Page images
PDF
EPUB

steel highways from California to Maine and from Canada to Florida; the affairs of the railway lines in which Armour millions have clinched their interest.

One of the veteran department heads of the Armour house made this statement to me, adding it to the estimate uttered by the man on the plank walk at the "yards":

"J. Ogden Armour is just as great a money-maker as his father, if any one chooses to measure business capacity by that standard The elder Armour was essentially a merchandizer. And he was a master in that field. His successor, having recourse to every instrument of modern business method and system, has continued that record. He has, too, the genius and ability to carry on his operations in a constantly widening field. System is the complement that has made this success possible."

And, modest, disliking to talk of himself or his success, J. Ogden Armour has thus summed up the elements which have produced the results of the present!

"At the start it was the genius of the builder. Success lay in individuality and foresight and method. It lay in the ability to grasp opportunities as they presented themselves; to build the foundation big enough and to construct an organization broad enough to keep pace with the demands of the ensuing years. As for the balance, there must constantly be adherence to system.

"Following this rule, the way to success then lies in doing thoroughly what there is to be done, in taking care of each day's business promptly, and in being able to look around three corners financially and have money when it's needed."

And who shall say that he is not fully qualified to speak?

THE STORY OF OIL1

BY HAROLD J. HOWLAND

N the afternoon of a dull February day I stood with a companion in the center of a level space of farm land in southeastern Illinois. A heavy mist, hesitating on the border line between fog and rain, subdued the landscape to a gray monotone, its only bright spot the ruddy flare of a natural-gas flame in a distant farm-yard. From a shadowy group of low buildings across a field the measured beat of a giant heart punctuated the stillness, its sound reproduced in diminishing emphasis from points farther and farther away through the dusk.

A hundred yards before us rose a tall mast, flanked by a small shanty, a wheeled boiler, and an engine with a simplified steamboat walking-beam. At the foot of the mast four men stood idly about watching another who seemed engaged in mysterious rites. The center of their interest and ours was a new oil well. The well had been sunk until the "pay sand" was reached, and the busy little man was completing his preparations to "shoot" it.

Oil occurs in the crevices of certain kinds of porous rock from three hundred to two thousand feet below the surface. An oil well is a hole in the ground, a foot in diameter at the top, six inches at the bottom, tapping the rock containing the oil and affording an outlet through which the oil may flow, or, more usually, be pumped, to the surface. The boring of the well is done

1 By permission of the Author and "The Outlook." Copyright, 1907,

by a steel drill, measuring, with its fittings, thirty feet in length, and weighing from half a ton to a ton and a half. This drill is continually lifted and dropped in the hole, the force of its impact pulverizing the rock into sand. At intervals the debris is removed by a sandpump, which is not a pump at all, but a tube with a valve at the bottom, which is lowered into the hole and drawn out, bringing the sand with it.

When the oil rock is reached, sometimes the pressure is sufficient to bring the oil to the surface with a rush, and to keep it flowing indefinitely. Generally, however, the oil either does not flow at all or flows only in small quantity. In either case the well is "shot." By exploding a charge of nitro-glycerine at the bottom of the hole the surrounding rock is broken up and the flow of the oil stimulated.

The busy little man was the "shooter," engaged in lowering into the well two hundred quarts of "glycerine," contained in ten cylindrical tin shells. The premature explosion of only a small fraction of the thick yellow fluid which he was pouring so calmly into the shells would have sufficed to eliminate not only him but most of the surrounding apparatus. By mutual consent, then, my companion and I viewed proceedings from our remote point of vantage. His experience of twenty years in the oil fields led me to accept without question his estimate of a satisfactory distance for observation.

After a couple of hours of steady work the ten shells were safely in position, and the well filled for a couple of hundred feet above them with water to "tamp" the charge. The shooter, ready with his "jack squib," a long slender shell filled with a small charge of "glycerine," a fulminating cap, and a slow-burning fuse, lighted the fuse and started the squib on its downward course to

arouse the sleeping energies of those two hundred quarts of yellow earthquake essence.

Then even the shooter forsook his nonchalant calm and joined us without delay in our retirement. In a moment a heavy shock accompanied by a dull, muffled report stirred the earth beneath us. From the well a jet of muddy fluid leaped a hundred feet into the air, was swept away by the wind, and fell in a scattered shower, the sound of its fall accented by the thud of chunks of rock hurled out with a force that plunged them bodily into the earth.

Rapidly the jet died down; and the drillers went briskly to work to finish lining the well with iron piping, and to connect it up to a receiving tank. In a few hours, if it proved in any degree a flowing well, oil from it would be accumulating, and the well would have begun to pay for its drilling. In another day its pump would be installed.

By the improved methods in use in the newer oil fields a single engine serves to supply the power for the pumping of from a dozen to thirty wells scattered over a farm of perhaps a hundred or two hundred acres. The pump at the well is the extreme of simplicity: below ground a tube running nearly to the bottom of the well, with a valve at its lower end; within it a pump-rod working up and down; above ground a framework in which works the "jack," a combination of two levers joined together and serving to transform the horizontal pull of the rod coming from the engine into a vertical pull on the pump-rod. The wells are connected to the engine in pairs, so that the up-stroke in one coincides with the down stroke in another, affording another source of economy of power. The saving of the new method over the old is instantly apparent. The new has one engine, run by the gas from

the wells themselves, while the old had a central boiler heated by coal, and a pumping engine at each well, to say nothing of the network of steam-pipes leading to the widely separated pumps.

This scene in the Illinois field shows the first point at which the Standard Oil Company comes into contact with the petroleum, and illustrates by contrast an interesting fact in connection with its operations. The farm on which the well described was located belonged to the Standard; the wells on it were drilled and operated by the Standard; the oil would be drawn off into Standard pipe lines, refined in a Standard refinery, shipped in Standard steamers, cars, and wagons, and probably sold by Standard agents to the retail dealers. But it should be noted that the Standard is not primarily or even largely engaged in the production of petroleum. In 1905 it produced less than twelve per cent of the crude oil in the United States.

The Standard Oil Company was at first engaged merely in the refining of oil. The transportation of crude oil by pipe lines and tank cars was undertaken, in the natural course of events, to facilitate the control of the supply of the raw material. The extension into all parts of the world of the selling of the refined products, and the distribution of these products by its own carriers direct to the small dealers and sometimes to the consumers, were an inevitable outcome of the need for a market for its enormous output, and its underlying principle of eliminating, wherever possible, the profit to the middleman.

The production of oil has always been in the hands of many individuals or small companies. In the Illinois field alone, where production was begun hardly two years ago, there are one hundred and eighty-five producing companies. In that field the Standard owns about one

« PreviousContinue »