XV. FROM THE WELL TO THE LAMP…

XV. FROM THE WELL TO THE LAMP

TRANSPORTING CRUDE-OIL BY WAGONS AND BOATS—UNFATHOMABLE MUD AND SWEARING TEAMSTERS—POND FRESHETS—ESTABLISHMENT OF PIPE-LINES—NATIONAL-TRANSIT COMPANY AND SOME OF ITS OFFICERS—SPECULATION IN CERTIFICATES—EXCHANGES AT PROMINENT POINTS—THE PRODUCT THAT ILLUMINES THE WORLD AT VARIOUS STAGES OF PROGRESS.

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“Lamps were gleaming everywhere, gleaming from huge banks of flowers.”—Wilson Barrett.

“Nature must give way to Art.”—Jonathan Swift.

“The flighty purpose never is o’ertook, unless the deed go with it.”—Shakespeare.

“My kingdom for a horse to haul my oil.”—Richard III. Revised.

“We’ll all dip oil, and we’ll all dip oil, We’ll dip, dip, dip, and we’ll all dip oil.”—Pond-Freshet Song.

“Lines of truth run through the world of thought as pipe-lines to the sea.”—Mrs. C. A. Babcock.

“These be piping times.”—Popular Saw.

“Seneca predicted another hemisphere, but Columbus presented it.”—Collins.

“Nature begets Merit and Fortune brings it into play.”—La Rochefoucauld.

“The wise and active conquer difficulties by daring to attempt them.”—Rowe.

“Perfection is attained by slow degrees.”—Voltaire.

“One little bull on oil was I, Bought a lot when the stuff was high, Sold when low and it pumped me dry, One little bull on oil.”—Oil City Blizzard.

“It is just as dangerous to speculate in kerosene as to kindle the fire with it.”—Boston Herald.

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The tribulations of early operators did not cease with drilling and tubing their wells. Oil might flow or be pumped readily, but it could neither transport nor sell itself. Crude in the tank was not always money in the purse without a good deal of engineering. The Irishman’s contrary pig, which he headed for Cork to drive to Dublin, was much less trouble to raise than to get to market. The first wells on Oil Creek were so close to the water that the stuff could be loaded directly into canoes or dug-outs and floated to the mouth of the stream. This arrangement, despite its apparent convenience, had serious drawbacks. The creek was too low in dry weather for navigation, except possibly by the Mississippi craft that slipped along easily on the morning dew. To overcome this difficulty recourse was had to artificial methods when the production increased sufficiently to introduce flat-boats, which dispensed with barrels and freighted the oil in bulk. The system of pond-freshets was adopted. A dam at the saw-mill near the Drake well stored the fluid until the time agreed upon to open the gates and let the imprisoned waters escape. Rev. A. L. Dubbs was appointed superintendent and shippers were assessed for the use of the water stored in the pond. Usually two-hundred to eight-hundred boats—boats of all shapes and sizes, from square-keeled barges, divided into compartments by cross-partitions, to slim-pointed guipers—were pulled up the stream by horses once or twice a week to be filled at the wells and await the rushing waters. Expert rivermen, accustomed to dodging snags and rocks in inland streams, managed the fleet. These skilled pilots assumed the responsibility of delivering the oil to the larger boats at Oil City, for conveyance to Pittsburg, at one-hundred to two-hundred dollars per trip.

At the appointed moment the flood-gates were opened and the water rushed forth, increasing the depth of the creek two or three feet. The boatmen stood by their lines, to cast loose when the current was precisely right. Sound judgment was required. The loaded boat, if let go too soon, ran the risk of grounding in the first shallow-place, to be battered into kindling-wood by those coming after. Such accidents occurred frequently, resulting in a general jam and loss of vessels and cargoes. The scene was more exciting than a three-ringed circus. Property and life were imperiled, boats were ground to fragments, thousands of barrels of oil were spilled and the tangle seemed inextricable. Men, women and children lined the banks of the stream for miles, intently watching the spectacle. Persons of all nationalities, kindreds and conditions vociferated in their diversified jargon, producing a confusion of tongues that outbabeled Babel three to one. Men of wealth and refinement, bespattered and besmeared with crude—their trousers tucked into boots reaching above the knee, and most likely wearing at the same time a nobby necktie—might be seen boarding the boats with the agility of a cat and the courage of warriors, shouting, managing, directing and leading in the perilous work of safe exit. Sunday creeds were forgotten and the third commandment, constantly snapped in twain, gave emphasis to the crashing hulks and barrels. A pillar of the Presbyterian church, seeing his barge unmanned, ran screaming at the top of his voice: “Where in sheol is Parker?” This so amused his good brethren that they used it as a by-word for months.

The cry of “Pond Freshet” would bring the entire population of Oil City to witness the arrival of the boats. Sometimes the tidal wave would force them on a sand-bar in the Allegheny, smashing and crushing them like egg-shells. Oil from overturned or demolished boats belonged to whoever chose to dip it up. More than one solid citizen got his start on fortune’s road by dipping oil in this way. If the voyage ended safely the oil was transferred from the guipers—fifty barrels each—and small boats to larger ones for shipment to Pittsburg. William Phillips, joint-owner of the biggest well on Oil Creek, was the first man to take a cargo of crude in bulk to the Smoky City. The pond-freshet was a great institution in its day, with romantic features that would enrapture an artist and tickle lovers of sensation to the fifth rib. One night the lantern of a careless workman set fire to the oil in one of the boats. Others caught and were cut loose to drift down the river, floating up against a pier and burning the bridge at Franklin. Running the “rapids” on the St. Lawrence river or the “Long Sault” on the Ottawa was not half so thrilling and hair-raising as a fleet of oil-boats in a crush at the mouth of Oil Creek.

The fleet of creek and river-boats engaged in this novel traffic numbered two-thousand craft. The “guiper,” scow-shaped and holding twenty-five to fifty barrels, was the smallest. The “French Creekers” held ten to twelve-hundred barrels and were arranged to carry oil in bulk or barrels. At first the crude was run into open boats, which a slight motion of the water would sometimes capsize and spill the cargo into the stream. When prices ruled low oil was shipped in bulk; when high, shippers used barrels to lessen the danger of loss. Thousands of empty barrels, lashed together like logs in a raft, were floated from Olean. The rate from the more distant wells to Oil City was one-dollar a barrel. From Oil City to Pittsburg it varied from twenty-five cents to three dollars, according to the weather, the stage of water or the activity of the demand. Each pond-freshet cost two or three-hundred dollars, paid to the mill-owners for storing the water and the use of their dams. Twice a week—Wednesday and Saturday—was the average at the busy season. The flood of petroleum from flowing-wells in 1862 exceeded the facilities for storing, transporting, refining and burning the oil, which dropped to ten cents a barrel during the summer. Thousands of barrels ran into Oil Creek. Pittsburg was the chief market for crude, which was transferred at Oil City to the larger boats. The steamer-fleet of tow-boats—it exceeded twenty—brought the empties back to Oil City. The “Echo,” Captain Ezekiel Gordon; the “Allegheny Belle No. 4,” Captain John Hanna; the “Leclaire,” Captain Kelly; the “Ida Rees,” Captain Rees, and the “Venango” were favorite passenger-steamers. The trip from Pittsburg—one-hundred-and-thirty-three miles—generally required thirty to thirty-six hours. Mattresses on the cabin-floor served as beds for thirty or forty male passengers, who did not undress and rose early that the tables might be set for breakfast. The same tables were utilized between meals and in the evening for poker-games. The busiest man on the boat was the bar-tender and the clerk was the most important. He carried letters and money for leading oil-shippers. It was not uncommon for Alfred Russell, of the “Echo,” John Thompson, of the “Belle No. 4,” and Ruse Russ, of the “Venango,” to walk into Hanna’s or Abrams’s warehouse-office with large packages of money for John J. Fisher, William Lecky, John Mawhinney, William Thompson and others who bought oil. No receipts were given or taken and, notwithstanding the apparent looseness in doing business, no package was ever lost or stolen. The boats usually landed at the lower part of the eddy to put off passengers wishing to stop at the Moran and Parker Hotels. At Hanna & Co.’s and Abrams & Co.’s landing, where the northern approach of the suspension bridge now is, they put off the remaining passengers, freight and empty oil-barrels. Many a Christian-looking man was heard to swear as he left the gang-plank of the boat and struck the mud, tough and greasy and deep. He would soon tumble to the situation, roll up his trousers and “pull for the shore.”

Horses and mules dragged the empty boats up Oil Creek, a terrible task in cold weather. Slush or ice and floating oil shaved the hair off the poor animals as if done with a razor. The treatment of the patient creatures—thousands were literally murdered—was frightful and few survived. For them the plea of inability availed nothing. They were worked until they dropped dead. The finest mule, ears very long, coat shiny, tail vehement, eye mischievous, heels vigorous and bray distinct and melodious, quickly succumbed to the freezing water and harsh usage. As a single trip realized more than would buy another the brutal driver scarcely felt the financial loss. A story is told of a boatman who started in the morning for the wells to bring down a load of oil. Returning in the evening, he learned that he had been drafted into the army. Before retiring to bed he had hired a substitute for one-thousand dollars, the proceeds of his journey of eleven miles and back. William Haldeman hauled a man over the coals for beating his exhausted horse, told him to buy another and handed him five-hundred dollars for eight horses to haul a boat to the gushers at Funkville.

Pond-freshets were holidays in Oil City sufficiently memorable to go gliding down the ages with the biggest kind of chalk-mark. Young and old flocked to see the boats slip into the Allegheny, lodge on the gravel-bar, strike the pier of the bridge or anchor in Moran’s Eddy. Hundreds of boatmen, drillers, pumpers and operators would be on board. Once the river had only a foot of water at Scrubgrass Ripple and large boats could not get to or from Pittsburg. A ship-carpenter came from New York to Titusville and spent his last dollar in lumber for six boxes sixteen feet square and twelve inches deep. He covered them with inch-boards and divided them into small compartments, to prevent the oil from running from one end to the other and swamping the vessel. This principle was applied to oil-boats thereafter and extended to bulk-barges and bulk-steamships. The ingenious carpenter floated his strange arks down to the Blood farm and bargained with Henry Balliott to fill them on credit. He performed the voyage safely, returned in due course, paid Balliott, built more boxes and went home in four months with a snug fortune. His ship had come in. Railroads and pipe-lines have relegated pond-freshets, oil-boats and Allegheny steamers to the rear, but they were interesting features of the petroleum-development in early days and should not be utterly forgotten.

To haul oil from inland wells to shipping-points required thousands of horses. This service originated the wagon-train of the oil-country, which at its best consisted of six-thousand two-horse teams and wagons. No such transport-service was ever before seen outside of an army on a march. General M. H. Avery, a renowned cavalry-commander during the war, organized a regular army-train at Pithole. Travelers in the oil-regions seldom lost sight of these endless trains of wagons bearing their greasy freight to the nearest railroad or shipping-point. Five to seven barrels—a barrel of oil weighed three-hundred-and-sixty pounds—taxed the strength of the stoutest teams. The mud was practically bottomless. Horses sank to their breasts and wagons far above their axles. Oil dripping from innumerable barrels mixed with the dirt to keep the mass a perpetual paste, which destroyed the capillary glands and the hair of the animals. Many horses and mules had not a hair below the eyes. A long caravan of these hairless beasts gave a spectral aspect to the landscape. History records none other such roads. Houses within a quarter-mile of the roadside were plastered with mud to the eaves. Many a horse fell into the batter and was left to smother. If a wagon broke the load was dumped into the mud-canal, or set on the bank to be taken by whoever thought it worth the labor of stealing. Teamsters would pull down fences and drive through fields whenever possible, until the valley of Oil Creek was an unfathomable quagmire. Think of the bone and sinew expended in moving a thousand barrels of oil six or eight miles under such conditions. Two-thirds of the work had to be done in the fall and winter, when the elements spared no effort to increase the discomfort and difficulty of navigation by boat or wagon. To haul oil a half-dozen miles cost three to five dollars a barrel at certain periods of the year. Thousands of barrels were drawn to Shaw’s Landing, near Meadville, and thousands to Garland Station and Union City, on the Philadelphia & Erie Railroad. The hauling of a few hundred barrels not infrequently consumed so much time that the shipper, in the rapid fluctuations of the market, would not realize enough to pay the wagon-freight. A buyer once paid ten-thousand dollars for one-thousand barrels at Clapp farm, above Oil City, and four-thousand for teaming it to Franklin, to be shipped by the Atlantic & Great Western Railroad to New York. Even after a plank-road had been built from Titusville to Pithole, cutting down the teaming one-half or more, the cost of laying down a barrel of crude in New York was excessive. In January of 1866 it figured as follows:

Government tax $1 00 Barrel 3 25 Teaming from Pithole to Titusville 1 25 Freight from Titusville to New York 3 65 Cooperage and platform expenses 1 00 Leakage 25 ——— Total $10 40 ======

The Oil Creek teamster, rubber-booted to the waist and flannel-shirted to the chin, was a picturesque character. He was skilled in profanity and the savage use of the whip. A week’s earnings—ten, twenty and thirty dollars a day—he would spend in revelry on Saturday night. Careless of the present and heedless of the future, he took life as it came and wasted no time worrying over consequences. If one horse died he bought another. He regulated his charges by the depth and consistency of the mud and the wear and tear of morality and live-stock. Eventually he followed the flat-boat and barge and guiper to oblivion, railroads and pipe-lines supplanting him as a carrier of oil. Some of the best operators in the region adopted teaming temporarily, to get a start. They saved their money for interests in leases or drilling-wells and not a few went to the front as successful producers. The free-and-easy, devil-may-care teamster of yore, brimful of oil and tobacco and not averse to whiskey, is a tradition, remembered only by men whose polls are frosting with silver threads that do not stop at sixteen to one.

Wharves, warehouses and landings crowded Oil City from the mouth of Oil Creek to the Moran House. Barrels filled the warehouse-yards, awaiting their turn to be hauled or boated to the wells, filled with crude and returned for shipment. Loaded and empty boats were coming and going continually. Firms and individuals shipped thousands of barrels daily, employing a regiment of men and stacks of cash. William M. Lecky, still a respected citizen of Oil City, hustled for R. D. Cochran & Co., whose “Tiber” was a favorite tow-boat. Parker & Thompson, Fisher Brothers, Mawhinney Brothers and John Munhall & Co. were strong concerns. Their agents scoured the producing farms to buy oil at the wells and arrange for its delivery. Prices fluctuated enormously. Crude bought in September of 1862 at thirty cents a barrel sold in December at eleven dollars. John B. Smithman, Munhall’s buyer, walked up the creek one morning to buy what he could at three dollars. A dispatch at Rouseville told him to pay four, if necessary to secure what the firm desired. At Tarr Farm another message quoted five dollars. By the time he reached Petroleum Centre the price had reached six dollars and his last purchases that afternoon were at seven-fifty. Business was done on honor and every agreement was fulfilled to the letter, whether the price rose or fell. Lecky, Thomas B. Simpson, W. J. Young and Isaac M. Sowers—he was the second mayor of Oil City—clerked in these shipping-offices, which proved admirable training-schools for ambitious youths. William Porterfield and T. Preston Miller tramped over Oil Creek and Cherry Run for the Fishers. Col. A. J. Greenfield, Bradley & Whiting and I. S. Gibson bought at Rouseville and R. Richardson at Tarr Farm. “Pres” Miller, “Hi” Whiting and “Ike” Gibson—square, manly and honorable—are treading the golden-streets. John Mawhinney—big in soul and body, true to the core and upright in every fiber—has voyaged to the haven of rest. William Parker is president of the Oil City Savings Bank and Thompson returned east years ago. John Munhall settled near Philadelphia and William Haldeman removed to Cleveland. The iron-horse and the pipe-line revolutionized the methods of handling crude and retired the shippers, most of whom have shipped across the sea of time into the ocean of eternity.

Fisher Brothers have a long and enviable record as shippers and producers of oil, “staying the distance” and keeping the pole in the hottest race. Men have come and men have retreated in the mad whirl of speculation and wild rush for the bottom of the sand, but they have gone on steadily for a generation and are to-day abreast of the situation. Whether a district etched its name on the Rainbow of Fame or mocked the dreams of the oil-seeker, they did not lose their heads or their credit. John J. Fisher went to Oil City in 1862 and Fisher Brothers began shipping oil by the river to Pittsburg in 1863, succeeding John Burgess & Co. The three brothers divided their forces, to give each department personal supervision, John J. managing the buying and shipping at Oil City and Frederick and Henry receiving and disposing of the cargoes at Pittsburg. Competent men bought crude at the wells and handled it in the yards and on the boats. The firm owned a fleet of bulk-boats and tow-boats and acres of barrels. Each barrel was branded with a huge F on either head. The “Big F”—widely known as Oil Creek or the Drake well—was the trademark of fair play and spot cash. When railroads were built the Fishers discarded boats and used more barrels than before. When wooden-tanks—a car held two—were introduced they adopted them and let the barrels slide. When pipe-lines were laid they purchased certificate-oil and continued to be large shippers until seaboard lines suspended the older systems of freighting crude by water or rail, in barrels or in tanks. From the beginning to the end of the shipping-trade Fisher Brothers were in the van.

Next devoting their attention entirely to the production of oil and gas, with the Grandins and Adnah Neyhart they invested heavily at Fagundas and laid the first pipe-line at Tidioute. They operated below Franklin and were pioneers at Petrolia. Organizing the Fisher Oil-Company, they drilled in all the Butler pools and held large interests at McDonald and Washington. At present they are operating in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia, the Fisher ranking with the foremost companies in extent and solidity. The brothers have their headquarters in the Germania Building, Pittsburg, and juicy wells in a dozen counties. Time has dealt kindly with all three, as well as with Daniel Fisher, ex-mayor of Oil City. They have loads of experience and capital and too much energy to think of adjusting their halo for retirement from active work. True men in all the relations of life, Fisher Brothers worthily represent the splendid industry they have had no mean part in making the greatest and grandest of any age or nation. To natural shrewdness and the quick perception that comes from contact with the activities of the world they joined business-ability that would have proved successful in whatever career they undertook to map out.

The first suggestion of improvement in transportation was made in 1860, at Parkersburg, W. Va., by General Karns to C. L. Wheeler, now of Bradford. An old salt-well Karns had resurrected at Burning Springs pumped oil freely and he conceived the plan of a six-inch line of pipe to Parkersburg to run the product by gravity. The war interfered and the project was not carried out. At a meeting at Tarr Farm, in November of 1861, Heman Janes broached the idea of laying a line of four-inch wooden-pipes to Oil City, to obviate the risk, expense and uncertainty of transporting oil by boats or wagons. He proposed to bury the pipe in a trench along the bank of the creek and let the oil gravitate to its destination. A contract for the entire work was drawn with James Reed, of Erie. Col. Clark, of Clark & Sumner, grasped the vast possibilities the method might involve and advised applying to the Legislature for a general pipe-line charter. Reed’s contract was not signed and a bill was introduced in 1862 to authorize the construction of a pipe-line from Oil Creek to Kittanning. The opposition of four-thousand teamsters engaged in hauling oil defeated the bill and the first effort to organize a pipe-line company.

J. L. Hutchings, a Jersey genius, came to the oil-country in the spring of 1862 with a rotary-pump he had patented. To show its adaptation to the oil-business he laid a string of tubing from Tarr Farm to the Humboldt Refinery, below Plumer. He set his pump working and sent a stream of crude over the hills to the refinery. The pipe was of poor quality, the joints leaked and a good deal of oil fell by the wayside, yet the experiment showed that the idea was feasible. Although eminent engineers declared friction would be fatal, the result proved that distance and grade were not insurmountable. Eminent engineers had declared the locomotive would not run on smooth rails and that a cow on the track would disrupt George Stephenson’s whole system of travel, hence their dictum regarding pipe-lines had little weight. Dr. Dionysius Lardner nearly burst a flue laughing at the absurdity of a vessel without sails crossing the ocean and wrote a treatise to demonstrate its impossibility, but the saucy Sirius steamed over the herring-pond all the same. The rotary-pump at Tarr Farm confounded the scientists who worshipped theory and believed friction would knock out steam and pipe and American ingenuity and keep oil-operators forever subject to mud and pond-freshets. The two-inch line to the Humboldt Refinery planted the seed that was to become a great tree. Nobody saw this more plainly than the teamsters, who proceeded to tear up the pipe and warn producers to quit monkeying with new-fangled methods of transportation. That settled the first pipe-line and left the rampant teamsters, modern imitators of “Demetrius the silversmith,” the upper dog in the fight.

Hutchings—the boys called him “Hutch”—had pump and pipe-line on the brain and would not be suppressed. He put down a line in 1863 from the big Sherman well to the terminus of the railroad at Miller Farm. The pipes were cast-iron, connected by lead-sockets and laid in a shallow ditch. The jarring of the pump loosened the joints and three-fourths of the oil started at the well failed to reach the tanks, two miles north. The teamsters were not in business solely for their health and they tore up the line to be sure it would not cut off any of their revenue. Hutchings persisted in his endeavors until debts overwhelmed him and he died penniless and disappointed. The ill-starred inventor, who lived a trifle ahead of the times, deserves a bronze statue on a shaft of imperishable granite.

The Legislature granted a pipe-line charter in 1864 to the Western Transportation Company, which laid a line from the Noble & Delamater well to Shaffer. The cast-iron pipe, five inches in diameter, was laid on a regular grade in the mode of a water-pipe. The lead points leaked like a fifty-cent umbrella, just as the Hutchings line had done, and the attempt to improve transportation was abandoned.

Samuel Van Syckle, a Jerseyite of inventive bent, arrived at Titusville in the fall of 1864. The problem of oil-transportation, rendered especially important by the opening of the Pithole field, soon engrossed his attention. In August of 1865 he completed a two-inch line from Pithole to Miller Farm. Mr. Wood and Henry Ohlen, of New York, held an interest and the First National Bank of Titusville loaned the money to forward the project. J. N. Wheeler screwed the first joints together. Two pump-stations, a mile west of Pithole and at Cherry Run, at first helped force the oil through the pipe, which was buried two feet under ground “to be out of the way of the farmer’s plow.” Eight-hundred barrels a day could be run and the frantic teamsters talked of resorting to violence to cripple so formidable a rival. The pipeage was one dollar a barrel, at which rate the Pithole and Miller Farm Pipe-Line ought to have been a bonanza. Van Syckle traded heavily in oil and commanded plenty of capital. A. W. Smiley managed the line and bought oil for Van Syckle, who conducted this branch of business in his son’s name. Smiley’s largest transaction was a purchase of one-hundred-thousand barrels, at five dollars a barrel, from the United-States Petroleum Company, in one lot. Young Van Syckle spent money as the whim struck him. If Smiley refused his demand for a hundred or a thousand dollars, the fly youth would refuse to sign drafts and threaten to stop the whole concern. There was nothing to do in such cases but imitate Colonel Scott’s coon and “come down.” The Culver failure in May of 1866 compelled the First National Bank to press its claim against the line, which passed into the hands of Jonathan Watson. J. T. Briggs and George S. Stewart operated it for the bank and Watson until William H. Abbott and Henry Harley purchased the entire equipment.

Reverses beset Van Syckle, who induced George S. and Milton Stewart to erect a big refinery at Titusville to test his pet theory of “continuous distillation.” Failure, tedious litigation and heavy loss resulted. Van Syckle’s mind teemed with new schemes and new devices for refining. He possessed the rare faculty of finding friends willing to listen to his plans and back him with cash. Some of his ideas were valuable and they are in use to-day. Mismanagement swamped the enterprises he created and Van Syckle finally removed to Buffalo, where his checkered life closed peacefully on March second, 1894. While often unsuccessful financially, earnest men like Samuel Van Syckle benefit mankind. The oil-business is much better for the fertile brain and perseverance of the man whose pipe-line was the first to deliver oil to a railroad. His example stimulated other men combining keen perception and executive ability, who could sift the wheat from the chaff and discard the useless and impracticable.

