Chapter XIX: Just Odds and Ends 429-452 (24)

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.

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._

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.

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“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._

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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.