Oil City, Pennsylvania

“ There are several well-equipped independent refineries in operation at the present time in Pennsylvania [Pg 430] and Ohio oil-fields where the refiner has his own crude oil, his own pipe line, and produces his own natural gas for fuel purposes. It is needless to say that an experienced and skilful refiner operating under such favorable conditions can manufacture at less cost per barrel than any trust with a long list of pensioners and burdened with the control of two political parties and the maintenance of numerous city mansions, stock farms, and theological seminaries. ”

“ Is the center of one of the richest bituminous coal and natural gas districts in the world. Oil fields lie mainly in basins of Allegheny and Ohio Rivers. Staple manufactures are iron, steel and glass. The history of Allegheny County presents a greater variety of startling incidents than almost any other portion of the state. Mound builders were primeval inhabitants, site of ancient fortifications are on Chartier’s Creek, eight miles from Pittsburgh, county seat, second city in size in the state, on site of Shannopin’s Town, chief of about twenty families of Delawares ”

“ These verdicts have been followed by suits now pending in the Pennsylvania courts, claiming heavy damages from the oil combination as responsible for the disaster and the loss of life and property.
The Oil City and Titusville disaster is but a provincial affair compared with the metropolitan avalanche of ruin which is all ready to move upon the cities on New York Bay from the refineries and tanks along its shores. Several condensed oceans of unignited fire are waiting for such accident as happens almost every day to some gas-works or refinery or tank-car. ”

“ The petroleum discovery in North Western Pennsylvania and the coincident opening of direct railroad communication between Cleveland and the oil regions, contributed greatly to the rapid increase of the population and wealth of the city. ”

“ California is not content to have gold-mines, overgrown trees and tropical fruits and leave petroleum out in the cold. For years developments have been carried on, centering finally at Los Angeles. City-lots are punctured with holes and three-hundred wells have been drilled on two-hundred acres. Samuel M. Jones, formerly of the Pennsylvania oil-region and now president of the Acme Sucker-Rod-Company of Toledo, leveled his kodak at the Los-Angeles wells in 1895, securing the view printed in the cut. ”

“ Men forgot easily in the Oil Regions in the sixties.
An evil in their business which they were only beginning to grasp fully in 1871 was the unholy system of freight discrimination which the railroads were practising. Three trunk lines competed for the business by 1872—the Pennsylvania, which had leased the Philadelphia and Erie, the Erie and the Central. (The latter road reached the Oil Regions by a branch from Ashtabula on the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern division to Oil City; this branch was completed in 1868.) The Pennsylvania claimed the oil traffic as a natural right ”

“ 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. ”

“ Thus that man who had gone to Canada had been himself damming back for twenty-three years a flow of coal oil which the State Geologist of Pennsylvania declared officially, as early as 1870, was then worth to our State a hundred millions of dollars. The city of Titusville now stands on that farm and those Pleasantville wells flow on, and that farmer who had studied all about the formation of oil since the second day of God's creation clear down to the present time, sold that farm for $833, no cents—again I say, "no sense." ”

“ 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. ”

“ ARMSTRONG COUNTY FORMED March 12, 1800, and named for General John Armstrong, who commanded the expedition against the Indians at Kittanning in 1756, and destroyed their town; a hilly and well-watered region with fine farming lands on bottoms and hills. Bituminous coal and limestone are found in all parts of the county; cannel coal of excellent quality, oil, gas, and iron ore; the plate-glass industry at Ford City is said to be the largest in the world. Historic places are, site of Fort Jacob; Battle of Blanket Hill; and point where Washington and Gist crossed the river, not marked. ”

“ The great petroleum fields lie in and near the Pittsburg region, in the basin of the Allegheny and Ohio Rivers, and extend from New York southwest to West Virginia, and also into Ohio. This region has had enormous yields in different parts of the river basin, the wells, however, ultimately dwindling as their supplies are drawn out. The petroleum industry, which has been one of the greatest in Pennsylvania, has been gradually all absorbed by the Standard Oil Company, which is probably the most extensive industrial combination in America, and certainly the most powerful. ”

“ The oil region of Western Pennsylvania is the portion of oil-producing territory that now occupies the largest share of attention. It is confined principally to the valley of Oil Creek, a tributary of the Alleghany River, which it enters at a point about sixty miles south from Lake Erie. It is true that oil wells are successfully worked on the banks of the Alleghany for some distance above and below the mouth of Oil Creek: still the county of Venango has monopolized almost the whole number of oil-producing wells in this region. ”

“ The first effect of the downfall of the Empire was a new railroad pool. Indeed when it became evident that the Pennsylvania would yield, the Erie, Central and the Standard had begun preparing a new adjustment, and the papers for this were ready to be signed on October 17, with those transferring the pipe-line property. Never had there been an arrangement which gathered up so completely the oil outlets, for now the Baltimore and Ohio road came into a pool for the first time. ”

“ The Evans well at Franklin confirmed this view. Naturally the Allegheny River was regarded with favor as the base of further experiments. Quite as naturally the town at the junction of the river and the creek was benefited. The Michigan Rock-Oil-Company laid out building-lots and Oil City grew rapidly in wealth, ambition, enterprise and population. From a half-dozen dwellings, two unbridged streams, the remnants of an iron-furnace and a patch of cleared land on the flats it speedily advanced to a hustling settlement of five-thousand souls, “out for the stuff” and all eager for profit. ”