In the fall of 1865 Henry Harley began a pipe-line from Benninghoff Run to Shaffer, the terminus of the Oil-Creek Railroad. Teamsters cut the pipes, burned the tanks and retarded the work seriously. An armed patrol arrested twenty of the ring-leaders, dispersed the mob and quelled the riot. The line—two-inch tubing of extra weight—handled oil expeditiously, a pump at Benninghoff forcing six to eight-hundred barrels a day into the tanks at Shaffer. The system was a public improvement, personal interest had to yield and four-hundred teams left the region the week Harley’s line pumped its first oil. Abbott and Harley owned an interest in the Pithole line and secured control by purchasing Jonathan Watson’s claim, to run it in connection with the Benninghoff line. They organized the firm of Abbott & Harley and operated both lines several months. At Miller Farm they constructed iron-tanks and loading-racks, which enabled two men to load a train of oil-cars in a few hours. Avery & Hedden laid a line from Shamburg to Miller Farm, establishing a station on the highest point of the Tallman farm and running the oil to the railroad by gravity. Abbott & Harley supplemented this with a branch from the Pithole line at the crossing of Cherry Run. Crude was a good price, operators prospered and Miller Farm became a busy place. Railroads extended to the region and pipe-lines pumped oil directly from the wells to the cars or refineries. In the fall of 1867 Abbott & Harley acquired control of the Western Transportation Company, the only one empowered by the Legislature to pipe oil to railway-stations. Under its charter they combined the Western and their own two lines as the Allegheny Transportation Company. The first board of directors, elected in January of 1869, consisted of Henry Harley, president; W. H. Abbott, secretary; Jay Gould, J. P. Harley and Joshua Douglass. T. W. Larsen was appointed treasurer and William Warmcastle—genial, capable “Billy” Warmcastle—general superintendent. Jay Gould purchased a majority of the stock in 1868 and appointed Mr. Harley general oil-agent of the Atlantic & Great Western and Erie Railroads. In 1871 the Commonwealth Oil and Pipe Company was organized in the interest of the Oil-Creek Railroad. Harley contrived to effect a combination and reorganize the Allegheny and the Commonwealth as the Pennsylvania Transportation Company, with a capital of nearly two-million dollars and five-hundred miles of pipes to Tidioute, Triumph, Irvineton, Oil City, Shamburg, Pleasantville and Titusville, centering at Miller Farm. Among the stock-holders were Jay Gould, Thomas A. Scott, William H. Kemble, Mrs. James Fisk and George K. Anderson. The new enterprise absorbed a swarm of small lines and was considered the acme of pipe-line achievement.

William Hawkins Abbott was a Connecticut boy, an Ohio merchant at twenty-five and a visitor to the Drake well in February of 1860. He remained two days, paid ten-thousand dollars for three one-eighth interests in farms below the town and two days after William Barnsdall struck a fifty-barrel well on one of the properties. He located at Titusville, established a market for crude in New York, shipped extensively and in the fall of 1860, with James Parker and William Barnsdall as partners, began the erection of the first complete refinery in the oil-region. To convey the boilers and stills from Oil City, whither they were shipped from Pittsburg by water, was a task greater than the labors of Hercules. The first car-load of coal ever seen in Titusville Mr. Abbott laid down in the fall of 1862. He opened a coal-yard and superintended the refinery. Oil fluctuated at a rate calculated to make refiners bald-headed. In January of 1861 Abbott paid ten dollars a barrel for crude and one-twenty-five in March. In October of 1862 Howe & Nyce stored five-hundred barrels of crude on the first railroad-platform at Titusville, selling it to Abbott at two-sixty a barrel, packages included. In January of 1863 Abbott sold the oil from the same platform for fourteen dollars and in March the same lot—it had never been moved—brought eight dollars. Thirty days later Abbott bought it again at three dollars a barrel and refined it. He was interested in the Noble well, bought a large share in the Pithole and Miller Farm Pipe-Line and in 1866 formed a partnership with Henry Harley. He contributed largely to the Titusville and Pithole plank-road and all local enterprises likely to benefit the community. His generosity was comprehensive and discerning. He donated a chapel to the Episcopal congregation, projected the Union & Titusville Railroad and was a most exemplary, public-spirited citizen. To give bountifully was his delight. He bore financial disaster heroically and labored incessantly to save others from loss. At seventy-two he is patient and helpful to those about him, his daily life illustrating his real worth and illumining the pathway of his declining years.

Born in Ohio in 1839 and graduated from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute as a civil-engineer in 1858, Henry Harley supervised the construction of the Hoosac Tunnel until the war and settled at Pittsburg in 1862 as active partner of Richardson, Harley & Co. The firm had a large petroleum commission-house and Harley removed to Philadelphia in 1863 to manage its principal branch. He purchased large tracts in West Virginia which did not meet his expectations, withdrew from the commission-firm and in the latter part of 1865 built his first pipe-line. He was the confidential friend of Jay Gould and James Fisk, whose support placed him in a position to organize the Pennsylvania Transportation Company. For years Harley swam on the topmost wave and was a high-roller of the loftiest stripe. Henry Villard was not more magnetic. He told good stories, dealt out good cigars, knew champagne from seltzer and had no trace of the miser in his intercourse with the world. He lived at Titusville in regal style and made “the grand tour of Europe” in 1872. He was on intimate terms with railroad magnates, big politicians and Napoleons of finance. The Pipe-Line Company got into deep waters, prosecutions and legal entanglements crippled it and Henry Harley tumbled with the fabric his genius had reared. He drifted to New York, was a familiar figure around Chautauqua several seasons and died in 1892. His widow lives in New York and his brother George, a popular member of the Oil-City Oil-Exchange, died last year.

In November of 1865 the Oil City & Pithole Railroad Company began a railroad between the two towns, pushing the work with such energy that the first train from Pithole to Oil City was run on March tenth, 1866. Vandergrift & Forman equipped the Star Tank-Line to carry oil in tank-cars and laid the Star Pipe-Line from West Pithole to Pithole to connect with the railroad. An unequivocal success from the start, this pipe-line has been regarded as the real beginning of the present system of oil-transportation. The lower oil-country enlarged the field for pipe-line stations. Lines multiplied in Venango, Clarion, Armstrong and Butler. Some of these were controlled by Vandergrift & Forman, who brought the business to a high standard of perfection. Each district had one or more lines running to the nearest railroad. The Pennsylvania Transportation Company secured a charter in 1875 to construct a line to the seaboard. Nothing was done except to build more lines in the oil-region. The number grew continually. Clarion had a half-dozen, the Antwerp heading the list. Parker had a brood of small-fry and Butler was net-worked. It was the fashion to talk of trunk-lines, call public meetings, subscribe for stock and—let the project die. Dr. Hostetter, the Pittsburg millionaire of “Bitters” fame, built the Conduit Line from Millerstown to the city of smoke and soot. The Karns, the Relief and others ran to Harrisville. Every fellow wanted a finger in the pipe-line pot-pie. A war of competition arose, rates were cut, business was done at heavy loss and the weaker concerns went to the wall. The companies issued certificates or receipts, instead of paying cash for crude received by their lines. When the producer ran oil into the storage-tanks of some companies he was not certain the certificates given him in return would have any value next day. He must either use the lines or leave the oil in the ground. The necessity of combining the badly-managed competitive companies into a solid organization was urgent. The Union Pipe-Line Company acquired a number of lines and operated its system in connection with the Empire Line. Under the act of 1874 Vandergrift & Forman organized the United Pipe-Lines, into which numerous local lines were merged. The first grand step had been taken in the direction of settling the question of oil-transportation for all time.

The advantages of the consolidation quickly commended the new order of things to the public. The United Lines erected hundreds of iron-tanks for storage and connected with every producing-well. Needless pipes and pumps and stations were removed to be utilized as required. The best appliances were adopted, improving the service and diminishing its cost. Uniform rates were established and every detail was systematized. Captain Vandergrift, president of the United Lines, was ably assisted in each department. Daniel O’Day, a potent force in pipe-line affairs, developed the system to an exact science. He learned the shipping-business from the very rudiments in the great Empire Line. His thorough knowledge, industry and practical talent were of incalculable value to the United Lines. He possessed in full measure the qualities adapted especially to the expansion and improvement of the giant enterprise. He had the skill to plan wisely and the ability to execute promptly. His sagacity and experience foresaw the magnificent future of the system and he laid the foundations of the United Lines broad and deep. To-day Daniel O’Day is a master-spirit of the pipe-line world, a millionaire and vice-president of the National Transit Company, which transports nine-tenths of the oil produced in the United States. He has risen by personal desert, without favoritism or partiality. His elevation has not subtracted one whit from the manly character that gained him innumerable friends in the oil-region.

Edward Hopkins, first manager of the United Pipe-Lines, was an efficient officer and died young. John R. Campbell has been treasurer from the incorporation of the lines in 1877. Born in Massachusetts and graduated from Rev. Samuel Aaron’s celebrated school at Norristown, he served his apprenticeship in the Baldwin Locomotive Works and manufactured printing-inks in Philadelphia, with William L. and Charles H. Lay as partners. In March of 1865 he visited the oil-region and in August removed to Oil City. He acquired oil-interests, published the Register and was treasurer for the receiver of the Oil City & Pithole Railroad Company. In 1867 he became book-keeper for Vandergrift & Lay, afterwards for Captain Vandergrift and later for Vandergrift & Forman, who appointed him treasurer of their pipe-lines in 1868. He retained the position in the United Lines and he is still treasurer of that division of the National Transit Company. To Mr. Campbell is largely due the accurate and comprehensive system of pipe-line accounts now universally adopted. He aided in devising negotiable oil-certificates, reliable as government bonds and convertible into cash at any moment. He enjoys to the fullest extent the confidence and esteem of his associates and is treasurer of a dozen large corporations. He was president term after term of the Ivy Club, one of the finest social organizations in Pennsylvania, and a liberal promoter of important enterprises. His abiding faith in Oil City he manifests by investing in manufactures and furthering public improvements. Active, helpful and popular in business, in society and in the church, no eulogy could add to the high estimation in which John R. Campbell is held wherever known.

The enormous production of the Bradford field, the increased distances and the construction of lines to the sea presented new and difficult problems. A natural increase in size led to a demand for pipe of better quality, for heavier fittings and improved machinery. The largest line prior to Bradford’s advent was a four-inch pipe from the Butler field to Pittsburg, in 1875. Excepting this and three-inch lines to Raymilton and Oil City, none of the main lines exceeded twelve miles in length. Many were gravity-lines and others used small tubing and light pumps. The greater quantities and longer distances in the northern district—the oil also congealed at a higher temperature and was harder to handle than the product of the lower fields—required greater power, larger pipes and increased facilities. The first six-inch line was laid from Tarport to Carrollton in the spring of 1879. Two four-inch lines had preceded it and a four-inch line from Tarport to Kane was completed the same season, five six-inch lines following later. The first long-distance line, a five-inch pipe from Hilliards—near Petrolia—to Cleveland, was completed in the summer of 1879. Trunk-lines to the eastern coast were begun in 1879-80. The trunk-line to Philadelphia starts at Colegrove, McKean county, and extends two-hundred-and-thirty-five miles—six-inch pipe—with a five-inch branch of sixty-six miles from Millway to Baltimore. Starting at Olean, two six-inch lines were paralleled to Saddle River, N.J. They separated there, one connecting with the refineries at Bayonne and the other going under the North and East Rivers to Hunter’s Point, on Long Island. The New-York line is double under the Hudson—one pipe inside another, with tight-fitting sleeve-joints. The ends of the jacket-pipe were separated twelve inches to permit the enclosed pipe to be screwed home. The sleeve was then pushed over the gap and the space between the pipes filled with melted lead. The line is held in place by two sets of heavy chains, parallel with and about twenty feet from the pipe, one on each side. At intervals of three-hundred feet a guide-chain connects the pipe with the lateral chains and beyond each of these connections an anchor, weighing over a ton, keeps the whole in place. The completion of this part of the line was an engineering triumph not much inferior to the laying of Cyrus W. Field’s Atlantic Cable.

The United Pipe-Lines Association moved forward steadily, avoiding the pitfalls that had wrecked other systems. It bought or combined the Oil-City, Antwerp, Union, Karns, Grant, Conduit, Relief, Pennsylvania, Clarion and McKean divisions of the American-Transfer, Prentice, Olean, Union Oil-Company’s at Clarendon, McCalmont at Cherry Grove and smaller lines, covering the oil-region from Allegany to Butler. The United owned three-thousand miles of lines, thirty-five-million barrels of iron-tankage and one-hundred-and-eighteen local pump-stations. Even these extraordinary resources were strained by the overflowing demand. Bradford was the Oliver Twist of the region, continually crying for “More!” Ohio and West Virginia entered the race and required facilities for handling an amazing amount of oil. To meet any contingency and secure the advantages of consolidation in the states producing oil the National-Transit Company increased its capital to thirty-two-million dollars. The company held the original charter granted to the Pennsylvania Company under the act of 1870. In 1880 it absorbed the American-Transfer Company, an extensive concern. On April first, 1884, it acquired the plant and business of the United Lines, thus ranking with the most powerful corporations in the land.

Men entirely familiar with the minutest details of oil-transportation and storage guided the National Transit. Captain Vandergrift was influential in the management until his retirement from active duty in 1892. President C. A. Griscom was succeeded by Benjamin Brewster and he by H. H. Rogers, the present official head of the company. John Bushnell was secretary, Daniel O’Day general manager, and James R. Snow general superintendent. Skillful, practical and keenly alive to the necessities of the oil-region, they were not kid-gloved idlers whose chief aim was to draw fat salaries. Mr. Rogers made his mark on Oil Creek in pioneer times as a forceful, intelligent, progressive business-man. He had brains, earnestness, integrity and industry and rose by positive merit to the presidency of the greatest transportation-company of the age. He is a first-class citizen, a liberal patron of education and an apostle of good roads. He endows schools and colleges, abounds in kindly deeds and does not forget his experiences in Oildom. Daniel O’Day—clever and capable, “whom not to know is to argue one’s self unknown”—who has not heard of the plucky, invincible vice-president of the National Transit Company? Everybody admires the genial, resolute son of Erin whose clear head, willing hands, strong individuality and sterling qualities have raised him to a position Grover Cleveland might covet. James R. Snow invented a pump so perfect that oil would fairly flow up hill for a chance to pass through the machine. From their Broadway offices Rogers, O’Day and Snow direct by telephone and telegraph the movements of regiments of employés in Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia and Indiana. They are in direct communication with every office of the company, every purchasing-agency, every pump-station on the trunk-lines and every oil-producing section of four states. No army Napoleon, Wellington or Grant commanded was better officered, better disciplined, better equipped and better managed than the grand army of National-Transit pipe-men. If “poets are born, not made,” what shall be said of the wide-awake solvers of the problem of rapid transit for oil—the pipe-liners who, combining the maximum of efficiency with the minimum of cost, have placed a great staple within reach of the lowliest dwellers beneath the Stars and Stripes? Candidly, is “the best in the shop” too good for them?

No man has contributed more to the development of the oil-industry, alike as a producer, refiner and transporter, than Captain J. J. Vandergrift. His active connection with petroleum goes back to pioneer operations, widening and expanding constantly. By his energy, perseverance, uprightness and masterly traits of character he attained prominence in all branches of the oil-business. His wonderful success was not due to any caprice of fortune, but to stability of purpose, patient application and honorable methods. Vigor and decision supplemented the keen foresight that discovered the amazing possibilities of petroleum as an article of universal utility. He believed in the future of oil and shaped his course in accordance with the broadest ideas. Allied with George V. Forman, clear-headed, quick to plan and execute, the firm took a leading part in producing and carrying oil. Vandergrift & Forman constructed the Star Pipe-Line and equipped trains of tank-cars to convey crude from Pithole to Oil City. They drilled hosts of wells in Butler county and built the Fairview Pipe-Line, which finally crystallized with numerous others into the United Pipe-Lines Association and the gigantic National-Transit Company. The firm of H. L. Taylor & Co., of which they were members, originated the Union Oil-Company. Vandergrift & Forman, Vandergrift, Pitcairn & Co. and Vandergrift, Young & Co. consolidated as the Forest Oil-Company, which holds the foremost place in the production of oil. Mr. Forman operated in Allegany and McKean, developing large tracts of territory on the Bingham and Barse lands. He resided at Olean and established the finest stock-farm in the Empire State. Removing to Buffalo to engage in banking, he organized the Fidelity Trust-Company and erected for its use a palatial structure in the heart of the city. Under his presidency the Fidelity is a power in the world of finance. Shrewd, prompt and far-seeing, George V. Forman is richly dowered with the qualities of business-leadership. His influence in the oil-country was not limited to one corner or district or locality. He has enjoyed the pleasure of making money and the greater pleasure of giving liberally. He is “a man who thinks it out, then goes and does it.”

Born at Pittsburg in 1827, at fifteen Jacob Jay Vandergrift chose the pathway that naturally opened before him and entered the steamboat-service, then the chief medium of intercommunication between his native city and the west. In ten years he rose from cabin-boy to captain. He introduced the method of towing coal-barges that has since been employed in the river-traffic. The innovation attracted wide attention and gave a great impetus to mining in the Pittsburg coal-fields. Captain Vandergrift was steamboating on the Ohio when the war broke out and owned the staunch Red Fox, which the government chartered and lost near Cairo. He transported oil down the Allegheny, was concerned in West-Virginia wells—the Confederates destroyed them—and removed to Oil City in 1863 to oversee his shipping-business, with Daniel Bushnell as his first partner in producing oil. He organized the firms out of which grew the Union, the Forest, the Washington Oil-Company and the United Oil and Gas Trust. He was president of the Forest and the Washington and a leading promoter of the Anchor Oil-Company. The success of these great companies was owing largely to his peculiar ability as an organizer and manager of important enterprises. Other individuals and corporations produced oil profitably, but to Vandergrift & Forman the marvelous advance in modes of transportation is mainly attributable. They piped and railroaded oil from Pithole, extended their lines through the different fields, devised many improvements, perfected the methods of handling the product and developed the system that has eliminated jaded horses, wooden-barrels, mud-scows, slow freights and the thousand inconveniences of early transportation. Captain Vandergrift’s sturdy integrity and wise forethought planned the open, clear-cut manner in which his pipe-lines conducted business. Throughout their entire existence he was president of the United Pipe-Lines and of the United Division of the National-Transit after the consolidation in 1884. Their splendid record is an unqualified tribute to his business-skill and rare sagacity. He found the region hampered by an expensive, tedious method of moving oil and left it a transportation-system that serves the industry as no other on earth is served. He substituted the steam-pump for the wearied mule, the iron-artery for the roads of bottomless mire and the huge cistern of boiler-plate for the portable tank of wooden staves that leaked at every pore. To Oil City he was a munificent benefactor. He projected the Imperial Refinery, with a capacity of fifteen-thousand barrels a week, by the sale of which he became a stockholder and officer of the Standard Oil-Company. He aided in establishing the Boiler-Works, the Barrel-Works, river-bridges, manufactories, churches and public improvements. He paid his workmen the highest wages, befriended the humble toiler and assisted every worthy object. The poor blessed his beneficent hand and all classes revered the modest citizen whose unostentatious deeds of kindness no party, race, color or creed could for one moment restrict.

Very naturally, one thus interested in a special product and its industries must be identified with its finance. Captain Vandergrift founded the Oil-City Trust-Company, one of the leading banking institutions of the state, and was prominent in organizing the Oil-Exchange, the Seaboard-National Bank of New York and the Argyle Savings-Bank at Petrolia. Removing to Pittsburg in 1881, he founded the Keystone Bank and the Pittsburg Trust-Company—nine-hundred-thousand dollars paid-up capital and four-millions deposits—and was unanimously elected president of both. He provided spacious quarters for the Oil-Exchange and established it on a sound basis. He erected the massive Vandergrift Building on Fourth avenue, in which the National-Transit Company, the Forest, the South-Penn, the Pennsylvania, the Woodland and other oil-companies are commodiously housed. The owner occupies a suite of offices on the second floor and the Pittsburg Trust-Company has its bank on the ground floor of the granite structure. He also erected the Conestoga Building, which has seven-hundred elegant offices, and the Imperial Power-Building, with factory-construction and the latest electric-motors throughout. In 1882 he organized the Pennsylvania Tube-Works—eight-hundred-thousand dollars capital—to manufacture all kinds of wrought-iron pipe. The output was so excellent that the capital was increased to two-millions and the plant doubled. The works turn out pipe from one-eighth inch to twenty-eight inches, the smallest and largest sizes in the world. The Apollo Steel-Company, which he also capitalized in 1885 at three-hundred-thousand dollars, has likewise trebled its plant and enlarged its capital to two-millions. The Penn Fuel-Company, the Bridgewater Gas Company, the Natural-Gas Company of West Virginia, the Chartiers Natural-Gas Company, the United Oil and Gas Trust, the Toledo Natural-Gas Company, the Fort-Pitt Natural-Gas Company and a number more were incorporated by Captain Vandergrift. They represent many millions of capital and have performed inestimable service in developing the fuel that proved a veritable philosopher’s stone to the iron-industries of Western-Pennsylvania. As in petroleum, from the days of spring-poles and bulk-barges and pond-freshets down through all the changes of the most remarkable industrial development the world has ever seen, so Captain Vandergrift has been a pioneer, a guide and a leader in natural-gas. His hand has never been off the helm, nor has he ever grudged an atom of the energy bestowed upon the cherished pursuits of his busy life.

Forty miles north-east of Pittsburg, on a beautiful bend of the Kiskiminetas River, the new town of Vandergrift has been laid out, under the direction of Frederick Law Olmsted. It is located on a plot one mile square, two miles below Apollo, the gentle slope overlooking the valley and the river for leagues. Its residents will have within easy reach of simple thrift what luxurious people enjoy in large cities at great expense. They will have clean air and water and breathing-room, green leaves and flowers and grass, paved streets and sewers and electricity, parks and walks and drives, shade-trees and lawns and pleasant homes, for Vandergrift will be the model town of Pennsylvania. The company is paying sixty-thousand dollars a month at Apollo in wages and the big works at Vandergrift will employ thrice as many men. At first the bulk of the town will be the habitations of those employed by and associated with the company. After a little others will note its advantages and desire to share them. Provision will be made this year for an immediate population of several thousand, with the means of living comfortably, families owning their homes and controlling their own pursuits. The town is not to be a fad, a hobby, or a visionary Utopia, but a good place for men to live in, for the founder to use his money, for the world to look at and learn from. These banks and business-blocks, pipe-lines and refineries, mills and factories and the town that bears his name are enduring monuments to the enterprise and wisdom of a man who recognizes the responsibilities of wealth in his investments, in his works of philanthropy and in his gifts to the children of misfortune.

