Chapter XIX: Just Odds and Ends 429-452 (26)

Let me say that it gives me a great deal of pleasure to be here to-night. Although I cannot make you a speech, I have brought with me to show you young men a little book—a book, I think, which may interest you. It is the first ledger I kept. I was trained in business affairs and how to keep a ledger. The practice of keeping a little personal ledger by young men just starting in business and earning money and requiring to learn its value is, I think, a good one. In the first struggle to get a footing—and if you feel as I did I am sorry for you, although I would not be without the memory of that struggle—I kept my accounts in this book, also some memoranda of little incidents that seemed to me important. In after-years I found that book and brought it to New York. It is more than forty-two years since I wrote what it contains. I call it Ledger A, and now I place the greatest value upon it. I have thought that it would be a little help to some of you young men to read one or two extracts from this ledger. [Mr. Rockefeller then produced from his pocket, carefully enveloped in paper-wrapping, the ledger to which he referred, and continued his remarks]:

When I found this book recently I thought it had no cover, because it had writing upon its back. I had utilized the cover to write upon. In those days I was economical, even with paper. When I read it through it brought to my mind remembrances of the care with which I used to record my little items of receipts and disbursements, matters which many of you young men are rather careless over. I believe it is a religious duty to get all the money you can fairly and honestly; to keep all you can and to give away all you can. I think that is a problem that you are all familiar with. I have told you before what pleasure this little book gives me. I dare not let you read it through, because my children, who have read it, say that I did not spell tooth-brush correctly. [Laughter.] But you know we have made great progress in our spelling and I suppose some changes have taken place since those days. [Renewed laughter.] I have not seen this book for twenty-five years. It does not look like a modern ledger, does it? But you could not get that book from me for all the modern ledgers in New York, nor for all that they would bring. It almost brings tears to my eyes when I read over this little book, and it fills me with a sense of gratitude that I cannot express. It shows largely what I received and what I paid out during my first years of business. It shows that from September twenty-sixth, 1855, until January first, 1856, I received $50. Out of that I paid my washerwoman and the lady I boarded with, and saved a little money to put away. I am not ashamed to read it over to you.

Among other things I find that I gave a cent to the Sunday-school every Sunday. That is not a very large sum, is it? But that was all the money I had to give for that particular object. I was also giving to several other religious objects. What I could afford to give I gave regularly, as I was taught to do, and it has been a pleasure to me all my life to do so.

I had a large increase in my revenue the next year. It went up to $25 a month. I began to be a capitalist and, had I regarded myself then as we regard capitalists now, I ought to have felt like a criminal because I had so much money. But we had no trusts or monopolies then. [Laughter.] I paid my own bills and always had a little something to give away, and the happiness of saving some. In fact, I am not so independent now as I was then. It is true I could not secure the most fashionable cut of clothing. I remember I bought mine then of a Jew. [Laughter.] He sold me clothing cheap, clothing such as I could pay for, and it was a great deal better than buying clothing that I could not pay for. I did not make any obligations I could not meet. I lived within my means, and my advice to you young men is to do just the same.

Dr. Faunce has just told you that all young men who come to this church are welcome and are never asked to whom they belong or where they came from. But there is just one question I would like to ask. I would like to know how many of you come from the city and how many come from the country. (Mr. Rockerfeller asked, as a personal favor, if all those present in the room who came from the country would raise their right hand. Fully three-quarters of the number did so.) Now, what a story that tells!

To my mind there is something unfortunate in being born in a city. You have not had the struggles in the city that we have had who were reared in the country. Don’t you notice how the men from the country keep crowding you out here—you who have wealthy fathers? These young men from the country are turning things around and are taking your city. We men from the country are willing to do more work. We were prepared by our experience to do hard work. I remember a little time ago I was in the country and saw a carpenter placing mineral-wool under the roof of a city servant’s bedroom, so that the man should not feel the heat of the summer or hear the patter of the rain-drops on the roof. I could not at the time help recalling the experience of my boyhood, when I slept under a roof. While I could not see the shingles, I remember I could peep through the cracks in them. It was pretty hot in the summer up there, too, I can tell you. But I think I was better for all that sort of experience, for having been reared in the country in that sturdy, practical way, and my heart is sometimes full of sadness as I contemplate the condition of the number of young fellows in this city whom I happen to know well.

They are in the embarrassing position that their fathers have great sums of money, and those boys have not a ghost of a chance to compete with you who come from the country and who want to do something in the world. You are in training now to shortly take the places of those young men. I suppose you cannot realize how many eyes are upon you and how great is the increasing interest that is taken in you. You may not think that, when you are lonely and find it difficult to get a footing. But it is true that, in a place like this, true interest is taken in you. When I left the school-house I came into a place similar to this, where I associated with people whom it was good to know. Nothing better could have happened to me.

I spoke just now of the struggle for success. What is success? Is it money? Some of you have all the money you need to provide for your wants. Who is the poorest man in the world? I tell you, the poorest man I know of is the man who has nothing but money—nothing else in the world upon which to devote his ambition and thought. That is the sort of man I consider to be the poorest in the world. Money is good if you know how to use it.

Now, let me leave this little word of counsel for you. Keep a little ledger, as I did. Write down in it what you receive, and do not be ashamed to write down what you pay away. See that you pay it away in such a manner that your father or mother may look over your book and see just what you did with your money. It will help you to save money, and that you ought to do. When I spoke of a poor man with money I spoke against the poverty of that man who has no affection for anything else, or thought for anything else but money. That kind of a man does not help his own character, nor does he build up the character of another.

