flower-garden.

Wearing-apparel and household-articles were strewn about the place.

While Mr. Jones and a circle of friends were viewing the wreck and

wondering how the Nitro-Glycerine exploded a faint cry was heard. A

search resulted in finding the family-cat in the branches of a tree

fifty feet from the dwelling. It was surmised the cat caused the

disaster by pushing from the table some article sufficiently heavy to

explode the glycerine on the floor. The New York _Sun’s_ famous

grimalkin should have retired to a back-fence and begun his final

caterwauling over the superior performance of the Illinois feline. Jones

and his friends unanimously endorsed the verdict: “It was the cat.”

The first statement coupling a hog and Nitro-Glycerine in one package

was written by me in December of 1869, at Rouseville, and printed in the

Oil-City _Times_. The item went the rounds of the press in America and

Europe, many papers giving due credit and many localizing the narrative

to palm it off as original. One of the latter was “Brick” Pomeroy’s La

Crosse _Democrat_, which laid the scene in that neck of woods. The tale

has often been resurrected and it was reported in a New-Orleans paper

last month. The original version of “The Loaded Porker” read thus:

“Rouseville furnishes the latest unpatented novelty in connection with

Nitro-Glycerine. A torpedo-man had taken a small parcel of the dangerous

compound from the magazine and on his return dropped into an

engine-house a few minutes, leaving the vessel beside the door. A

rampant hog, in search of a rare Christmas dinner, discovered the

tempting package and unceremoniously devoured the entire contents, just

finishing the last atom as the torpedoist emerged from the building! Now

everybody gives the greedy animal the widest latitude. It has full

possession of the whole sidewalk whenever disposed to promenade. All the

dogs in town have been placed in solitary confinement, for fear they

might chase the loaded porker against a post. No one is sufficiently

reckless to kick the critter, lest it should unexpectedly explode and

send the town and its total belongings to everlasting smash! The matter

is really becoming serious and how to dispose safely of a gormandizing

swine that has imbibed two quarts of infernal glycerine is the grand

conundrum of the hour. When he is killed and ground up into sausage and

head-cheese a new terror will be added to the long list that

boarding-houses possess already.”

Charles Foster, of the High-Explosive Company, had an adventure in March

of 1896 that he would not repeat for a hatful of diamonds. He loaded

five-hundred quarts of glycerine at the magazine near Kane City. On Rynd

Hill the horses slipped and one fell. The driver jumped from his seat to

hold the animal’s head that it might not struggle. He cut the other

horse free from the harness, as the road skirted a precipice and the

frightened beast’s rearing and plunging would almost certainly dump the

wagon and outfit over the steep bank. Nobody was in sight, the driver

had no chance to block the wheels and the wagon started down the hill

backward. The vehicle, with its load of condensed destruction, kept the

road a few yards and pitched over the hill, turning somersaults in its

descent. It brought up standing on the tongue in a heap of stones. The

covers were torn off the wagon and the cans of the explosive were widely

scattered. Seven in one bunch were picked up ten yards below the road. A

three-cornered hole had been jammed in the bottom of one of the

eight-quart cans and the contents were escaping. Darkness came on before

the glycerine could be removed to a place of safety. Foster secured a

rig and drove home, after arranging to have the stuff taken to the

factory next morning. How the explosive, although congealed, stood the

shock of going over the hill and scattering about without soaring

skyward is one of the unfathomed mysteries of the Nitro-Glycerine

business.

A Polish resident of South Oil City carried home what he took to be an

empty tomato-can. His wife chanced to upset it from a shelf in the

kitchen. A few drops of glycerine must have adhered to the tin. The can

burst with fearful violence, blowing out one side of the kitchen,

destroying the woman’s eyes and nearly blinding her little daughter. A

woman at Rouseville poured glycerine, mistaking it for lard-oil, into a

frying-pan on the stove, just as her husband came into the kitchen. He

snatched up the pan and landed it in a snow-bank so quickly the stuff

didn’t burst the combination. The wife started to scold him, but fainted

when he explained the situation.

The wonderful explosion at Hell-Gate in 1876, when General Newton fired

two-hundred tons of dynamite and cleared a channel into New-York harbor

for the largest steamships, brought to the front the men who always tell

of something that beats the record. A group sat discussing Newton’s

achievement at the Collins House, Oil City, as a Southerner with a

military title entered. Catching the drift of the argument he said:

“Talk about sending rocks and water up in the air! I knew a case that

knocked the socks clear off this little ripple at New York!”

“Tell us all about it, Colonel,” the party chorused.

“You see I used to live down in Tennessee. One day I met a farmer

driving a mule that looked as innocent as a cherub. The farmer had a

whip with a brad in the end of it. Just as I came up he gave the mule a

prod. Next moment he was gone. It almost took my breath away to see a

chap snuffed out so quick. The mule merely ducked his head and struck

out behind. A crash, a cloud of splinters and the mule and I were alone,

with not a trace of farmer or wagon in sight. Next day the papers had

accounts of a shower of flesh over in Kentucky and I was the only person

who could explain the phenomenon. No, gentlemen, the dynamite and

Nitro-Glycerine at Hell-Gate couldn’t hold a candle to that Tennessee

mule!”

The silence that followed this tale was as dense as a London fog and

might have been cut with a cheese-knife. It was finally broken by a

_Derrick_ writer, who was a newspaper man and not easily taken down,

extending an invitation to the crowd to drink to the health of Eli

Perkins’s and Joe Mulhatten’s greatest rival.

William A. Meyers, whom every man and woman at Bradford knew and

admired, handled tons of explosives and shot hundreds of wells. He had

escapes that would stand a porcupine’s quills on end. To head off a lot

of fellows who asked him for the thousandth time concerning one notable

adventure, he concocted a new version of the affair. “It was a close

call,” he said, “and no mistake. In the magazine I got some glycerine on

my boots. Soon after coming out I stamped my heel on a stone and the

first thing I knew I was sailing heavenward. When I alighted I struck

squarely on my other heel and began a second ascension. Somehow I came

down without much injury, except a bruised feeling that wore off in a

week or two. You see the glycerine stuck to my boot-heels and when it

hit a hard substance it went off quicker than Old Nick could singe a

kiln-dried sinner. What’ll you take, boys?”

So the darkest chapter in petroleum history, a flood of litigation, a

mass of deception, a black wave of treachery and a red streak of human

blood, must be charged to the account of Nitro-Glycerine.

GRAINS OF THIRD SAND.

