PLUMER MITCHELL.
PLUMER MITCHELL.
PLUMER MITCHELL.
J. Plumer Mitchell—we called him “Plum”—worked for me on theIndependent Pressat Franklin in 1879-80. Everybody liked the bright, genial, capable young man who set type, read proof, wrote locals, solicited advertisements and won golden opinions. He married and was the proud father of two winsome children. Meeting me on the street one day shortly after quitting thePress, we chatted briefly.
“I am through with sticking type,” he said.
“What are you driving at now?”
“Torpedoing wells. I started on Monday.”
“Well, be sure you get good pay, for it’s risky business, and don’t furnish a thrilling paragraph for the obituary-column.”
“I shall do my best to steer clear of that. Good-bye.”
That was our last meeting. He met the fate that overtook West, Taylor and Harper, shooting a well at Galloway. The shattered frame rests in the cemetery and the widow and fatherless daughters of the lamented dead reside at Franklin. Poor “Plum!”
T. A. McClain, an employé of the Roberts Company, was hauling two-hundred quarts of glycerine in a sleigh from Davis Switch to Kinzua Junction, on February fourteenth, 1881. The horses frightened and ran off. The sleigh is supposed to have struck a stump and the cargo exploded. Hardly a trace of McClain could be found and a bit of the steel-shoeing was the only part of the sleigh recovered. Obliteration more complete it would be difficult to imagine.
The most destructive sacrifice of life followed on September seventh. Charles Rust, a Bradford shooter, drove to Sawyer City to torpedo a well on the Jane Schoonover farm. It is alleged that Rust had domestic trouble, wearied of life and told his wife when leaving that morning he would never return. A small crowd assembled to witness the operation. William Bunton, owner of several adjacent wells, Charles Crouse, known as “Big Charlie the Moonlighter,” James Thrasher, tool-dresser, and Rust were on the derrick-floor. Rust filled the first shell, fixed the firing-head and struck the cap two sharp blows with his left hand. There was a blinding flash, then a deafening report. Dust, smoke and missiles filled the air. The derrick was demolished and piecesof board flew hundreds of yards with the force of cannon-balls. One hit Crouse in the center of the forehead and passed through the skull. His face was terribly lacerated and the clothing stripped off his body. Bunton and Thrasher were not mangled beyond recognition, while Rust was thrown a hundred yards. His legs were missing, the face was battered out of the semblance of humanity and not a vestige of clothing was left on the mutilated trunk. Frederick Slatterly, a lad on his way to school, was hit by a piece of the derrick, which ripped his abdomen and caused death in three hours. Three boys walking behind young Slatterly were thrown down and hurt slightly. Mr. Bunton gasped when picked up and lived five minutes. He was an estimable citizen, an elder in the Presbyterian church, intelligent and broad-minded. Thrasher and Crouse were industrious workmen. Edward Wilson, a gauger, standing ten rods away, was perforated by slivers and pieces of tin, his injuries confining him to bed several months. Thomas Buton and John Sisley were at the side of the derrick, within six feet of Rust, yet escaped with trifling injuries. The tragedy produced a sensation, all the more fearful from the belief of some who witnessed it that Rust intended to commit suicide and in compassing his own death killed four innocent victims.
The Roberts magazine on the Hatfield farm, two miles south of Bradford, blew up on the night of October thirteenth, 1881. Nobody doubted it was the work of “moonlighters” attempting to steal the glycerine. Traces of blood and minute portions of flesh on the stones and ties indicated that two persons at least were engaged in the job. Who they were none ever learned.
John McCleary, a Roberts shooter, had a remarkable escape on December twenty-seventh, 1881. While filling the shell at a well near Haymaker, in the lower oil-field, the well flowed and McCleary left the derrick. The column of oil threw down the shell and the glycerine exploded promptly, wrecking the derrick and tossing the fleeing man violently to the ground. He rose to his feet as four cans on the derrick-floor cut loose. McCleary was borne fifty feet through the air, jagged splinters of tin and wood pierced his back and sides and he fell stunned and bleeding. He was not injured fatally. Like Feeney, Buton and Sisley, he survives to tell of his close call. Less fortunate was Henry W. McHenry, who had torpedoed hundreds of wells and was blown to atoms near Simpson Station, in the southern end of the Bradford region, on February fifth, 1883. His fate resembled West’s, Taylor’s, Harper’s and Mitchell’s.