Before I leave you I will read a few items from my ledger. I find in looking over it that I was saving money all this time, and in the course of a few years I had saved $1,000. Now, as to some of my expenses. I see that from November twenty-fourth, 1855, to April, 1856, I paid for clothing $9.09. I see also, here, another item which I am inclined to think is extravagant, because I remember I used to wear mittens. The item is a pair of fur-gloves, for which I paid $2.50. In the same period, I find I gave away $5.58. In one month I gave to foreign-missions ten cents; to the mite-society thirty cents, and there is also a contribution to the Five-Points Mission. I was not living then in New York, but I suppose I felt that it was in need of help, so I sent up twelve cents to the mission. Then to the venerable teacher of my class I gave thirty-five cents to make him a present. To the poor people of the church I gave ten cents at this time. In January and February following I gave ten cents more and a further ten cents to the foreign-missions. Those contributions, small as they were, brought me into direct contact with philanthropic work, and with the beneficial work and aims of religious institutions, and I have been helped thereby greatly all my life. It is a mistake for a man who wishes for happiness and to help others to wait until he has a fortune before giving to deserving objects. [Great applause.]

And this exemplary citizen, who in his youth and poverty formed the habit of systematic benevolence, who befriends the poor, who dispenses charity with a bountiful hand, who helps young men better their condition, who gives millions for education and religion, who believes in the justice of God and the rights of man, who has woven the raveled skeins of a weakened industry into the world’s grandest business-enterprise, assassins of character picture as a cold-blooded oppressor, a base conspirator, a “devourer of widows’ houses,” an abettor of larceny and instigator of arson! “Oh, Shame! where is thy blush?”

Although the Standard pays the highest wages in the world and has never had a serious strike in its grand army of forty-thousand men, not one cent of a reduction was ordered during the panic. No works stopped and no employés were turned adrift to beg or starve. On the contrary, improvements and additions were made continually, the force of workmen was augmented, cash was paid for everything bought, no claims remained unsettled and nobody had to wait an hour for money justly due. These are points for the toiling masses, whom prejudice against big corporations sometimes misleads, to understand and consider before accepting the creed that wealth and dishonor are synonymous, that each is the creature of the other and both are twin-links of the same sausage.

A WELL-SHOOTER.

The Oil-City _Blizzard_, itself as lively as a glycerine-explosion, in a spasm of dynamite-enthusiasm loaded up and fired off this eccentricity:

Pat Magnew was a shooter bold,
Who handled glycerine;
And though he had no printing-shop
He ran a magazine.

And while he had a level head,
And business plenty found,
’Most ev’ry job he undertook
He ran into the ground.

He never claimed expert to be,
But what he did was right,
And when he shot a well, you see,
He did it “out of sight.”

He seemed to like his daily toil,
Its dangers did not fear;
He’d help his patrons to find oil,
And then he’d disappear.

Sometimes he shot wells with a squib,
When at the proper level;
Sometimes when he had been to church,
He shot with a go-devil.

He always had a great tin-shell
Beside him on the seat,
Had horses good and drove like—well,
No moss grew on their feet.

And when he drove along the road,
And that was every day,
Wise people all, who knew his load,
Gave him the right of way.

His wife once said: “I greatly fear
That you will yet be blown
To atoms, if you don’t, my dear,
Let well enough alone.”

“Some day there’ll be a thunder-sound;
And scattered far and near,
O’er hill and dale and all around,
Will be my husband dear.”

Replied Magnew: “I call to mind—
His words are nowise sickly—
That Billy Shakespeare once remarked:
‘’Twere well it were done quickly.’

“And I’ll be blown,” continued Pat,
“If I didn’t want it known,
That I’d rather be by dynamite
Than by a woman blown.”

THE OLD YEAR DONE IN OIL.

Old Year! transported by fast freight,
With neither drawback nor rebate,
How odd it seems to quote thee “late!”

Old Year! since thou wert struck, alas!
What surface shows have men let pass—
They promised oil and yielded gas!

Old Year! test-wells of crude that smelt,
But had no sand like snows would melt.
Few always drill straight on the belt!

Old Year! thy option has expired,
Certificates have been retired
And royalty in full required.

Old Year! thy territory’s played,
Pipage and storage-charges paid,
Tanks emptied and delivery made.

Old Year! a twelvemonth pump’d thee dry,
Now tools and cable are laid by,
Engine and derrick idle lie.

Old Year! developments are o’er,
The paraffine has clogg’d each pore
And thou shalt operate no more.

Old Year! lease out and rig in dust,
Time on thy boiler, left to rust,
Writes the producer’s motto: “Bu’st!”

And when it comes our turn to be
Immediate shipment o’er life’s sea,
Old Year! we’ll put a call for thee!

THE CANINE’S DOOM.

When the Oil-City _Derrick_ had its circus with the Allegheny-Valley Railroad it fell to my lot to write up most of the incidents of the conflict. Occasionally a bit of doggerel like this hit the popular fancy:

Moses had a great big dog,
His hair was black as jet,
And everywhere that Moses went
That pup was sure to get.

One day, upon the Valley Road
When Moses went to ride,
The faithful canine follow’d close
And sat down by his side.

But when the train to Scrubgrass got
The daily wreck occurr’d,
The cars cavorted down the bank
Without one warning word.

Sad was that hapless puppy’s fate—
So mangled, burn’d and drown’d,
Not a bologna could be made
From all the fragments found!