Many expressions coined in or about the oil-regions condense a page into

a line. Not a few have the force of a catapult and the directness of a

rifle-ball. Some may be quoted:

“A fat bank-account won’t fatten a lean soul.”—_Charles Miller._

“The poorest man I know of is the man who has nothing but money.”—_John

D. Rockefeller._

“Don’t size up a man by the size of his wad.”—_Peter O. Conver._

“Never be the mere echo of any man on God’s green earth.”—_David Kirk._

“Take nobody’s dust in oil or politics.”—_James M. Guffey._

“What’s oil to a man when his wife’s a widow.”—_Edwin E. Clapp._

“Dad’s struck ile.”—_Miss Anna Evans._

“The Standard is the octopus of the century.”—_Col. J. A. Vera._

“It’s monopoly when you won’t divide with the other fellow.”—_John D.

Archbold._

“The Standard would swallow us without chewing.”—_Samuel P. Boyer._

“Give us public officials who dare own their own souls.”—_Lewis Emery._

“The man who won’t demand his rights should crawl off the earth.”—_M. H.

Butler._

“He’s only a corporation-convenience.”—_James W. Lee._

“A railroad-pass is the price of some legislators.”—_W. S. McMullan._

“I believe in a man who can say no at the right time.”—_James H. Osmer._

“A sneer can kill more tender plants than a hard freeze.”—_Edwin H.

Sibley._

“Grease, grace and greenbacks are the boss combination.”—_John P. Zane._

“Where are we now?”—_Philip M. Shannon._

“Piety that won’t march all week isn’t worth parading on Sunday.”—_Rev.

Fred. Evans._

“A jimson-weed has more fragrance than some folks’ religion.”—_Rev. John

McCoy._

“The scythe of Time gathers no rust.”—_Rev. N. S. McFetridge._

“Faith may see the fruit, but works knock the persimmons.”—_Rev. J.

Hawkins._

“Train your boy as carefully as your fifty-dollar pup.”—_Frank W.

Bowen._

“Who is the father of that child?”—_Oil-City Derrick._

“Other curses are trifles compared with the curses that follow falling

prices.”—_J. C. Sibley._

“Hit the calamity-howler in the solar plexus.”—_Patrick C. Boyle._

“Good character? A man doesn’t need a character to sell whisky.”—_S. P.

McCalmont._

“He thinks himself a little tin-godelmitey on wheels.”—_Coleman E.

Bishop._

“Just to be contrary he’d have a chill in Hades.”—_David A. Dennison._

“That fellow’s so cold-blooded he sweats ice-water.”—_John H. Galey._

“Think out your plan, then go and do it.”—_Charles V. Culver._

“I pay for what I get.”—_John McKeown._

“This Court will not be made a thumbscrew to squeeze any debtor.”—_Judge

Trunkey._

“A good many injunctions ought to be enjoined.”—_Judge Taylor._

“We may safely assume that the Almighty knows all about it.”—_James S.

Myers._

“A flea may upset a mastiff.”—_Stephen D. Karns._

“The city-water is as dirty as the dirty pool of politics.”—_Samuel P.

Brigham._

“Haven’t the producers played the fool long enough?”—_George H. Nesbit._

“Tracts and missionaries are poor feed for the heathen.”—_Alexander

Cochran._

“Money is good only as it enables men to do good.”—_J. J. Vandergrift._

“It takes dry-holes to test an operator’s moral fiber.”—_Joseph T.

Jones._

“I have tapped the mine.”—_Edwin L. Drake._

“Give us dollar-oil and Klondyke can go to the devil.”—_Chorus of

Operators._

“That duffer is the ugliest bristle on the monopoly-hog.”—_Peter Grace._

“I think more of my ‘belt-theory’ than of a thousand-barrel

well.”—_Cyrus D. Angell._

“First stop the drill, then you may pray for higher prices.”—_T. T.

Thompson._

“A cat in hell without claws is less helpless than the

producers.”—_Clarion Oilmen._

“Seventy-cent oil is a mustard-plaster that draws out all our

vitality.”— _Michael Murphy._

“The world is all right; it’s your liver that’s wrong.”—_Roger Sherman._

“He washed his face and the disguise was perfect.”—_Samuel L. Williams._

“I feel sorry for the poor fellow fifty-dollars; how sorry are

you?”—_Wesley Chambers._

“Hell is running over with souls lost for lack of sympathy on

earth.”—_Rev. J. Hart._

“Cigarettes and corsets kill off a good many fools.”—_Albert P.

Whitaker._

“Giving is a luxury no man can afford to miss.”—_Dr. Albert G. Egbert._

“Lord, preserve our pastor, which is sailin’ on the ragin’ sea.”—_Elder

at Franklin._

“The best preparation for a good death is a good life.”—_Rev. Thomas

Carroll._

“Let me pipe the oil and I don’t care who drills the wells.”—_Henry

Harley._

“One well in the sand beats a hundred geological guesses.”—_Wesley S.

Guffey._

“Oil is the sap that keeps the tree of commerce in bloom.”—_Marcus

Hulings._

“Producers and oil-wells should have plenty of sand.”—_Frederic

Prentice._

“He hasn’t half the backbone of a printer’s towel.”—_M. N. Allen._

“His ideas have the vigor of a mule’s hind legs.”—_Robert L. Cochran._

“Damn a man who won’t stand up for a square deal.”—_Robert B. Allen._

“He’s too big a mullet-head to say damn.”—_John A. Steele._

“God has no use for the man a dry-hole knocks out.”—_Daniel Cady._

“His good deeds are so far apart they die of loneliness.”—_Charles

Collins._

“He’s more kinds of a blamed fool than a whole lunatic asylum.”—_David

Armstrong._

“Too often the mean man is the man of means.”—_Stephen W. Harley._

“If all Christians were like some Christians the church would be a

rubbish-heap.”—_Rev. Edwin T. Brown._

[Illustration: STANDARD BUILDING, 26 BROADWAY, NEW YORK.]

XVIII.

THE STANDARD OIL-COMPANY.

GROWTH OF A GREAT CORPORATION—MISUNDERSTOOD AND

MISREPRESENTED—IMPROVEMENTS IN TREATING AND TRANSPORTING

PETROLEUM—WHY MANY REFINERIES COLLAPSED—REAL MEANING OF THE

TRUST—WHAT A COMBINATION OF BRAINS AND CAPITAL HAS ACCOMPLISHED—MEN

WHO BUILT UP A VAST ENTERPRISE THAT HAS NO EQUAL IN THE WORLD.

----------

“Speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate,

Nor set down aught in malice.”—_Shakespeare._

“Not to know me argues yourself unknown.”—_Milton._

“The keen spirit seizes the prompt occasion.”—_Hannah Moore._

“Genius is the faculty of growth.”—_Coleridge._

“Success affords the means of securing additional

success.”—_Stanislaus._

“Fortune, success, position, are never gained but by determinedly,

bravely striking, growing, living to a thing.”—_Townsend._

“The goal of yesterday will be the starting-point of

to-morrow.”—_Voltaire._

“Where the judgment is weak the prejudice is strong.”—_Kate O’Hara._

“Amongst the sons of men how few are known

Who dare to be just to merit not their own.”—_Churchill._

“Censure is the tax a man pays to the public for being eminent.”—_Dean

Swift._

“As though a rose should shut and be a bud again.”—_John Keats._

----------

[Illustration: JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER.]