Captain Vandergrift’s home in Allegheny City is a center of good cheer and genial hospitality. The host is the same kindly, companionable gentleman by his own hearth, in his office or on the street. He casts the lead of memory into the stream of the past and talks entertainingly of the old days on the Ohio, the Allegheny and Oil Creek. He is never too much engaged to welcome a comrade of his early years. He has not lost touch with men or the spirit of sympathy with the struggling and unsuccessful. His trials and vicissitudes, equally with his triumphs and successes, have strengthened his moral fiber, his manly courage and his nobility of character. Doubtful plans and purposes have had no place in his policy. Strict honesty and fairness have governed his conduct and respected the rights and privileges of his fellows. He has been quick to discover and reward talent, to grasp the details and possibilities of business and to mature plans for any emergency. Money has not shriveled his soul and narrowed him to the prayer of selfishness: “Give me this day my daily bread.” He prefers straightforwardness to a pedigree running back to the Mayflower. He realizes that golden opportunities for good are not traveling by a time-table and that men will not journey this way again to repair omissions and rectify mistakes. He knows that he who does right will be right and feel right. He does not lay aside his sense of justice, his love of fair-play, his earnest convictions and his desire to benefit mankind with his Sunday clothes. He believes that principle which is not exercised every day will not keep sweet a week. The story of J. J. Vandergrift’s life and labor is told wherever the flame of natural-gas glows in the white heat of a furnace or the gleam of an oil-lamp brightens a happy home.

Somehow we all feel sure, boys, that when the game is o’er— When the last inning’s play’d, boys, this side the other shore— We’ll hear the Umpire say, boys: “The Captain’s made a score.”

Few persons have any conception of the labor and capital involved in storing and transporting petroleum. Only those familiar with the early methods can appreciate fully the convenience and economy of the pipe-line system. It puts the producer in direct communication with the carrier and a market at all seasons, regardless of high or low water, rain or storm, mud or dust. The tanks at his wells are connected with the pipe-line by one or more of the two-inch feeders that spider-web the producing-country. Small pumps force the crude, when the location of the well prevents running it by gravity, from these tanks into a receiving-tank of the line, whence it can be piped into the trunk-lines or a storage-tank as desired. The producer who wishes his oil run notifies the nearest office or agent of the company—usually this requires about two minutes by wire—a gauger measures the feet and inches of fluid in the tank, opens the stop-cock, turns the stream into the line and, presto, change! the job is done. The gauger measures the oil left at the bottom of the tank, gives the producer a receipt for the difference between the two gauges and reports the result to the central station of that section of the field. There tables of the measurements of every tank in the locality are at hand, properly labeled and numbered. The right table shows at a glance the amount of oil in barrels corresponding to the feet and inches the gauger reports having run and the producer is credited accordingly, just like a depositor in a bank. These reports are summed up at a certain hour and the company learns precisely how much oil has been received each day. By a similar process the shipments are recorded and the exact quantity in the custody of the company is known at the close of the day’s business. Runs and shipments are published daily and a monthly synopsis is posted, in compliance with the laws of Pennsylvania. The producer can leave his oil in the line, subject to a slight charge for storage after thirty days, or sell it immediately. He can take certificates or acceptances of one thousand barrels each, payable on demand in crude-oil at any shipping-point in the oil-region. These certificates, good as gold and negotiable as certified checks, the holder can use as collateral to borrow money, sell at sight or stow away if he looks for an advance in prices. It is not Hobson’s choice with him. In an hour from the time of notifying the office his oil may be run, the amount figured up, the sale made and the currency in the owner’s pocket. He has not tugged and perspired loading it in wagons or on cars, worn out his patience and his team and his profanity driving it through an ocean of mud, or risked the chances of a jam and a wreck ferrying it on the bosom of a pond-freshet. Nor has he put up one penny for the service of the pipe-line, which collects twenty cents a barrel when the oil is delivered to the purchaser. The company is not a holder of oil on its own account, except what it necessarily keeps to offset evaporation and sediment, acting merely as a common-carrier between the producer and the refiner. The system is the perfection of simplicity, accuracy and cheapness.

Pipe-lines are the natural outgrowth of the petroleum-business, which could no more get along without them than could the commerce of the world without railroads and steamships. The movement of a thousand barrels of crude in early times was a task of great magnitude, costly, time-consuming and perplexing. Sometimes barrels were not to be had, the water was too shallow for boating or the mud too deep for teaming. Often a big well wasted half its product and gorged transportation, harassing the soul and depleting the purse of the luckless owner. Fancy attempting to handle a hundred-thousand barrels a day with the primitive appliances! Whew! You might as well try to cart off Niagara in kegs. Butler and McKean rushed wells by the hundred every week, swelling the production extravagantly. The supply was enormously in excess of the demand. Operators wouldn’t stop drilling and the surplus oil had to be cared for in some way. The United Lines and the National-Transit Company spent millions of dollars to provide adequate facilities. Not only was the vast output to be taken from the wells, but a large percentage must be stored. To pipe a hundred-and-forty-thousand barrels a day was a grand achievement, even without the burden of husbanding much of the stuff for weeks, months and years. A wilderness of iron-tanks—thirty to forty thousand barrels each—went up at Olean, Oil City, Raymilton, Parker and distributing points. Stocks increased and tanks multiplied until forty-million barrels were piled up! Think of the mountains of pipe, the acres of iron-plates, the legions of workmen and the stacks of cash all this required. Six pipes were laid to New York and the Tidewater Company built a six-inch line to New Jersey. The trunk-lines of the National-Transit alone are five-thousand miles in length, besides which the Tidewater and the United-States pipe oil eastward. Fifty-thousand barrels of crude a day flow through these underground arteries to the refineries at Hunter’s Point, Bayonne and Philadelphia. Other thousands are piped to Baltimore, Buffalo, Cleveland, Pittsburg and refineries in the oil-region. The pipe used in transporting crude would girdle the earth twice and leave a long string for extra-measure. Truly “these be piping times.”

McDonald gushers poured out their floods, but the National-Transit and Mellon Lines were on deck with pumps and pipes that snatched the contents of the tanks and whirled them to the sea. John McKeown’s leviathan at Washington electrified the neighborhood by starting at three-hundred barrels an hour, with only three small tanks to hold the product. It filled the first in forty minutes. Superintendent Glenn Braden set up a pump in thirty minutes more that would empty the tank in a half-hour. All night it was nip and tuck between the spouter and the pump, big Goliath and puny David. The pump won, the oil was safe in the line and not a drop spilled! West-Virginia’s geysers burst forth and the Southern Trunk-Line—three-hundred miles of eight-inch and six-inch pipe—linked Morgantown to Philadelphia. Lima tried to drown Ohio in crude and an eight-inch line quietly dumped the deluge into Chicago. Part of it fired the half-mile row of boilers at the Columbian Exposition, with not a cinder, a speck of ashes or a whiff of smoke to dim the lustrous flame of fuel-oil. Indiana, the home of some pretty big statesmen, some pretty big oil-territory and “the Hoosier Schoolmaster,” had a surfeit of crude which the pipe-lines bore to the huge refinery at Whiting, to Cleveland and the Windy City. Thus the development of new fields, remote from railroads, has been rendered possible.

Trunk-lines require pipe of extra weight, manufactured expressly for the purpose from wrought-iron, lap-welded, cut into lengths of eighteen feet and tested to a pressure of two-thousand pounds to the square inch. Pumping-stations, supplied with powerful machinery, are located at suitable points, generally twenty-five to thirty miles apart. The stations on the National-Transit trunk-lines usually comprise a boiler-house forty feet square, built of brick and roofed with corrugated iron, lighted by electricity and containing seven or eight tubular boilers of eighty to one-hundred horse-power. For greater safety from fire the immense pumps are in a separate brick-building. The largest pumps are triple-expansion crank and fly-wheel engines, the invention of John S. Klein, superintendent of the company’s machine-shops at Oil City. Each of these giants can force twenty-five-thousand barrels of oil a day through three six-inch pipes from one station to the next. A low-duty engine is run when the main-pump is stopped for repairs or any cause. At each station two or more storage-tanks—thirty to thirty-five thousand barrels apiece—are provided. One receives the oil from the preceding station while the pump is emptying the other into the receiver at the station beyond. The movement is incessant. Night and day, never tiring and never resting, the iron-arteries throb and pulsate with the greasy liquid that rushes swiftly a yard beneath the surface, duplicate machinery obviating the necessity of delay or interruption. Five or six boilers are fired at once and two are held in reserve, in case of accident. Loops are laid around some of the stations, that a pump may send the oil two or three times the average distance and the total disability of a station not blockade the line. When lofty hills are surmounted the pressure on the pump reaches twelve to fifteen-hundred pounds. Independent telegraph-lines connect the stations with one another and the main-offices. The engineers handle the key and click messages expertly. The lines are patrolled regularly to detect leaks, although the system of checking from tank to tank makes it impossible for a serious break to pass unnoticed. To clear the incrustations of paraffine, especially in cold weather, a scraper or “go-devil” is sent through the pipes. The best of these instruments—a spindle with a ball-and-socket-joint near its center to follow the bends of the pipe, fitted with steel-blades set radially and kept in position by three arms in front and rear—was devised by Mr. Klein. Oblique vanes, put in motion by the running oil, rotate the spindle and the blades scrape the pipe as the “go-devil” is propelled forward. A catch-box is placed at the end of each division and the queer traveler can be closely timed. The great battery of boilers, the huge engine-pumps—one on the Lima-Chicago line weighs a hundred tons—the electric-plants and the intricate maze of steam-pipes and water-pipes suggest the machinery of an ocean-steamship.

If the railroad is “the missionary of punctuality,” as Robert Burdette concisely expresses it, surely the pipe-line is the messenger of efficiency. With wondrous speed and unfailing certainty it conveys crude-oil from the wells to the refineries in or out of the region, climbing hills, descending ravines, fathoming rivers and traversing plains and forests. Methods of refining have kept pace with progress in transportation. The smoky, dangerous, inconvenient kettle-still of the pioneer on Oil Creek has given place to the mammoth refinery of to-day, with its labor-saving appliances, its hundreds of skilled employés and its improved processes. Instead of the ill-smelling, sputtering, explosive mixture of earlier years, the world now receives the water-white kerosene that burns as steadily and safely as a wax-taper. Seventy tank-vessels carry it over the seas to Europe, Asia and Africa. It is delivered at your house in neat cans, or the grocer will sell it by the pint, quart, gallon or barrel. The light is pure as heaven’s own sunshine, grateful to the eye and beautifying to the home. No other substance approaches petroleum in the number and utility of its products. Long years of patient research and experiment have extracted from it one-hundred-and-fifty articles of value in art, science, mechanics and domestic economy. It supplies healing-salves, ointments, cosmetics, soaps, dainty toilet-accessories and—oh, girly Vassar girls—chewing-gum! Refuse tar and scum are converted into lamp-black and coarse lubricants. Scarcely a particle of it goes to waste. Noxious gases and poisonous acids no longer pollute the air and the streams around refineries, offending human nostrils and killing helpless fish. The amazing vastness of its development is equalled only by the marvelous variety of petroleum’s commercial uses.

At every stage of its journey from the hole in the ground to the abode of the purchaser of kerosene, oil is handled with a view to the best results. The pipe-line relieves the producer from worry and fatigue and a large outlay, furnishing him prompt service and a cash market at his own door every business-day in the year. It enables the refiner to fill the consumer’s lamp at a trifling margin above the price of crude. For seventy cents a barrel—less than half it cost formerly to haul it a mile—the line collects oil from the wells, pumps it into the trunk-lines and delivers it in New York. Contrast this charge with the four, five, eight or ten dollars exacted in the days of boats and wagons, barrels and tank-cars and endeavor to figure the saving to the public wrought by the pipe-lines, to say nothing of greater convenience and expedition. The existing transportation-system may be a monopoly, but the country is hungry for more monopolies of the same sort. If it be monopoly to bring order out of chaos, to build one strong enterprise from a dozen weaklings, to consolidate into a grand corporation a score of feeble lines and reduce freight-rates seventy-five to ninety-five per cent., the National-Transit Company is the rankest monopoly of the century. It practices the kind of monopoly that converts a row of tottering shanties into a stately business-block. It is guilty of furnishing storage solid as the Rock of Gibraltar to the men who drilled oil down to forty cents a barrel and tiding them over the period of excessive production. This is the brand of monopoly that keeps industry alive, that supplies foreign nations with an American product and benefits humanity. If Van Syckle, Abbott and Harley were plucky and courageous in braving the wrath of four-thousand teamsters, how much more brain and brawn, muscle and money, dollars and sense were needed to lay trunk-lines that sent ten-thousand tank-cars to the junk-pile and diminished the revenues of railroads millions of dollars annually! The owners of these lines have grown rich, as they ought to do, because for every dollar of their winnings they have saved producers and consumers of petroleum ten.

Pipe-line certificates afforded an excellent medium for speculation. The commodity they represented was subject to fluctuations of five to fifty per cent., which made it particularly fascinating to speculators in stocks. Oil-exchanges were established at Oil City, Titusville, Parker, Bradford, Pittsburg, New York, Philadelphia and elsewhere. In a single year the clearances exceeded eleven-billion barrels. Bulls and bears reveled in excitement and brokers had customers from every quarter of the country. The forerunner of these institutions was “the Curbstone Exchange” at Oil City in 1870. The bulk of the buying and selling was done in front of Lockhart, Frew & Co.’s office, Centre street, near the railroad track. Producers, dealers and spectators would congregate on the sidewalk, discuss the situation, tell stories and buy or sell oil. The group in the illustration includes a number of well-known citizens. Most of them have left Oil City and not a few have gone from earth. Acquaintances will recognize Dr. Knox, John Mawhinney, James Mawhinney, John D. Archbold, Dr. Baldwin, A. H. Bronson, P. H. Judd, L. D. Kellogg, A. E. Fay, George Porter, Edward Higbee, William M. Williams, John W. Austin, J. M. Butters, Joseph Bates, George W. Parker, William H. Porterfield, Charles W. Frazer, Edward Simmons, Samuel H. Lamberton, James H. Magee, Isaac Lloyd and William Elliott. Charles Lockhart and William Frew were pioneer refiners at Pittsburg and heavy buyers of crude at Oil City. William G. Warden entered into partnership with them and established the great Atlantic Refinery at Point Breeze. In 1874 the refineries controlled by Warden, Frew & Co. consolidated with the Standard Oil-Company of Ohio, forming the nucleus of the Standard Oil-Trust. Mr. Warden built the Gladstone, the first large apartment-house in Philadelphia, and died in April of 1895. He married a daughter of Daniel Bushnell and was one of the most enterprising and charitable citizens of Pennsylvania. His surviving contemporaries are old in reminiscences of Oil Creek and the days when pipe-lines and oil-certificates were unguessed probabilities.

Trades were made in offices, at wells, on streets, anywhere and everywhere. Purchasers for Pittsburg, Baltimore and Philadelphia refiners started brokerage in 1868, on a commission of ten cents a barrel from buyers and five from sellers. The Farmers’ Railroad, completed to Oil City in 1867, brought so many operators to town that a car was assigned them, in which they bought and sold “spot,” “regular” and “future oil.” There were no certificates, no written obligations, no margins to bind a bargain, but everything was done on honor and no man’s word was broken. “Spot oil” was to be moved and paid for at once, “regular” allowed the buyer ten days to put the oil on the cars and “future” was taken as agreed upon mutually. Large lots frequently changed hands in this passenger-car, really the first oil-exchange. The business increased, an exchange on wheels had manifest disadvantages and in December of 1869 it was decided to effect a permanent organization. Officers were elected and a room was rented on Centre street. It removed to the Sands Block in 1871, to the Opera-House Block in January of 1872 and to a temporary shed next the Empire-Line office in the fall, when South-Improvement complications dissolved the organization. For about fifteen months hotels, streets, or offices sufficed for accommodations. In February of 1864 the exchange was reorganized, with George V. Forman as president, and occupied quarters in the Collins House four years. Gradually rules were adopted and methods introduced that brought about the system afterwards in vogue. In April of 1878 the formal opening of the splendid Oil-Exchange Building took place. The structure contained offices, committee-rooms, telegraph-lines, reading-rooms and all conveniences for its four-hundred members. H. L. Foster, now of Chicago, was president term after term. The late H. L. McCance, secretary for years, was a first-class artist, with a skill for caricature worthy of Thomas Nast. Some of the most striking cartoons pertaining to oil were the work of his ready pencil. F. W. Mitchell & Co. inaugurated the advancing of money on certificates, their bank’s transactions in this line ranging from one to four-million dollars a day. The application of the clearing-house system in 1882 simplified the routine and facilitated deliveries. The volume of business was immense, the clearances often amounting to ten or fifteen-million barrels a day. Only the New York and the San Francisco stock-exchanges surpassed it. If speculation were piety, everybody who inhaled the air of Oil City would have been saved and the devil might have put up his shutters. During rapid fluctuations the galleries would be packed with men and women who had “taken a flyer” and watched the antics of the bulls and bears intently. Fortunes were gained and lost. Many a “lamb” was shorn and many a “duck” lamed. It was a raging fever, a delirium of excitement, compressing years of ordinary anxiety and haste into a week. Now the exchange is deserted and speculative trade in oil is dead. Part of the big building is a clothier’s store and offices are rented for sleeping-apartments. Myer Lowentritt, Stewart Simpson, “Eddie” Selden, Samuel Justus and a half-dozen others are seen occasionally, but days pass without a solitary transaction, the surging crowds have vanished and activity is a dream of bygone years.

Parker had a lively oil-exchange when the Armstrong and Butler fields were at their height. The most prominent men in speculative trade lived in the town or were represented in the exchange. Thomas B. Simpson was a large operator. George Darr was agent of Daniel Goettel, who once engineered the greatest bull-movement in the history of oil and was supposed to have “cornered” the market. Charles Ball and Henry Loomis earned sixty-thousand dollars brokerage a year and died within a month of each other. Trade slackened and expired. The boys shifted to Bradford and Pittsburg and a constable sold the building to satisfy Mrs. W. H. Spain’s claim for ground-rent! The five-thousand-dollar library and the costly pictures, dust-covered and neglected, sold for a trifle and went to South Oil City. A jollier, bigger-hearted crowd of fellows than the members of the Parker Exchange never played a practical joke or helped a poor sufferer out of “a deuce of a fix.”

The Bradford Oil-Exchange started on January first, 1883, with five-hundred members and a forty-thousand-dollar building. Five-hundred others, with Hon. David Kirk as president, organized the Producers’ Petroleum-Exchange and erected a spacious brick-block, occupying it on January second, 1884. Both exchanges whooped it up briskly, both have subsided and the buildings are stores and offices. Titusville’s handsome exchange, on the site of the American Hotel, has gone the same road. Captain Vandergrift built the Pittsburg Oil-Exchange, the finest of them all, fitting it up superbly. A bank and offices have succeeded the festive dealers in crude. From the Mining-Stock Exchange, the Miscellaneous Security Board and several more of similar types the New-York Consolidated Stock and Petroleum Exchange developed a huge concern, with twenty-four-hundred members and a lordly building—erected in 1887—on Broadway and Exchange Place. The membership was the largest in the country, with the exception of the Produce Exchange, and the business in oil at times exceeded the transactions of the Stock Exchange. Seats sold as high as three-thousand dollars. Charles G. Wilson has been president since the organization of the Petroleum and Stock Board, which absorbed the National Petroleum Exchange—L. H. Smith was its president—and in 1885 adopted the elongated name that has burdened it eleven years. Oil is not mentioned once a week, because the stocks have declined to a skeleton and the certificates represent scarcely a half-million barrels. Philadelphia had an exchange of lesser degree and a score of oil-region towns sharpened their appetite for speculation by establishing branch-concerns and bucket-shops. The almost entire disappearance of the speculative trade is not the least remarkable feature of the petroleum-development.

Since the elimination of exchanges producers generally sell their oil in the shape of credit-balances. For their convenience the Standard Oil-Company has established purchasing-agencies throughout the region. The quantity of crude to the credit of the seller on the pipe-line books is ascertained from the National-Transit office, a check is given and all the trouble the producer has is to draw his money from the bank. It is handier than a pocket in a shirt, easier than rolling off a log in a mill-pond, and the happy “victim of monopoly” goes on his way rejoicing after the manner of Philip’s converted eunuch. If he reside at a distance, be sojourning at Squedunk or in London, traveling with the Czar or showing the Prince of Wales a good time, a message to the agency will deliver his oil to Harry Lewis and the cash to his own order in a twinkling. The whole chain of purchasing-agencies is managed by Joseph Seep, whose headquarters are at Oil City. The Standard has the knack of selecting A-1 men for responsible positions—men who are not misfits, square pegs in round holes or small potatoes in the hill. Among the capable thousands who represent the great corporation none is better adapted to his important place than the head of the purchasing-agencies. He has the tact, the experience, the knowledge of human-nature and the strength of character the position demands. For twenty-five years he has purchased crude for the company, up Oil Creek, at Oil City and down the Allegheny. You may not belong to his church or his party, you may differ from him on silver and woman-suffrage, you may even call the Standard an “octopus”—Col. J. A. Vera first did this at a meeting near St. Petersburg in 1874—and wish to turn its picture to the wall, but you like “Joe” Seep for his candor, his manliness, his admirable blending of suavity and firmness. He hails from the succulent blue-grass of Kentucky, combines Southern ease and Northern vigor, lives at Titusville and enjoys his wealth. It would strain Chicago’s convention-hall to hold his legions of friends. His heart and his purse are alike generous. He produces oil, buys oil, ships oil and “pays the freight” on three-fourths of the oil handled in Oildom. He and George Lewis and Harry Lewis—“match ’em if you can”—have bought enough oil to fill a sea on which the navies of the world might race and leave room for the Yale crew that crew too soon. Seep and the Lewises are the gilt-edged stripe of men who don’t drop banana-skins on the sidewalk to trip up a neighbor or squirm with envy because somebody else has a streak of good-luck. When Seep’s last shipment has been made, the account is closed and the Recording Angel’s ledger shows his big credit-balance, St. Peter will “throw the gates wide open,” bid him welcome and never think of springing the old gag: “Not for Joseph, not for Joe!”

Sudden shifts in the market brought queer experiences in the days of wild oil-speculation, enriching some dabblers and impoverishing others. Stories of gains and losses were printed in newspapers, repeated in Europe and exaggerated at home and abroad. A bull-clique at Bradford, acting upon “tips from the inside,” dropped four-hundred-thousand dollars in six months. An Oil-City producer cleared three-hundred-thousand one spring, loaded for a further rise and was bankrupted by the frightful collapse Cherry Grove ushered in. A Warren minister risked three-thousand dollars, the savings of his lifetime, which vanished in a style that must have taught him not to lay up treasures on earth. A Pittsburg cashier margined his own and his grandmother’s hundred-thousand dollars. The money went into the whirlpool and the old lady went to the poor-house. A young Warrenite put up five-hundred dollars to margin a block of certificates, kept doubling as the price advanced and quit fifty-thousand ahead. He looked about for a chance to invest, but the craze had seized him and he hazarded his pile in oil. Cherry Grove swept away his fortune in a day. A Bradford hotel-keeper’s first plunge netted him a hundred dollars one forenoon. He thought that beat attending bar and haunted the Producers’ Exchange persistently. He mortgaged his property in hope of calling the turn, but the sheriff raked in the pot and the poor landlord was glad to drive a beer-wagon. Such instances could be multiplied indefinitely. Hundreds of producers lost in the maelstrom all the earnings of their wells, while the small losers would be like the crowd John beheld in his vision on Patmos, “a great company whom no man can number.” Wages of drivers, pumpers, drillers, laborers and servant-girls were swallowed in the quicksands of the treacherous sea.