HOW THE PRICE OF OIL AFFECTS THE PRODUCER.
WHEN OIL IS 70 CENTS.
WHEN OIL IS $3.
WHEN OIL IS $5.
]

XIX.
JUST ODDS AND ENDS.

HOW NATURAL-GAS PLAYED ITS PART—FIRE AND WATER MUCH IN EVIDENCE—CHANGES
IN METHODS AND APPLIANCES—DESERTED TOWNS—PECULIAR COINCIDENCES AND
FATALITIES—RAILROAD EPISODES—REMINISCENCES OF BYGONE
SCENES—PRACTICAL JOKERS—SAD TRAGEDIES—LIGHTS AND SHADOWS INTERMINGLE
AND THE CURTAIN FALLS FOREVER.

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“Variety’s the very spice of life.”—_Cowper._

“Fuss and feather, wind and weather, varied items strung together.”—_Oil
City Derrick._

“Laugh when we must, be candid when we can.”—_Pope._

“‘A picker-up of unconsidered trifles’
From many sources facts and fancies rifles.”—_Anonymous._

“Every house should have a rag-bag and a general storeroom.”—_Miss
Parloa._

“A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest
men.”—_Holmes._

“Let days pass on, nor count how many swell
The episode of life’s hack chronicle.”—_Lytton._

“Fond memory brings the light of other days around me.”—_Anonymous._

“Close up his eyes and draw the curtain close.”—_Shakespeare._

“Fare thee well! and if forever, still forever fare thee well.”—_Byron._

Hard coal and dry wood as good fuel may pass,
But can’t hold a candle to natural gas.—_Original._

“Half light, half shadow, let my spirit sleep.”—_Tennyson._

“Side by side may we stand at the same little door when all’s
done.”—_Owen Meredith._

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Natural-gas, the cleanest, slickest, handiest fuel that ever warmed a heart or a tenement, is the right bower of crude-petroleum. It is the one and only fuel that mines, transports and feeds itself, without digging every spoonful, screening lumps, carting, freighting and shoveling into the stove or furnace. Getting it does not imperil the limbs and lives of poor miners—the most overworked and underpaid class in Pennsylvania—in the damp and darkness of death-traps hundreds of feet beneath the surface of the ground. You drill a hole to the vital spot, lay a pipe from the well to the home or factory, turn a stop-cock to let out the vapor, touch off a match and there it is—the brightest, cleanest, steadiest, hottest fire on earth. Not a speck of dust, not an atom of smoke, not a particle of cinder, not a taint of sulphur, not a bit of ashes vexes your soul or tries your temper. There is no carrying of coal, no dumping of choked grates, no waiting for kindling to catch or green wood to burn, no scolding about sulky fires, no postponement of heat because the wind blows in the wrong direction. Blue Monday is robbed of all its terrors, the labor of housekeeping is lightened and husbands no longer object to starting the fire on cold mornings. A nice blaze may be let burn all night in winter and kept on tap in summer only when needed. It is lighted or extinguished as readily as the gas-jet in the parlor. It melts iron, fuses glass, illumines mills and streets, broils steaks to perfection and does away with many a fruitful source of family-broils. It saves wear and tear of muscle and disposition, lessens the production of domestic quarrels, adds to the pleasure and satisfaction of living and carries the spring-time of existence into the autumn of old age. Set in a dainty metal frame, with background of asbestos and mantel above, its glow is cheerful as the hickory-fire in the hearth. It gives us the ingle-nook modernized and improved, the chimney-corner brought down to date. It glides through eighty-thousand miles of pipes in Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Indiana and New York and employs a hundred-million dollars to supply it to people within reach of the bounteous reservoirs the kindly earth has treasured all through the centuries. If it be not a blessing to humanity, the fault lies with the folks and not with the stuff. The man who spouts gas is a nuisance, but the well that spouts gas is something to prize, to utilize and be thankful for. Visitors to the oil-region or towns near enough to enjoy the luxury, beholding the beauty and adaptability of natural-gas, may be pardoned for breaking the tenth commandment and coveting the fuel that is Nature’s legal-tender for the comfort and convenience of mankind.

The pretty town of Fredonia, in New York state, three miles from Lake Erie and forty-five south-west of Buffalo, enjoys the distinction of first using natural-gas for illuminating purposes. It is a beautiful place, famous for fine roads, fine scenery and fine vineyards. Canodonay Creek, a small but rapid stream, passes through it to the lake. Opinions vary as to the exact date when the gas was utilized, some authorities making it 1821, others 1824 and a few 1829. The best information fixes it at 1824, when workmen, in tearing down an old mill, observed bubbles on the water that proved to be inflammable. The hint was not lost. A company bored a hole _one-inch-and-a-half_ in diameter into the limestone-rock. The gas left its regular channel, climbed the hole, lighted a new mill and was piped to a hundred houses in the village at a cost of one-fifty a year for each. The flame was large and strong and for years Fredonia was the only town in America lighted by “nature-gas.” A gasometer was constructed, which collected _eighty-eight_ cubic feet in twelve hours. The inhabitants didn’t keep late hours. A mile nearer Lake Erie many gas-bubbles gamboled on the stream. Efforts to convey the gas to the light-house at Dunkirk failed, as it was only half the weight of air and would not descend the difference in elevation.

A light-house at Erie was lighted by natural-gas in 1831, “the Burning Spring,” a sheet of water through which the vapor bubbled, furnishing the supply. A tower erected over the spring held the gas that accumulated during the day and wooden-pipes conveyed it at night to the light-house.