Compared with a petroleum-sketch which did not touch upon the Standard

Oil-Company, in different respects the greatest corporation the world

has ever known, Hamlet with “the melancholy Dane” left out would be a

masterpiece of completeness. Perhaps no business-organization in this or

any other country has been more misrepresented and misunderstood. To

many well-meaning persons, who would not willfully harbor an unjust

thought, it has suggested all that is vicious, grasping and oppressive

in commercial affairs. They picture it as a cruel monster, wearing horns

and cloven-hoofs and a forked-tail, grown rich and fat devouring the

weak and the innocent. Its motives have been impugned, its methods

condemned and its actions traduced. If a man in Oildom drilled a

dry-hole, backed the wrong horse, lost at poker, dropped money

speculating, stubbed his toe, ran an unprofitable refinery, missed a

train or couldn’t maintain champagne-style on a lager-beer income, it

was the fashion for him to pose as the victim of a gang of conspirators

and curse the Standard as vigorously and vociferously as the fish-wife

hurled invectives at Daniel O’Connell.

Some folks display most wonderful agility

In their attempts to shift responsibility.

The reasons for this are as numerous as the sands of the sea. It is no

new thing to shove upon other shoulders the burden that belongs properly

to our own. In their fiery zeal to convict somebody people have been

known to bark up the wrong tree, to charge the innocent with all sorts

of offences and to get off their base entirely. Such people and such

methods did not die out with the passing of the Salem witch-burners. The

Standard was made the scape-goat of the evil deeds alleged to have been

contemplated by the unsavory South-Improvement Company. That odious

combine, which included a number of railroad-officials, oil-operators

and refiners, disbanded without producing, refining, buying, selling or

transporting a gallon of petroleum. “Politics makes strange bedfellows”

and so does business. Among subscribers for South-Improvement stock were

certain holders of Standard stock and also their bitterest opponents;

among those most active in giving the job its death-blow were prominent

members of the Standard Oil-Company. The projected spoliation died

“unwept, unhonored and unsung,” but it was not a Standard scheme.

Envy is frequently the penalty of success. Whoever fails in any pursuit

likes to blame somebody else for his misfortune. This trick is as old as

the race. Adam started it in Eden, Eve tried to ring in the serpent and

their posterity take good care not to let the game get rusty from

disuse! Its aggregation of capital renders the Standard, in the opinion

of those who have “fallen outside the breastworks,” directly responsible

for their inability to keep up with the procession. Sympathizers with

them deem this “confirmation strong as proof of Holy Writ” that the

Standard is an unconscionable monopoly, fostered by crushing out

competition. Such reasoning forgets that enterprise, energy, experience

and capital are usually trump-cards. It forgets that “the race is to the

swift,” the battle is to the mighty and that “Heaven is on the side with

the heaviest artillery.” Carried to its logical conclusion, it means

that improved methods, labor-saving appliances and new processes count

for nothing. It means that the snail can travel with the antelope, that

the locomotive must wait for the stage-coach, that the fittest shall not

survive. In short, it is the double-distilled essence of absurdity.

Any advance in methods of business necessarily injures the poorest

competitor. Is this a reason why advances should be held back? If so,

the public could derive no benefit from competition. The fact that a man

with meagre resources labors under a serious disadvantage is not an

excuse for preventing stronger parties from entering the field. The

grand mistake is in confounding combination with monopoly. By

combination small capital can compete successfully with large capital.

Every partnership or corporation is a combination, without which

undertakings beyond individual reach would never be accomplished. Trunk

railroads would not be built, unity of action would be destroyed,

mankind would segregate as savages and the trade of the world would

stagnate. Combinations should be regulated, not abolished. Rightful

competition is not a fierce strife between persons to undersell each

other, that the one enduring the longest may afterwards sell higher, but

that which furnishes the public with the best products at the least

cost. This is not done by selling below cost, but by diminishing in

every way possible the cost of producing, manufacturing and

transporting. The competition which does this, be it by an individual, a

firm, a corporation, a trust or a combination, is a public benefactor.

This kind of competition uses the best tools, discards the sickle for

the cradle and the cradle for the reaper, abandons the flail for the

threshing-machine and adopts the newest ideas wherever and whenever

expenses can be lessened. To this end unrestricted combination and

unrestricted competition must go hand-in-hand. A small profit on a large

volume of business is better for the consumer than a large profit on a

small business. The man who sells a million dollars’ worth of goods a

year, at a profit of five per cent., will become rich, while he who

sells only ten-thousand dollars’ worth can get a bare living. If the

builder of a business of one-hundred-thousand dollars deserve praise,

why should the builder of a business of millions be censured? Business

that grows greater than people’s limited notions should not for that

cause be fettered or suppressed. When business ceases to be local and

has the world for its market, capital must be supplied to meet the

increasing demand and combination is as essential as fresh air. Thus

large establishments take the place of small ones and men acting in

concert achieve what they would never attempt separately. The more

perfect the power of association the greater the power of production and

the larger the proportion of the product which falls to the laborer’s

share. The magnitude of combinations must correspond with the magnitude

of the business to be done, in order to secure the highest skill, to

employ the latest devices, to pay the best wages, to invent new

appliances, to improve facilities and to give the public a cheaper and

finer product. This is as natural and legitimate as for water to run

down hill or the fleet greyhound to distance the slow tortoise.

How has the Standard affected the consumer of petroleum-products? What

has it done for the people who use illuminating oils? Has it advanced

the price and impaired the quality? The early distillations of petroleum

were unsatisfactory and often dangerous. The first refineries were

exceedingly primitive and their processes simple. Much of the crude was

wasted in refining, a business not financially successful as a rule

until 1872, notwithstanding the high prices obtained. Methods of

manufacture and transportation were expensive and inadequate. The

product was of poor quality, emitting smoke and unpleasant odor and

liable to explode on the slightest provocation. In 1870 a few persons,

who had previously been partners in a refinery at Cleveland, organized

the Standard Oil-Company of Ohio, with a capital of one-million dollars,

increased subsequently to three-and-a-half millions. For years the

history of refining had been mainly one of disaster and bankruptcy. A

Standard Oil-Company had been organized at Pittsburg by other persons

and was doing a large trade. The Cleveland Standard Refinery, the

Pittsburg Standard Refinery, the Atlantic Refining Company of

Philadelphia and Charles Pratt & Co. of New York were extensive

concerns. Because of the hazardous nature and peculiar conditions of the

refining industry, the need of improved methods and the manifold

advantages of combination, they entered into an alliance for their

mutual benefit. Refineries in the oil-regions had combined before, hence

the association of these interests was not a novelty. The cost of

transportation and packages had been important factors in crippling the

industry. Crude was barreled at the wells and hauled in wagons to the

railroads prior to the system of transporting it by pipes laid under

ground. Railroad-rates were excessive and irregular. Refiners who

combined and could throw a large volume of business to any particular

road secured favorable rates. The rebate-system was universal, not

confined to oil alone, and possibly this fact had much to do with the

combination of refiners afterwards known as the Standard Oil-Company.