Of course there were many winners and many happy strokes of fortune. In 1876 Peter Swenk, of Ithaca, N. Y., purchased through a Parker broker ten-thousand barrels at two dollars and left orders to buy five-thousand more should the market break to one-seventy-five. Returning home, he was taken violently ill and the market suddenly fell forty cents, five cents below his margins. The day was stormy and Swenk could obtain no reports except from Oil City, where the break was eight cents greater than at Parker. The storm saved Swenk, although he did not know it for months, by crippling the wires and shutting off communication between Oil City and Parker the last hour of business. Concluding the margins were exhausted and the broker had sold the oil to save himself, Swenk went west to start anew. Weeks after his departure his Ithaca friends received urgent telegrams from the broker at Parker. They forwarded the messages, which informed him that, as the market stood, he was worth nineteen-thousand dollars and would be wise to sell. Swenk wired to close the whole matter and started for Parker. The market jumped another peg just before the order to sell arrived and Swenk received twenty-two-thousand dollars profits. He paid the broker double commission, returned home and bought a splendid farm. The faithful broker who managed this singular deal is now virtually a pauper at Bradford and a slave of rum. Last time we met he staggered up to me, his eyes bleared and his clothing in tatters, pressed my hand and said: “Gimme ten cents; I’m dying for a drink!”

A big spurt in April of 1895 temporarily revived interest in oil-speculations. Again the exchange at Oil City was thronged. Exciting scenes of former years were renewed as the price climbed ten cents a clip. It was refreshing after the long stagnation to see the pool once more stirred to its depths. From one-ten on April fourth the price strode to two-eighty on April seventeenth. Certificates were scarce and credit-balances were snapped up eagerly. A few big winnings resulted, then the reaction set in, the spasm subsided and matters resumed their customary quietude. Connected with this phenomenal episode the papers in May told this breezy tale of “Bailey’s Jag Investment:”

“C. J. Bailey, of Parkersburg, drew seventy-five-hundred dollars out of the Commercial Bank of Wheeling as the earnings of a three-hundred-dollar investment, made involuntarily and unknowingly. Bailey is a traveling salesman. A little less than a month ago he made a trip through the West-Virginia oil-fields. At Sistersville he got in with a crowd of oil-men, with the result that next day he had a big head, a very poor recollection of what had happened and was three-hundred dollars short, according to his memorandum-book. He wisely decided that the less publicity he gave his loss the better it would be and kept still. On Friday he was coming to Wheeling on the Ohio River Railroad, when a stranger approached him with:

“‘You are J. C. Bailey, I believe.’

“‘Yes,’ replied Bailey.

“‘Well, you will find seven-thousand-five-hundred dollars to your credit in the Commercial Bank at Wheeling,’ replied the stranger. ‘I put it there day before yesterday and was about to advertise for you.’

“Bunco was the first thought of Bailey; but as the stranger did not ask for any show of money and talked all right, he asked for an explanation. It turned out that the stranger was one of the men with whom Bailey had been out in Sistersville. He was also secretary and treasurer of an oil-company, which had struck a rich well in the back-country pool two weeks before. Bailey, while irresponsible, had put three-hundred dollars into the company’s capital-stock, on the advice of his friends. Meantime the well had been drilled, coming in a gusher of three-thousand barrels a day, one-tenth of which belonged to Bailey on his three-hundred-dollar investment. Bailey came to Wheeling, went to the bank and found the money awaiting him. He drew five-thousand dollars to send to his wife. Bailey’s good fortune is not over yet, for the well is a good producer and the company holds large leases, on which several more good wells are sure to be drilled.”

What of the brokers and speculators? They are scattered like chaff. A thousand have “gone and left no sign.” President Foster, of the Oil City Exchange, an accomplished musician, traveler and orator, is a Chicagoan. John Mawhinney, John S. Rich—the fire at Rouseville’s burning-well nearly destroyed his sight—H. L. McCance, George Cornwall, Wesley Chambers, Dr. Cooper, A. D. Cotton, T. B. Porteous, Isaac Reineman, I. S. Gibson, Charles J. Fraser, W. K. Vandergrift, B. W. Vandergrift, B. F. Hulseman, Charles Haines, Michael Geary, Patrick Tiernan, “Shep” Moorhead, Melville, McCutcheon, Fullerton Parker, George Harley, Marcus Brownson and a host of other familiar figures will nevermore be seen in any earthly exchange. “Jimmy” Lowe—he was a telegrapher at first—Arthur Lewis, M. K. Bettis, George Thumm, I. M. Sowers and a dozen more drifted to Chicago. “Dick” Conn, “Sam” Blakeley, Wade Hampton, “Rod” Collins, Major Evans, Col. Preston and Charles W. Owston are residents of New York. “Tom” McLaughlin buys oil for the Standard at Lima. “Ajax” Kline is dissecting the Tennessee field for the Forest Oil-Company. “Cal” Payne is Oil-City manager of the Standard’s gas-interests. “Tom” Blackwell is in Seep’s purchasing-agency. John J. Fisher is flourishing at Pittsburg. “Charley” Goodwin holds the fort at Kane. Daniel Goettel and W. S. McMullan are running a large lumber-plant in Missouri. O. C. Sherman is a Baptist preacher and Jacob Goettel fills a Methodist pulpit. Frank Ripley and “Fin” Frisbee are heavy-weights in Duluth real-estate. C. P. Stevenson, the leading Bradford broker, dwells at his ease on a plantation in North Carolina. B. F. Blackmarr lives at Meadville and “Billy” Nicholas is a citizen of Minneapolis. Some are in California, some in Alaska, some in Florida, some in Europe and two or three in India. Go whither you may, it will be a cold day if you don’t stumble across somebody who belonged to an oil-exchange or had a cousin whose husband’s brother-in-law knew a man who was acquainted with another man who once saw a man who met an oil-broker. It is sad to think how the capital fellows who juggled certificates at Oil City, Parker and Bradford have thinned out and the pall of obliteration has been spread over the exchanges.

“So fallen! So lost! the light withdrawn Which once they wore, The glory of their past has gone Forevermore!”

A pretty girl might as well expect to escape admiring glances as petroleum to escape a fire occasionally. “Uncle Billy” Smith’s lantern ignited the first tank at the Drake well and a long procession has followed in its smoky trail. The lantern-fiend has been a prolific cause of oil-conflagrations, boiling-over refinery-stills have not been slack in this particular, the cigarette with a fool at one end and a spark at the other has done something in the same line, but lightning is the champion tank-destroyer. The result of an electric-bolt and a tank of inflammable oil engaging in a debate may be imagined. At first tanks were covered loosely with boards or wooden roofs. The gas formed a vapor which attracted lightning and kept up a large production of fires each season. One vicious stroke cremated sixty tanks of oil at the Atlantic Refinery in 1883. In July and August of 1880, a quarter-million barrels of McKean crude went up by the lightning-route. On June eleventh, 1880, a flash collided with the first steel-tank on which lightning had ever experimented and set the oil blazing. The tank was on a hill-side three-hundred feet from the west bank of Oil Creek, at Titusville. Several houses and the Acme Refinery, located between it and the stream, were consumed. While the burning oil flowed down the hill a sheet of solid flame covered ten acres. Bursting tanks, exploding stills and burning oils were an unpleasant premonition of the red-hot hereafter prepared for the wicked. The fire raged three days with the fury of the furnace heated sevenfold to give Shadrack, Meshach and Abed-nego a roast. The Titusville Battery checked it somewhat by cannonading the tanks with solid shot, which made holes that let the oil run into the creek. This plan was tried successfully in Butler and McKean. The old log-house that sheltered the generations of Campbells on the site of Petrolia met its fate by the firing of Taylor & Satterfield’s twenty-thousand-barrel tank on the hill above, which fell a prey to lightning. Three tanks opposite the mouth of Bear Creek, below Parker, stood together and burned together, the one singed by Jupiter’s shaft setting off its mates. The scene at night was of the grandest, multitudes gathering to watch the huge waves of flame and dense clouds of smoke. As the oil burned down—just as it would consume in a lamp—the tank-plates would collapse and the blazing crude would overflow. Thousands of barrels would pour into the Allegheny, covering the water for a mile with flame and painting a picture beside which a volcanic eruption resembled the pyrotechnics of a lucifer-match. Many tanks were burned prior to the use of close iron-roofs, which confine the gas and do not offer special inducements to “the artillery of heaven” to score a hit. Of late years such fires have been rarities. All oil in the pipe-line to which the burned tank belonged was assessed to meet the amount lost. This was known as General Average, as unwelcome in oil as General Apathy in politics, General Depression in business, General Dislike in society or General Weyler in Cuba.

George B. Harris, a pioneer refiner, died at Franklin in January of 1892, aged sixty years. A member of the firm of Sims & Co., he built the first or second refinery in Venango county, near the lower end of Franklin. He prospered for years, but reverses swept away his fortune and he was poor when death closed the scene.

A party of young men from New England started a refinery on Oil Creek in the sixties. Their industry, correct habits and attention to business attracted favorable notice. Mr. Trefts, of machinery fame, one day observed to a friend: “You mark my words; some day these young men will be rich and their names shall be a power in the land. I know it will be so from their industry and good habits.” This assertion was prophetic. The young man at the head of that modest firm of young men was H. H. Rogers, now president of the National-Transit Company. Speaking of his election as supervisor of streets and highways at Fair Haven, a New-York paper indulged in this facetious pleasantry regarding Mr. Rogers:

“The people of Fair Haven have done well. No man in New York or Massachusetts has had more experience with bad roads than Mr. Rogers, or has met with more success in subduing them. When he first engaged in the petroleum-business on Oil Creek the highways there were rarely navigable for anything on wheels, but were open to navigation by flat-boats most of the year. There was something in the mud of the oil-country at that time which was sure death to the capillary glands. Hairless horses and mules were in the height of fashion. When Mr. Rogers arrived on the strange scene, poling his way up to the hotel on a sawlog, he was at once chosen road-supervisor. In a neat speech, which is still extant, Mr. Rogers thanked the oil-citizens for the confidence reposed in him and then went to work. In the first place, he refined the mud of the highways, taking from it all the merchantable petroleum and converting the residue into stove-polish of an excellent quality. In the next place, he constructed pipe-lines, through which the oil was conveyed, thus keeping it out of the middle of the road, and to-day there is a boulevard along Oil Creek that is hardly surpassed by the Appian Way. Horses are again covered with hair and happiness sits smiling at every hearthstone. The people of Fair Haven have a superintendent of streets to whom they can point with pride.”

Dr. J. W. James, of Brady’s Bend, who drilled some of the first wells around Oil City and was largely interested in the Armstrong and Bradford fields, in 1858 had a plant near Freeport for extracting coal-oil from shale. At a cost of twelve cents a gallon it produced crude-petroleum, which the company refined partially and sold at a dollar to one-twenty-five. The oil obtained from the rocks by drilling and that distilled from the shale were the same chemically. Dr. James read medicine with Dr. F. J. Alter, who constructed a telegraph Morse journeyed from the east to see before perfecting his own device. Dr. Alter’s line extended only from the house about the small yard and back to his study. Full of enthusiasm over its first performance, he cried out to his student, young James: “I believe I could make this thing work a distance of six miles!” Bell’s first telephone—a cord stretched between two apple-trees in an orchard at Brantford, Canada—was equally simple and its results have been scarcely less important.

John J. Fisher bought the first thousand barrels of oil in the new exchange at Oil City, on April twenty-third, 1878. Probably the largest purchase was by George Lewis, who took from a syndicate of brokers a block of two-hundred-thousand barrels. The first offer was fifty-thousand, increasing ten-thousand until it quadrupled, with the object of having Lewis cry: “Hold! Enough!” Lewis wasn’t to be bluffed and he merely nodded at each addition to the lot until the other fellow weakened, the crowd watching the pair breathlessly. “Sam” Blakeley, the most eccentric genius in the aggregation, once bid at Parker for a million barrels. Nobody had that quantity to sell and he advanced the bid five cents above the quotations. There was not a response and he offered a million barrels five cents below the ruling price, toying with the market an hour as if it were a foot-ball. He played for big stakes, but none knew who backed him. Coming to Oil City, he reported the market for the Derrick and cut up lots of shines. One morning he looked glum, oil had tumbled and “Sam” hired an engine to whirl him to Corry. By nightfall he landed in Canada and his oil was sold to square his account in the clearing-house. An hour after his flight William Brough came up from Franklin to take the oil and carry “Sam” over the drop. In the afternoon a sudden rise set in, which would have left Blakeley twenty-thousand dollars profit had he stayed at his post! That was the time “Sam” didn’t do “the great kibosh,” as he phrased it. For years he has been hanging around New York. He was one of the boys distinguished as high-rollers and extinguished before the shuffle ended.

Telegraph-operators and messenger-boys at the oil-exchanges learned to note the movements of leading speculators and profit thereby. Some of them, with more hope of gain than fear of loss, beginning in a small way by risking a few dollars in margins, coined money and entered the ring on their own account. “Jimmy” Lowe, one of the biggest brokers at Parker and Oil City, slung lightning for the Western-Union when the Oil-City Exchange needed the services of twenty operators and scores of messenger-boys. Among the latter was “Jim” Keene, the Franklin broker. He and John Bleakley often received fifty cents or a dollar for delivering a message to “Johnnie” Steele, who stopped at the Jones House and flew high during his visits to Oil City. Steele and Seth Slocum would dash through the mud on their black chargers, dressed in the loudest style and sporting big diamonds. These halcyon times have passed away and the oil-exchanges have departed. “The glories of our mortal state are shadows.”

In January of 1894 the Producers’ and Refiners’ Oil-Company erected an iron-tank on the hill south-east of Titusville. Lightning destroyed the tank and its contents in May. The second tank was built on the spot in October and on June twelfth, 1895, lightning struck a tree beside it. The burning tree fired the gas and the tank and oil perished. The site is still vacant, the company deciding not to give the electric fluid a chance for a third strike.

George W. N. Yost, who died in New York last year, was once the largest oil-buyer and shipper in the region. He lived at Titusville and removed to Corry, where he built the Climax Mower and Reaper Works, a church, a handsome residence and blocks of dwellings. Patents of different kinds recouped losses in manufacturing. With Mr. Densmore, of Meadville, he brought out the caligraph. Yost sold to his partner and developed the Yost Typewriter, organized the American Writing-Machine Company and fitted up the shops at Bridgeport, Connecticut, used to manufacture Sharp’s rifles during the border-troubles in Kansas. Mr. Yost was a man of striking personality and unflagging energy. He became a strong spiritualist and believed a medium, to whom he submitted completely, put him in communication with his dead relatives and recorded their thoughts on his typewriter.

The men of the oil-region have ever been noted for their commercial honor. It passed into a proverb—“honor of oil.“ The spirit of the saying, “his word is as good as his bond,” has always been lived up to more closely in Oildom than in any other section of the country. The force of business-obligation ran high in the exchanges and among the early dealers in crude. Transactions involving hundreds-of-thousands of dollars occurred every day, without a written bond or a scrap of paper save a pencil-entry in a memorandum-book. Certificates were borrowed and loaned in this way and the idea of shirking a verbal contract was never thought of. The celerity with which property thus passed from man to man was one of the striking features of business in the bustling world of petroleum. And the record is something to be proud of in these days of embezzlements, defalcations, breaches of trust and commercial deviltry generally.

The average tank-steamer carries about two-million gallons of oil in bulk across the Atlantic. In addition to this fleet of steamers, scores of sailing vessels, under charter of the Orient, France, Italy and foreign countries, load cases and barrels of refined-oil for transport to European ports. American wooden-ships are chartered sometimes to convey oil to Japan. Thus Russian competition is met through the instrumentality of pipe-lines to the coast and transportation by water to points many thousand miles away from the wells that produced the oil.

The production of crude-petroleum in the United States in 1895, according to the statistics compiled for the Geological Survey by Joseph D. Weeks, was fifty-three-million barrels, valued at fifty-eight-million dollars. For 1894 the figures were fifty-million barrels and thirty-five-million dollars respectively. All districts except West Virginia and New York shared in the increase. The total production from the striking of the Drake well in 1859 to the end of 1895 was seven-hundred-and-ten-million barrels. Five-hundred-and-seventeen-million barrels of this enormous aggregate represent the yield of the Pennsylvania and New-York oil-fields. Who says petroleum isn’t a big thing?

At Pittsburg you can easily gather a little group of men, such as Charles Lockhart and Captain Vandergrift, who recall the time when the Tarentum petroleum was termed “a mysterious grease.” They had a hand in handling it when the oil had no commercial name. They watched Samuel M. Kier’s efforts to give it a commercial name and a marketable value. They saw it run to waste at first, they remember paying a dollar a gallon for it and can tell all about Drake’s visit to Tarentum. They hold their breath when they think of the gold that changed hands in Venango county after “Uncle Billy” Smith bored the seventy-foot hole below Titusville, of the wonderful spread of operations and the dazzling progress of the commodity once despised. They noted the flow of petroleum toward Europe—how forty casks were sent to France in 1860 as a curiosity and thirty-nine-hundred in 1863 as a commercial venture. They have seen this “mysterious grease,” that used to flow into the Pennsylvania Canal, light the world from the Pyramids of Egypt to the salons of Paris, from the shores of Palestine to the Chinese Wall. They have seen the four salt-and-oil wells at Tarentum and the solitary oil-well at Titusville multiplied into a hundred-thousand holes drilled for petroleum and a production almost beyond calculation. Do the gentlemen composing this little group occupy a position dramatic in the marvelous events they review? Is petroleum freighted with interest and a touch of romance at every step of its passage from the well to the lamp?

MERELY DROPPED IN.

To big oil-wells a man may be a claimant, From the sand-rock take in enormous payment, Yet all he gets on earth is food and raiment.

The good well is the humble bee With honey on its wings; The dry-hole is the bumble-bee That buzzes loud and stings.

Oilmen who run in debt, despite their rapid talk, Not very often come out faster than a walk.

Uneasy lies the face that wears a frown; No wonder, at the rate crude-oil goes down.

“What are your favorite books?” the gushing damsel cried; “Bank-books and pocket-books,” the oilman quick replied.

Idle gossip? Oh, no, that isn’t right, For gossip keeps on working day and night, Beating a flowing oil-well out of sight.

The driller mutter’d, as he stagger’d with unsteady gait, “There is no evil mixture here, I took my whisky straight.”

Of all uncertain kinds of biz An oilman’s most uncertain is; To-day, perhaps, his anguish’d soul Laments because of a dry-hole; He tries again, and who can tell But he may strike a flowing-well?

Sound money? Yes indeed; no oilman has a doubt The coin that jingles is the “soundest” money out.

Who with himself is satisfied Wants little here below; He has a small excuse for pride, For if the third-sand once he tried He might find a poor show.

The fabric of the clothing may not wear a little bit, But the clothier’s fabrications will outlast Berea grit.

“Pay as you go.” We will, for all the oilmen know All men must pay the debt of nature as they go.

The gusher and the duster May be on one town-plot, Angels and devils muster Upon the self-same lot, And sobs and smiles may cluster Like flies on one bald spot. Rare goodness and tough badness May come from the same shank, Twin-links of grief and gladness Be issued by one bank, For tears of joy and sadness Still flow from the same tank.

“A rolling stone gathers no moss,” for trying junctures May some wildcatters fit; But then it is the rolling wheel that gathers punctures, Which makes the old saw nit.

Be not a spouting well that keeps an endless flow; It isn’t always wise to tell all that you know, But all you tell be mighty sure it’s truly so.

“Young Luckyboy made fifty-thousand plunks From one small can of crude,” The oilman said, while silence lay in chunks; “I pray don’t think me rude”— A list’ner spoke—“It strikes me you’re a man Must practice on the lyre.” The oilman smil’d: “His rich aunt used the can To hurry up the fire!”

He put the glycerine to thaw, the water was too hot, The stuff let go; it was the man, and not the well, was shot.

“No!” said the oilman’s daughter, when young Dudelet sought her hand, “You may have lots of money, but you haven’t got the sand.”

Why are proof-readers needed, those careless printers’ terrors? Because our first impressions are often full of errors.

COL. LEE M. MORTON. W. H. LONGWELL. WARREN C. PLUMER. COL. J. T. HENRY.

WALTER R. JOHNS. MAJOR W. W. BLOSS. J. H. BOWMAN.

L. H. METCALFE. C. E. BISHOP. HENRY C. BLOSS. COL. M. N. ALLEN.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

XVI. THE LITERARY GUILD

CLEVER JOURNALISTS WHO HAVE CATERED TO PEOPLE OF THE OIL-REGIONS—NEWSPAPERS AND THE MEN WHO MADE THEM—CULTURED WRITERS, POETS AND AUTHORS—NOTABLE CHARACTERS PORTRAYED BRIEFLY—SHORT EXTRACTS FROM MANY SOURCES—A BRIGHT GALAXY OF TALENTED THINKERS—WORDS AND PHRASES THAT WILL ENRICH THE LANGUAGE FOR ALL TIME.

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“And a small drop of ink * * * makes thousands, perhaps millions, think.”—Byron.

“Literature is the immortality of speech.”—Wilmott.

“News, the manna of a day.”—Green.

“They whom truth and wisdom lead can gather honey from a word.”—Cooper.

“Thoughts that breathe and words that burn.”—Gray.

“Reading maketh a full man.”—Bacon.

“The pen is mightier than the sword.”—Lytton.

“Every worthy citizen reads a newspaper and owns the paper he reads.”—Beecher.

“His verse is lusty as a trooper’s oath.”—Viscount Valrose.

“Thus men ascend to the stars.”—Virgil.

“Hath thy toil o’er books consumed the midnight-oil?”—Gay.

“Books are * * * the only men that speak aloud for future times to hear.”—Mrs. Browning.

“Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets.”—Napoleon.

“He was the interpreter of Nature, dipping his pen into Mind.”—Suidas.

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Thirty-seven years have had their entrances and their exits since Col. Drake’s little operation on Oil Creek played ducks and drakes with lard-oil lamps and tallow-dips. That seventy-foot hole on the flats below Titusville gave mankind a queer variety of things besides the best light on “this grain of sand and tears we call the earth.” With the illuminating blessing enough wickedness and jollity were mixed up to knock out Sodom and Gomorrah in one round. The festive boys who painted the early oil-towns red are getting gray and wrinkled, yet they smile clear down to their boots as they think of Petroleum Centre, Pithole, Babylon, or any other of the rapid places which shed a lurid glare along in the sixties. The smile is not so much on account of flowing wells and six-dollar crude as because of the rollicking scenes which carmined the pioneer-period of Petroleum. These were the palmy days of unfathomable mud, swearing teamsters, big barrels, high prices, abundant cash and easy morals, when men left their religion and dress-suits “away out in the United States.” The air was redolent of oil and smoke and naughtiness, but there was no lack of hearty kindness and the sort of charity that makes the angels want to flap their wings and give “three cheers and a tiger.” Even as the city destroyed by fire from heaven boasted one righteous person in the shape of Lot, whose wife was turned into a pillar of salt for being too fresh, so the busy Oil-Dorado had a host of capital fellows, true as steel, bright as a dollar and “quicker’n greas’d lightnin’!” Braver, better, nobler, squarer men never doffed a tile to a pretty girl or elevated a heavy boot to the coat-tails of a scoundrel. About the well, on the streets, in stores and offices could be found gallant souls attracted from the ends of the world by glowing pictures—real oil-paintings—of huge fortunes gained in a twinkling. Ministers, lawyers, doctors, merchants, soldiers, professors, farmers, mechanics and members of every industry were neither few nor far between in the exciting scramble for “the root of all evil.”