In the summer of 1884 Lark Easton went to torpedo a well at Coleville, seven miles southeast of Bradford. He tied his team in the woods, carried some cans of glycerine to the well and left four in the wagon. A storm blew down a tree, which fell on the wagon and exploded the glycerine, demolishing the vehicle and killing one horse. It was a lucky escape, if not much of a lark, for Easton.
A peculiar case was that of “Doc” Haggerty, a teamster employed to haul Nitro-Glycerine to the magazine near Pleasantville. In December of 1888 he took fourteen-hundred pounds on his wagon and was seen at the magazine twenty minutes before a furious explosion occurred. Pieces of the horses and wagon were found, but not an atom of Haggerty. He had disappeared as completely as Elijah in the chariot of fire. An insurance-company, in which he held a five-thousand-dollar policy, resisted payment on the ground that, as no remains of the alleged dead man could be produced, he might be alive! Some pretexts for declining to pay a policy are pretty mean, but this certainly capped the climax. Experts believed the heat generated by the explosion wassufficient to cremate the body instantaneously, bones, clothes, boots and all.
James Woods and William Medeller, two experienced shooters, were ushered into eternity on December tenth, 1889, by the explosion of the Humes Torpedo-Company’s magazine at Bean Hollow, two miles south of Butler. They had gone for glycerine and that was the end of their mortal pilgrimage. Six years later, on December fourth, 1895, at the same place and in the same way, George Bester and Lewis Black lost their lives. Bester was blown to atoms and only a few threads of his clothing could be picked up. The lower part of Black’s face, the trunk and right arm remained together, while other portions of the body were strewn around. The left arm was in a tree three-hundred yards distant. Huge holes marked the site of the two Humes magazines, a hundred feet apart. The mangled horse lay between them, every bone in his carcass broken and the harness cut off clean. The buggy was in fragments, with one tire wrapped five times about a small tree. Not a board stayed on the boiler-house and the boiler was moved twenty feet and dismantled. The factory, two-hundred feet from the magazines, was utterly wrecked. The young men left Butler early in the morning, Black going for company. The supposition is that Bester was removing some of the cans from the shelf, intending to take them out, and that he dropped one of them. About seven-hundred pounds of glycerine were stored in one of the magazines and a less amount in the other. George Bester was twenty-eight and had a wife and two small children. He was industrious, steady and one of the best shooters in the business. Black was twenty and lived with his parents. The concussion jarred every house in Butler, broke windows and loosened plaster in the McKean school-building, causing a panic among the children.
W. N. Downing’s death, on January second, 1891, at the Victor Oil-Company’s well, in the Archer’s Forks oil-field, near Wheeling, West Virginia, was very singular. The glycerine used to torpedo the well the previous day had been thawed in a barrel of warm water. Next day two of the owners drove out to see the well and talk with Downing, who was foreman of the company. On their way back to Wheeling they heard an explosion, conjectured the boiler had burst and returned to the lease. Mr. Downing’s body lay near where the barrel of water had stood. The barrel had vanished and a large hole occupied its place. The victim’s head was cut off on a line with the eyes. The only explanation of the accident was that the glycerine had leaked into the barrel and a sudden jar had caused the stuff to explode. Beside the well, in the fence-corner, were twelve cans of glycerine not exploded. Downing lived at Siverlyville, above Oil City, whither his remains were brought for interment.
Letting a torpedo down a well at Bradford in September of 1877, a flow of oil jerked it out, hurled the shell against the tools, which were hanging in the derrick, and set off the nitro on the double quick. The shooter jumped and ran at the first symptoms of trouble, the derrick was sliced in the middle and set on fire. The rig burned and strenuous exertions alone saved neighboring wells. The fire was a novelty in the career of the explosive.