Very naturally the Standard endeavored to secure the lowest

transportation-rates. Quite as naturally railroad-managers, in their

eagerness to secure the traffic, vied with each other in offering

inducements to large shippers of petroleum. The Standard furnished,

loaded and unloaded its own tank-cars, thereby eliminating barrels and

materially cheapening the freight-service. This reduction of expense

reduced the price of refined in the east to a figure which greatly

increased the demand and gave oil-operations a healthy stimulus. Still

more important was the introduction of improvements in refining, which

yielded a larger percentage of illuminating-oil and converted the

residue into merchantable products. Chemical and mechanical experts,

employed by the combined companies to conduct experiments in this

direction, aided in devising processes which revolutionized refining.

The highest quality of burning-oil was obtained and nearly every

particle of crude was utilized. Substances of commercial value took the

place of the waste that formerly emptied into the streams, polluting the

waters and the atmosphere. In this way the cost was so lessened that

kerosene became the light of the nations. Consumers, whose dime now will

buy as much as a dollar would before the “octopus” was heard of, are

correspondingly happy.

Since consumers have fared so well, how about refiners outside the

Standard? That smaller concerns were unable to compete with the Standard

under such circumstances was no reason why the public should be deprived

of the advantages resulting from concentration of capital and effort.

Many of these, realizing that small capital is restricted to poor

methods and dear production, either sold to the Standard or entered the

combination. In not a few cases wide-awake refiners took stock for part

of the price of their properties and engaged with the company, adding

their talents and experience to the common fund for the benefit of all

concerned. Others, not strong enough to have their cars and provide all

the latest improvements, made such changes as they could afford to meet

the requirements of the local trade, letting the larger ones attend to

distant markets. Some continued right along and they are still on deck

as independent refiners, always a respectable factor in the trade and

never more active than to-day. Those who would neither improve, nor

sell, nor combine, sitting down placidly and believing they would be

bought out later on their own terms, were soon left far behind, as they

deserved to be. Let it be said positively that the Standard, in

negotiating for the purchase or combination of refineries, treated the

owners liberally and sought to keep the best men in the business. A

number who put up works to sell at exorbitant prices, failing in their

design, howled about “monopoly” and “freezing out” and tried to pass as

martyrs. It is true hundreds of inferior refineries have been

dismantled, not because they were frozen out by a crushing monopoly, but

because they lacked requisite facilities. The refineries in vogue when

the Standard was organized could not stay in business a week, if

resurrected and revived. A team of pack-mules might as well try to

compete with the New York Central Railroad as these early refineries to

meet the requirements of the petroleum-trade at its present stage of

perfection. They were “frozen out” just as stage-coaches were “frozen

out” by the iron-horse or the sailing-vessel of our grandfathers’ time

by the ocean-liner that crosses the Atlantic in six days. Every

labor-saving invention and improvement in machinery throws worthy

persons out of employment, but inventions and improvements do not stop

for any such cause. Business is a question of profit and convenience,

not a matter of sentiment. The manufacturer who, by an improved process,

can save a fraction of a cent on the yard or pound or gallon of his

output has an enormous advantage. Must he be deprived of it because

other manufacturers cannot produce their wares as cheaply? Refining

petroleum is no exception to the ordinary rule and a transformation in

its methods and results was as inevitable as human progress and the

changes of the seasons.

Over-production is justly chargeable with the low price of crude that

wafted many producers into bankruptcy. Regardless of the inexorable laws

of supply and demand, operators drilled in Bradford and Butler until

forty-million barrels were above ground and the price fell to forty

cents. Time and again the wisest producers sought to stem the tide by

stopping the drill, which started with renewed energy after each brief

respite. With the stocks bearing the market the dropping of crude to a

price that meant ruin to owners of small wells was as certain as death

and taxes. Gold-dollars would be as cheap as pebbles if they were as

plentiful. Forty-million barrels of diamonds stored in South Africa

would bring the glistening gems to the level of glass-beads. The

Standard, through the National-Transit Company, erected thousands of

tanks to husband the enormous surplus, which the world could not consume

and would not have on any terms. Hosts of operators were kept out of the

sheriff’s grasp by this provision for their relief, using their

certificates as collateral during the period of extreme depression. The

richest districts were drained at length, consumption increased and

production declined, stocks were reduced and prices advanced. Then a

number of oil-operators, foremost among whom were some of the men whom

the Standard had carried over the grave crisis, thought the

National-Transit was making too much money storing crude and tried to

secure legislation that was hardly a shade removed from confiscation.

The legislature refused to pass the bills, the company voluntarily

reduced its charges and the agitation subsided. Thousands of producers

sold or entered large companies, into whose hands a good share of the

development has fallen, mainly because of the great expense of operating

in deep territory and the wisdom of dividing the risk attendant upon

seeking new fields. Operators who had to retire were “frozen out” by

excessive drilling, nothing more and nothing less!

The highest efficiency in all fields of economical endeavor is obtained

by the greatest degree of organization and specialization of effort. To

attack large concerns as monopolies, simply because they represent

millions of dollars under a single management, is as stupid and unjust

as the narrow antagonism of ill-balanced capitalists to organized labor.

If organized capital means better methods, greater facilities and

improved processes, organized labor means better wages, greater

recognition and improved industrial conditions. Hence both deserve to be

encouraged and both should work in harmony. The Standard Oil-Company

established agencies in different states for the sale of its products.

As the business grew it organized corporations under the laws of these

states, to carry on the industry under corporate agencies. Manufactories

were located at the seaboard for the export-trade. It was easier and

cheaper to pipe crude to the coast than to refine it at the sources of

supply and ship the varied products. Thus the refining of export-oil was

done at the seaboard, just as iron is manufactured at Pittsburg instead

of at the ore-beds on Lake Superior. The company aimed to open markets

for petroleum by reducing the cost of its transportation and manufacture

and bettering its quality. It manufactured its own barrels, cans,

paints, acids, glue and other materials, effecting a vast saving. On

January second, 1882, the forty persons then associated in the Standard

owned the entire capital of fifteen corporations and a part of the stock

of a number of others. Nine of these forty controlled a majority of the

stocks so held, and it was agreed on that date that all the stocks of

the corporations should be placed in the hands of these nine as

trustees. The trustees issued certificates showing the extent of each

block of stock so surrendered, and agreed to conduct the business of the

several corporations for the best interests of all concerned. This was

the inception of the Standard Oil-Trust, the most abused and least

understood business-organization in the history of the race.