To keep matters straight and slake the thirst for current literature newspapers were absolutely necessary. Going back to 1859, the eventful year that brought petroleum to the front, Venango county had three weeklies. The oldest of these was the Spectator, established at Franklin in 1849, by Albert P. Whitaker. At the goodly age of seventy-eight he wielded a vigorous pen and died in February, 1897. A zealous disciple of Izaak Walton and Thomas Jefferson, he could hook a fish or indite a pungent editorial with equal dexterity. He was an encyclopedia of political lore and racy stories. His Spectator was no idle spectator of passing incidents. In 1851 Col. James Bleakley, subsequently a prosperous producer and banker, secured an interest, selling it in 1853 to R. L. Cochran, who soon became sole proprietor and published the paper seven years. Mr. Cochran took an active part in politics and agriculture and exerted wide influence. A keen, incisive writer and entertaining talker, with the courage of his convictions and the good of the public at heart, his sterling qualities inspired confidence and respect. Probably no man in Northwestern Pennsylvania had a stronger personal following. The Spectator flourished like a prize sunflower under his tactful management. It printed the first “oil report,” giving a list of wells drilling and rigs up or building in the spring of 1860. Desiring to engage in banking, R. L. Cochran sold the paper to A. P. Whitaker, its founder, and C. C. Cochran. The latter retiring in 1861, Whitaker played a lone hand three years, when the two Cochrans again purchased the establishment. A. P. Whitaker and his son, John H., a first-class printer, bought it back in 1866 and ran the concern four years. Then the elder Whitaker once more dropped out, returning in 1876 and resuming entire control a year later, which closed the shuttlecock-changes of ownership that had been in vogue for twenty-five years. Will S. Whitaker, an accomplished typo and twice the nominee of his party for mayor, had long assisted his father in conducting the staunch exponent of unadulterated Democracy. Col. Bleakley passed away in 1884, leaving a fine estate as a monument of his successful career. He built the Bleakley Block, founded the International Bank, served as City Councilman and was partner in 1842-4 of John W. Shugert in the publication of the Democratic Arch, noted for aggressiveness and sarcasm. John H. Whitaker died in Tennessee years ago. R. L. Cochran was killed in June, 1893, on his farm in Sugarcreek Township, by the accidental discharge of a gun. The paper began regular “oil-reports” in 1862, prepared by Charles C. Duffield, now of Pittsburg, who would go up the Allegheny to Warren and float down in a skiff, stopping at the wells. P. J. Donahoe is the present editor and proprietor.

Charles Pitt Ramsdell, a school-teacher from Rockland Township, started the American Citizen at Franklin in 1855. Sent to the Legislature in 1858, he sold the healthy chick to William Burgwin and Floyd C. Ramsdell, removed to Delaware and settled in Virginia a few years before his lamented death from wounds inflicted by an enraged bull. J. H. Smith acquired Ramsdell’s interest in 1861. The new partners made a strong team in journalistic harness for three years, selling in 1864 to Nelson B. Smiley. He changed the title to Venango Citizen. Mr. Burgwin reposes in the Franklin cemetery. Mr. Smith carries on the book-trade, his congenial pursuit for three decades, and is a regular contributor to the religious press. Alexander McDowell entered into partnership with Smiley, buying the entire “lock, stock and barrel” in 1867. His former associate studied law, practiced with great credit and died at Bradford. Major McDowell, now a banker at Sharon—the number of Venango editors who blossomed into financiers ought to stimulate ambitious quill-drivers—was a daisy in the newspaper-lay. His liberality and geniality won hosts of warm friends. He tried his hand at politics and was chosen Congressman-at-Large in 1892, with Galusha A. Grow as running-mate, and Clerk of the House in 1895. A prime joker, he bears the blame—if it be blameable to have done so—of introducing Pittsburg stogies to guileless members of Congress for the fun of seeing the victims cut pigeon-wings doing a sea-sick act. Col. J. W. H. Reisinger purchased the outfit in 1869, guiding the helm skilfully fifteen months. April first—the day had no special significance in this case—1870, E. W. Smiley, the present owner and cousin of Nelson B., succeeded Reisinger. The Colonel located at Meadville, where he has labored ably in the journalistic field for a quarter-century. Mr. Smiley steered his craft adroitly, usually “bobbing up serenely” on the winning side. He is a shrewd Republican worker and for twenty years has filled a Senate-clerkship efficiently. What he doesn’t know about the inside movements of state and local politics could be jumped through the eye of a needle. His right-bower in running the Citizen-Press—the hyphenated name was flung to the breeze in 1884—is his son, J. Howard Smiley, a rising young journalist. The paper toes the mark handsomely, has loads of advertising and does yeoman service for its party. The Daily Citizen, the first daily in Oildom, expired on the last day of 1862, after a brief existence of ten issues. A fit epitaph might be Wordsworth’s couplet:

“Since it was so quickly done for, Wonder what it was begun for.”

Later newspaper ventures at Franklin were refreshingly plentiful. In January, 1876, Hon. S. P. McCalmont launched The Independent Press upon the stormy sea of journalism. It was a trenchant, outspoken, call-a-spade-a-spade advocate of the Prohibition cause, striking resolutely at whoever and whatever opposed its temperance platform. Mr. McCalmont wrote the editorials, which bristled with sharp, merciless, unsparing excoriations of the rum-traffic and its aiders and abettors. The paper was worthy of its name and its spirited owner. Neither truckled for favors, cringed for patronage or ever learned to “crook the pregnant hinges of the knee where thrift may follow fawning.” Beginning life a poor boy, S. P. McCalmont toiled on a farm, taught school, devoured books, read law and served in the Legislature. For nearly fifty years he has enjoyed a fine practice which brought him well-earned reputation and fortune. Ranking with the foremost lawyers of the state in legal attainments and professional success, he does his own thinking, declines to accept his opinions at second-hand and is a first-rate sample of the industrious, energetic, self-reliant American. By way of recreation he works a half-dozen farms, a hundred oil-wells, a big refinery and a coal-mine or two. James R. Patterson, Miss Sue Beatty and Will. S. Whitaker held positions on the Press. Mr. Patterson is farming near Franklin and Mr. Whitaker managed the Spectator. Miss Beatty, a young lady of rare culture, was admitted to the bar recently.

The Independent Press-Association bought the Press in 1879. This influential body comprised twelve stockholders, Hon. William R. Crawford, Hon. C. W. Gilfillan, Hon. John M. Dickey, Hon. Charles Miller, Hon. Joseph C. Sibley, Hon. S. P. McCalmont, Hon. Charles W. Mackey, James W. Osborne, W. D. Rider, E. W. Echols, B. W. Bredin and Isaac Reineman, whom a facetious neighbor happily termed “the twelve apostles, limited.” They enlarged the sheet to a nine-column folio, discarded the bourgeois skirt with long-primer trimmings for a tempting dress of minion and nonpareil and engaged J. J. McLaurin as editor. H. May Irwin, the second editor under the new administration, filled the bill capably until the Press and the Citizen buried the hatchet and blended into one. Mr. Irwin is not excelled as an architect of graceful, felicitous paragraphs on all sorts of subjects, “from grave to gay, from lively to severe.” He possesses in eminent degree the enviable faculty of saying the right thing in the right way, tersely, pointedly and attractively. The Press was a model of neatness, newsiness and thorough editing, with a taste for puns and plays on words that added zest to its columns.

James B. Borland’s Evening News appeared in February, 1878, as an amateur-daily about six by nine inches. The small seed quickly grew to a lusty plant. James B. Muse became a partner, enlargements were necessary, and to-day the News is a seven-column folio, covering the home-field and deservedly popular. Muse retired in 1880, H. May Irwin buying his share and editing the wide-awake paper in capital style. Every Evening, a creditable venture by Frank Truesdell, E. E. Barrackman and A. G. McElhenny, bloomed every evening from July, 1878, to the following March. H. B. Kantner, a versatile specimen, hatched out the Morning Star, Franklin’s only morning daily, in 1880. It shone several months and then set forever and ever. Kantner drifted to Colorado. The Herald, the Penny Press and Pencil and Shears wriggled a brief space and “fell by the wayside.” Samuel P. Brigham, an aspiring young lawyer, edited the one-cent Press and stirred up a hornet’s nest by fiercely assailing the water-works system and raising Hail Columbia generally. He is at the head of a newspaper in the Silver State.

The third weekly Venango boasted in 1859 was the Allegheny-Valley Echo, published at Emlenton by Peter O. Conver, a most erratic, picturesque genius. Learning the printing-trade in Franklin, the anti-slavery agitation attracted him to Kansas in 1852. He established a paper at Topeka, which intensified the excitement a man of Conver’s temperament was not calculated to allay, and it soon climbed the golden stair. Other experiments shared the same fate, going to the dogs in short metre. Conver roamed around the wild, woolly west several years, returned to Venango county and perpetrated the Echo in the fall of 1858. At intervals a week passed without any issue, which the next number would attribute to the sudden departure of the “jour,” the non-arrival of white paper, or the absence of the irrepressible Peter on a convivial lark. Sparkling witticisms and “gems of purest ray” frequently adorned the pages of the sheet, although sometimes transgressing the rules of propriety. It was the editor’s habit to set up his articles without a manuscript. He would go to the case and put his thoughts into type just as they emanated from his fertile brain. Poetry, humor, satire, invective, comedy, pathos, sentiment and philosophy bunched their hits in a medley of clean-cut originality not even “John Phœnix” could emulate. The printer-editor had a fund of anecdotes and adventures picked up during his wanderings and an off-hand magnetism that insured his popularity. His generosity was limited only by his pocket-book. Altogether he was a bundle of strange contradictions, “whose like we shall not look upon again,” big-hearted, impatient of denial, heedless of consequences, indifferent to praise or blame, sincere in his friendships and with not an atom of sham or hypocrisy in his manly fiber. He enlisted in the Fourth Pennsylvania Cavalry when the war broke out, serving gallantly to the close of the struggle at Appomattox.

R. F. Blair, who had taken the Echo in 1861, disposed of it in 1863 to J. W. Smullin, by whom the materials were removed to Oil City. Walter L. Porter’s Rising Sun, W. R. Johns’ Messenger, Needle & Crowley’s Register, P. McDowell’s News, Col. Sam. Young’s Telegraph, Hulings & Moriarty’s Times and Gouchler Brothers’ Critic in turn flitted across the Emlenton horizon. E. H. Cubbison exploited the Home News in 1885 and it is still holding the fort.

Getting back from the war safe and sound, Conver pitched his tent at Tionesta in 1866 and generated the Forest Press. Its peculiar motto—“The first and only paper printed in Forest county and about the only paper of the kind printed anywhere”—indicated the novel stripe of this unique weekly. The crowning feature was its department of “Splinters,” which included the weird creations of the owner’s vivid fancy. The Press, after running smoothly a dozen years, did not long survive its eccentric, gifted proprietor, who answered the final roll-call in the spring of 1878, meeting death unflinchingly. He wrote a short will and asked Samuel D. Irwin, his trusted adviser, to prepare his obituary, “sense first, nonsense afterwards.” The Bee, which Col. Reisinger hived in 1867, sipped honey a season and flew away. J. B. Muse’s Vindicator and Jacob Wenk’s Republican occupy the field. Mrs. Conver left Tionesta and died in the west. Hosts of old friends who knew and understood Peter O. Conver will be glad to see his characteristic portrait, from a photograph treasured by Judge Proper, and “a nosegay of culled flowers” from his inimitable Press, “rugged as a jog over a stubble-field:”

“That marble slab has arrived at last. Our own beautiful slab, with its polished surface, was manufactured expressly to our order, on which to impose the forms of the Forest Press, a fit emblem and unmistakable evidence of the almost unparalleled success of an enterprise started in the very hell of the season and circumstances on a one-horse load of old, good-for-nothing, worn-out, rotten and “bottled” material, taken in payment, etc., and a will to succeed. After we shall have fulfilled our mission through the Press and have done with the things of earth, that same slab can be used by the weeping “devils” on which to dance a good-bye to us and our sins, after which they may inscribe with burning charcoal on its polished surface, in letters of transient darkness:

‘Here lies Pete. The old cuss is dead.’

“Our mother was a Christian, the best friend we had, and the name of her truant son—your servant—was the last she uttered. We are not a Christian, but when convinced we should be we will be. Never intend to marry or die, if we can help it. In brief, we are a white Indian.”

“A promissory-note is tuning the fiddle before the performance.”

“A man suffering from dyspepsia sees nothing bright in the noonday-sun. Another with a rusty liver looks upon a flower-garden as so many weeds. Another with nerves at angles sees nothing lovely in the most beautiful woman. Another with a disordered stomach can utter no word not tinged with acid and fire.”

“Smiles are among the cheapest and yet richest luxuries of life. We do not mean the mere retraction of the lips and the exhibition of two rows of masticators—mastiffs, hyenas and the like amiabilities are proficient in that. We do not mean the cold, formal smile of politeness, that plays over the features like moonlight on a glacier—automatons and villains can do that, but we mean the real, genial smile that breaks right out of the heart, like a sunbeam out of a cloud, and lights up the whole face and shines straight into another heart that loves it or needs it.”

“Ravishingly rich and gorgeous is our surrounding scenery smiling down upon us in all the dying glory of these autumn days, like the summery landscape in childhood’s dreams, impressed on the heart but not described; like the soul-beam of a good old person passing away. View all the grand and beautiful scenes of earth with the aid of imagination’s pencil if you please, and them come to Tionesta in October and behold the masterpiece. It is the finishing touch of beauty from the Master Hand, imparting joy and faith and hope and resignation to the heart of man, which no human pen or pencil may copy and combinations of words have not been discovered to describe; in fact, we have almost come to the conclusion that he who attempts it is a presuming fool, because there’s no language in the dictionary or even invented by the poet to that effect. But if we only live till the sun shines to-morrow, on such another day as this, we’ll dig our potatoes, from which patch we can obtain mountain views on every hand alongside of which the Rocky Mountains would appear overgrown and unnatural and Alpine scenery worn-out.”

“The first great damper that threw cold water on the Fourth of July was, perhaps, the agitation of the temperance question; then the Sunday-school celebrations gave a mortal blow to its ancient prestige and glory, until now, alas! it has been entirely eclipsed. Bantlings of the third generation are soaring aloft in place of the old gray bird, niggers dancing jubas over the heads of their imperial masters and, great heavens! the very whiskey that we drink at $3 to $7 a gallon in mortal jeopardy. But, seriously speaking, we are in favor of every one following the bent of his or her own inclination in celebrating things. Next week will be our usual occasion for getting full, unless we should accompany a very beautiful young lady hunting, in either of which events the Press may also have a celebration of its own and not appear in public on any stage.”

“Lieut. Samuel D. Irwin is a rare, original genius, a companion of our boyhood, whose life has been lively and stirring as our own in some respects. He is also a candidate for District Attorney.”

“Some people don’t care much whether things go endwise or otherwise.”

“Next to a feast upon a seventeen-year-old pair of sweet lips, under grapevines, by moon-light, is a foray upon a platter of beans, after fishing for suckers all day.”

“One of the greatest bores in the world is he who will persistently gabble about himself when you want to talk about yourself.”

“Pay your debts and shame the devil for an old scoundrel.”

“Bright and fair as a Miss in her teens is this beautiful March morning. All nature laughs with gladness. Forest feels glad, the streams sing a glad song in their swim to the sea, Tionesta is glad and the big greyhound Charley Holmes sent Major Hulings wags his sharp tail in token of the gladness and gratitude he cannot otherwise express. He is a gentlemanly, well-bred, $500 purp and got to have his meals regularly.”

“Do unto other men as you would have them do unto you and you wouldn’t have money enough in two weeks to hire a shirt washed.”

“Many a preacher complains of empty pews when they are really not emptier than the pulpit.”

“The man who can please everybody hasn’t got sense enough to displease anybody.”

“To be good and happy kick up your heels and holler Hallelujah!”

“Rev. Brown will preach everybody to hell on the Tubb’s Run Flats, Lord willing, next Sunday, between meals.”

On the twelfth of January, 1862, Walter R. Johns, who struck the territory four weeks previously, issued the initial number of the Oil-City Weekly Register, the first newspaper devoted especially to the petroleum-industry, which it upheld tenaciously for five years. The modest outfit, purchased second-hand at Monongahela City, was shipped to Pittsburg by boat, to Kittanning by rail and to its destination by wagons. The editor, publisher, proprietor and compositor—Mr. Johns outdid Pooh-Bah by combining these offices in his own person—accompanied the expedition to aid in extricating the wagons from mud-holes in which they stuck persistently. In 1866 he retired in favor of Henry A. Dow & Co., who fathered the Daily Register and soon found the cake dough. Farther on Mr. Johns was identified, editorially or in a proprietary way, with the semi-weekly Petrolian and the Evening Register, the Parker Transcript, the Emlenton Messenger, the Lebanon Republican, the Clarion Republican-Gazette and the Foxburg Gazette. Writing with great readiness and heartily in touch with his profession, he took to literary work as a duck takes to water. He and the late Andrew Cone prepared all the petroleum-statistics available in 1862, which, with the gatherings of the years intervening, were published in 1869, under the expressive title of “Petrolia.” From Clarion, his home for some years, Mr. Johns returned to Oil City, doing valuable work for the Derrick and the Blizzard. For seven years he has been employed by the National-Transit Company to compile newspaper-clippings and magazine-articles and arrange records of different kinds from every quarter of the oil-regions. The duty is congenial and he fits the place “like der paper mit der wall.” Mr. Johns is a son of Louisiana and a hero of two wars. During the Mexican trouble he fought under Zachary Taylor and Winfield Scott, was at the battles of Monterey and Buena Vista and participated in the march from Puebla to the City of Mexico. He served under General Grant in the “late unpleasantness.” The death of his estimable wife several years ago was a terrible blow to the Nestor of petroleum journalism, who has gained distinction as printer, editor, author and soldier.

“Age sits with decent grace upon his visage And worthily becomes his silver locks; He bears the marks of many years well spent, Of virtue, truth well tried and wise experience.”

With the plant of the defunct Emlenton Echo, which he had bought from R. F. Blair and boated to Oil City, J. W. Smullin propelled the Monitor in 1863. O. H. Jackson, a sort of perambulatory printing-office, and C. P. Ramsdell figured in the ownership at different times. Jackson let go in the fall of 1864 and Jacob Weyand bossed the ranch until it was absorbed by the Venango Republican, the first out-and-out political newspaper in the settlement. Smullin farmed in Cranberry township, dispensed justice as “’Squire” and died in 1894. Of Jackson’s whereabouts nothing is known. He flaunted the Sand-Pump at Oil City, the Bulletin at Rouseville, the Gaslight at Pleasantville and ephemeral sheets at other points. The outfits of the Register, Petrolian, Republican and Monitor were consolidated in December, 1867, by Andrew Cone and Dr. F. F. Davis, into the weekly Times. The paper was well managed, well edited and well sustained. A syndicate of politicians bought it in 1870, to boom C. W. Gilfillan, of Franklin, for Congress, and George B. Delamater, of Meadville, for State-Senator in the Crawford district. A morning daily was tacked on. L. H. Metcalfe, who lost a leg at Gettysburg, had editorial charge. Thomas H. Morrison, of Pleasantville, officiated as manager, W. C. Plumer presided as foreman and A. E. Fay acted as local news-hustler. The daily died with the close of the campaign, a fire that destroyed the establishment hurrying the dissolution. Metcalfe went back to Meadville and was elected county-treasurer. Whole-souled, earnest and trustworthy, he made and retained friends, wrote effectively and “served his day and generation” as a good man should. The grass and the flowers have bloomed above his head for nineteen years. Morrison entered politics, put in a term faithfully as county-treasurer, studied law, practiced at Smethport and was elected judge of the McKean-Potter district.

Hon. Andrew Cone, to whose bounteous purse and willing pen the Venango Republican and the Oil-City Times owed their continuance, was of Puritan descent, nephew of the founder of Oberlin College, born in 1822, reared on a New-York farm and married to a Maryland lady. His parents dying, he removed to Michigan, lost his first and second wives by death, and in 1862 settled at Oil City to superintend the United Petroleum-Farms Association’s sale of building-lots. He named various Oil-City streets, helped build the first Baptist church and labored for temperance and local improvements. In 1868 he married Miss Mary Eloisa Thropp, of Valley Forge, a cultured linguist and writer. Her brother, Joseph E. Thropp, owns the iron-works at Everett and is married to the late Colonel Thomas A. Scott’s eldest daughter. Her two sisters, Mrs. George Porter and Miss Amelia Thropp, also reside at Oil City and are gifted writers. Mr. Cone and W. R. Johns collected the data of “Petrolia,” a perfect treasury of facts concerning oil, which the Appletons published in 1869. Governor Hartranft appointed Mr. Cone to represent the oil-regions at the Vienna Exposition in 1873. He served four years with great fidelity as consul in Brazil and died in New York on November seventh, 1880, as one to whom “Well done, good and faithful servant,” is spoken through all the centuries. Mrs. Cone’s “Wild Flowers of Valley Forge” will give an idea of the exquisite work of the Thropp sisters, who are esteemed for their poetic talents and unselfishness:

Blest be the flowers that freely blow In this neglected spot, Anemone with leaves of snow And blue Forget-me-not. God’s laurels weave their classic wreath, Their pale pink blossoms wave O’er lowly mounds, where rest beneath Our martyrs in their grave.

In white and gold the daisies shine All o’er encampment hill; There wild-rose and the Columbine Lift glistening banners still. Here plumy ferns, an emerald fringe, Adorn our stream’s bright way; And soft grass whence the violet springs, With fragrant flowers of May.

Oh, there’s a spell around these blooms Owned by no rarer flowers; They blossomed on our soldiers’ tombs And they shall bloom on ours. To us, as to our sires, their tone Breathes forth the same glad strain, “We spring to life when winter’s gone, And ye shall rise again.”

Uncultured ’round our path they grow, Smile up before our tread To cheer, as they did long ago Our noble-hearted dead. Arbutus in the sheltering wood Sighs, “Here he came to pray,” And Pansies whisper, “Thus we stood When heroes passed away.”

Thus every wild-flower’s simple leaf Breathes in my native vale, To conscious hearts, some record brief, Some true and touching tale. Wealth’s gay parterre in glory stands:— I own their foreign claims, Those gorgeous flowers from other lands, Rare plants with wondrous names.

Ye blossomed in our martyr’s field Beneath the warm spring’s sun, Sprung from the turf where lowly kneeled Our matchless Washington. Ye in our childhood’s garden grew, Our sainted mother’s bowers; My grateful heart beats high to you, My own wild valley-flowers!

The collapse of the syndicate Times terminated experimental dailies in Oil City. Mr. Gilfillan, F. W. Mitchell, P. R. Gray and other stockholders sold the good-will and smoking ruins to Sheriff H. H. Herpst, who revived the weekly with Dr. Davis at the bellows. It was rather weakly, notwithstanding the doctor’s excellent doses of leaded pellets. Advertisers seemed a trifle shy and columns of blank space, by no means nutritious pabulum, were not infrequent. Everybody favored a newer, grander, bolder stride forward. The borough and suburbs had attained the dignity of a city, an oil-exchange had been organized, railroads were coming in and a paper of metropolitan scope was urgently demanded. Usually men adapted to a particular niche turn up and the traditional “long-felt want” is not likely to remain unfilled.

Coleman E. Bishop and W. H. Longwell landed in Oil City one summer afternoon to “view the landscape o’er,” as good Dr. Watts phrased it. They had heard the Macedonian cry and decided to size up the situation. Bishop achieved greatness at Jamestown, N. Y., where he edited the Journal, by attacking Commander Cushing, the naval officer who sank the Confederate ram Merrimac, and kicking him down stairs when the indignant marine invaded the sanctum to “horsewhip the editor and pitch him out of the window.” Longwell, a brave soldier and sharp man of affairs, had learned the ropes at Pithole and Petroleum Centre. A deal was soon closed, material ordered and a building on Seneca street rented, Herpst keeping an interest as silent partner.