Dr. Charles Oesterlin, a young German physician, sixty years ago unpacked his pill-boxes and hung out his little sign at Findlay, in Northwestern Ohio. He was an expert geologist and mineralogist, but the flat Black Swamp afforded poor opportunities to study the rocks underlying the limestone. The young physician detected the odor of sulphuretted hydrogen in the town and along the banks of the Blanchard River. It puzzled him to guess the source of the odor. He spoke to the farmers, who smelled the stuff, knew nothing and cared less about its origin or properties. The Doctor searched for a sulphur-spring. In October of 1836 the solution came. A farmer was digging a well three miles from town. A spring was tapped and the water “boiled,” as the diggers expressed it. Debating what to do, they were called to supper, returned after dark and lighted a torch to examine the well. Holding the torch over the well an explosion startled them and a flame ascended that lasted for days. Nobody was seriously hurt, but all thought the devil had a finger in the pie. Dr. Oesterlin connected the incident with the odor and it confirmed his theory of a gas that would burn and might serve as fuel. At a stone-quarry he made a cone of mud over a fissure, covered it with a bucket and applied a light. When the Doctor picked himself up in an adjoining corn-field the bucket was still sailing north towards Toledo. Daniel Foster, another Findlay farmer, dug a well in 1838. Gas issued from the hole before water was seen. Foster had a practical mind. He inverted a copper-kettle over the hole, rigged a wooden pump-stock beneath the kettle, plastered around it with clay, joined more pump-stocks together, stuck an old gun-barrel in the end of the last one, lighted the gas in his kitchen and by means of the flame boiled water, roasted coffee and illumined the apartment. Then Dr. Oesterlin declared Findlay was right over a vast caldron of gas. People laughed at him, adhered to tallow-dips and positively refused to swallow such a dose. Petroleum-developments in Pennsylvania fortified his faith and he sought to interest the public in a company to “bore a hole twenty inches across.” Sinners in Noah’s day were less impervious. Business-men scoffed and declined to subscribe for stock. He tried again in 1864 and 1867 with the same result. A company was organized to manufacture coal-gas. He talked of the absurdity of _making_ gas at Findlay as equal to setting up a manufactory of air or water. It was no use. At last the triumph of natural-gas in Pennsylvania was manifested too strongly for the obtuse Findlayites to ignore it. In 1884 the Doctor managed to enlist four-thousand dollars of capital and start a well in a grove a mile east of town, where the odor was pungent and gas flowing through a tile-pipe he planted in the ground burned for weeks. He watched the progress of the work with feverish anxiety. The hopes of fifty long years were to be grandly realized or dashed forever. Sleepless nights succeeded restless days as the veteran’s heart-beats kept time with the rhythmic churning of the drill. At five, six and seven-hundred feet morsels of gas quickened the expectations of success. At eleven-hundred feet, in the Trenton limestone, on November tenth, 1884, gas burst forth with terrific force. The well was drilled sixteen-hundred feet and encountered salt-water. It was plugged below the gas-vein, the gas was lighted, an immense flame shot up and for months a quarter-million feet a day burned in the open air. Findlay grew from five-thousand to fifteen-thousand population and manufacturing flourished. Dr. Oesterlin, slight of frame, infirm with age, his thin locks and beard white as snow, had waited fifty years for his vindication. It came when he had reached four-score, full, complete and overwhelming. He bore his honors meekly, lived to round out eighty-two and nowhere is it recorded that he even once yielded to the temptation of remarking: “I told you so!”

Gas was used as fuel at pumping-wells on Oil Creek in 1862. It was first collected in “gas-barrels,” one pipe leading from the well to the receptacle and another from the barrel to the boiler. Many fires originated from the flame, when the pressure of gas was small, running back to the barrel and exploding it. A pumper at Rouseville, seated on a gas-barrel at such a moment, went skyward and may be ascending yet, as he never returned for his week’s wages. D. G. Stillwell, better known as “Buffalo Joe,” drilled a gasser in 1867 at Oil City, on the site of the Greenfield Lumber-Company’s office. He piped the gas to several houses, but the danger from constant changes of pressure led to its abandonment. This is the first authentic record of the use of “the essence of Sheol” for cooking food and heating dwellings. In 1883 the Oil-City Fuel-Supply Company laid a six-inch gas-line to wells at McPherson’s Corners, Pinegrove township, eight miles distant. The gas was produced from the second and third sands, at a depth of nine to ten-hundred feet and a pressure not exceeding two-hundred pounds to the square inch. In 1885 the late Samuel Speechly started a well on his farm near McPherson’s, intending to drill three-thousand feet in search of the Bradford sand. Oil-bearing strata dip twenty feet to the mile southward and Speechly believed the northern rocks existed far beneath the ordinary third-sand in Venango county. On April thirteenth, at nineteen-hundred feet, the drill penetrated what has since been called the “Speechly sand,” the most extraordinary and valuable fuel-sand as yet discovered. In this sand at three feet pressure of gas became entirely too great to keep jerking the tools. The gas company leased the well and turned it into the line without being able to gauge it on account of the high volume. Speechly commenced a second well and the company, having previously laid a new ten-inch line to Oil City, constructed branches to Franklin and Titusville. The second well proved to be the largest to the present time, excepting the Big Moses in West Virginia. For a time it could not be controlled. The roar of the escaping gas could be heard for miles. Eventually it was tubed and the pressure was six-hundred pounds. Many wells in other fields have had greater pressure, but the large volume of the Speechly well made it a wonder. One day all the other wells connected with the main-line were discontinued from the line temporarily and the Jumbo turned in. The flow was sufficient to supply Oil City, Titusville and Franklin with all the gas required. Hundreds of wells have been drilled to the Speechly sand and the field now reaches from the southern part of Rockland township, Venango county, to Tionesta township, Forest county. It is about thirty miles long, with an average width of three miles, while the sand ranges in thickness from fifty to one-hundred feet. The pressure gradually diminishes. It requires constant drilling to keep up the supply, the Oil-City Company alone having about four-hundred wells.