The Standard Trust, which demagogues lay awake nights coining language

to denounce, did not unite competing corporations. The corporations were

contributory agencies to the same business, the stock owned by the

individuals who had built up and carried on the business and held the

voting power. These individuals had combined not to repress business,

but to extend it legitimately, by allying various branches and various

corporations. The organization of the Trust was designed to facilitate

the business of these corporations by uniting them under the management

of one Board of Trustees. This object was business-like and laudable. It

had no taint of a scheme to “corner” a necessity of life and elevate the

price at the expense of the masses. On the contrary, it was calculated

to enlarge the demand and supply it at the minimum of profit. For ten

years the Standard Trust continued in existence, dissolving finally in

1892. During this term its stockholders increased from forty to two

thousand. Many of the most skillful refiners and experienced producers

joined the combination and were retained to manage their properties.

Each corporation was managed as though independent of every other in the

Trust, except that the rivalry to show the best record stimulated them

to constant improvement. Whatever economy one devised was adopted by

all. The business was most systematic and admirably managed in every

detail, running as harmoniously as the different parts of a watch.

Clerks, agents and employés who could save a few hundred dollars

purchased Trust Certificates and thus became interested in the business

and gains. If it is desirable to multiply the number who enjoy the

profits of production, how can it be done better than through ownership

of stock in industrial associations? The problem of co-operation and

profit-sharing can be solved in this way. The Standard Trust was a real

object-lesson in economics, which illustrated in the fullest measure the

benefits of an association in business that affected consumers and

producers of a great staple alike favorably.

Misrepresentation is as hard to eradicate as the Canada thistle or the

English sparrow. Once fairly set going, it travels rapidly. “A lie will

travel seven leagues while Truth is pulling on its boots.” The Standard

is the target at which invidious terms and bitter invective have been

hurled remorselessly, often through downright ignorance. Although

reputable editors might be misled, in the hurry and strain of daily

journalism, to give currency to deliberate falsehoods against

corporations or capitalists, reasonable fairness might be expected from

the author of a pretentious book. Henry D. Lloyd, of Chicago, last year

published “Wealth Against Commonwealth,” an elaborate work, which is

devoted mainly to an assault upon the Standard Oil-Company. The book,

notable for its distortion of facts and suppression of all points in

favor of the corporation it assails, caters to the worst elements of

socialism. The author views everything through anti-combination glasses

and, like the child with the bogie-man, sees the monopoly-spook in every

successful aggregation of capital. He confounds the South-Improvement

Company with the Standard and charges to the latter all the offenses

supposed to lie at the door of the organization that died at its birth.

One thrilling story is cited to show that the Standard robbed a poor

widow. The narrative is well calculated to arouse public resentment and

encourage a lynching-bee. It has been repeated times without number.

Within the past month two Harrisburg ministers have referred to it as a

startling evidence of the unscrupulous tyranny of the Standard

millionaires. To make the case imposing Mr. Lloyd informs mankind that

the husband of this widow had been “a prominent member of the

Presbyterian church, president of a Young Men’s Christian Association

and active in all religious and benevolent enterprises.” After his death

she continued the business until she was finally coerced into selling it

to the Trust at a ruinously low price—a mere fraction of its actual

value. Mr. Lloyd states her hopeless despair as follows:

“Indignant with these thoughts and the massacred troop of hopes and

ambitions that her brave heart had given birth to, she threw the

letter—a letter she had received from the Standard regarding the sale of

her property—into the fire, where it curled up into flames like those

from which a Dives once begged for a drop of water. She never reappeared

in the world of business, where she had found no chivalry to help a

woman save her home, her husband’s life-work and her children.”

Is this harrowing statement true? The widow continued the business four

years after her husband’s death. Competition increased, prices tumbled,

the margin of profit was constantly narrowing, new appliances simplified

refining-processes and the widow’s plant was no longer adapted to the

business. She sold for sixty-thousand dollars, the Standard paying twice

the sum for which a refinery better suited to the purpose could be

constructed. Foolish friends afterwards told her she had sold too low

and the widow wrote a severe letter to the president of the Standard.

The company had bought the property to oblige her and at once offered it

back. She declined to take it, or sixty-thousand dollars in Standard

stock, evidently realizing that the refinery had lost its profit-earning

capacity and that even the new management might not be able to make it

pay. This will serve to illustrate the unfairness of “Wealth Against

Commonwealth,” which has been widely quoted because of its presumed

reliability and the high standing of the publishers. Yet this story of

imaginary wrong has been worked into speeches, sermons and editorials of

the fiercest type! In its treatment of the widow the Standard was truly

magnanimous. Few business-men would consent to undo a transaction and

have their labor for naught, simply because the other party had become

dissatisfied. Possibly Mr. Lloyd would not be as generous if there was

any profit in the transaction. If the Standard cut prices to ruin the

widow and other competitors, would not oil have gone up again when they

were disposed of? No such upward movement occurred. The widow

disappeared. Many small refineries disappeared. Monopoly

railroad-contracts, if such ever existed, have disappeared, but the

price of refined-oil has been falling steadily for twenty years,

declining from an average of nineteen cents a gallon in 1876 to five

cents in 1895. The potent fact in this connection is that the Standard

has continued to make profits with the declining price of oil. This

conclusively demonstrates that the decline was due to economic

improvements in the productive methods and not to a malicious cut to

ruin a widow or anybody else, as Mr. Lloyd assumes. Otherwise a profit

accompanying the fall in price would have been impossible and the

Standard would have been sold out by the sheriff long years ago.

All the dealers in slander from Lloyd down to the chronic kicker who has

attempted to make money by annoying the Standard have played the Rice

case as a trump-card. According to their version, Mr. Rice was an

angelic Vermonter, whose success inspired the Standard with devilish

enmity and it determined to compass his ruin. Rice had operated at

Pithole and at Macksburg and owned a small refinery at Marietta. It was

alleged that the Cleveland & Marietta Railroad discriminated against

him, doubling his freight-charge and giving the Standard a drawback on

all the oil that went over the road. This was an iniquitous arrangement,

entered into by the receiver of the road and cancelled by the Standard

whenever a report of what was done reached New York. Mr. Rice had paid

two-hundred-and-fifty dollars wrongfully, the money was at once refunded

and Mr. Rice did not harass the company into buying his twenty-thousand

dollar refinery for half a million. This will serve as an example of the

dishonest misstatements that had wrought lots of good people up to white

heat. The sins of the trusts may be very scarlet and very numerous, but

economic literature should not pollute the sources of information and

the foundations of public opinion.