Occasionally Nitro-Glycerine goes off by spontaneous combustion without apparent provocation. On December fifth, 1881, two of the employés noticed a thin smoke rising from the top row of cans in the Roberts magazine at Kinzua Junction. They retreated, came back and removed eighty cans, observed the smoke increasing in density and volume and decided to watch further proceedings from a safe distance. Twelve-hundred quarts exploded with such vigor that the earth jarred for miles and a big hole was ploughed in the rock. In Novemberof 1885 the Rock Glycerine-Company’s factory on Minard Run, four miles south of Bradford, was wrecked for the fourth time. O. Wood and A. Brown were running the mixture into “the drowning tank,” to divest it of the acid. The process generates much heat and acid escaping from a leak in the tank fired the wood-work. Wood and Brown and a carpenter in the building, knowing their deliverance depended upon their speed, took French leave. Samuel Barber, a teamster, was unloading a drum of acid in front of the building and joined the fugitives in their flight. The glycerine obligingly waited until the four men reached a safe spot and then reduced the factory to kindling-wood. Barber’s horses and wagon were not hurt mortally, the animals bleeding a little from the nose. Next evening Tucker’s factory at Corwin Centre, six miles north-east of Bradford, followed suit. Griffin Rathburn, who was making a run of the fluids, fled for his life as the mass emitted a flame. He saved himself, but the factory and a thousand pounds of the explosive went on an aërial excursion.
In November, 1896, at Pine Fork, West Virginia, William Conn drove a two-horse wagon to the magazine for glycerine to shoot a well. While Conn was inside two men drove up with two horses. That moment the magazine exploded with a report heard ten miles off. Only a piece of a man’s foot was ever found. Thus three human beings, two wagons and four horses were extinguished utterly.
On December twenty-third, 1896, a half-ton of glycerine blew up near Montpelier, Indiana. Two men and two teams were the victims. The forest was mowed down for hundreds of feet. Oak-trees three feet in diameter were cut off like mullein-stalks. A steel-tire from one wagon was coiled tightly around a small tree. One of the shooters was John Hickok, a giant in stature. He was unusually cheerful that morning. He kissed his wife and daughter good-bye and said, in answer to the query if he would be home to dinner, “You know, Jennie, we are never sure of coming back.”
By the explosion of a magazine at Shannopin, eighteen miles from Pittsburg, in January, 1897, two men and two girls were killed, one man was injured, buildings were shattered and part of the public-school was demolished. The concussion broke windows at Economy and Coraopolis and was felt thirty miles distant.
On February twenty-fifth, 1897, a similar accident at the magazine three miles west of Steubenville, Ohio, blew Louis Crary and Eugene Ralston into bits too small to be gathered up. Both were in the frame building containing the iron-safe that held the explosive when the whole thing went into the air. At Celina, on April second, Cornelius O’Donnell and John Baird perished, one finger alone remaining to prove they had ever existed.
Near Wellsville, New York, on March third, three tons of the stuff let go, probably from spontaneous combustion, leaving a yawning chasm where the magazine of the Rock Glycerine-Company had been erected. Nobody was near enough to be hurt. Next day John Pike and Lewis Washabaugh met their fate at Orchard Park. Washabaugh went to the magazine to examine its contents and the explosion occurred as he opened the door, tearing him to pieces. Pike, who stood a hundred yards away, was killed instantly. On March twenty-second, at the Farren farm, two miles from Wellsville, six-hundred quarts of the compound sent Henry H. Youngs to his death. His young wife heard the warning note and ran bareheaded through the deep mud to the scene. Doctor Clark and Thomas Myers were driving posts five hundred feet from the magazinewhen Youngs drove past for his load. Myers wanted to leave the spot, fearing an accident, but Clark laughed at him and they continued working. At nine o’clock Myers stood upon a saw-horse mauling away at a post. Suddenly he was thrown over and over, performing several somersaults. He soon realized that the terrible explosion he feared had taken place. With bloody face, bruised body and a limping gait he arose. Smoke ascended over the site of the magazine. Man and horses and wagon were gone. Clark was slowly rolling himself over the ground and groaning from an injury in the region of the stomach. Both men gasped for breath. Scraps of clothing and shreds of flesh were all that could be picked up.
C. N. Brown, manager of a torpedo-company, lost his life on April first while shooting a well near Evans City, in Butler county. He had placed part of the charge in the hole and was filling another shell on the derrick-floor. Face and limbs were blown to the four winds, a portion of skull dropping in the field. Brown was an expert shooter and a can probably slipped from his hands to the floor so forcibly as to explode. He expected to quit the business that week.
Within sight of Marietta, Ohio, on August third, a wagon loaded with nitro-glycerine dropped into a chuck hole in the road, setting off the cargo. The driver, John McCleary, and the horses were scattered far and wide. Half of a hoof was the largest fragment left of man or beast. Thomas Martin, working on the road a hundred yards away, was hit by a piece of the wagon and died instantly. John Williams, riding a horse three-hundred yards beyond Martin, was pitched from his saddle and painfully bruised.
