CHAPTER IV

FOUNDER OF THE PETROLEUM INDUSTRY

On October 4, 1901, a magnificent monument was unveiled at Woodlawn Cemetery, Titusville, Pa., to the memory of Edwin Laurencine Drake at the expense of the late Henry H. Rogers, of the Standard Oil Company, himself a pioneer of the Pennsylvania oil fields in the boom days of the sixties. The inscription on the monument not only describes Drake as the “Founder of the Petroleum Industry” but gives an explicit review of what his services meant, not only to the people of the United States but to mankind at large. It runs as follows:-

Col. E. L. Drake, born at Greenville, N. Y., March 29, 1819; died at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, November 8, 1884, Founder of the Petroleum Industry, The friend of man.

Called by circumstances to the solution of a great mining problem, he triumphantly vindicated American skill and near this spot laid the foundation of an industry that has enriched the State, benefited mankind, stimulated mechanic arts, enlarged the pharmacopoeia, and has attained world wide proportions. He sought for himself not wealth nor social distinction. Content to let others follow where he had led, at the threshold of his fame he retired to end his days in quieter pursuits.

His highest ambition the successful accomplishment of his task, his noble victory the conquest of the rock, bequeathing to posterity the fruits of his labour and his industry. His last days oppressed by ills--To want, no stranger--He died in obscurity.

This monument is erected by Henry Huttleson Rogers, in grateful recognition and remembrance.

Drake was in his fortieth year when, through friends in New Haven, he was appointed director and superintendent of the Titusville properties of the Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company and the Seneca Oil Company. As a youth he had led a wandering life and his education was such as he could pick up at odd moments. He had worked as a commercial traveller and hotel clerk, and was a railroad conductor at the time he took service with the Bissell syndicate, which had decided to experiment in drilling for oil. He himself was so thorough a believer in the project that he put all his small savings into it. The salary at which he was engaged was a thousand dollars a year, which signified considerably more in the later fifties than it does to-day. On reaching Titusville early in 1859 he soon realized that he was handicapped by lack of practical knowledge of drilling processes, and therefore sent for one William Smith, a man of long experience as a driller of brine wells, who came with his two sons to assist in the work. The method adopted was that of forcing cast iron pipe through the soil at a spot near the “old oil spring,”--well known to the farmers of the locality.

Operations were started in February and after many tedious delays rock was struck at a depth of thirty-six feet. If they were to go farther steam power was necessary, and by August 1st, this had been secured. In the meantime the drilling operations had been the joke of the countryside, but Drake literally could not afford to fail. With steam power it was found possible to drill through the rock at the rate of about three feet a day until toward the end of the month oil was struck at a depth of sixty-nine and a half feet. No record was kept of the exact date, though the New York Tribune a few weeks later fixed it at August 23rd. The well was not a free flowing one, but yielded to the pumping process.

The discovery, momentous as it was, did not create much excitement except in the immediate locality. John Brown’s raid, at Harper’s Ferry, and the possibility of the Civil War, which was to ensue within less than two years, were the chief topics in the public mind of America. Shortly after the discovery a fire wiped out the existing plant but kindly neighbours, now satisfied that the experiment was no failure, assisted Drake, and when the well was again set in working order its flow was more promising than ever. In the view of experts, Drake’s achievement as a pioneer may be regarded as limited to one great feat, the drilling with steam power of the first cased oil well. He ceased to be an active factor in the development of the newborn industry with the drilling of this first well. Following his inspiration, others organized it and in the course of a few years a great army of industrial workers, merchants, financiers and distributors of all classes became associated with petroleum and placed it in a foremost position among the world’s industries. Drake himself finally left the oil regions in 1863 with about $15,000 savings, which he soon lost in other forms of speculation. In the stupendous events of the national conflict he was almost forgotten. In 1869, ten years after his discovery, the older oil men who had known him learned that he was sick and penniless, with a wife and family at the point of starvation. They raised among themselves a purse of $5,000 and later the State Legislature was prevailed upon to grant him an annual pension of $1,500, which maintained him in comparative comfort at his home in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, until his death in 1884.

The scale on which petroleum production increased during the period immediately following Drake’s discovery is indicated by the fact that though the total American production in 1859 was 2000 barrels, in 1869 it had risen to 4,215,000 barrels. It must be remembered that those who started the oil industry in the United States were in almost every instance poor men who attained wealth with its development. As the news of the new industry and its possibilities spread, more and more wells were sunk along Oil Creek and the Allegheny River; farm lands containing oil prospects began to command enormous sums, methods of extracting the crude petroleum from the depths of the earth improved and gradually American inventive genius began to be applied to the industry with enormously fruitful results. The Civil War undoubtedly interrupted development at the outset, and the new oil fields gave many a brave soldier to the Northern cause.

The really sensational developments in connection with the oil fields began as the Civil War was drawing to a close. Then they commenced to assume the romantic and fevered aspect of California in the days of the early gold rush a decade or more previous. Unfortunately, the oil fields possessed no Bret Harte, as did California, to write the epic of good-fortune and ill-fortune. The story of the City of Pithole, not far from Titusville, is, however, as romantic as anything in the annals of gold discovery. It sprang to full life in 1865, a mushroom city with all the vices and excitements of frontier life. Fabulous tales have been told of its population, which probably never exceeded 20,000 but 20,000 men and women all excited by the fever of speculation and money-getting gave life in Pithole a gusto not equalled at that time on any other part of the continent. Gamblers and adventurers flocked there in company with many legitimate oil men. In the speculation that ensued fortunes were made and lost daily. Then, after a year or two, the wells which had shown such riches began to decline and Pithole was quickly deserted. A few years later a visitor found only two inhabited houses in a city that had for a time been the home of thousands of restless mortals. Later still some of the abandoned wells were made productive by new processes, but the glory of the mushroom city had vanished forever. In other parts of this continent there have been oil crazes, but nothing approaching the story of Pithole. And it is famous for another reason; it was the scene of the establishment of one of the earliest pipe-lines, a system which has been an invaluable auxiliary to the growth of the American industry.

[Illustration: Early activity; the famous Red Hot Oil Field near Shamburg, Pa., in 1870]

[Illustration: Where Pithole stood--the main street of a Pennsylvania oil town, which had a population of 20,000 in 1870, as it looks to-day]

The success of the early oil men of the United States not only in grappling with the problem of crude production, but with those of conservation, transportation, refining and the development of new uses for the various elements of the treated crude, set an example to all the world.

From 1870 onward, though Pennsylvania continued to lead, American methods were copied in many other countries. The foundations of the trade which have made petroleum the most international of all commercial undertakings were at that time laid; and this brings us to a survey of the industry as a world interest.