Samuel Speechly died on Sunday night, January ninth, 1893, aged sixty-one, at his home in the gas-district bearing his name. His life was notably eventful, adventurous and fortunate. Born in England in 1832, at fourteen he began to learn locomotive-building and marine-engineering at Newcastle-on-Tyne. At twenty Robert Stephenson & Co. sent him to China to join a steamer engaged in the opium-trade. In 1855 he entered the service of the Chinese government to suppress piracy on the coast, and in 1857 started at Hong Kong the first engineering-business in the vast empire ruled by the pig-tailed Brother of the Sun. He visited America in 1872 and lived in Philadelphia. Wanting plenty of room, he went to Northwestern Pennsylvania, resided a year in Cranberry township, concluded to stay and settled on what subsequently became the famous Speechly farm. The well he drilled in 1885 had neither oil nor gas in the usual formations. Veteran operators advised him to abandon it, but Speechly entertained a notion of his own and the world knows the sequel. He was married in China in 1864 to Miss Margaret Galbraith, who survives him, with two daughters, Emily, born in China, and Adelaide, born in America. His widow and children occupy the old home on the farm.

Bishop Potter, stopping at Narrowsburg in 1854, noticed jets of gas exuding from the bank of the Delaware river at Dingman’s Ferry, forty miles above Easton, and published an article on the subject. A company in 1860 bored three wells, but the result was not encouraging, as politicians are the most gaseous bodies Northampton county has produced for thirty years. A gas-well at Erie attracted considerable attention in 1860 and was followed by a number more, which from a shallow depth yielded fuel to run several factories. East Liverpool, Ohio, put the product to practical use early in the seventies as a substitute for coal. The first well, drilled in 1860, caught fire and destroyed the rig. Geologists say natural-gas is the disembodied spirits of plants that grew in the sunshine of ages long before the foundations of the buried coal-measures were laid, so long ago shut up and forsaken by the light-hearted sun that it is a wonder they hadn’t forgotten their former affinity. But they hadn’t. They rushed out to the devouring kiss of their old flame at the first tap of the drill on their prison-house, like a foolish girl at the return of a fickle lover. They found Old Sol flirting with their younger sister, playing sweet to a lot of new vegetation. Before they had time to form a sewing-circle and resolve that all the male sex are horrid, they took fire with indignation at his fickleness and the tool-dresser’s forge and burst with a tremendous explosion. The fire was quenched and gas poured out of the pioneer-well fifteen years. Street-lamps were left burning all day, which was cheaper than to bother putting them out, and East Liverpool prospered as a hive of the pottery-industry. The celebrated well at East Sandy, Venango county, which gave birth to Gas City in 1869, burned a year with a roar audible three miles. Becoming partially exhausted, the fire was put out and the product was used for fuel at numerous wells. The famous Newton well, on the A. H. Nelson farm, was struck in May of 1872 and piped in August to Titusville, five miles south west. Its half-million cubic-feet per day supplied three-hundred firms and families with light and fuel. Henry Hinckley and A. R. Williams organized the company, one of the very first in Pennsylvania to utilize natural-gas on an extensive scale. The same year gas from the Lambing well was piped to Fairview and Petrolia. The Waugh well at Millerstown and the Berlin at Thompson’s Corners, Butler county, were the next big gassers. The great Delamater No. 2, near St. Joe, finished in 1874, for months was the biggest gas-well in the world. Its output was conveyed to the rolling-mills at Sharpsburg. The first gas-well in Butler county is credited to John Criswell, of Newcastle, who drilled for salt-water in 1840 near Centreville, struck a vein of the vapor at seven-hundred feet and fired it to heat his evaporating-pans.

At Leechburg and Apollo natural-gas has been used in puddling-furnaces since 1872. It will supply the huge mills at Vandergrift, the model town that is to be the county-seat of Vandergrift county, which the next Legislature will set off from Armstrong, Westmoreland and contiguous districts. It was the fuel of the cutlery-works at Beaver Falls from 1876 until the wells ceased producing in 1884. In 1875 Spang & Chalfant piped it from Butler to their mills in the suburbs of Pittsburg. Though Pittsburgers knew of its value in the oil-region for twenty years, they regarded it as a freak and not calculated to affect their interests favorably. Iron manufactured by its means was of superior quality, owing to the absence of sulphur and the intensity of the heat. In 1877 the Haymaker well opened the Murraysville gas-field, but that immense storehouse of potential energy lay dormant until Pew & Emerson piped the product to Pittsburg. In June of 1884 George Westinghouse, inventor of the air-brake and of various electric-appliances, struck a gas-well near his residence in Pittsburg. From that date the development was enormous. Wells producing from two to twenty-million cubic-feet a day were in order. The Philadelphia Company—Westinghouse was its president—alone tied up forty-thousand acres of gas-territory, drilled hundreds of wells and laid thousands of miles of pipes. Hon. James M. Guffey headed big corporations that supplied Wheeling, a portion of Pittsburg and dozens of smaller towns. The coal displacement in Pittsburg equaled thirty-thousand tons daily. Twenty and twenty-four-inch mains intersected the city. Iron, brass, steel and metal-working establishments consumed it. Glass-factories turned out by its aid plate-glass such as mankind had never seen before. The flaming breath of the new demon transformed the appearance and revolutionized the iron-manufacture of the Birmingham of America. The Smoky City was a misnomer. Soot and dirt and smoke and cinders disappeared. People washed their faces, men wore “biled shirts” and girls dressed in white. The touch of a fairy-wand could not have made a more resplendent change. Think of green grass, emerald hues, clear sunlight and clean walls in Pittsburg! At first timid folks feared to introduce it, because the pressure could not be regulated. All this has been remedied. The roaring, hissing monster that almost bursts the gauge at the well is tamed and subjugated to the meekness of a dove by valves and gasometers, which can reduce the pressure to a single ounce. Queer, isn’t it, that Pittsburg should be metamorphosed by natural-gas—the fires of hell as it were—into a city of delightful homes, an industrial paradise?