The Oil-City Derrick, ordained to become “the organ of oil,” was born on the thirteenth of September, 1871. The name was an inspiration, sprung by Bishop as a surprise, instead of the hackneyed Times, which had been agreed upon by the three proprietors. To embody its most conspicuous emblem in the head of a newspaper designed to represent the oil-trade suggested itself to the alert editor. He consulted only his foreman, Charles E. White, long the brilliant editor of the Tidioute News, who had come with him from Jamestown and approved of the drawing from which the famous design of a derrick spouting newspapers was engraved. It was a go from the start. People were roused from their slumber by strong-lunged newsboys shouting, “Derrick, ere’s yer Derrick, Derrick!” Their first impulse was to wonder if they had left any derricks out all night, exposed to thieves and marauders, and somebody was bringing them home. The new sheet was scanned eagerly. It had departments of “Spray,” “Lying Around Loose” and “Pick-ups,” teeming with catchy, piquant, invigorating items. Its advocacy of the producers’ cause boomed the paper tremendously. A bitter fight with the Allegheny Valley Railroad increased its circulation and prestige. Bishop’s individuality permeated every page and column. He had the sand to continue the railroad war, but a threat to remove the shops from Oil City weakened his partners and they bought him out in 1873. From the “Hub of Oildom” he went to Buffalo to edit the Express. Thence he went to Bradford, embarked in oil-operations on Kendall Creek and enlivened the Chautauqua Herald, Rev. Theodore Flood’s bonanza, one summer. Invited to New York in 1880, he managed the Merchants’ Review and edited Judge until it changed owners in 1885. Leaving the metropolis, he wandered to Dakota and freshened the Rapid-City Republican. Returning east, he furnished Washington correspondence to various papers. Locomotor-ataxia disabled him and he died in 1896. Mrs. Bishop is a popular teacher of the Delsarte system and has published a book on the subject. Miss Bishop is a talented lecturer. It is not disparaging the galaxy of oil-region journalists to say that C. E. Bishop, the gamest, keenest, raciest member of the fraternity, might be termed a bishop in the congregation of men who have shaped public opinion in the domain of grease. No matter how difficult or delicate the theme, from pre-natal influence to monopoly, from heredity to fishing, from biology to pumpkins, he treated it tersely and charmingly. A thoroughbred from top to toe, his was a Damascus blade and “none but himself can be his parallel.”

Captain Longwell—the title was awarded for gallantry in many a hard battle—attended to the business-end with decided success. Buying Herpst’s claim, he conducted the whole concern four years and sold out at a steep figure in 1877. He raked in wealth producing and speculating, quitting well-heeled financially. A native of Adams county, he was educated at Gettysburg and learned printing in the office of the Chambersburg Repository and Whig, then published by Col. Alexander K. McClure, now the world-famed editor of the Philadelphia Times. His mother was a descendant of James Wilson, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Herpst opened a wall-paper store, removed later to Jamestown and died there in 1884. Square, honest and “straight as a string,” he merited the regard of his fellows. Charles H. Morse, the first city-editor, had the snap to corral news at sight and present it toothsomely. Who that knew him in his beardless youth imagined Charley would “get religion” and adorn the pulpit? He entered the ministry and for over twenty years has been pastor of a Baptist church at Mercer. Were he to serve up to his hearers some of the funny experiences he encountered as a reporter, he would discount Talmage’s recitals of the slums and Dr. Parkhurst’s leap-frog exploits in the Tenderloin! Archie Frazer wrote the market-report, ten or twelve lines at first and a plump column or more ultimately. In November of 1872 it was my luck to engage with the Derrick and inaugurate the role of traveling correspondent. Venango and Warren, with Clarion, Armstrong and Butler budding into prominence, covered the oil-fields. Bradford loomed up in the autumn of 1875, extending my mission from the northern line of McKean county to the southern boundary of Butler before the close of the term of five years. These breezy days were crowded with bustle and excitement, adventure and incident. Over the signature of “J. J. M.”—possibly remembered by old-timers—fate appointed me to chronicle a multitude of events that played an important part in petroleum-annals. The system of “monthly reports” was arranged methodically, the producing sections were visited regularly and my acquaintance embraced every oil-farm and nearly every oil-operator in the rushing, hustling, get-up-and-get world of petroleum.

Orion Clemens, a brother of “Mark Twain,” worked on the Derrick a few weeks in 1873. The exact opposite of “Mark,” his forte was the pathetic. He could write up the death of an insect or a reptile so feelingly that sensitive folks would shed gallons of tears in the wood-shed over the harrowing details. He fairly reveled in the gloomy, somber, tragic element of life. Daily contributions taxed him too severely, as he composed slowly, and his resignation caused no surprise. Frank H. Taylor, a young graduate from the Tidioute Journal, succeeded Bishop, vacating the chair to undertake the field-work. Frank can afford to “point with pride” to his career as editor and compiler of statistics. His “Handbook” is an unquestioned authority on petroleum. Once he resigned to float the Call, a sprightly Sunday folio, which glistened from the spring of 1877 to October of 1878. “Puts and Calls,” the humorous column, had to answer for bursting off tons of vest-buttons. Taylor acquired money and fame as a journalist, was president of select-council, called the turn as a producer and saved a snug competence. During a term of Congress he was Hon. J. C. Sibley’s secretary, a position demanding remarkable tact and industry. Now he is leasing lands, drilling wells and looking after the oil-properties of Sibley & Co. in Indiana. Oil City is his home and he is as busy as a boy clubbing chestnuts or a Brooklynite dodging the trolley-cars at thirty miles an hour.

Robert W. Criswell, who has forged to the front by his mirth-provoking sketches, followed Taylor as editor in 1877. He fertilized the “Stray-sand,” parodied Shakespeare and developed “Grandfather Lickshingle,” giving the Derrick national celebrity. He stepped down when the shuffle occurred in 1877 and went to the Cincinnati Enquirer. W. J. McCullagh and Frank W. Bowen were on deck at about the same time. McCullagh held the field department up to its elevated standard and Bowen ground out first-class local and editorial. Col. Edward Stuck, who came from York in 1879 to supervise the Bradford Era, ran the machine in 1880-2, displaying much ability in the face of manifold hindrances. William Brough and J. M. Bonham of Franklin, gentlemen of high literary attainments, wishing to have a paper of their own, induced Mr. Stuck to leave Bradford, with a view to resurrect the Sunday Call. The project was not carried out and he assumed charge of the Derrick, with gratifying results. His training was acquired on the York Democratic Press, his father’s weekly, which Col. Stuck now conducts in connection with the Daily Age, established by him after his sojourn in Oil City. He was appointed State Librarian during Governor Pattison’s first term and elected Register of Wills of York county in 1889, in recognition of his excellent journalistic services. William H. Siviter, straight from college, was next in order. His polished, scholarly writings were relished by educated people. He paragraphed for the Pittsburg Chronicle-Telegraph and for some years has contributed to the comic weeklies. He is responsible for the “High-School Girl,” with her Bostonese flavor and highfalutin speech. McCullagh became an operator in the Bradford region, drilled extensively in Ohio, laid by considerable boodle and chose Toledo as his residence. Robert Simpson, who began as “printer’s devil” in 1872, remained with the Derrick as a writer until the Blizzard blew into town, excepting brief respites at Emlenton and Bradford.

P. C. Boyle, whose dash and skill and tireless energy had advanced him steadily, leased the establishment in 1885. He had the vigor and backbone needed to bring the paper back to its pristine strength. By turns a roustabout at Pithole in 1866, a driller, a scout, a reporter, a publisher and an editor, his experience in the oil-country was extensive and invaluable. He published the Laborer’s Voice at Martinsburg in 1877-8, reported for the Derrick and Titusville Herald in 1879, for the Petroleum World in 1880 and the Olean Herald in 1881, conducted the Richburg Echo in 1881-2 and scouted all through the developments at Cherry Grove, Macksburg and Thorn Creek in 1882-5. George Dillingham, who had “a nose for news,” and J. N. Perrine, gilt-edged and yard-wide in the counting-room, assisted Mr. Boyle in tuning the paper up to high G. The outside fields, daily growing in number and importance, were put in charge of Homer McClintock, the real Homer of oil-reporters. He fattens on timely paragraphs, scents live items in the air and lets no juicy happening escape. The force was augmented as occasion arose, type-setting machines and fast presses were added, the job-office was supplied with the latest and best materials and the Derrick is to-day one of the finest, brightest, smartest newspapers that ever edified a community. It is owned by the Derrick Publishing Company, of which Mr. Boyle is president and H. McClintock, J. N. Perrine and Alfred L. Snell are the active members. Mr. Boyle also managed the Toledo Commercial and the Bradford Era. He is “the Dean of the Fourth Estate” by virtue of eminent services and seniority. Like the lightning, he never needs strike twice in the same spot, because the job is finished at a single lick when he goes “loaded for b’ar.”

John B. Smithman, a wealthy operator, to whom Oil City owes its street-railways and a bridge spanning the Allegheny, in 1880 equipped the Telegraph, an evening sunflower, with Philip C. Welch at its head. Isaac N. Pratt, later an advance-agent for Ezra Kendall, had a finger in the pie. The paper was as fetching as a rural maiden in a brand-new calico gown, but two dailies were too rich for the blood of the population and the Telegraph wilted at a tender age. Welch tapped a vein of rich humor in the Philadelphia Call by originating “Accidentally Overheard,” a feature that captured the bakery. It bubbled with actual wit, fragrant as sweet clover and wholesome as morning dew, not revamped and twisted and warmed over. Charles A. Dana, no mean judge of literary merit, recognized the value of the Welch rarebits and secured them for the New York Sun at a fixed rate for each, big or little, long or short, large or small. Anon Dana offered him a salary few bank-presidents would refuse and Welch moved to Gotham. The Sun that “shines for all” fairly glittered and dazzled. Welch’s “Tailor-Made Girl” hit the popular taste and was published in elegant form by the Scribners. Disease preyed upon him, compelling an operation similar to General Grant’s. Half the tongue was cut off, affecting his utterance seriously. Weeks and months of patient suffering ended at last in release from earthly pain and sorrow. Mrs. Welch, a noble helpmeet, lives in Brooklyn and is to be credited with the clever, dainty “From Her Point of View,” which irradiates the Sunday issues of the New York Times. Upon the grave of Philip C. Welch old friends would lay a wreath and drop a sympathetic tear.

“Alas, Poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio; A fellow of infinite jest, Of most excellent fancy.”

Frank W. Bowen, a diamond of the first water, H. G. McKnight, the lightning type-slinger, and B. F. Gates, a dandy printer, swarmed from the Derrick hive and raised the wind to blow an evening Blizzard in 1882. They bought the Telegraph stuff and the Richburg Echo press, had brains and pluck in abundance and went in to win. The significant motto—“It blows on whom it pleases and for others’ snuff ne’er sneezes”—attested the independence of the free-playing zephyr. Gentle as the summer breezes when dealing with the good, the true and the beautiful, it swept everything before it when a wrong was to be righted, a sleek rascal unmasked or a monopoly toppled over. Bowen’s “Little Blizzards” had a laugh in every line. If they stung transgressors by their sharp thrusts, the author didn’t lie awake nights trying to load up with mean things. His humor was spontaneous and easy as rolling off a log. Now his friends and admirers—their name is Legion—propose to waft him into the Legislature, a clear case of the office seeking the man. It goes without saying that the Blizzard was an instant success. It was no fault of the fond parents that they were built that way and couldn’t compel people not to want their exhilarating paper. Place its neat make-up to McKnight’s account. Gates flocked by himself to usher in the Venango Democrat, which the gods loved so well that it passed through the golden gates in four weeks. Robert Simpson, jocularly styled its “horse editor,” was a Blizzard trump-card until 1886. He then filled consecutive engagements as exchange-editor, news-editor, night-editor, assistant managing-editor and legislative correspondent of the Pittsburg Dispatch. Again he edited the Derrick nine months in 1889. Returning to Pittsburg as political-reporter of the Commercial-Gazette, he was promoted to legislative-correspondent and lastly to managing-editor, a position of much responsibility.

The Reno Times, an eight-column folio that ranked with the foremost weeklies in the State, was started in 1865 and expired in May of 1866. A department was assigned each kind of news, the matter was classified and set in minion and nonpareil, oil-operations were noted fully and local affairs received due attention. Samuel B. Page, the editor, understood how to glean from exchanges and correspondence. George E. Beardsley, whose parish lay along Oil Creek, about Pithole and the Allegheny River from Franklin to Tidioute, a section thirty miles by seventy, managed the oil-columns admirably. E. W. Mercer kept the books, collected the bills and had general supervision. W. C. Plumer, J. Diffenbach and Edward Fairchilds stuck type and the average edition exceeded ten-thousand copies.

Pithole, the most kaleidoscopic oil-town that ever stranded human lives and bank-accounts, gave birth to the Daily Record on the twenty-fifth of September, 1865. It was a five-column folio, crammed with news piping-hot and sold at five cents a copy, or thirty cents a week. Morton, Spare & Co. were the publishers. Col. L. M. Morton—he earned his shoulder-straps in the civil war—edited the Record, winning laurels by his wise discernment. He was a manly character, incapable of deceit, a brilliant writer and conversationalist, the soul of honor and courtesy, “a knight without fear and without reproach.” He served as postmaster at Milton and spent his closing years as night-editor of the Bradford Era, dying at his post, loved and esteemed by thousands of friends. W. H. Longwell, another brave defender of the Union, bought out Spare in May, 1886. Charles C. Wicker and W. C. Plumer were taken into the firm shortly after. In May of 1868, Pithole having crawled into a hole, Longwell changed the base of operations to Petroleum Centre, then at the zenith of its meteoric flight. He sold the paper in 1871 to Wicker, who held on until formidable rivals in Oil City and Titusville forced the Record to quit. Generous to a fault and faithful to those who shared his confidence, Wicker left the decaying town in 1873, was foreman of the Titusville Courier, worked as a compositor at Bradford and died there years ago. He was never satisfied to accept ill-luck without emphatic dissent. He always wore a blue-flannel shirt, a fashion he adopted in the army, and was eccentric in attire.

Charles C. Leonard was “a bright, particular star” in the days of the Pithole Record, to which, over the signature of “Crocus,” he contributed side-splitting sketches of ludicrous phases of oil-region life. These felicitous word-paintings, with additions and revisions, he published in a volume that had a prodigious sale. He was an Ohioan, born in 1845, and a soldier at sixteen. Arriving at Pithole in 1865, he saw that wonderful place grow from a dozen shanties to a city of fifteen-thousand at a pace distancing Jonah’s gourd or Jack-the-Giant-Killer’s bean-stalk. In the fall of 1867 he came to the Titusville Herald, remaining five years. After short terms with the Cleveland Leader and St. Louis Globe, he returned to Titusville to write for the Evening Press. He went back to St. Louis and died at Cleveland on the twelfth of March 1874, wounds received in battle hastening his demise. He was a natural wit, whose keen jokes had the aroma of Attic salt. Mrs. Leonard removed to Detroit, her home at present. One of Charlie’s favorite creations was “The Sheet-Iron Cat,” written for the Cleveland Leader. It passed the rounds of the newspapers and was printed in the Scientific American. The sell took immensely, lots of persons sending letters asking the cost of the “cats” and where they could be procured! The article, which revives many a pleasant memory of “auld lang-syne,” follows:

“A young mechanic in this city, whose friends and acquaintances have heretofore supposed there was “nothing to him,” has at last achieved a triumph that will place him at once among the noblest benefactors of mankind. His name will be handed down to posterity with those of the inventors of the “steam-man,” the patent churn and other contrivances of a labor-saving or comfort-inducing character. His invention, which occurred to him when trying to sleep at night in the sky-parlor of his cheap boarding-house, with the feline demons of mid-night clattering over the roof outside, is nothing more than a patent sheet-iron cat with cylindrical attachment, steel-claws and teeth, the whole arrangement being covered with cat-skins, which give it a natural appearance and preserve the clock-work and intricate machinery with which the old thing is made to work. Among the other peculiarities of this ingenious invention are the tail and voice. The former is hollow and supplied by a bellows (concealed within the body) with compressed air at momentary intervals, which causes the appendage to be elevated and distended to three times its natural size, giving to the metallic cat a most warlike and belligerent appearance. By the aid of the same bellows and a tremolo-stop arrangement, the cat is made to emit the most fearful caterwauls and “spitting” that ever awakened a baby, made the head of the family swear in his dreams, or caused a shower of boots, washbowls and other missiles of midnight wrath to cleave the sky.

“Such is the invention. The method of using and the result is as follows: Winding up the patent Thomas-cat, the owner adjusts him upon the house-top or in the back-yard and awaits events. Soon is heard the tocsin of cat-like war in the shape of every known sound that the tribe are capable of producing, only in a key much louder than any live cat could perform in. Every cat within a circle of a half-mile hears the familiar sounds and accepts the challenge, frequently fifty or one hundred appearing simultaneously upon the battle-ground, ready to buckle in. The swelling tail invites combat and they attack old “Ironsides,” who no sooner feels the weight of a paw upon his hide than a spring is touched off, his paws revolve in all directions with lightning rapidity and the adversaries within six feet of him are torn to shreds! Fresh battalions come to the scratch only to meet a like fate, and in the morning several bushels of hair, fiddle-strings and toe-nails is all that are seen, while the owner proceeds to wind the iron cat up and set him again.

“But a few pleasant evenings are needed to clean out a common-sized country town of its sleep-disturbers. We understand the inventor will make a proposition next week to the common council to depopulate the city of cats for a moderate sum. We do not intend to endorse any invention or article unless we know that it will perform all that it is claimed to do, and therefore we have not been so explicit in our description as we might have been; but the principle is a good one, and we hope to see every house in the city surmounted with a sheet-iron cat as soon as they are offered for sale, which will be about April the first, the inventor and patentee informs us.”

J. H. Bowman and Richard Linn sent forth the Petroleum Monthly at Oil City in October, 1870. Their purpose was to treat the oil-industry from a scientific stand and present statistics and biographies in magazine-style. The Monthly, which lasted a year, was ably edited and supplied matter of permanent value. Bowman, a fascinating writer and agreeable companion, went westward and the snows of twenty winters have drifted over his grave. Linn aided in compiling a history of petroleum, spent some years in the east and meandered to Australia. Pleasantville evolved the Evening News in 1888 and the semi-monthly Commercial-Record. The former has sought “the dark realms of everlasting shade,” to keep company with J. L. Rohr’s Cooperstown News, Tom Whitaker’s Gatling Gun, the Oil-City Critic, the Franklin Oil-Region, the Petroleum-Centre Era and a score of unwept sacrifices on the altar of Venango journalism. James Tyson, a hardware merchant at Rouseville, in 1872 issued the Pennsylvanian, a superior weekly, which subsided with the waning town. He migrated to California, living in San Francisco until last year, when he located in Philadelphia. At the age of seventy-nine his faculties are unimpaired and he stands erect. He is an earnest member of the Pennsylvania Historical Society and compiler of a “Life of Washington and the Signers of the Declaration of Independence.” This timely and interesting work, published in two handsome volumes in 1895, is dedicated to the public schools of the nation. It fitly crowns the literary labors of the revered author, who is “only waiting till the shadows are a little longer drawn.”

Titusville enjoys the honor of harboring the first petroleum-daily that weathered the storm and stayed in the ring. June, 1865, heralded the Morning Herald of W. W. and Henry C. Bloss, which possessed the entire field and prospered accordingly. Col. J. H. Cogswell joined the partnership in 1866. Major W. W. Bloss, the elder of the two brothers, was a fluent writer, and made his mark in journalism. Mastering the details of “the art preservative” at Rochester, N. Y., in 1857 he started a short-lived journal in Kansas, retraced his footsteps to his native heath in 1859, was badly wounded at Antietam, beamed upon Titusville in the spring of 1865 and bought the Petroleum Reporter, a moribund weekly. Quitting the Herald, in 1873, he unfurled the banner of the Evening Press, which did not live to cut its eye-teeth. His next attempt, a tasteful weekly, traveled the road to oblivion. The Major once more headed for Kansas, served in the Legislature and wended his way to Chicago, whence he crossed “to the other side” in the prime of matured manhood. Harry C. Bloss stuck to the Herald “through evil and through good report,” steadfastly upholding Titusville and dipping his eagle feather in vitriol when necessary to squelch “a foeman worthy of his steel.” He died—the ranks are thinning out sadly—four years ago and his son, upon whom the mantle of his father has descended, is keeping the paper in the van. Col. Cogswell, who dropped out to accept the postmastership, enacting the role of “Nasby” a couple of terms, for years has been in the office of the Tidewater Pipe-Line. Among the Herald force were C. C. Leonard, John Ponton and A. E. Fay. Ponton turned his peculiar talent for invention to electrical pursuits and the giddy telephone. He narrowly missed heading off Prof. Bell in stumbling upon the “hello” machine. Fay forsook the Herald for the Oil-City Times, did a turn on the Titusville Courier and hied him to Arizona. He ran a mining-paper, sat in the Legislature, incubated a chicken-nursery that would have dumbfounded Rutherford B. Hayes, farmed a bit and harvested a crop of shekels.

The Titusville Courier, sprung in 1870 to oppose the Herald, was edited by Col. J. T. Henry, an accomplished journalist from Olean, N. Y. In 1871 he bought the Sunday News, formerly A. L. Chapman’s Long-Roll, transferring it in 1872 to W. W. Bloss, who changed it to the Evening Press. Col. Henry in 1873 published “Early and Later History of Petroleum,” a large volume, replete with information, biographies and portraits. The author speculated profitably in oil, lived at Olean, wrote as the impulse prompted and died at Jamestown in May, 1878. A tear is due the memory of a kingly, chivalrous man, who reflected luster upon his profession and was not fully appreciated until he had reached the haven of eternal rest. To him Littleton’s tribute applies:

“He wrote not a line which dying he would blot.”

Warren C. Plumer guided the Courier after Col. Henry’s retirement. He was no tyro in slinging his quill. Born in Maine in 1835, at fourteen he entered a printing-office, ten years later edited a paper, served three years in the war, set type on the Reno Times in 1865 and was editor-journeyman of the Pithole Record in the fall of 1866. His “Dedbete” contributions were a striking feature of the Record, of which he became joint-owner with Longwell and Wicker in 1867, when Burgess of Pithole, and editor-in-chief upon its removal to Petroleum Centre in 1868. Selling out in 1869, Wicker and Plumer lighted a Weekly Star at Titusville that quickly set to rise no more. Plumer was foreman of the Oil City Times in 1870-1 and connected with the Tidioute Journal in 1872, when offered the editorship of the Courier. Elected to the Legislature on the Democratic ticket in 1874, he was defeated for a second term and for Congress as the Greenbackers’ candidate in 1878. For a time his political notions were as facile as his Faber and he trained with whatever party chanced to have a vacancy. From 1879 to 1881 he controlled the Meadville Vindicator, a soft-money weekly, winding up the latter year on the Richburg Echo. In Dakota, his next stamping-ground, he edited Republican papers at Fargo, Bismarck, Aberdeen and Casselton. He stumped several states for Blaine with an eye to an appointment that would have swelled his bank-account to the dimensions of a plumber’s. “The Plumed Knight” failed to connect and the plum did not fall into the lap of his eloquent supporter. President Harrison in 1891 appointed him Receiver of the Minot District Land-office, North Dakota, which he resigned last year. As an orator Col. W. C. Plumer—they call him “Colonel” in the Dakotas—trots in the class with Robert G. Ingersoll, Thomas B. Reed and William McKinley and is denominated the “Silver Tongue of the North-west.” At the Republican National Conventions in 1884-8 he was unanimously pronounced the finest off-hand speaker in the crowd. He is a finished lecturer and unrivaled story-teller, loves the choicest books, reads the Bible diligently, sticks to his friends and delights to recount his experiences in the Pennsylvania oil-regions.

