The puffing, panting engine that dragged
the long train of heavy cars into the busy little
city of Bradford, in the State of Pennsylvania, one
day last summer, witnessed through its one white, staring
eye, sometimes called the head-light, many happy meetings
between waiting and coming friends; but none was more
hearty than that between two college mates - one
who had graduated the year previous, and the other
who hoped to carry off the honors at the close of
the next term.
“Here at last!” exclaimed
George Harnett, as he met his old chum with a hearty
clasp of the hand. “In this case, if the
hope had been much longer deferred, the heart would
indeed have been sick.”
“It was thoughtless in me, old
fellow, not to have sent you word when I concluded
to remain at home two days longer, but the fact of
the matter is that I did not think you would be at
the depot to meet me, but would let me hunt you up,
for I suppose you do have some kind of an office.”
“Yes,” laughed the young
man, “I have an office; but since my work just
now is several miles from here, I am seldom at home,
and was obliged to come for you, or run the chance
of having you spend a good portion of your vacation
hunting for me.”
“And are you sorry yet that
you chose civil engineering for a profession?”
“Sorry! Not a bit of it!
Up here there is more excitement to it than you are
aware of, and before you have finished your vacation,
you will say that the life of a civil engineer in
the oil fields of Pennsylvania is not by any means
monotonous. But come this way. My team is
here, and while we are talking we may as well be riding,
for we have quite a little journey yet before us,
over roads so bad, that you can form no idea of them
by even the most vivid description.”
“But I thought you lived here in Bradford.”
“I live where my work is, my
boy, and since it happens just now to be out of town,
my home, for the time being, is in as old and comfortable
a farm-house as city-weary mortals could ask for.”
“Well, I can’t say that
I shall be sorry to live in the country - for
awhile, at least.”
“Sorry! Well, I hardly
think you will be, when you learn what I have to offer
you in the way of enjoyment. I am locating some
oil-producing lands, in a valley where game is abundant,
where the fish prefer an artificial fly to a natural
one, and where the moonlighter revels with his harmless-looking
but decidedly dangerous nitro-glycerine cartridge.”
“What do you mean by moonlighter?”
asked Ralph, as he seated himself in the mud-bespattered
carriage which George pointed out as his.
“A moonlighter is one who shoots
an oil well regardless of patent rights or those owning
them, save when, by chance, he finds himself gathered
in by the strong arm of the law.”
“I thank you, Brother Harnett,
for your decidedly clear explanation. I almost
fancy that I know as much about moonlighters now as
when I asked the question, which is saying a good
deal, for you very often contrive, in explaining anything,
to leave one even more ignorant than when he consulted
you.”
“If you are willing to listen
to as long and as dry a dissertation on oil wells
in general, and illegally-opened ones in particular,
as ever Professor Gardner favored us with on topics
in which we were not much interested, I will begin,
stopping now and then only to prevent my teeth from
being shaken out of my head as we ride over this road.”
The two had hardly got out of the
“city,” and the thoroughly bad character
of the road was already apparent. Riding over
it was very much like sailing in a small boat on rough
water - always down by the head or up by
the stern, but seldom on an even keel.
“Go on with the lecture,”
said Ralph, “and while I try to hold myself in
the carriage, I will listen.”
“Because of my friendship for
you, I will make it as brief as possible. In
the first place, you must know that before oil is struck,
the operator finds either a rock formed of sand or
of gravel. This is the strata just above the
deposit of petroleum.
“Of course this must be bored
through, if possible, and in the pebbly rock there
is no trouble about it. The drills will go through,
and the gravel will be forced to the surface without
much difficulty. But when the sand-rock is met,
it clogs the drills, making it almost impossible to
bore through. A heavy charge of nitro-glycerine
makes short work of this rock, and out comes the oil.
“Now, this method of blasting
in oil wells has been patented, or, at least, the
cases for the glycerine and the manner of exploding
it has, and the company, which has its office in Bradford,
use every effort to discover infringements of their
patent. Like all owners of patent rights, they
charge an extra price for their wares, and the result
is that there are parties who will, for a much smaller
amount of money, shoot a well and infringe the patent
at the same time. These people are called moonlighters,
and the risk they run of losing their lives or their
liberty is, to say the least, very great. The
lecture-hour has now been fully, and I hope I may
say profitably, employed.”
“If it profits one to learn
of your friends, the moonlighters, then your lecture
has been a success. But how do you find excitement
in anything they do? Surely they do not make
public their unlawful doings.”
“Oh, everything save the shooting
of the well is done legally, and with many even that
is questionable! The cases are to be tried, and
many believe that the owners of the patent have really
no rights in the premises. The owners or prospective
owners of the land whereon the wells are to be sunk,
employ me to survey their tracts, and by that means
I frequently make the acquaintance of those people
who, for the almighty dollar, will peril their lives
driving around the country with nitro-glycerine enough
to blow an entire town up.”