Samuel Barber torpedoed George Grant’s well, in the middle of the town of Cygnet, on September seventh. A heavy flow of gas and a stream of oil followed. The gas caught fire from the boiler, a hundred yards back, filling the air with a sheet of solid flame. Men, women and children were burned badly in trying to escape. Barber, clad in oily clothing that burned furiously, ran until he fell and was burned fatally. A store and office were consumed and the multitude supposed all danger had passed. Forty quarts of the explosive had not been taken from the derrick. The terrific explosion killed five men outright, three others expired in a few hours, nine houses were wrecked and every pane of glass in town was broken. Eight months previously two men were killed at Cygnet by the explosion of a magazine.
Warren VanBuren, of Bolivar, a noted shooter, has exploded three-thousand torpedoes in oil-wells and is still in the business. Three years ago two of his brothers worked with him. One of them tripped on a gas-pipe and fell, while carrying a can of nitro-glycerine to his wagon, with the usual result. All that could be found of his body was placed in a cigar-box. The other brother retired from the business next day, bought a fruit-farm, returned to the oil-country lately and he is again pursuing his old vocation.
John Jeffersey, an Indian pilot, died at Tionesta in 1894. One dark night he plunged into the Allegheny, near Brady’s Bend, to grasp a skiff loaded with cans of glycerine that brushed past his raft. Jacob Barry and Richard Spooner jumped from the skiff as it touched the raft, believing an explosion inevitable, and sank beneath the waters. As “Indian John” caught the boat he yelled: “Me got it him! Me run it him and tie!” He guided the craft through the pitchy darkness and anchored it safely. Had it drifted down the river a sad accident might have been the sequel. Happily Americanite, quite as powerful and much safer, is displacing nitro-glycerine.
Andrew Dalrymple, who perished at Tidioute, was at his brother’s wellten minutes before the fatal explosion and said to the pumper: “I have five-hundred dollars in my trousers and next week I’m going west to settle on a farm.” Man and wife and money were blotted out ruthlessly and the trip west was a trip into eternity instead.
Frequently loads of explosives are hauled through the streets of towns in the oil-regions, despite stringent ordinances and lynx-eyed policemen. Once a well-known handler of glycerine was arrested and taken before the mayor of Oil City. He denied violating the law by carrying the stuff in his buggy. An officer bore a can at arm’s length and laid it tenderly on the floor. “Now, you won’t deny it?” interrogated the mayor. “No,” replied the prisoner, “there seems to be a lot of it.” Then he hit the can a vicious kick, sending it against the wall with a thud. The spectators fled and the mayor tried to climb through the back-window. The can didn’t explode, the agent put it to his lips, took a hearty quaff and remarked: “Mr. Mayor, try a nip; you’ll find this whisky goes right to the ticklish spot!”
Men in Ohio, West Virginia and Indiana have added to the dismal roll of those who, leaving home happy and buoyant in the morning, ere the sun set were dispersed over acres of territory. Yet all experiences with the dread compound have not been serious, for at intervals a comic incident brightens the page. Robert L. Wilson, a blacksmith on Cherry Run in 1869-70, was a first-class tool-manufacturer. Joining the Butler tide, he opened a shop at Modoc. A fellow of giant-build entered one day, bragged of his muscle as well as his stuttering tongue would permit and wanted work. Something about the fellow displeased Wilson, who was of medium size and thin as Job’s turkey, and he decided to have a little fun at the stranger’s expense. He asked the burly visitor whether he could strike the anvil a heavier blow than any other man in the shop. The chap responded yes and Wilson agreed to hire him if he proved his claim good. Wilson poured two or three drops of what looked like lard-oil on the anvil and the big ’un braced himself to bring down the sledge-hammer with the force of a pile-driver. He struck the exact spot. The sledge soared through the roof and the giant was pitched against the side of the building hard enough to knock off a half-dozen boards. When he extracted himself from the mess and regained breath he blurted out: “I t-t-told you I co-cou-could hi-hi-hit a he-he-hell of a b-bl-blow!” “Right,” said Wilson, “you can beat any of us; be on hand to-morrow morning to begin work.” The man worked faithfully and did not discover for months that the stuff on the anvil was Nitro-Glycerine.