Gas-wells of high pressure were found in Ohio by thousands, as though striving to vie with the oil-wells which, beginning at Mecca in 1860 and ending at Lima, stocked up twenty-million barrels of crude. Over three-hundred companies were chartered in a year to supply every town from Cincinnati to Ashtabula. Natural-gas raged and blistered and for a term was the genuine “Ohio idea.” For thirty years wells at New Cumberland, West Virginia, have furnished fuel to burn brick. The same state has the biggest gassers in existence and lines to important cities are projected. If “the mountain won’t come to Mohammed, Mohammed must go to the mountain.” Indiana has gas and oil in four counties, with Gas City as headquarters and lots of fuel for houses and factories in Indianapolis and the chief cities. The Hoosiers have carried out the principle of Edward Eggleston’s Mrs. Means: “When you’re a-gittin’ git plenty, I say.” Illinois had a morsel of oil and gas in wells at Litchfield. Kentucky and Tennessee are blessed with “a genteel competence” and Kansas has not escaped. Michigan has gas-wells at Port Huron and St. Paul once boasted a company capitalized at a half-million. Buffalo inhaled its first whiff of natural-gas, piped from wells in McKean county, on December first, 1886. Youngstown was initiated next day, from wells in Venango. A Mormon company bored wells at Salt Lake, but polygamy was not supplanted by any odor more unsavory. In Canada gas is abundant and Robert Ferguson, now a well-to-do farmer near Port Sarnia, first turned it into an engine-cylinder as a joke on the engineer at the pump-station in Enniskillen township. Steam was low, the engineer was absent, Ferguson cut the pipe leading from the boiler, connected it with one from a gas-well near-by, opened the throttle and, to his astonishment, found the pressure greater than steam. Natural-gas, a gift worthy of the immortal gods, worthy of the admiration of Vulcan, worthy of the praise of poets and historians, the agent of progress and saver of labor, is not a trifle to be brushed off like a fly or dismissed with a contemptuous sneer.

Pittsburg iron-works and rolling-mills received natural-gas at about two-thirds the cost of coal. The coal needed to produce a ton of metal cost three dollars, the gas that did the same service cost one-ninety. Besides this important saving, the expense of handling the fuel, hauling away cinders and waiting for furnaces to heat or cool was avoided. Gas-heat was uniform, stronger, more satisfactory, could be regulated to any temperature, turned on at full head or shut off instantly. Thus Pittsburg possessed advantages that boomed its manufactories immensely and obliged many competitors less favored to retire. In this way the anomaly of freezing out men by the use of greater, cheaper heat was presented.

On March seventeenth, 1886, at Pittsburg, Milton Fisher, of Columbus, was the first person to be incinerated in a natural-gas crematory. In fifty minutes the body was reduced to a handful of white powder. The friends of the deceased pronounced the operation a success, but Fisher was not in shape to express his opinion.

A singular accident occurred near Hickory, Washington county, on the night of December fourth, 1886. Alfred Crocker, an employé of the Chartiers Gas-Company, had been at the tanks on the McKnight farm and was going toward the well. The connecting-pipe between the well and tank burst with terrible force, striking Crocker on the left leg, blowing the foot and ankle completely off and injuring him about the body. The explosion hurled the large gas-tank a hundred feet. The young man died next morning.

The steam tow-boat Iron City once grounded near the head of Herr’s Island, above Pittsburg. The stern swung around and caught on a pipe conveying natural-gas across the Allegheny river. In trying to back the vessel off the pipe broke, the escaping gas filled the hold and caught fire from the furnace. An explosion split the boat from stem to stern, blew off the deck and blew the crew into the river. The boat burned to the water’s edge.

Near Halsey, in the Kane field, James Bowser was standing on a gas-tank, while a workman was endeavoring to dislodge an obstruction in the pipe leading from the well. The removal of the obstruction caused the pent-up gas to rush into the tank with such force that the receptacle exploded, hurling Bowser high in the air. He alighted directly in front of the heavy volume of gas escaping through the broken pipe. Before he could be rescued he was denuded of all clothing, except one boot. His clothing was torn off by the force of the gas and his injuries were serious.

Workmen laying pipe to connect with the main at Grapeville were badly flustered one frosty morning. By mistake the gas was turned on, rushing from the open end with great force. It ploughed up the earth and pebbles and ignited, the flinty stones producing a spark that set the whole thing in a blaze. Gas-wells yield liberally at Grapeville, supplying the glass-works at Jeannette and houses at Johnstown, the farthest point east to which the vapor-fuel has been piped.

J. S. Booker, an Ohio man, claimed to spot gas. His particular virtue lay in the muscles at the back of the neck, which rise up and irritate him in the presence of natural-gas. This is ahead of rheumatism as a rain-indicator. Booker’s own story is that an attack of asthma left him in a sensitive state, so that when he passes over a vein of gas the electricity runs through his legs, up his spine and knots the muscles of the neck. The story deserves credit for its rare simplicity. With the whole realm of fiction at his command, Booker chose only a few simple details and was content to pass current as a sort of human witch-hazel.