An oft-repeated story is that the Standard owes its success to

railway-discriminations. In proof of this the testimony of A. J.

Cassatt is quoted. The testimony, published in a congressional

investigation-report, shows that granting rebates was then the custom

of railway-companies. Largely the same rebates were granted to all who

shipped over the railways. Special to the Standard was payment of a

joint freight-rate over pipe-line and railroad. A large rebate was

given for one summer to all shippers by rail to equalize low rates by

canal, of which many shippers took advantage. The only discriminatory

rebate received by the Standard was ten per cent. for equalizing its

large shipments over three trunk-lines, shipping exclusively by rail,

even when water-rates were cheaper, furnishing terminal facilities and

exempting the roads from loss by fire or accident. Courts in England

and this country have very properly held that railways have the right

to carry for less rates under such circumstances. Many wise men are of

the same opinion. Subsequently it was developed that, while the

short-lived agreement existed, the Standard’s strongest competitors

were getting lower rates of freight than it was paying! Why do the

Lloyd brand of critics ignore this pointed fact?

Another favorite story is that some officers of the Standard were

convicted of burning a rival refinery. As all know who ever took the

trouble to investigate, they were indicted for conspiracy to injure a

rival. The counts in the indictment embraced the enticing away of an

employé, the bringing of suits to prevent infringement of patents and

the serious charge of inciting an employé to burn the works. When all

the evidence on the part of the State was in, the court directed the

discharge of every person connected with the Standard. There was not a

scintilla of evidence against them. Two of the indicted persons were

convicted of conspiracy, but they were not connected with the Standard,

and never owned a share of Standard stock. The majority of the jurymen

made affidavits that they found the convicted persons guilty only of

enticing away an employé. The employé thus enticed had first been

enticed from the works of the convicted parties and induced to reveal

the secret processes by which a valuable lubricating-oil was

manufactured. The best citizens of Rochester certified that the men

convicted were men of unimpeachable honor, while the men who testified

against them were quite the reverse. The whole affair was a wicked plot

to blacken the character of men who stood and who still stand as high as

any in Rochester. The court, satisfied of their innocence of any grave

offence, inflicted merely a nominal fine.

Many of the attacks in a well-known work by a leading socialist against

the Standard are made up of court-cases. The accusations are copied, the

moving speeches of plaintiffs’ attorneys are printed; but all else is

omitted, except that the case was decided in favor of the Standard. The

inference is left to be drawn, or the charge is made openly, that the

court was corrupt. Had the evidence of both sides been given, there

would be no more room for such an inference than for a pretty maiden’s

small brother in the parlor when her best young man is about to pop the

momentous question. The rustic divine, weak in his spelling and strong

in his opposition to the feminine style of coiling the hair in a huge

knot, had better grounds for declaring the Scripture endorsed his view

of the fashion. Reading the familiar passage, “let him that is on the

housetop not come down to take anything out of his house,” he based his

terrific sermon on this dismembered clause of the verse: “Top not, come

down.”

One instance may be noted briefly. A Pennsylvania office-holder, whose

unworthy motives an investigation exposed, charged that the Standard had

defrauded the State of millions of taxes. The case was ably tried before

an upright judge and the allegation found to be utterly baseless. Then

the judge was charged with corruption. The case was taken to the highest

court of the State, which affirmed the decision of the court below. At

once the Supreme Court and the Attorney-General, who conducted the case

for the State with signal ability, were accused of rank corruption.

Perhaps the greatest surprise is that they were not charged with an

attempt to get even with Moses by breaking all the commandments at one

lick. An investigation committee, appointed by the Legislature, went

fully into all the facts and allegations and reported that the case had

been ably and fairly tried and correctly decided. It only remained to

charge the legislative committee with corruption, which was done with

great promptitude and emphasis. Yet every lawyer knows that the case of

Pennsylvania against the Standard Oil-Company is a leading case on the

subject of taxation of foreign corporations, establishing correct

principles which, since its decision, the Supreme Court of the United

States has affirmed.

In another case a respectable old man conceived the idea that he had

solved the problem of continuous distillation of oil, an invention which

would very much cheapen the product and be worth millions to refiners.

The Standard aided him in his experiments until convinced they were

unsuccessful. He became crazed on the subject and brought suit, alleging

he had been prevented from demonstrating his discovery. The case was

tried and the baseless suit dismissed, with as little injury to the poor

man’s feelings as possible. This incident figures in histories written

to fire the popular heart in the war against wealth, accompanied by

pictures of a soulless corporation and an insane old man, calculated to

draw hot tears and inflame public indignation to a dangerous pitch. Of

course the readers are supposed to infer that the court was corrupted

and justice grossly outraged. And so the changes are rung along the

whole line; but the Standard, regardless of malevolent assaults and

villainous distortions of facts, goes right on with its business of

furnishing the world with the best light in the universe.

Russian competition, the extent and danger of which most people do not

begin to appreciate, was met and overcome by sheer tenacity and superior

generalship. The advantages of capable, courageous, intelligent

concentration of the varied branches of a great industry were never

manifested more strongly. Deprived of the invincible bulwark the

Standard offered, the oil-producers of Pennsylvania, New York, West

Virginia, Ohio and Indiana would have been utterly helpless. The

Muscovite bear would have gobbled the trade of Europe and Asia, driving

American oil from the foreign markets. Local consumption would not have

exhausted two-thirds of the production, stocks of crude would have piled

up and the price would have fallen proportionately. Instead of ranking

with the busiest, happiest and most prosperous quarters of the universe,

as they are to-day, the oil-regions of five states would have been

irretrievably ruined, dragging down thousands of the brightest,

manliest, cleverest fellows on God’s footstool! Instead of bringing a

vast amount of gold from England, France and Germany for petroleum

produced on American soil, refined by American workmen paid American

wages and exported by an American company in American vessels, the trade

would have been killed, the cash would have stayed across the waters and

the country at large would have suffered incalculably! These are things

to think of when some cheap agitator, with a private axe to grind, a

mean spite to gratify or a selfish object to attain, raises a howl about

monopoly and insists that the entire creation should “damn the

Standard!”

When the history of this wonderful century is written it will tell how

an American boy, born in New York sixty years ago, clerked in a

country-store, kept a set of books, started a small oil-refinery at

Cleveland and at forty was the head of the greatest business in the

world. This is, in outline, the story of John D. Rockefeller’s

successful career. Yesterday, as it were, a youth with nothing but

integrity, industry and ambition for capital—a pretty good outfit,

too—to-day he is one of the half-dozen richest men in Europe or America.