M. N. Allen, an original stockholder and its last guardian, purchased the Courier in 1874. Even his acknowledged skill could not put it on a paying basis and the paper, unsurpassed in quality and appearance, succumbed to the inevitable. Mr. Allen followed Col. Cogswell as postmaster, a proper tribute to his rugged Democracy. Hale and hearty, although “over the summit of life,” time has dealt kindly with him and his deft pen has lost none of its vigor. He is editing the Advance Guard, the outgrowth of Roger Sherman’s departed American Citizen, as an intellectual pastime. F. A. Tozer, the champion “fat take,” five-feet-four-inches high and four-feet-five-inches around, graduated from the Courier, wafted the St. Petersburg Crude-Local up the flume and was chief-cook of the East-Brady Times. His reports were newsy and palatable. He travels for a Pittsburg house and would pay extra fare if passengers were carried by weight. The East-Brady Review “sees” the Times and “goes it one better.”

Graham & Hoag’s Sunday News-Letter arose from the tomb of the Evening Press and the Sunday-News. J. W. Graham, now of the Herald, piloted the trim vessel skillfully. A stock-company of producers, thinking a daily in the family would be “a thing of beauty” and “a joy forever,” bought the News-Letter and the Courier equipment in 1879, to start the Petroleum World. James M. Place, a pusher from Pusherville, had solicited the bulk of the subscriptions to the stock and was entrusted with the management. R. W. Criswell edited the paper splendidly. Captain M. H. Butler, who put heaps of ginger into his spicy effusions, and John P. Zane, whose hobby was finance—both have gone the journey that has no return trip—embellished its columns with thoughtful, digestible brain-food. Oil-news, readable locals, dispatches, jaunty selections and bang-up neatness were never lacking. But competition was fierce and the World had a hard row to hoe. A committee of stockholders soon took charge. Place, sleepless, indomitable and with the energy of a steam-hammer, opened a big store at Richburg and drove a rattling trade. Setting out to paddle his own canoe as a Corry newsboy at ten, he had run a newsroom at Fagundas, a bookstore and the post-office at St. Petersburg, a branch store at Edenburg, large stores at Bradford and Bolivar and won laurels as the greatest newspaper circulator in the petroleum-diggings. At Harrisburg and Reading he swung papers and the Globe in New York. He is now in Washington. S. L. Williams, unexcelled as a sprightly writer, and Hon. George E. Mapes, equally competent in the Legislature and the editorial chair, kept the World booming until “patience ceased to be a virtue” and the daily ceased to be a sheet. About half the material went to the Oil City Blizzard and the rest went to print the Sunday World Frank W. Truesdell had determined to originate. The late Hon. A. N. Perrin, ex-Mayor of Titusville, possessing “ample means and ample generosity,” backed the project. Truesdell finished his trade as printer in Cleveland and worked at Youngstown and Franklin, settling at Titusville in 1880 to manage the World jobbing-room. He was a young man of fine ability and scrupulous integrity. His partnership with Perrin ended in 1887 by his purchase of the entire business. He sold a half-interest in the paper in 1893 and death claimed him in October of 1894. Measured by his thirty-seven years, Frank Willard Truesdell’s life was short; measured by his good deeds, his worthy enterprises, his lofty sentiments and kindly acts, it was longer than that of many who pass the Psalmist’s three-score-and-ten. Mrs. Truesdell and her little daughter live in Titusville. F. F. Murray, associated with Walter Izant and W. R. Herbert in the general details, edits the Sunday World, which is as frisky as a spring-colt. Born at Buffalo in 1860, Murray was reared in Venango county, whither his father was drawn by the oil-excitement. Correspondence for local papers naturally bore him into the journalistic swim. He whooped it up six years for the Blizzard. A regular hummer, he is at home whether flaying monopolists, taking a ruffian’s scalp, praising a pretty girl, writing a tearful obituary, dissecting a suspicious job or reeling off a natty poem. “The Old Tramp-Printer,” a recent effort, is a fair sample of his quality:

“Here’s a rhyme to the old tramp-printer, who as long as he lives will roam, Whose ‘card’ is his principal treasure and where night overtakes him home; Whose shoes are run over and twisty, whose garments are shiny and thin, And who takes a bunk in the basement when the pressman lets him in.

“It is true there are some of the trampers that only the Angel of Death, When he touches them with his sickle, can cure of the ‘spirituous breath’; That some by their fellow-trampers are shunned as unwholesome scamps, And that some are just aimless, homeless, restless, typographical tramps.

“But the most of them surely are worthy of something akin to praise, And have drifted down to the present out of wholesomer, happier days; And when, though his looks be as seedy as ever a mortal wore, Will you find the old tramper minus his marvelous fund of lore?

“What paper hasn’t he worked on? Whose manuscript hasn’t he set? What story worthy remembrance was he ever known to forget? What topics rise for discussion, in science, letters or art, That the genuine old tramp-printer cannot grapple and play his part?

“It is true you will sometimes see him when the hue that adorns his nose Outrivals the crimson flushes which the peony flaunts at the rose; It is true that much grime he gathers in the course of each trip he takes, Inasmuch as he boards all freight-trains between the Gulf and the Lakes.

“Yet his knowledge grows more abundant than many much-titled men’s, Who travel as scholarly tourists and are classed with the upper-tens; And few are the contributions these scholarly ones have penned That the seediest, shabbiest tramper couldn’t readily cut and mend.

“He has little in life to bind him to one place more than the rest, For his hopes in the past lie buried with the ones that he loved the best; He has little to hope from Fortune and has little to fear from Fate, And little his dreams are troubled over the public’s love or hate.

“So a rhyme to the old tramp-printer—to the hopes he has cherished and wept, To the loves and the old home-voices that still in his heart are kept; A rhyme to the old tramp-printer, whose garments are shiny and thin, And who takes a bunk in the basement when the pressman lets him in.”

Mr. Mapes gravitated to Philadelphia to write for Colonel McClure’s Times. His are the appetizing paragraphs that burnish the editorial page by their subtile essence. He is a familiar figure at party conventions, which his intimate knowledge of state-politics enables him to gauge accurately. He abhors trickery and chicanery, deals his hardest blows in exposing corrupt methods, believes taxpayers and voters have rights contractors and bosses are bound to respect and is a stickler for honest government. Williams also strayed to the Quaker City as paragrapher for the Press, making a phenomenal hit. James G. Blaine complimented Charles Emory Smith upon these tart, peppery nuggets, saying: “I invariably read the Press paragraphs before looking at any other paper.” This pleasant tribute added ten dollars a week to Sam’s salary, yet he tired of Philadelphia years ago and glided back to his old home in “the Messer Diocese.” He is now connected with the New York Mail and Express, whose readers can hardly find words to express their satisfaction with the spice he injects into Elliot Shepherd’s trusty expositor of Republicanism.

His pointed squibs and his cranium bare Are as much alike as steps in a stair— One grows no moss and the other no hair.

R. W. Criswell holds an honorable place among the men who have made oil-region newspapers known abroad and influential at home. He was born in Clarion county and educated in Cincinnati. His sketches, signed “Chris,” introduced him to the public through the medium of the Oil-City Derrick, the East Brady Independent and the Fairview Independent, Colonel Samuel Young’s twin offspring. Retiring from Young’s employ at Fairview, he was next heard of as traveling correspondent of the Cincinnati Enquirer. His editorship of the Derrick in 1877 clinched his fame as a Simon-pure humorist, thirty-six inches to the yard and one-hundred cents to the dollar. The Shakespearian parodies and Lickshingle stories, lustrous as the Kohinoor, waltzed the merry round of the American press and were published in two taking books—“The New Shakespeare” and “Grandfather Lickshingle.” After his departure from the Petroleum World Criswell renewed his relations with the Enquirer as managing-editor. He was John R. McLean’s trusty lieutenant and held the great western daily on the topmost rung of the ladder. The New-York Graphic, the pathfinder of illustrated dailies, needed him and he accepted its flattering offer. The Cincinnati Sun was about to shine on the just and the unjust and he returned to Porkopolis. Colonel John Cockrell coaxed him back to Manhattanville to reconstruct the funny-streak of the overflowing New-York World.

When the Colonel and Joseph Pulitzer disagreed—they “never spoke as they passed by”—he went with Cockrell to the Commercial Advertiser, for which he has done some of the brightest work in the newspaper-kingdom. He now edits Truth. “Mark Anthony’s Oration Over Cæsar,” from “The Comic Shakespeare,” will dispel the gloom and indicate the rare brand of Criswell’s vintage:

“Friends, Romans, countrymen! lend me your ears; I will return them next Saturday. I come To bury Cæsar because the times are hard And his folks can’t afford to hire an undertaker. The evil that men do lives after them, In the shape of progeny, who reap The benefit of their life insurance. So let it be with the deceased. Brutus hath told you that Cæsar was ambitious, What does Brutus know about it? It is none of his funeral. But that it isn’t is no fault of the undersigned. Here under leave of you I come to Make a speech at Cæsar’s funeral. He was my friend, faithful and just to me; He loaned me five dollars once when I was in a pinch, And signed my petition for a post-office. And Brutus says he was ambitious. Brutus should chase himself around the block. Cæsar hath brought many captives home to Rome Who broke rock on the streets until their ransoms Did the general coffers fill. When that the poor hath cried, Cæsar hath wept, Because it didn’t cost anything And made him solid with the masses. [Cheers. Ambition should be made of sterner stuff. Yet Brutus says he was ambitious. Brutus is a liar, and I can prove it. You all did see that on the Lupercal I thrice presented him a kingly crown, Which he did thrice refuse, because it did not fit him quite. Was this ambition? Yet Brutus says he was ambitious. Brutus is not only the biggest liar in this country But is a politician of the deepest dye. [Applause. If you have tears prepare to shed them now. You all do know this ulster. [Laughter. I remember the first time ever Cæsar put it on; It was on a summer’s evening in his tent, With the thermometer registering ninety degrees in the shade; But it was an ulster to be proud of, And it cost him $3 at Marcalus Swartzheimer’s, Corner of Broad and Ferry streets, sign of the red flag. Old Swartz wanted $40 for it, But finally came down to $3, because it was Cæsar! Look! in this place ran Casca’s dagger through; Through this the son of a gun of a Brutus stabbed, And when he plucked his cursed steel away, Good gracious, how the blood of Cæsar followed it!

[Cheers, and cries of “Give us something on the Wilson bill!” “Hit him again;” etc.]

I came not, friends, to steal away your hearts; I am no thief as Brutus is. Brutus has a monopoly in all that business, And if he had his deserts, he would be In the State prison and don’t you forget it. Kind friends, sweet friends, I do not wish to stir you up To such a sudden flood of mutiny, And, as it looks like rain, The pallbearers will please place the body in the wheelbarrow And we will proceed to bury Cæsar, Not to praise him.”

Edwin C. Bell, a son of the Pine-Tree state, landed at Petroleum Centre in 1866, spent 1869 in the west, returned to Oil Creek in 1870 and for three years punched down oil-wells. In 1874 he started a job-printery at Pioneer, using a press he built from iron-scraps and an oak-rail and learning the trade without an instructor. That fall he transplanted his kit to Titusville and continued in the jobbing-line fourteen years. Early in 1878 he published the Leader, a weekly that petered out in two months. Mr. Bell in 1882 flew the flag of the Republic, a campaign-oracle of the Greenbackers and supporter of Thomas A. Armstrong for governor. The Republic, like the Argus, the Observer and others of that ilk, didn’t attain old age. Bell’s first grists—stories and sketches—went into the Courier hopper in 1872, supplemented from 1878 to 1882 by bundles of live matter in the Meadville Vindicator and the Richburg Echo. He edited the Republican at Casselton, N. D., in 1882-3, and during the nine years following his return to Titusville sent a news-letter almost daily to the Oil-City Blizzard. He has long contributed to the Sunday World and in 1888-9 was its assistant-editor. In 1892 he began a history of the Pennsylvania oil-regions, instalments of which the Derrick printed, and he hopes to finish the task on a comprehensive scale befitting the subject.

Warren has been blessed with two weeklies, the Ledger and the Mail, for two generations. Ephraim Cowan founded the Mail in 1848 and owned it until his death in 1894. Three dailies vigilantly watch each other and guard the pretty town. At Tidioute the Journal, inaugurated by J. B. Close in 1867, jogged along seven years. George A. Needle and Frank H. Taylor were the owners. Needle, whose sharp lance could prick the fiends of the opposition like a needle, followed the tide to Parker and boosted the Daily, which shortly plunged into perpetual night. Its chief contributor was Stephen W. Harley, who furnished rich budgets of Petrolia odds and ends over the name of “Keno.” “Steve” was kindly, obliging, congenial and well-liked. Six summers have come and gone since he was laid beneath the sod. Clark Wilson removed the Oilman’s Journal to Smethport and the Phœnix is in undisputed possession of the Parker territory, with the youngest editor—son of G. A. Needle—in the State guiding it capably. In October of 1874 the Warren-County News was moved from Youngsville to Tidioute. C. E. White, who took charge in December, bought the plant in 1875 and he has been in the harness continuously since. Mr. White is among the best all-round newspaper-men in the country. He was born at Newburg in 1842, boyhooded at Binghampton, learned his trade at Elmira, served the Jamestown Journal six years, spent a year with the Oil-City Derrick and went to Tidioute in 1872 to manage the Journal’s job-department. His record as a citizen, soldier, printer and editor is solid nonpareil.

Clarion county did not escape the frantic rush to stick a paper in every mushroom-town. F. H. Barclay inflicted the Record on the long-suffering St. Petersburgers, mooring his bark in California when the paper turned up its toes. Tozer’s Crude-Local, which never sported a crude-local or editorial, the Fern-City Illuminator, brighter in name than in real substance, the Clarion Banner, a species of rag on the bush, the Edenburg National Record and several more slid off the perch with a dull thud, fatal as Humpty Dumpty’s irretrievable tumble.

Frank A. Herr’s Record has long kept up a good record at Petrolia. Colonel Young and the three papers he propagated in Butler county, with a half-dozen elsewhere, have mouldered into dust. He was intensely earnest and industrious, able to maintain his end of a discussion and seldom unwilling to dare opponents knock the chip off his stout shoulder. Rev. W. A. Thorne attempted to reform the race with his Greece-City Review, hauling the traps to Millerstown upon the depletion of the frontier-town. His path was strewn with thorns, mankind resenting his review of everybody and everything. Ex-Postmaster Rattigan braces up the unterrified with his sturdy Chicora Herald, which he has conducted successfully for twenty years. St. Joe’s bantam, never distinguished for its strength, crowed mildly and dropped from the roost. The county-seat is fully stocked with political organs, the Citizen, the Eagle and the Herald coaching their respective parties. J. H. Negley & Son are not negligent in their conduct of the Citizen. The Eagle is the proud bird of Thomas H. Robertson, a trained writer and journalist, now Superintendent of Public-Printing in Harrisburg. The Herald was for many years the pet of Jacob Zeigler, to whom all Butlerites took off their hats. “Uncle Jake” was the soul of the social circle, a treasury of wit and wisdom, an exhaustless reservoir of pat stories, a mine of practical knowledge and a welcome guest in every corner of Pennsylvania. His soubriquet of “Uncle” fastened upon him in a curious way. At the funeral of a youthful acquaintance the distracted mother, as her boy was consigned to the grave, in a frenzy of grief laid her head upon young Zeigler’s breast and exclaimed: “Oh, were you ever a stricken mother?” “No, madam,” was the cool reply, “but I expect to be an uncle before sundown to-morrow.” Bystanders noted the strange incident and thenceforth the “Uncle” stuck like a fly-blister. His parents are buried in the Harrisburg cemetery, near Joseph Jefferson’s father, and whenever he visited the capital he strewed their resting-place with flowers. Who can doubt that the filial son, in whom mingled the strength of a man and the tenderness of a woman, found his loved ones not far away when he entered the pearly gates? Truly “this was the noblest Roman of them all.”

Another honored resident of Butler was Samuel P. Irvin, author of “The Oil-Bubble,” a pamphlet abounding with delicious satire and bits of personal experience. It was printed in 1868 and produced a sensation. Enjoying very few advantages in his boyhood, Mr. Irvin was emphatically a self-made man. Born in a backwoods-township seventy years ago, his schooling was limited and he toiled “down on the farm.” Like Lincoln, Garfield, Simon Cameron and many other country-boys, he rose to distinction by his own exertions. He read assiduously, studied law and stood well at the bar. His literary bent found expression in newspaper-articles of very high grade. He lived some years at Franklin in the earlier stages of petroleum-developments, drilling wells and handling oil-properties on commission. He met death with fortitude, “like one who wraps the drapery of his couch about him and lies down to pleasant dreams.”

The Bradford semi-weekly New Era, harbinger of the new era dawning upon McKean county, saw daylight in the spring of 1875. The main object of its founder, Colonel J. H. Haffey, was to invite attention to the possibilities of the locality as a prospective oil-field. Colonel Haffey was a man of varied talents—public speaker, writer, soldier, surveyor, promoter of oil-enterprises, rail-roader and expounder of the gospel. Irish by birth, he came to America at fourteen, lived three years in Canada, was licensed to preach and in 1851, at the age of twenty-one, accepted a call to the Baptist church at Bradford, then Littleton. Marrying Diantha, youngest daughter of Nathan De Golier, in December of 1852, a year later he quit the pulpit, sensibly concluding that the Lord had not called him to starve his family. As surveyor and geologist, he was employed to prospect for coal and iron in McKean and adjacent counties. In 1858-9 he had charge of a gang of men grading the Erie railroad to Buttsville. The first man in Bradford township to enlist in 1861, he raised a force for Colonel Kane’s famous “Bucktails,” shared in the fighting around Richmond and was honorably discharged with the rank of major. Governor Hartranft appointed him a member of his staff and the title of colonel resulted. He sold his Bradford home in 1877 and removed to Beverly, N.J., where his active, helpful career ended in November, 1881.

Ferrin & Weber, of Salamanca, publishers of the Cattaraugas Republican, in 1876 bought the New Era from Col. Haffey and placed it in charge of Charles F. Persons. He had been in their establishment at Little Valley two years. For nine or ten months he washed rollers, fed presses, carried wood and did the varied chores allotted to the “printer’s devil.” His aptitude impressed his employers, who sent him first to Salamanca and then to Bradford, an important post for a youth of twenty-two. Hoping to be an editor some day, he had corresponded for neighboring papers from boyhood on his father’s farm, a practice he maintained during his apprenticeship. A few months after reaching Bradford he and the Salamanca firm established the Daily Era, with the names of Ferrin, Weber & Persons at the mast-head. Very soon Persons bought out his partners and conducted the paper alone. His ability and energy had full play. The Era met the demands of the eager, restless crowds that thronged the streets of Bradford and scoured the hills in quest of territory. Its news was concise and fresh, its oil-reports were not doctored for speculative ends, it had opinions and presented them tersely. Persons sold to W. H. Longwell and W. F. Jordan early in 1879 and in the fall bought the Olean Democrat. The nobby New-York town was feeling the stimulus of oil-operations and he started the Daily Herald, enhancing his wallet and well-won reputation. The American Press-Association, which furnishes plate-matter to thousands of newspapers, secured him in 1888 as Local Manager of its New-York office. Two years ago he was promoted to General Eastern-Manager and in 1894 was elected Secretary, Assistant General-Manager and one of the five directors. Mr. Persons occupies a snug home in Brooklyn, with his wife and two little daughters. He is a live representative of the go-ahead, enterprising, sagacious, executive American.

Longwell & Jordan also bought the Breeze—it first breathed the oil-laden air of Bradford in 1878 and was edited by David Armstrong, “organizer” of the producers in one of their movements to “get together”—and consolidated it with the Era. Col. Edward Stuck, of York, worked the combination successfully some months. Colonel Leander M. Morton was night-editor until his lamented death. Thomas A. Kern attended to the field, preparing the “monthly reports” and posting readers on oil-developments in his bailiwick. Years have flown since poor “Tom,” young and enthusiastic, and J. K. Graham, exact and upright, responded to the message that brooks no excuse or postponement. “Musing on companions gone, we doubly feel ourselves alone.” Bradshaw, McMullen and others scattered. Jordan, whose first work for papers was done at Petrolia in 1873, died in Harrisburg in 1897. P. C. Boyle secured the Era and infused into it much of his own prompt, courageous spirit. David A. Dennison has for years been its efficient editor. His parents removed from Connecticut to a farm south of Titusville when he was a baby. At thirteen David wrote a batch of items, which it tickled him to see in print, without a thought of one day blossoming into a full-fledged “literary feller.” Not caring to be a tiller of the soil, he juggled the hammer and lathe in machine-shops to the music of “the Anvil Chorus.” A short season on the boards convinced him that he was not commissioned to elevate the stage and wrest the scepter from Edwin Booth, Lawrence Barrett, John McCullough or Alexander Salvini. He whisked to a Bradford shop to strike the iron while it was hot, writing smart descriptions of oil-region scenes for outside papers as a side-issue for several years. A series of his articles on gas-monopoly, in the Elmira Telegram, brought reduced rates to consumers and pleasant notoriety to the ironworker, who had proved himself a blacksmith with the sledge and no “blacksmith” with the quill. His name was neither Dennis nor Mud, and the Daily Oil News, McMullen & Bradshaw’s game-fowl, wanted him forthwith. The salary was not alluring and in the Indian-summer days of 1886 he cast in his lot with the Era. Promotion chased him persistently. From reporter he was boosted to city-editor and in 1894 to the editorial management, a flawless selection. He has tussled with all sorts of topics, constructed tales of woe in jingling verse and even tempted fate by firing off a drama, which has not yet run the gamut of publicity. Dennison has been offered good sits in metropolitan offices, but he likes Bradford and clings to the Era. He married Miss Katharine Grady in 1883 and three boys gladden the home of the exultant D. A. D. “May his shadow never grow less.”

E. W. Butler started the Bradford Sunday News on April first, 1879, with Joseph Moorhead as editor. Mr. Moorhead grew up on a farm near Newcastle, served in the army as captain in Matthew Stanley Quay’s regiment, landed at Petroleum Centre in 1869, worked about oil-wells five years, taught school at St. Petersburg in 1874-5, published a short-lived fraternal paper at Newcastle in 1870, aided in editing the Millerstown Review and in 1878 filled a position on the Bradford Era. He edited the Sunday News one year, helped launch a similar sheet at Minneapolis, returned to Bradford in 1880, resumed his position a few months and resigned to edit the Sunday-Mail. Early in 1885 he settled in Kansas, farming there five years and coming back to Pennsylvania in 1890. Since that time he has lived in Pittsburg and been connected with various dailies of the sooty city. His vigor and experience are manifested in his writings, which always go direct to the spot. At sixty-two the veteran unites the activity of buoyant youth with the wisdom of robust age. Butler reeled off the Buffalo Sunday-News in 1880, the sharpest, quickest, breeziest afternoon-paper in the Bison City, and in 1885 sold his Bradford bantling to Philip H. Lindeman, Era book-keeper and manager. Lindeman navigated against wind and tide until the News ran ashore in 1894, the “Commodore” himself ending life’s voyage in June of 1897.