At Economy, where a hundred stand-pipes for natural-gas illuminate the streets, bugs and fruit-vermin were slaughtered wholesale. In the mornings there would be a fine carpet of bugs around every post. Chickens and turkeys would have a feast and a foot-race from the roosts to see which would get to the already-cooked breakfast first. The trees came out in bloom earlier and healthier than formerly, because the vermin were destroyed and the frosts kept from settling by the gas-lights, which burn constantly. As a promoter of vegetation natural-gas beats General Pleasanton’s blue-glass out of sight.

Samuel Randall, the Democratic statesman, visited the gas-wells at Murraysville with Hon. J. M. Guffey. From a safe distance the visitor threw a Roman candle at a huge column of vapor, which blazed quicker than a church-scandal, to Mr. Randall’s great delight. President and Mrs. Cleveland were afforded a similar treat by Mr. Guffey. The chivalrous host chartered a train and had a big well fired for the distinguished visitors. The lady of the White House was in ecstacies and the President evidently thought the novel exhibition knocked duck-shooting silly. Could a mind-reader have X-rayed his thinking-department it would likely have assumed this form: “Mr. Guffey, _you_ have a tremendous body of gas here, but _I_ have Congress on my hands!”

Eli Perkins lectured at St. Petersburg one night and next day rode with me through part of the district. He wanted points regarding natural-gas and smilingly jotted down a lot of Munchausenisms current in the oil-region. A week later he sent me a marked copy of the New-York _Sun_, with columns of delicious romance concerning gas-wells. Eli was no slouch at drawing the long-bow, but he fairly surpassed himself, Jules Verne and Rider Haggard on this occasion. His vivid stories of tools hurled by gas a thousand feet, of derricks lifted up bodily, of men tossed to the clouds and picturesque adventures generally were marvels of smooth, easy, fascinating exaggeration. Perhaps “if you see it in the _Sun_ it’s so,” but not when Eli Perkins is the chronicler and natural-gas the subject.

“The Fredonia Gas-Light and Water-Works Company,” which obtained a special charter in 1856, was undoubtedly the first natural-gas company in the world. Its object was, “by boring down through the slate-rock and sinking wells to a sufficient depth to penetrate the manufactories of nature, and thus collect from her laboratories the natural-gas and purify it, to furnish the citizens with good cheap light.” The tiny stream of gas first utilized at the mill yielded its mite forty years. When Lafayette remained a night at Fredonia in 1824, on his triumphal visit to the United States, “the village-inn was lighted with gas that came from the ground.” The illustrious Frenchman saw nothing in his travels that interested and delighted him more than this novel illumination.

Col. J. A. Barrett, for many years a citizen of Illinois and law-partner of Abraham Lincoln, in 1886 removed to a tract of five-thousand acres on Tug Fork, near the quiet hamlet of Warfield. Gas issued from the soil and tradition says George Washington fired the subtle vapor at Burning Spring while surveying in West Virginia before the Revolution. Captain A. Allen, who pioneered the oil-business on Little Kanawha, leased the tract from Col. Barrett and struck a vast reservoir of gas at two-thousand feet.

John G. Saxe once lectured at Pithole and was so pleased with the people and place that he donated twenty-five dollars to the charity-fund and wrote columns of descriptive matter to a Boston newspaper. “If I were not Alexander I would be Diogenes,” said the Macedonian conqueror. Similarly Henry Ward Beecher remarked, when he visited Oil City to lecture, “If I were not pastor of Plymouth church I would be pastor of an Oil-City church.” The train conveying Dom Pedro, Emperor of Brazil, through the oil-regions stopped at Foxburg to afford the imperial guest an opportunity to see an oil-well torpedoed. He watched the filling of the shell with manifest interest, dropped the weight after the torpedo had been lowered and clapped his hands when a column of oil rose in the air. An irreverent spectator whispered: “This beats playing pedro.”

Daniel Fisher, ex-mayor of Oil City and chief of the fire-department, donned a new suit one day when oil-tanks abounded in the Third Ward. Hearing a cry of distress, he mounted a tank and saw a man lying on the bottom, in a foot of thick oil. He dropped through the hatchway, pulled up the victim of gas and with great difficulty dragged him up the small ladder into the fresh air. Of course, the new clothes were spoiled beyond hope of redemption. The man revived, said his name was Green, that he earned a living by cleaning out tank-bottoms and was thus employed when overcome by gas. Next day Fisher met Green, who thanked him again for saving his life, borrowed ten dollars and never repaid the loan or offered to set up a new suit of clothes.

“Brudders an’ sistern,” ejaculated a colored preacher, “ef we knowed how much de good Lawd knows about us it wud skeer us mos’ to deff.” A Franklin preacher once seemed to forget that the Lord was posted concerning earthly affairs, as he prayed thirty-six minutes at the exercises on Memorial Day. The sun beat down upon the bare heads of the assembled multitude, but the divine prayed right along from Plymouth Rock to the close of the war. Col. J. S. Myers, the veteran lawyer, presided. Great drops of perspiration rolled down his face, but he was like the henpecked husband who couldn’t get away and had to grin and bear it. He summed up the situation in a sentence: “I think ministers ought to take it for granted that the Almighty knows enough American history to get along nicely without having it prayed at Him by the hour!”