The farm-house of Albert Jones, three miles from Auburn, Illinois, was demolished on a Sunday afternoon in November of 1885. Jones had procured some Nitro-Glycerine to remove stumps and set the can on the floor of the dining-room. After dinner the family visited a neighbor, locking up the house. About three o’clock a thundering detonation alarmed the Auburnites, who couldn’t understand the cause of the rumpus. A messenger from the country enlightened them. The Jones domicile had been wrecked mysteriously and the family must have perished. Excited people soon arrived and the Joneses put in an appearance. The house and furniture were scattered in tiny tidbits over an area of five-hundred yards. Half the original height of the four walls was standing, with a saw-tooth and splintered fringe all around the irregular top of the oblong. Two beds were found several hundred yards apart, in the road in front of the house. A sewing-machine was buried head-first in the flower-garden. Wearing-apparel and household-articles were strewn about the place.While Mr. Jones and a circle of friends were viewing the wreck and wondering how the Nitro-Glycerine exploded a faint cry was heard. A search resulted in finding the family-cat in the branches of a tree fifty feet from the dwelling. It was surmised the cat caused the disaster by pushing from the table some article sufficiently heavy to explode the glycerine on the floor. The New YorkSun’sfamous grimalkin should have retired to a back-fence and begun his final caterwauling over the superior performance of the Illinois feline. Jones and his friends unanimously endorsed the verdict: “It was the cat.”
The first statement coupling a hog and Nitro-Glycerine in one package was written by me in December of 1869, at Rouseville, and printed in the Oil-CityTimes. The item went the rounds of the press in America and Europe, many papers giving due credit and many localizing the narrative to palm it off as original. One of the latter was “Brick” Pomeroy’s La CrosseDemocrat, which laid the scene in that neck of woods. The tale has often been resurrected and it was reported in a New-Orleans paper last month. The original version of “The Loaded Porker” read thus:
“Rouseville furnishes the latest unpatented novelty in connection with Nitro-Glycerine. A torpedo-man had taken a small parcel of the dangerous compound from the magazine and on his return dropped into an engine-house a few minutes, leaving the vessel beside the door. A rampant hog, in search of a rare Christmas dinner, discovered the tempting package and unceremoniously devoured the entire contents, just finishing the last atom as the torpedoist emerged from the building! Now everybody gives the greedy animal the widest latitude. It has full possession of the whole sidewalk whenever disposed to promenade. All the dogs in town have been placed in solitary confinement, for fear they might chase the loaded porker against a post. No one is sufficiently reckless to kick the critter, lest it should unexpectedly explode and send the town and its total belongings to everlasting smash! The matter is really becoming serious and how to dispose safely of a gormandizing swine that has imbibed two quarts of infernal glycerine is the grand conundrum of the hour. When he is killed and ground up into sausage and head-cheese a new terror will be added to the long list that boarding-houses possess already.”
Charles Foster, of the High-Explosive Company, had an adventure in March of 1896 that he would not repeat for a hatful of diamonds. He loaded five-hundred quarts of glycerine at the magazine near Kane City. On Rynd Hill the horses slipped and one fell. The driver jumped from his seat to hold the animal’s head that it might not struggle. He cut the other horse free from the harness, as the road skirted a precipice and the frightened beast’s rearing and plunging would almost certainly dump the wagon and outfit over the steep bank. Nobody was in sight, the driver had no chance to block the wheels and the wagon started down the hill backward. The vehicle, with its load of condensed destruction, kept the road a few yards and pitched over the hill, turning somersaults in its descent. It brought up standing on the tongue in a heap of stones. The covers were torn off the wagon and the cans of the explosive were widely scattered. Seven in one bunch were picked up ten yards below the road. A three-cornered hole had been jammed in the bottom of one of the eight-quart cans and the contents were escaping. Darkness came on before the glycerine could be removed to a place of safety. Foster secured a rig and drove home, after arranging to have the stuff taken to the factory next morning. How the explosive, although congealed, stood the shock of going over the hill and scattering about without soaring skyward is one of the unfathomed mysteries of the Nitro-Glycerine business.