“Let me trespass once more on
you for dry detail, and then I will learn anything
else I may want to know from observation. What
is nitro-glycerine?”
“I will answer your question
by quoting as nearly as I can from what I read the
other day. It is composed of:
“Until 1864 it found no practical
application, except as a homeopathic remedy for headache,
similar to those which it causes. In that year,
Alfred Nobel, a Swede, of Hamburg, began its manufacture
on a large scale, and, though he sacrificed a brother
to the terrible agent he had created, he persevered
until in its later and safer forms nitro-glycerine
has come into wide use and popularity. It is a
clear, oily, colorless, odorless, and slightly sweet
liquid, and can, with safety, only be poured into
some running stream if one wishes to be rid of it.
Through the pores of the skin, or in the stomach, even
in small quantities, this oil causes a terrible headache
and colic, while headaches also result from inhaling
the gases of its combustion. It has thirteen
times the force of gunpowder, exploding so much more
suddenly than that agent does, that in reality it
is much more powerful, and it is this same rapid explosive
power that prevents it from being used in fire-arms.”
“You would make a first-rate
professor, George,” said Ralph, laughing, “and
you may refer to me in case you should desire to procure
such a position. Now I think I am armed with
sufficient knowledge to be able to meet your oily
friends, the moonlighters, and have some idea of what
they mean when they speak.”
“If I am not mistaken we shall
meet some of them very soon, without trying hard;
but if we do not, I will take you to one of their cabins
as soon as we may both feel inclined to go.”
“Don’t think that I have
come here to spend my vacation simply with the idea
that I am at liberty to make drafts at sight on your
time,” replied Ralph, as an unusually rough
portion of the road necessitated his exerting all
his strength to prevent being thrown out of the wagon.
“I intend to be of every possible assistance
to you, and when I cannot do that, if you are still
obliged to labor, I will extract no small amount of
enjoyment out of your farm-house and its surroundings.
But at any time that you have a few hours to spare,
I will be only too well pleased to meet with any adventure,
from nitro-glycerine blasts to the perils of trout-fishing.”
By this time the conversation ceased,
owing to Ralph’s interest in the scenery around
him, and the curious combination of oil-tanks and
derricks with which the landscape was profusely dotted.
From Bradford to Sawyer the road winds along at the
base of the hills through a lovely valley, that seems
entirely given over to machinery for the production
and storage of oil. On every hand are the tall,
unsightly constructions of timber that form the derricks,
looking not unlike enormous spiders, as they stand
on the sides of the mountains or in the ravines, while
the network of iron pipes, through which the oil is
forced by steam-pumps from the wells to Jersey City,
are fitting webs for such spiders.
Huge iron tanks, capable of holding
from twenty to forty thousand barrels of oil, dot
the valley quite as thickly as do the blots of ink
on a school-boy’s first composition, and form
storage places for this strange product of earth,
when the supply is greater than the demand. It
is truly a singular scene, and he who visits this portion
of the country for the first time cannot rid himself
of the impression that he has, by some mysterious
combination of circumstances, been transported to some
remote and unknown portion of the globe.
George, to whom this scene was perfectly
familiar, did not seem inclined to allow his friend
to remain in silent wonder, for he persisted in supplying
him with a fund of dry detail, which effectually prevented
any indulgence of day-dreams.
Although Ralph would have preferred
to gaze about him in silence, George told him of the
Pipe-Line Company, who owned the greater portion of
the huge iron receptacles for oil; who also owned the
network of iron pipes, through which they forced the
oil to the market at a charge of twenty-five cents
per barrel.
He also told him that this company
connected the main line of pipes with each tank owned
by the oil producers, supplying a small steam-pump
at each connection, and, at stated times, drew off
from private tanks the oil. He even went into
the particulars of the work, explaining how each man
could tell exactly the number of barrels the company
had taken from his tank by measuring the depth of
the oil before and after the drawing-off process.
Then he described how these huge receptacles
were frequently struck by lightning, setting fire
to the inflammable liquid, and causing consternation
everywhere in the valley; of the firing of solid shot
into the base of the tanks to make a perforation that
would allow the oil to run off, and of the loss of
property and danger of life attending such catastrophes.
So much of dry detail or interesting
particulars of the oil business had the young engineer
to tell, that he had hardly finished when the horses
turned sharply into a narrow road, over which the trees
formed a perfect archway, that led to just such a
farm-house as suggests by outside appearance all the
good things and comforts of life.
“This is to be home to you for
a while,” said George, breaking off abruptly
in his dissertation on the price and quality of oil,
in which Ralph was not very much interested, “and
I can safely guarantee it to be a place which you
will be sorry to leave after once knowing it.”
“It certainly does not seem
to be a place around which anything exciting can be
found,” thought Ralph; but, since it was only
rest from study he was in search of, he was content
with that which he saw.