A number of producers agreeing to stand sponsors for the bills, McMullen & Bradshaw floated the Daily News in 1886. Its backers grew tired of emptying their pockets and the bright venture gave up the ghost. Eben Brewer’s Evening Star tinted the sky under its founder’s artistic touch. He sold to Andrew Carr, who found the load unbearable and shoved it upon Rufus B. Stone, brother of Congressman Charles W. Stone. Mr. Stone, an able lawyer, was Chancellor of Mississippi in the reconstruction-days. The reconstructed legislature lopped off his salary and he located at Bradford to practice law. He owned the Star several years, writing most of the political editorials that carried weight and gave the paper high standing. H. F. Barber, a man of fine intellect and noble purpose, dropped the Smethport Miner, relieved Stone and honed the Star a few years, assisted at times by George Allen’s clever stroke. Protracted sickness, during which he showed “how sublime it is to suffer and be strong,” at last “withered the garlands on his brow.” He is dead, but “his speaking dust has more of life than half its breathing moulds.” Allen slid to Buffalo to polish up a railroad-periodical. “Judge” Johnson—in 1875 he landed at Bradford, served a term in the Legislature and another as postmaster, operated in oil and died three years ago—controlled the Star after Barber, whose widow still retains an interest in the paper. Ex-Senator Emery fitted out the Daily Record, which seeks to trail the standard of the Standard in the dust and ticket independent producers, refiners and pipe-liners to a petroleum-Utopia. “Ed.” Jones, the adept who toed the chalk-mark on the Harrisburg Call, whirled the emery-wheel so expertly that the Record has never approached Davy Jones’s locker. It is snappy and full of fight as a shillaleh at Donnybrook Fair. Carr’s Sunday-Mail, freighted with a car of delicate morsels, barked up the wrong tree and went to the bow-wows. Carr rolled down to Pittsburg to sell buggies, bagging a cargo of ducats. “Tom” L. Wilson—he’s as humorous as they make ’em—got out three numbers of Sunday Morning, a four-page blanket in size and a ten-course banquet in contents. Col. Ege shut it down for publishing a rank extract from Walt Whitman’s “Blades o’ Grass” and boomed the Evening-Times, which expired in infancy. Ege was a banker who hankered to be State-Treasurer, banked upon newspaper-support, went into bankruptcy, received an appointment in the Philadelphia Mint and traveled westward when Cleveland shuffled the pack for a new deal. Wilson wrote for the oil-region press, handled the Reading branch of a Harrisburg paper, edited the Washington Review—Sistersville has a sisterly Review now—and rounded up in Buffalo. The Post, Bradford’s latest Sunday experiment, owes its good looks and good matter to Edward F. McIntyre and George O. Sloan.

One evening in 1877 a young stranger walked into the St. Petersburg post-office, bought a package of stationery at the book-counter and told J. M. Place he was looking for a situation. Place hired him as a clerk. He had come from the homestead farm in Orange county, N. Y., to Cornell University, worked his way and graduated in civil-engineering. Marshall Swartzwelder lectured at St. Petersburg on temperance and Place’s clerk sat up all night to report the masterpiece for the Derrick. It was his first production in print, a voluntary act on his part, and the article attracted most favorable notice. Its author was at once offered a position on the Derrick. He came in contact with oil-statistics and his real genius asserted itself. His painstaking, conscientious reports were accepted as strictly reliable. He would trudge over the hills, wade through miles of mud and ford swollen streams to ascertain the precise status of an important well, rather than approximate it from hearsay. This care and thoroughness gave the highest value to the statistical work of Justus C. McMullen. In 1879 he went to Bradford and worked on the Breeze, the Era and the Star, always with the same devotion that was a ruling maxim of his life. In 1883 he scouted in Warren and Forest counties and became part owner of the Petroleum Age. Alfred L. Snell and Major W. C. Armor were associated with him in this admirable monthly, of which he became sole proprietor on the first of December, 1887. A. C. Crum, now on the editorial staff of the Pittsburg Dispatch, contributed many a newsy crumb to the Age. A newsboy at Pickwick hailed me in front of his stand one cool morning and asked—not in a Pickwickian sense—if it would be worth while to get somebody to send locals to the Derrick. “Why not do it yourself?” was my answer. He tried and he succeeded. His work expanded and improved and he adopted journalism permanently. He catered for Oil City and Bradford papers, spun yarns for Pittsburg dailies and was a legislative correspondent several sessions. Snell, a statistical hummer and hard-to-beat purveyor of news, hangs his manuscript on the Derrick hook. Armor sponsored a historic book and laid off his armor to second Dr. Egle in the State Library. He has a book-store in Harrisburg and a museum that distances the “Old Curiosity Shop.” McMullen established and edited the Daily Oil-News in 1886. He died of pleurisy, contracted from exposure in collecting oil-data, on January thirty-first, 1888, cut off at thirty-seven. The Petroleum Age did not stay long behind its unswerving projector. Justus C. McMullen is enshrined in the affections of the people. An unrelenting foe of oppression, he had a warm heart for the poor and pursued his own path of right through thorns or flowers. He married Miss Cora, daughter of Col. L. M. Morton, who lives in Bradford and has one little girl. A brave, grand, exalted spirit passed from earth when J. C. McMullen’s light was quenched.

“On the sands of life Sorrow treads heavily and leaves a print Time cannot wash away.”

Parker has been called “the graveyard of newspapers,” yet G. A. Needle has run his popular Phœnix twenty-three years, accumulating sufficient wealth to own a book-store and oil-wells and let the paper canter along under charge of his son, the youngest editor in Pennsylvania.

The Washington Reporter, established in 1892 as a daily and semi-weekly, owes its abundant success largely to the wide-awake editor, William Christman. His practical knowledge and ready pen keeps the Reporter right in the swim. Fulton Phillips in 1888 launched the Outlook at McDonald, then merely a flag-station on the Panhandle Railway, with no great outlook in prospect. His editorials are essentially independent and vigorous, the man dominating the paper. It is Fulton Phillips, rather than the paper, who is read and quoted by the thousands of Outlook readers. He was born within a mile of McDonald and the boom following oil-operations did not catch the tall editor—he is considerably above six feet—napping. The Outlook was the first to put a reporter in the field and write up the wells in picturesque style. Phillips served through the war, taught school at Pittsburg, ran a paper at Canonsburg, drifted westward, did editorial work in Missouri and California and returned to start the only failure in his pilgrimage, a temperance-organ at Washington. It went the way of former temperance-sheets in the local-option town where they take theirs in jugs. In other portions of the oil-world journalism holds up its end creditably, newspapers and developments marching neck and neck on their grand errand of enlightenment. The Sistersville Review and Parkersburg Sentinel do the West-Virginia field proud, the Toledo Journal is always primed with Ohio oil-news, nor is there a spot in which oil plays trump that literature does not hold a royal flush. Intelligence and petroleum are a good pair to tie to, to bet on and to rake in the jack-pot.

The Rev. S. J. M. Eaton—his name is ever spoken with reverence—thirty-three years pastor of the Presbyterian church at Franklin, filled a large place in the literary guild. He loved especially to delve into old books and papers and letters pertaining to the pioneers of Northwestern Pennsylvania. His faithful labors in this neglected nook unearthed a troop of traditions and facts which “the world will not willingly let die.” For the “History of Venango County” he furnished a number of leading chapters. His published works include “Petroleum,” an epitome of oil-affairs down to 1866, “Lakeside,” a tale based upon his father’s ministerial experiences in the wilds of Erie county, biographies of eminent divines, sketches of the Erie Presbytery, pamphlets and sermons. “The Holy City” and “Palestine,” embodying his observations in the orient, were issued as text-books by the Chautauqua Circle. Dr. Eaton was my near neighbor for years and hours in his well-stocked library, enriched by his “affluence of discursive talk,” are recalled with deep satisfaction. On the sixteenth of July, 1889, while walking along the street, he raised his hands suddenly and fell to the pavement, struck down by heart-failure. “He was not, for God took him” to wear the victor’s crown. Farewell, “until the day dawn and the shadows flee away.”

In the Franklin office of the Galena Oil-Works are three successful weavers of rich textures in the literary loom—Dr. Frank H. Johnston, E. H. Sibley and Samuel H. Gray. Dr. Johnston was born in Canal township, reared on a farm, severely wounded in battling for the Union, studied medicine, practiced at Cochranton and in 1872 located at Petrolia. There “he first essayed to write” for the Oil-City Derrick. From the very outset his articles were up to concert-pitch. Abandoning medicine for letters, he acquired a thorough knowledge of stenography, read the choicest books and wrote in his best vein for the press. He represented the Derrick as its Franklin correspondent with credit to himself and the paper. For sixteen years he has been connected with the Galena Oil-Works as secretary of Hon. Charles Miller, a place demanding the superior qualifications with which the doctor is unstintingly endowed.

Edwin Henry Sibley, born at Bath, N. Y., in 1857, is a brother of Hon. Joseph C. Sibley and has resided in Franklin twenty-three years. He was graduated from Cornell University in 1880. For several years he has been treasurer of the Galena Oil-Works and manager of Miller & Sibley’s famous Prospect-Hill Stock-Farm, positions of responsibility to which his personal address, his training and his business-methods adapt him pre-eminently. Three years in succession he has been unanimously elected President of the Pennsylvania Jersey-Cattle Club. He has been active and efficient in promoting the laudable work of the University Extension Society. Under guise of “Polybius Crusoe Smith, Sage of Cranberry Cross-Roads”—the Smiths are big folks since the by-play of Pocahontas—he contributes to Puck and other well-known publications humorous articles and short, quaint, pithy sayings. These display a keen insight into human nature and rare gift of happy, accurate expression. One of his recent effusions—an address welcoming the delegates to an agricultural convention—is a bit of burlesque that deserves to rank with Artemus Ward’s brightest efforts or the richest paragraphs in the Biglow Papers. A few buds plucked at random from the flowery mead will serve to illustrate the high-class stamp of Mr. Sibley’s work in the field his genius adorns. They are literary nosegays from his terse observations as a philosophic “looker-on in Vienna:”

“The wife that manages her husband is a genius, the one that bosses him is a tartar, the one that fights him is a fool, while the one that does none of them is now as much out of fashion as her grandmother’s wedding-gown.”

“The pygmies of Africa are such by nature, but elsewhere they are produced artificially by a diet of petty and envious thoughts.”

“‘Truth is mighty and will prevail,’ but Error generally has the better of it till the seventy-seventh round.”

“One of the greatest evils that humanity has to contend with is that so many icebergs have floated down from the North Pole and persist in passing themselves off for men.”

“Former lovers in making out their title-deeds of the heart to their successors always reserve at least a narrow pathway across a corner.”

“Wise men and fools have foolish thoughts; fools tell them, wise men keep them to themselves.”

“Parents that haven’t time to correct their children when they are small have time to weep over them when they are grown.”

“Affectation (alias of Deceitfulness) has three picked cronies from whom she is seldom separated. Their names are False Pride, Weakmindedness and Bad Temper.”

“If one has too much vitality in his brains he can get rid of it by taking them out and boiling them. If he finds this too much bother, he can accomplish the same result by swallowing a few doses of a decoction of faith-cure, spook-lore and hypnotism.”

“For peace of mind and length of days, put this inscription above the doorway of workshop and home: Troubles that will not be worth worrying over seven years hence are not worth worrying over now.”

“The ancient Israelites once worshiped a golden calf, but the modern Americans would worship a golden polecat if they couldn’t get the gold in any other form to worship.”

“The young man who starts out in life with character and brains and energy as his outfit will distance the one whose sole capital is the money his father left him.”

Samuel H. Gray carries under his hat plenty of the gray-matter that makes bright writers and bright wooers of the Muses. He has been court stenographer of Venango county and holds a confidential position with the firm of Miller & Sibley, applying his spare moments to newspaper-writing. His pictures of petroleum-traits and incidents are finished word-paintings, with “light and shade and color properly disposed.” Like Silas Wegg, he “drops into poetry” in a friendly way. Such papers as the New-York Truth strive for his emanations, which savor of Bret Harte and “hold the mirror up to nature” in oleaginous circles. Judge of this “By the Order of the Lord,” founded on an actual occurrence in Scrubgrass township:

“It was back, if I remember, in the year of sixty-five, When we formed a part and parcel of that rushin’, busy hive That extended from Oil City up the crooked crick until It reached its other endin’ in the town of Titusville; When every rock an’ hillside was included in a lease, An’ everyone was huntin’ fer the fortune-makin’ grease; When a poor man pushed and elbowed ’gainst the oily millionaire, An’ ‘the devil take the hindmost’ seemed the all-pervadin’ prayer.

“An’ we hed formed a pardnership, jest Tom an’ Jim an’ me, That was properly recorded as the ‘Tough and Hungry Three,’ An’ hed gone an’ leased a portion of some hard an’ rocky soil That we thought looked like the cover of a fountain filled with oil. An’ we set the drill a’goin’ on its long an’ greasy quest, That meant so much or little to the capital possessed. Our money was all in the well, in Providence our trust, An’ we waited for a fortune, or to liquidate an’ bu’st.

“An’ while the drill was chuggin’ at its hard an’ rocky way We three would hold a meetin’ at a certain time each day, The ‘resolves’ an’ the ‘whereases’ that the secretary took Were properly recorded ’twixt the covers of a book. An’ we passed a resolution by a vote unanimous Thet if Providence would condescend to sorter favor us, An’ assist the operations on the ‘Tough and Hungry’ lease, We would give to Him a quarter of the total flow of grease.

“Next day the drill broke through into a very oily sand An’ Providence remembered us with strong, unsparin’ hand; The oil came out with steady flow an’ loaded up the tanks, An’ the Lord was due rewarded by a solid vote of thanks. A resolution then came up thet caused the vote to split, A sort of an amendment, readin’ somethin’ like, to wit— ‘Whereas, a tenth is all the Lord was ever known to crave, Resolved we give it to Him; but resolved the rest we save.’

“I fit that resolution, an’ I fit it tooth an’ nail, Spoke of dangers such proceedin’s was most likely to entail; But two votes were in its favor, an’ two votes it only took Fer to have it due recorded in the resolution-book. Next day the oil stopped flowin’ an’ it never flowed no more, An’ the ‘Tough and Hungry’ combine was a’ feelin’ blue an’ sore. But they nailed upon the derrick this notice, on a board, ‘This well has stopped proceedin’s, by the order of the Lord.’”

The late Rev. Harry L. Yewens, rector of St. John’s church, was an accomplished writer and contributed many timely articles to the press. Rev. Dr. Fradenburg, formerly of Oil City and Franklin, has published seven scholarly volumes on religious subjects of vital interest.

The Bolivar Breeze, seven years old, under the able management of J. P. Herrick is one of the most readable sheets published in any section of the country. Editor Herrick is a philosopher and wit, who looks on the bright side of life and, better still, helps others to do likewise.

P. A. Rattigan, the very-much-alive perpetrator of the Millerstown Herald, once received an article entitled “Why Do I Live?” It was written on both sides of the sheet of foolscap, whereupon P. Anthony in next issue printed this conclusive answer: “You live because you sent your dog-goned rot by mail instead of bringing it in person.”

Melville J. Kerr, a Franklin boy, son of the senior proprietor of the marble-works, is a popular writer of facetiæ and society small-talk. Possibly “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” but his cognomen of “Joe Ker” is known to thousands of smiling readers who never heard of Melville. The aspiring youth, believing in the advantages of a big city, journeyed to New York to look for an opportunity that might want a party about his size and style. Unlike Jacob for Rachel, Penelope for Ulysses, the zealots who prayed for Ingersoll’s conversion or the Governor of South Carolina for the Governor of North Carolina to “fill ’em up again,” he didn’t wait long. A soap-mogul liked the ambitious, sprightly young man, introduced him to the swell set and booked him as editor of The Club. Kerr’s refined humor popped and effervesced with more “bead” than ever. He hobnobbed with millionaires, delighted Ward McAlister and married a lovely girl. Blood will tell as surely as a gossip or a tale-bearer. He is now editing The Yellow Kid, a semi-monthly crowded with good things, and raking in wealth at a Klondyke-gait from his newest book, “The World Over,” a graphic and geographic burlesque that is fated to be read the world over. And this is how the “Joe Ker” is the winning card in one oil-region instance.

Last year a compact “Life of Napoleon Bonaparte,” in harmony with the age of steam and electricity that won’t winnow a bushel of chaff for a grain of wheat, which had run through the winter and spring of 1894-5 in McClure’s Magazine, was published in book-form. Napoleonic ground had been so plowed and harrowed and raked and scraped and sifted by Hugo, Scott, Abbott, Hazlitt, Bourrienne, Madame Junot and a host of smaller fry that it seemed idle to expect anything new concerning the arbiter of Europe. Yet the beauty and freshness and acumen of this “Life” surprised and captivated its myriad readers, whose pleasure it increased to learn that the book was the production of a young woman. The authoress is Miss Ida M., daughter of Franklin S. Tarbell, a wealthy oil-operator. Her childhood was spent at Rouseville, where her parents lived prior to occupying their present home at Titusville. The romantic surroundings were calculated to awaken glowing fancies in the acute mind of the little girl. After graduating from Allegheny College, Meadville, she taught in the seminary at Poland, O., assisted to edit The Chautauquan at Meadville and spent three years in Europe gathering materials for articles on the dark days of Robespierre, Danton, Marat and Marie Antoinette. She wrote for Scribners’, McClure’s and the New-England Magazine, adding to her fame by an exhaustive study of Abraham Lincoln’s youth. Scribners’ will soon publish her biography of Madame Roland, the heroine of the French Revolution. Her success thus early in her career gives fruitful promise of a resplendent future for the vivacious, winsome biographer of the “Little Corporal.”

While many names and terms and phrases peculiar to oil-operations are unintelligible to the tenderfoot as “the confusion of tongues” at Babel, others will be valuable additions to the language. “He has the sand” aptly describes a gritty, invincible character. The fortunate adventurer “strikes oil,” the pompous strutter is “a big gasser,” foolish anger is “pumping roily” and fruitless enterprise is “boring in dry territory.” Misdirected effort is “off the belt,” failure “stops the drill,” a lucky investment “hits the jugular,” a hindrance “sticks the tools” and an abandoned effort “plugs the well.” A man or well that keeps at it is “a stayer,” one that doesn’t pan out is “a duster,” one that cuts loose is “a gusher” or “a spouter.” Fair promise means “a good show,” the owner of pipe-line certificates “has a bundle,” fleeced speculators are “shorn lambs”—not limited to Oildom by a large majority—and the ruined operator “shuts ’er down.” In a moment of inspiration John P. Zane created “the noble producer,” Lewis F. Emery invented “the downtrodden refiner” and Samuel P. Irvin exploited “the Great Invisible Oil-Company.” Some of these epigrammatic phrases deserve to go thundering down the ages with Grant’s “let us have peace,” Cleveland’s “pernicious activity,” and “a sucker is born every minute.”

Nor is the jargon of places and various appliances devoid of interest to the student of letters. Oil City, Petroleum Centre, Oleopolis, Petrolia, Greece City—first spelled G-r-e-a-s-e—Gas City, Derrick City and Oil Springs were named with direct reference to the slippery commodity. From prominent operators came Funkville, Shamburg, Tarr Farm, Rouseville, McClintockville, Fagundas, Prentice, Cochran, Karns City, Angelica, Criswell City, Gillmor, Duke Centre and Dean City. Noted men or early settlers were remembered in Titusville, Shaffer, Plumer, Trunkeyville, Warren, Irvineton, McKean, De Golier, Custer City, Garfield, Franklin, Reno, Foster, Cooperstown, Kennerdell, Milton, Foxburg, Pickwick, Parker, Troutman, Butler, Washington, Mannington and Morgantown. Emlenton commemorates Mrs. Emlon Fox. St. Joe recalls Joseph Oberly, a pioneer-operator in that portion of Butler county. Standoff City kept green a contractor who wished to “stand-off” his men’s wages until he finished a well. A deep hole or pit on the bank of the creek, from which air rushed, suggested Pithole. Tip-Top, near Pleasantville, signified its elevated site. Cornplanter, the township in which Oil City is situated, bears the name of the stalwart chief—six feet high and one hundred years old—to whom the land was ceded for friendly services to the government and the white settlers. This grand old warrior died in 1836 and the Legislature erected a monument over his grave, on the Indian reservation near Kinzua. Venango, Tionesta, Conewago, Allegheny, Modoc and Kanawha smack of the copper-hued savage once monarch of the whole plantation. Red-Hot, Hardscrabble, Bullion, Babylon, St. Petersburg, Fairview, Antwerp, Dogtown, Turkey City and Triangle are sufficiently obvious. Sistersville, the centre of activity in West Virginia, is blamed upon twin-islets in the river. Alemagooselum is a medley as uncertain in its origin as the ingredients of boarding-house hash. Diagrams are needed to convey a reasonable notion of “clamps,” “seed-bags,” “jars,” “reamers,” “sockets,” “centre-bits,” “mud-veins,” “tea-heads,” “conductors,” “Samson-posts,” “bull-wheels,” “band-wheels,” “walking-beams,” “grasshoppers,” “sucker-rods,” “temper-screws,” “pole-tools,” “casing,” “tubing,” “working-barrels,” “standing-valves,” “check-valves,” “force-pumps,” “loading-racks,” “well-shooters,” “royalty,” “puts,” “calls,” “margins,” “carrying-rates,” “spot,” “regular,” “pipage,” “storage,” and the thousand-and-one things that make up the past and present of the lingo of petroleum.

The Literary Guild is not the smallest frog in the petroleum-pool.

THE WOMAN’S EDITION.

To raise twenty-five-hundred dollars for an annex to the hospital, the ladies of Oil City, on February twelfth, 1896, issued the “Woman’s Edition” of the Derrick. It was a splendid literary and financial success, realizing nearly five-thousand dollars. This apt poem graced the editorial page:

Oh! sad was her brow and wild was her mien, Her expression the blankest that ever was seen; She was pained, she was hurt at the plain requisition: “We expect you to write for the Woman’s Edition.”

Her babies wept sadly, her husband looked blue, Her house was disordered, each room in a stew; Do you ask me to tell why this sad exhibition? She was trying to write for the Woman’s Edition.

Oh, what should she write? she had nothing to say; She pondered and thought all the long weary day; The question of woman, her life and her mission, Must all be touched up in the Woman’s Edition.

But what could she do—oh, how could she write? She could bake, she could brew from morning to night; She had even been known to get up a petition: But now she must write for “The Woman’s Edition.”

She felt that she must; her sisters all did it, Would she fall behind? The saints all forbid it! If the rest of her life should be spent in contrition, She felt she must write for the Woman’s Edition.

She did it, she wrote it, now read it and ponder; She treated a subject a little beyond her, But that was much better than total omission Of her name from the list on the Woman’s Edition.

Now her home is restored, her husband has smiled, But, alas! that pleased look on his face was beguiled By her cheerful assent to his simple condition: That she’ll not write again for a Woman’s Edition.

THE GIRL AND THE EDITOR.

D. A. Denison, the lively editor of the Bradford Era, is rarely vanquished in any sort of encounter. A “sweet-girl graduate” wrote a story and wanted him to print it. Thinking to let her down gently, he remarked: “Your romance suits me splendidly, but it has trivial faults. For instance, you describe the heroine’s canary as drinking water by ‘lapping it up eagerly with her tongue.’ Isn’t that a peculiar way for a canary to drink water?” “Your criticism surprises me,” said the blushing girl in a pained voice. “Still, if you think your readers would prefer it, perhaps it would be better to let the canary drink water with a teaspoon.” Dennison wilted like an ice-cream in July, promised to publish the story and the girl walked away mistress of the situation.

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