Better than all else, integrity that is part and parcel of his moral

nature, industry that finds life too fruitful to waste it idly and

ambition to excel in good deeds as well as in business are his rich

possession still. Gathering the largest fortune ever accumulated in

twenty-five years has not blunted his fine sensibilities, dwarfed his

intellectual growth, stifled his religious convictions or absorbed his

whole being. Increasing wealth brought with it a deep sense of

increasing responsibility and he is honored not so much for his millions

as for the use he makes of them. Even in an age unrivalled for

money-getting and money-giving, Mr. Rockefeller’s keen foresight,

executive ability and wise liberality have been notably conspicuous. His

faith in the future of petroleum and his desire to benefit humanity he

has shown by his works. Believing in the power of united effort to

develop an infant-industry, his genius devised the system of practical

co-operation that developed into the Standard Oil-Trust, against which

prejudice and ignorance have directed their fiercest fire. Believing in

education, his magnificent endowment of Chicago University—eight to

ten-million dollars—ranks him with the foremost contributors to the

foundation of a seat of learning since schools and colleges began.

Believing in fresh air for the masses, he donated Cleveland a public

park and a million to equip it superbly. Believing in spiritual

progress, he builds churches, helps weak congregations and aids in

spreading the gospel everywhere. Believing in the claims of the poor,

his charities amount to hundreds-of-thousands of dollars yearly, not to

encourage pauperism and dependence, but to relieve genuine distress,

diminish human suffering and put struggling men and women in the way to

improve their condition. He has differed from nearly all other eminent

public benefactors by giving freely, quietly and modestly during his

active life, without seeking the popular applause his munificence could

easily obtain.

Mr. Rockefeller is a strict Baptist, a regular attendant at church and

prayer-meeting, a teacher in the Sunday-school and a staunch advocate of

aggressive Christianity. His advancement to commanding wealth has not

changed his ideas of duty and personal obligation. He realizes that the

man who lives for himself alone is always little, no matter how big his

bank-account. He and his family walk to service or ride in a street-car,

with none of the trappings befitting the worship of Mammon rather than

the glory of God. Earnest, positive and vigorous in his religion as in

his business, he takes no stock in the dealer who has not stamina or the

profession of faith that is too destitute of backbone to have a

denominational preference. The president of the Standard Oil-Company

impresses all who meet him with the idea of a forceful, decisive

character. He looks people in the face, his eyes sparkle in conversation

and he relishes a bright story or a clever narration. You feel that he

can read you at a glance and that deception and evasion in his presence

would be utterly futile. The flatterer and sycophant would make as

little headway with him as the bunco-steerer or the green-goods vendor.

His estimate of men is rarely at fault and to this quality some measure

of the Standard’s success must be attributed. As if by instinct, its

chief officer picked out men adapted to special lines of work—men who

would not be misfits—and secured them for his company. The capacity and

fidelity of the Standard corps are proverbial. Whenever Mr. Rockefeller

wishes to enjoy a breathing-spell at his country-seat up the Hudson or

on his Ohio farm, he leaves the business with perfect confidence,

because his lieutenants are competent and trustworthy and the machine

will run along smoothly under their watchful care. He has not

accumulated his money by wrecking property, but by building up, by

persistent improvement and by rigidly adhering to the policy of

furnishing the best articles at the lowest price. Fair-minded people are

beginning to understand something of the service rendered the public by

the man who stands at the head of the petroleum-industry and more than

any other is the founder of its commerce. He has invested in factories,

railroads and mines, giving thousands employment, developing the

resources of the country and adding to the wealth of the nation. He is

human, therefore he sometimes errs; he is fallible, therefore he makes

mistakes, but the world is learning that John D. Rockefeller has no

superior in business and that the Standard Oil-Company is not an

organized conspiracy to plunder producers or consumers of petroleum. It

is time to dismiss the idea that ability to build up and maintain a

large business is discreditable, that marvellous success is blameworthy

and that business-achievements imply dishonesty.

William Rockefeller, who resembles his brother in business skill, is a

leader in Standard affairs and has his office in the Broadway building.

He was a member of the first Board of Trustees and bore a prominent part

in organizing and developing the Oil-Trust. He is largely interested in

railroads, belongs to the best clubs, likes good horses and contributes

liberally to worthy objects. The Standard folks don’t lock up their

money, loan it on mortgages at extravagant rates, spend it in Europe or

try to get a gold squeeze on the government. They employ it in

manufactures, in railways, in commerce and in enterprises that promote

the general welfare.

From the days of the little refinery in Cleveland, the germ of the

Standard, Henry M. Flagler and John D. Rockefeller have been closely

associated in oil. Samuel Andrews, a practical refiner and for some time

their partner, retired from the firm with a million dollars as his share

of the business. The organization of the Standard Oil-Company of

Cleveland was the first step towards the greater Standard Oil-Company of

which all the world knows something. Its growth surprised even the

projectors of the combination, who “builded better than they knew.” Mr.

Flagler devotes his time largely to beneficent uses of his great wealth.

He recognizes the duty of the possessor of property to keep it from

waste, to render it productive and to increase it by proper methods. A

vast tract of Florida swamp, yielding only malaria and shakes, he has

converted into a region suited to human-beings, producing cotton, sugar

and tropical fruits and affording comfortable subsistence to thousands

of provident settlers. He has transformed St. Augustine from a faded

antiquity into a modern town, with the magnificent Ponce de Leon Hotel,

paved streets, elegant churches, public halls, and all conveniences,

provided by this generous benefactor at a cost of many millions. He has

constructed new railroads, improved lines built previously, opened

interior counties to thrifty emigrants and performed a work of

incalculable advantage to the New South. He and his family attend the

West Presbyterian Church, of which the Rev. John R. Paxton, formerly of

Harrisburg, was pastor until 1894. Mr. Flagler is of average height,

slight build and erect figure. His hair is white, but time has not dealt

harshly with the liberal citizen whose career presents so much to praise

and emulate.

[Illustration: JOHN D. ARCHBOLD.]

John D. Archbold, vice-president of the Standard Oil-Company and its

youngest trustee during the entire existence of the Oil-Trust, has been

actively connected with petroleum from his youth. No man is better known

and better liked personally in the oil-regions. From his father, a

zealous Methodist minister, and his good mother, one of the noble women

to whom this country owes an infinite debt of gratitude, he inherited

the qualities of head and heart that achieved success and gained

multitudes of friends. A mere lad when the reports of golden

opportunities attracted him from Ohio to the land of petroleum, he first

engaged as a shipping-clerk for a Titusville refinery. His promptness,

accuracy, and pleasant address won him favor and promotion. He soon

learned the whole art of refining and his active mind discovered

remedies for a number of defects. Adnah Neyhart induced him to take

charge of his warehouse in New York City for the sale of refined-oil.