“ The oil region of Pennsylvania has a chance of three industries, the old farming industry, coal, and oil. It will have only one industry so long as oil gives chances superior to those enjoyed by any other similar district. When it loses its unique advantage by nature it will diversify. The “strongest” nation is the one which brings products into the world’s market which are of high demand, but which cost it little toil and sacrifice to get; for it will then have command of all the good things which men can get on earth at little effort to itself. ”

“ It is believed by many that the excitement over the discovery of oil fields in Pennsylvania in 1865 will be repeated on a much larger scale in oil regions yet to be discovered in the far West. At present, the mountains of Wyoming appear to be the most promising field. ”

“ The Pennsylvania Railroad is the representative carrier in the oil traffic. It controls all the oil business that passes over its lines, no matter how far away it originates. The initial road which led the attack on the barrel shippers is subsidiary to the Pennsylvania in the oil business, and the Pennsylvania controls its rates and regulations. ”

“ No sooner had the petroleum industry been firmly established in Pennsylvania than an active search was made for the precious fluid in various parts of the States, and one by one new oil regions were opened up, but it is interesting to recall the fact that, even in the first developed oil-producing region, no district has been entirely abandoned as exhausted of oil, for to-day wells are being pumped quite close to Drake’s first well and the scene of the birth of the American petroleum industry. ”

“ People from all parts of the country flocked to western Pennsylvania. Oil companies were everywhere organized, whose stock was sold on the market. Land which for generations had been regarded as almost barren sold for fabulous prices.
“Coal Oil Johnnie,” an ignorant young man whose paternal acres had long brought only poverty and were now found to be located with wealth, appeared in Philadelphia, scattering ten dollar bills in all directions, and buying teams of horses on one day, only to give them to his 593coachman on the next. ”

“ The efforts of the great majority of the Western Pennsylvania petroleum producers to obtain relief from what they deem the oppressive acts of the Standard Oil Company and the unjust discriminations of the United Pipe Lines, and the various railroads traversing the oil regions, have attracted more than usual attention to the present condition of this industry and its possible future. ”

“ In 1892 a number of refiners and producers of Pennsylvania, in a formal appeal to Governor Pattison, asked him to investigate the causes which were working "to the injurious depression if not the ultimate destruction of a great industry." In the same year mutterings of a turbulent discontent and threats of violence and the destruction of property, repeating those of 1872, were heard again in Pennsylvania and in Ohio, which had become an oil-producing State. "Many of the oil producers," a member of their protective association in Ohio said, in the spring of 1892, "are in a bad way. ”

“ Monotonous lines of frail houses, shops whose scanty assortment of goods must be sold at enormous prices to pay the expense of transportation from New York or Philadelphia, crowds of oil-speculators, oil-dealers, oil-teamsters, a clumsy bridge across the Creek, a prevailing atmosphere of petroleum,—such is Oil City. ”

“ Fifty years before Pennsylvania oil-wells had been heard of the Kanawha salt-seekers were drilling what to-day would be paying oil-wells. Instead of saving the oil, which is enriching West Virginia operators now, they wasted it and saved the salt-water. They wasted the natural gas, the best fuel of the century, and boiled their salt-water with wood, the most expensive and least satisfactory fuel of the valley. That is often the way humanity gropes in the dark. ”

“ For Pennsylvania and Ohio Communities formerly supplied from local production of natural gas could, if this is no longer possible, afford to pay a vary high price for gas rather than to discard existing gas appliances and to install new ones which would be required if oil or coal were to be substituted as fuel. In 1921 the average price per M cubic feet for domestic consumption was 26 cents in West Virginia, 44 cents in Pennsylvania, and 42 cents in Ohio. ”

“ The largest and best is the Appalachian, of which the best known is the [Pg 159] Pennsylvania field. It has a grade of petroleum that differs from any other thus far found in the world. It is most easily converted into kerosene or lamp oil, and contains a larger proportion of such oil. It is the finest petroleum in the world, except that found in Indiana and Ohio, and that costs more to refine.
The Appalachian field includes, besides Pennsylvania, western New York, West Virginia, a narrow strip in eastern Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee. ”

“ The "Warren oil-sand" of the northern district is very irregular in character, and the oil is found at horizons varying from 600 to 800 feet below the "third sand" of the preceding group, whose oil it, moreover, resembles. But at a depth of about 300 feet below the Warren horizon, and in the same northern district, is the Bradford oil-belt of McKean County, Pennsylvania, and Cattaraugus County, New York, the surest and safest oil-territory in all the oil-regions. The oil of the Bradford belt is of the same gravity as "third-sand oil." ”

“ The Society has a large and exceedingly rich collection of oil paintings; practically all the governors of the state are represented in portraiture on its walls, some of the mayors of Philadelphia, and portraits of many Revolutionary officers; a portrait of Johannes Kelpius, the “Hermit of the Wissahickon,” by Christopher Wick, in 1704, is believed to be the earliest portrait in oil painted in America; portraits of Gustavus Hesselius, his wife, and of Robert Morris, Sr., father of the financier, painted by Gustavus Hesselius, are of historic interest ”

“ If the railroad and lake transportation men would but adopt as liberal a policy toward the oil freights of Cleveland as the Pennsylvania Railroad was adopting toward that of Pittsburg, aided by her natural advantages the town was bound to become the greatest oil refining centre in the United States. By 1868 the Board of Trade reported joyfully that Cleveland was receiving within 300,000 barrels as much oil as Pittsburg. In 1869 she surpassed all competitors. ”