A Polish resident of South Oil City carried home what he took to be an empty tomato-can. His wife chanced to upset it from a shelf in the kitchen. A few drops of glycerine must have adhered to the tin. The can burst with fearful violence, blowing out one side of the kitchen, destroying the woman’seyes and nearly blinding her little daughter. A woman at Rouseville poured glycerine, mistaking it for lard-oil, into a frying-pan on the stove, just as her husband came into the kitchen. He snatched up the pan and landed it in a snow-bank so quickly the stuff didn’t burst the combination. The wife started to scold him, but fainted when he explained the situation.
The wonderful explosion at Hell-Gate in 1876, when General Newton fired two-hundred tons of dynamite and cleared a channel into New-York harbor for the largest steamships, brought to the front the men who always tell of something that beats the record. A group sat discussing Newton’s achievement at the Collins House, Oil City, as a Southerner with a military title entered. Catching the drift of the argument he said:
“Talk about sending rocks and water up in the air! I knew a case that knocked the socks clear off this little ripple at New York!”
“Tell us all about it, Colonel,” the party chorused.
“You see I used to live down in Tennessee. One day I met a farmer driving a mule that looked as innocent as a cherub. The farmer had a whip with a brad in the end of it. Just as I came up he gave the mule a prod. Next moment he was gone. It almost took my breath away to see a chap snuffed out so quick. The mule merely ducked his head and struck out behind. A crash, a cloud of splinters and the mule and I were alone, with not a trace of farmer or wagon in sight. Next day the papers had accounts of a shower of flesh over in Kentucky and I was the only person who could explain the phenomenon. No, gentlemen, the dynamite and Nitro-Glycerine at Hell-Gate couldn’t hold a candle to that Tennessee mule!”
The silence that followed this tale was as dense as a London fog and might have been cut with a cheese-knife. It was finally broken by aDerrickwriter, who was a newspaper man and not easily taken down, extending an invitation to the crowd to drink to the health of Eli Perkins’s and Joe Mulhatten’s greatest rival.
William A. Meyers, whom every man and woman at Bradford knew and admired, handled tons of explosives and shot hundreds of wells. He had escapes that would stand a porcupine’s quills on end. To head off a lot of fellows who asked him for the thousandth time concerning one notable adventure, he concocted a new version of the affair. “It was a close call,” he said, “and no mistake. In the magazine I got some glycerine on my boots. Soon after coming out I stamped my heel on a stone and the first thing I knew I was sailing heavenward. When I alighted I struck squarely on my other heel and began a second ascension. Somehow I came down without much injury, except a bruised feeling that wore off in a week or two. You see the glycerine stuck to my boot-heels and when it hit a hard substance it went off quicker than Old Nick could singe a kiln-dried sinner. What’ll you take, boys?”
So the darkest chapter in petroleum history, a flood of litigation, a mass of deception, a black wave of treachery and a red streak of human blood, must be charged to the account of Nitro-Glycerine.
GRAINS OF THIRD SAND.
Many expressions coined in or about the oil-regions condense a page into a line. Not a few have the force of a catapult and the directness of a rifle-ball. Some may be quoted:
“A fat bank-account won’t fatten a lean soul.”—Charles Miller.
“The poorest man I know of is the man who has nothing but money.”—John D. Rockefeller.
“Don’t size up a man by the size of his wad.”—Peter O. Conver.
“Never be the mere echo of any man on God’s green earth.”—David Kirk.
“Take nobody’s dust in oil or politics.”—James M. Guffey.
“What’s oil to a man when his wife’s a widow.”—Edwin E. Clapp.
“Dad’s struck ile.”—Miss Anna Evans.
“The Standard is the octopus of the century.”—Col. J. A. Vera.
“It’s monopoly when you won’t divide with the other fellow.”—John D. Archbold.
“The Standard would swallow us without chewing.”—Samuel P. Boyer.
“Give us public officials who dare own their own souls.”—Lewis Emery.
“The man who won’t demand his rights should crawl off the earth.”—M. H. Butler.
“He’s only a corporation-convenience.”—James W. Lee.
“A railroad-pass is the price of some legislators.”—W. S. McMullan.
“I believe in a man who can say no at the right time.”—James H. Osmer.
“A sneer can kill more tender plants than a hard freeze.”—Edwin H. Sibley.
“Grease, grace and greenbacks are the boss combination.”—John P. Zane.
“Where are we now?”—Philip M. Shannon.
“Piety that won’t march all week isn’t worth parading on Sunday.”—Rev. Fred. Evans.