His energy and rare tact increased the trade of the establishment

steadily. Mr. Rockefeller met the bright young man and offered him a

responsible position with the Standard. He was made president of the

Acme Refining Company, then among the largest in the United States. He

improved the quality of its products and was entrusted with the

negotiations that brought many refiners into the combination. He had

resided at Titusville, where he married the daughter of Major Mills, and

was the principal representative of the Standard in the producing

section. When the Trust was organized he removed to New York and

supervised especially the refining-interest of the united corporations.

His splendid executive talent, keen perception, tireless energy and

honorable manliness were simply invaluable. Mr. Archbold is popular in

society, has an ideal home, represents the Standard in the directory of

different companies and merits the high esteem ungrudingly bestowed by

his associates in business and his acquaintances everywhere.

[Illustration: CHARLES PRATT.]

The personal traits and business-successes of Charles Pratt, an original

member of the Standard Trust, were typical of American civilization. The

son of poor parents in Massachusetts, where he was born in 1830,

necessity compelled him to leave home at the early age of ten and seek

work on a farm. He toiled three years for his board and a short term at

school each winter. For his board and clothes he next worked in a Boston

grocery. His first dollar in money, of which he always spoke with pride

as having been made at the work-bench, he earned while learning the

machinist-trade at Newton, in his native state. With the savings of his

first year in the machine-shop he entered an academy, studying

diligently twelve months and subsisting on a dollar a week. Then he

entered a Boston paints-and-oil store, devoting his leisure hours to

study and self-improvement. Coming to New York in 1851, he clerked in

Appleton’s publishing-house and later in a paint-store. In 1854 he

joined C. T. Reynolds and F. W. Devoe in a paints-and-oil establishment.

Petroleum refining became important and the partners separated in 1867,

Reynolds controlling the paints-department and Charles Pratt & Co.

conducting the oil-branch of the business. The success of the latter

firm as oil-refiners was extraordinary. Astral-oil was in demand

everywhere. The works at Brooklyn, continuous and surprising as was

their expansion, found it difficult to keep pace with the consumption.

The firm entered into the association with the Cleveland, Pittsburg and

Philadelphia companies that culminated in the Standard Oil-Trust, Mr.

Pratt holding the relation of president of the Charles-Pratt

Manufacturing Company. He lived in Brooklyn and died suddenly at

sixty-three, an attack of heart-disease that prostrated him in his

New-York office proving fatal in three hours. For thirty years he

devoted much of his time to the philanthropies with which his name will

be perpetually identified. He built and equipped Pratt Institute, a

school of manual arts, at a cost of two-million dollars. He spent a

half-million to erect the Astral Apartment Buildings, the revenue of

which is secured to the Institute as part of its endowment. He devoted a

half-million to the Adelphia Academy and a quarter-million towards the

new edifice of Emanuel Baptist Church, of which he was a devout,

generous member. His home-life was marked by gentleness and affection

and he left his family an estate of fifteen to twenty-millions. Charles

Pratt was a man of few words, alert, positive and unassuming, sometimes

blunt in business, but always courteous, trustworthy and deservedly

esteemed for liberality and energy.

Jabez A. Bostwick, a member of the Standard Trust from its inception,

was born in New York State, spent his babyhood in Ohio, whither the

family moved when he was ten years old, and died at sixty-two. His

business-education began as clerk in a bank at Covington, Ky. There he

first came into public notice as a cotton-broker, removing to New York

in 1864 to conduct the same business on a larger scale. He secured

interests in territory and oil-wells at Franklin in 1860, organized the

firm of J. A. Bostwick & Co. and engaged extensively in refining. The

firm prospered, bought immense quantities of crude and increased its

refining capacity extensively. Mr. Bostwick was active in forming the

Standard Oil-Trust and was its first treasurer. He severed his

connection with his oil-partner, W. H. Tilford, who also entered the

Standard Oil-Company. Seven years before his death he retired from the

oil-business to accept the presidency of the New York & New England

Railroad. He held the position six years and was succeeded by Austin

Corbin. Injuries during a fire at his country-seat in Mamaroneck caused

his death. The fire started in Frederick A. Constable’s stables, in rear

of Mr. Bostwick’s. Unknown to his coachman, who was pushing behind it,

Mr. Bostwick seized the whiffletrees of a carriage. Suddenly the vehicle

swerved and the owner was violently jammed against the side of the

stable. The coachman saw his peril and pulled the carriage back. Mr.

Bostwick reeled forward, his face white with pain and sank moaning upon

a buckboard. “Don’t leave me, Mr. Williams,” he whispered to his son’s

tutor, “I fear I am badly hurt.” The sufferer was carried to the house,

became unconscious and died in ten minutes, surrounded by members of his

household and his neighbors. In 1866 Mr. Bostwick married a daughter of

Ford Smith, a retired Cincinnati merchant, who removed to New York

during the war. They had a son and two daughters. The daughters married

and were in Europe when their father met his tragic fate. The widow and

children inherited an estate of twelve millions. Mr. Bostwick was

liberal with his wealth, giving largely without ostentation. Forrest

College, in North Carolina, and the Fifth Avenue Baptist Church of New

York were special recipients of his bounty, while his private

benefactions amounted to many thousands yearly. He was strict almost to

sternness in his dealings, preferring justice to sentiment in business.

These were the six trustees of the Standard Oil-Trust as first

constituted of whom the world has heard and read most. Many of the

two-thousand stock-holders of the Standard Oil-Company are widely known.

Benjamin Brewster, president of the National-Transit Company, retired

with an ample fortune. His successor, H. H. Rogers, the present head of

the pipe-line system, is noted alike for business-sagacity and sensible

benefactions. The great structure at No. 26 Broadway, the largest

office-building in New York occupied by one concern, is the Standard

headquarters. Each floor has one or more departments, managed by

competent men and all under supervision of the company’s chief

officials. From the basement, with its massive vaults and steam-heating

plant, to the roof every inch is utilized by hundreds of book-keepers,

accountants, stenographers, telegraphers, clerks and heads of divisions.

Everything moves with the utmost precision and smoothness. President

Rockefeller has his private offices on the eighth floor, next the

spacious room in which the Executive Committee meets every day at noon

for consultation. Mr. Flagler, Mr. Archbold and Mr. Rogers are located

conveniently. The substantial character of the building and the

business-like aspect of the departments impress visitors most favorably.

There is an utter absence of gingerbread and cheap ornamentation, of

confusion and perplexing hurry. The very air, the clicking of the

telegraph-instruments, the noiseless motion of the elevators and the

prompt dispatch of business indicate solidity, intelligence and perfect

system. From that building the movements of a force of employés,

numbering twice the United States army and scattered over both

hemispheres, are directed. The sails of the Standard fleet whiten every

sea, its products are marketed wherever men have learned the value of

artificial light and its name is a universal synonym for the highest

development of commercial enterprise in any age or country.