Fire and water have scourged the oil-regions sorely. A flood in March of 1865 submerged Oil City, floated off hundreds of oil-tanks and small buildings and did damage estimated at four-millions of dollars. Fire in May of 1866 wiped out half the town, the loss footing up a million dollars. The most appalling disaster occurred on Sunday, June fifth, 1892. Heavy rains raised Oil Creek to such a height that mill-dams at Spartansburg and Riceville gave way, precipitating a vast mass of water upon Titusville during Saturday night. With a roar like thunder it struck the town. Sleepers were awakened by the resistless tide and drowned. Refineries and tanks of oil caught fire and covered acres of the watery waste with flames. Helpless men, women and children tottered and tumbled and disappeared, the death-roll exceeding fifty. The two elements seemed to strive which could work the greater destruction. Above Oil City a huge tank of benzine was undermined and upset on Friday morning. The combustible stuff floated on the creek, which had risen four feet over the floors of houses on the flats. The boiler-fire at a well near the Lake-Shore tunnel ignited the cloud of benzine. An explosion followed such as mortal eyes and ears have seldom seen and heard. The report shook the city to its foundations. A solid sheet of flame rose hundreds of feet and enveloped the flats in its fatal embrace. Houses charred and blazed at its deadly touch and fifty persons perished horribly. The sickening scene reminded me of the Johnstown carnage in 1889, with its miles of flooded ruins and dreadful blaze at the railroad-bridge. Whole families were blotted out. Edwin Mills, his wife and their five children died together. Heroic rescues and marvelous escapes were frequent. John Halladay Gordon saved forty people in his boat, rowing it amid the angry flames and swirling waters at imminent risk. The recital of brave deeds and thrilling experiences would fill a volume. That memorable Sunday was the saddest day Oil City and Titusville ever witnessed. The awful grandeur of the spectacle at both places has had no parallel.

Sweeping into the yards of a refinery at the upper end of Titusville, the water tore open a tank containing five-thousand gallons of gasoline. Farther down an oil-tank and a gasoline-tank were rent in twain. Water covered the streets and shut people in their houses. The gas-works and the electric-plant were submerged and the city was in darkness. At midnight a curious mist lay thick and dense and white for a few feet above the water. It was the gasoline vapor, a cartridge a half-mile long, a quarter-mile wide and two yards thick, with a coating of oil beneath, waiting to be fired. One arm of the mist reached into the open furnaces of the Crescent Works and touched the live coals on the grate. There was a flash as if the heavens had been split asunder. Then the explosion came and death and havoc reigned. And the horror was repeated at Oil City, until people wondered if the Day of Judgment could be more terrifying. The infinite pity and sadness of it all!

The burning of the Acme Refinery at Titusville, on June eleventh, 1886, entailed a loss of six-hundred-thousand dollars. It caught from a tank lightning had struck. By great efforts the railroad-bridge and the Octave Refinery were saved. The fire raged three days and nights, and the departments from Warren, Corry and Oil City were called to render assistance. Hardly a town in the oil-regions has been unharmed by fire or flood, while many have been ravaged by both.

The fire that desolated St. Petersburg started in Fred Hepp’s beer-saloon. Hepp had a sign representing a man attempting to lift a schooner of lager as big as himself and remarking, “Oxcuse me ov you bleese.” The fire “oxcused” him from further exertion. Two destructive conflagrations almost eliminated Parker from the face of the earth. Karns City experienced three fiery visitations. In 1874 sixty-four buildings in the heart of town went up in smoke. Sixteen followed in September, 1876, the post-office and two largest stores figuring in the list. On March fifth, 1877, Mrs. F. E. Bateman, three children and a guest perished in the Bateman House. Bateman, one son and one guest were caught in the flames and burned fatally, dying in a few hours. Burning coals adhering to a chunk of a bursting boiler, on Cherry Run, near the Reed well, plunged into a tank of oil and started a frightful blaze. Acres of the valley, covered with derricks and tanks, flamed with the fury of a veritable hell. Men fled to the hills and no life was lost. A train of blazing tank-cars on the Allegheny-Valley Railroad, below Foster station, interrupted travel for many hours. The passenger-train from Pittsburg stopped and the passengers walked up the track to see the huge blaze. Thomas Bennett, the engineer, went a short distance ahead, when an iron-tank exploded with fearful violence, one piece striking Bennett in the breast and killing him instantly. David Ker was conductor of the train poor Bennett did not live to guide to its destination.

Thomas Martindale, who leads the retail-grocery trade, brought with him to Philadelphia twenty years ago the vim and energy that gained him fame and fortune in the oil-region. He clerked for years in a Boston dry-goods store, quit Massachusetts for Pennsylvania and landed at Oil City in 1869. He took the first job that offered—grubbing out a road to his wells for John S. Rich—used eyes and brain and soon knew how to “run engine.” Buying an interest in a grocery, his “Checkered Store” became noted for excellent wares and low prices. The “Blue Store,” larger and better, followed and was in turn succeeded by the “Mammoth.” Martindale sold to Steffee & Co., moved to Philadelphia and opened the first California store. It was a revelation to the citizens to get fruits and wines straight from the Pacific coast and they patronized him liberally. Partners were taken in, whom the head of the firm imbued with something of his own energy and magnetism. Active in politics and trade, wide-awake and public-spirited, many Philadelphians contend that the next mayor of the Quaker City shall spell his name Thomas Martindale. He is a trenchant writer and has published “Sport Royal,” an admirable work descriptive of hunting adventures in which he participated. The live merchant who caught the inspiration of five-dollar oil is sixteen ounces to the pound every time and every place.