“A jimson-weed has more fragrance than some folks’ religion.”—Rev. John McCoy.
“The scythe of Time gathers no rust.”—Rev. N. S. McFetridge.
“Faith may see the fruit, but works knock the persimmons.”—Rev. J. Hawkins.
“Train your boy as carefully as your fifty-dollar pup.”—Frank W. Bowen.
“Who is the father of that child?”—Oil-City Derrick.
“Other curses are trifles compared with the curses that follow falling prices.”—J. C. Sibley.
“Hit the calamity-howler in the solar plexus.”—Patrick C. Boyle.
“Good character? A man doesn’t need a character to sell whisky.”—S. P. McCalmont.
“He thinks himself a little tin-godelmitey on wheels.”—Coleman E. Bishop.
“Just to be contrary he’d have a chill in Hades.”—David A. Dennison.
“That fellow’s so cold-blooded he sweats ice-water.”—John H. Galey.
“Think out your plan, then go and do it.”—Charles V. Culver.
“I pay for what I get.”—John McKeown.
“This Court will not be made a thumbscrew to squeeze any debtor.”—Judge Trunkey.
“A good many injunctions ought to be enjoined.”—Judge Taylor.
“We may safely assume that the Almighty knows all about it.”—James S. Myers.
“A flea may upset a mastiff.”—Stephen D. Karns.
“The city-water is as dirty as the dirty pool of politics.”—Samuel P. Brigham.
“Haven’t the producers played the fool long enough?”—George H. Nesbit.
“Tracts and missionaries are poor feed for the heathen.”—Alexander Cochran.
“Money is good only as it enables men to do good.”—J. J. Vandergrift.
“It takes dry-holes to test an operator’s moral fiber.”—Joseph T. Jones.
“I have tapped the mine.”—Edwin L. Drake.
“Give us dollar-oil and Klondyke can go to the devil.”—Chorus of Operators.
“That duffer is the ugliest bristle on the monopoly-hog.”—Peter Grace.
“I think more of my ‘belt-theory’ than of a thousand-barrel well.”—Cyrus D. Angell.
“First stop the drill, then you may pray for higher prices.”—T. T. Thompson.
“A cat in hell without claws is less helpless than the producers.”—Clarion Oilmen.
“Seventy-cent oil is a mustard-plaster that draws out all our vitality.”—Michael Murphy.
“The world is all right; it’s your liver that’s wrong.”—Roger Sherman.
“He washed his face and the disguise was perfect.”—Samuel L. Williams.
“I feel sorry for the poor fellow fifty-dollars; how sorry are you?”—Wesley Chambers.
“Hell is running over with souls lost for lack of sympathy on earth.”—Rev. J. Hart.
“Cigarettes and corsets kill off a good many fools.”—Albert P. Whitaker.
“Giving is a luxury no man can afford to miss.”—Dr. Albert G. Egbert.
“Lord, preserve our pastor, which is sailin’ on the ragin’ sea.”—Elder at Franklin.
“The best preparation for a good death is a good life.”—Rev. Thomas Carroll.
“Let me pipe the oil and I don’t care who drills the wells.”—Henry Harley.
“One well in the sand beats a hundred geological guesses.”—Wesley S. Guffey.
“Oil is the sap that keeps the tree of commerce in bloom.”—Marcus Hulings.
“Producers and oil-wells should have plenty of sand.”—Frederic Prentice.
“He hasn’t half the backbone of a printer’s towel.”—M. N. Allen.
“His ideas have the vigor of a mule’s hind legs.”—Robert L. Cochran.
“Damn a man who won’t stand up for a square deal.”—Robert B. Allen.
“He’s too big a mullet-head to say damn.”—John A. Steele.
“God has no use for the man a dry-hole knocks out.”—Daniel Cady.
“His good deeds are so far apart they die of loneliness.”—Charles Collins.
“He’s more kinds of a blamed fool than a whole lunatic asylum.”—David Armstrong.
“Too often the mean man is the man of means.”—Stephen W. Harley.
“If all Christians were like some Christians the church would be a rubbish-heap.”—Rev. Edwin T. Brown.
STANDARD BUILDING, 26 BROADWAY, NEW YORK.
STANDARD BUILDING, 26 BROADWAY, NEW YORK.
STANDARD BUILDING, 26 BROADWAY, NEW YORK.