NOVEMBER IS, ldl4 



Sis 



OUM 



Editor 



For God so loved the world. — John 3:16. 



Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, 

 7:7. 

 and subdue it. — Gen. 1:28. 



Knock, and it shall be opened unto you. — Matt. 



Somewhere about the year 1840, or per- 

 haps as late as 1845, a few miles away from 

 the log house in the woods where I was 

 born there used to be a salt-spring. I think 

 they called it a " deer-lick " in olden times, 

 as the deer came there to lick the salt 

 water; and I believe that, in early days 

 before salt for tabic and domestic use was 

 prepared in great factories, the people used 

 to boil the salt water to get salt for the 

 home ai'ound the region of Liverpool, Medi- 

 na Co.. Ohio. This salt-water spring was 

 near Rocky River; and besides the salt 

 spring a peculiar black-looking oil was 

 found there on tue water. It seemed to 

 ooze out of the rock. The people saved it, 

 and carried it around in bottles to cure 

 rheumatism. In this form it was genera'ly 

 called Seneca oil. I believe that was about 

 all the use they made of it until the oil 

 excitement broke out in Pennsylvania in 

 1859. This was when I was 19 years old; 

 and as I had been eager all through ray 

 boyhood to hunt up and utilize God's gifts 

 (although I did not enumerate them in that 

 way in that early day) I caught on to the 

 craze of digging for oil, or drilling for it. 

 The people near that old salt-spring became 

 excited also, and a couple of young tinners 

 in the town of Liverpool made some tubing 

 of heavy tin, put down a well back of their 

 tinshop, and got quite a little oil.* Very 

 soon it began to be discovered that it could 

 be used instead of tallow candles for light- 

 ing our homes. I was so busy in my shop 

 as a watch-repairer about that time that I 

 could not well get away except on Sunday 

 (or at least I thought I could not). I had 

 no money to hire a horse and buggy, so I 

 started off one Sunday morning and walked 

 ten miles to Liverpool and the same distance 

 back, at night. I am glad to recall, how- 

 ever, that I came home with a troubled 

 conscience. I knew what my good mother 



* In Gleanings for Nov. 1 I gave you a picture 

 of the old windmill when it was first started. Well, 

 in the description I failed to mention that it not only 

 printed Gleanings but it worked a home-made drill 

 for drilling for gas and oil. In the basement of the 

 factory that held the windmill I put down a hole; 

 and when I got tired of working the drill by hand 

 I arranged a piece of mechanism that would pull the 

 drill up a certain distance and let it drop; and that 

 old home-made drill is down in old mother Earth a 

 hundred feet or more at this present date. It got 

 stuck in the rock ; and with my limited experience 

 and crude implements I did not succeed in pulling 

 it out. 



would say about such a Sunday tramp. On 

 that trip I saw a great wooden tub or tank 

 filled with salt water and a little oil on the 

 surface which they pumped into it with a 

 steam-engine. Please remember that gaso- 

 line-engines were unknown at that time. 

 Those early wells were drilled down perhaps 

 one or two hundred feet, and we thought 

 then that it was a great thing to be able to 

 go so far into mother Earth. Quite a little 

 gas came up with the oil, but it was allowed 

 to pass off into the air or to make a beacon 

 light at night. It seems strange that people 

 at that early day did not seem to think it 

 was worth any thing of any account. Well, 

 these shallow wells after a brief time gave 

 out, or they did not get enough oil to pay 

 for pumping. Later on, by going down a 

 thousand feet or more they got gas and oil, 

 and quite an excitement resulted. Just now, 

 fifty years more or later, we find by going 

 two or three thousand feet, instead of only 

 two or three hundred, the supply of oil and 

 gas seems almost inexhaustible. See ^he 

 clipping below from the Plain Dealer in 

 regard to some recent developments not far 

 from that first start in Liverpool. 



In July there were eighty wells yielding gas in 

 quantities of from 500,000 to 10,000,000 cubic feet 

 a day. 



Gas was first strucK in the district last January 

 when a gusher well yielding 10,700,000 cubic feet 

 a day was sunk on the property of J. L. and H. 

 Stadler underneath the Harvard-Denison bridge. 



The boom commenced immediately and wells yield- 

 ing as much as 4,000,000 cubic feet a day sprang 

 into existence on adjoining properties. 



Now, friends, I need not undertake to tell 

 you what has come in fifty years from the 

 discovery of oil and gas in the bowels of 

 old mother Earth. I could not tell you, 

 even if I would, for I am not well enough 

 informed. I do know, however, that oil and 

 gas are now found more or less almost all 

 over the whole face of old mother Earth. 

 The first excitement was mainly in Penn- 

 sylvania. Later the Virginia oil-fields threat- 

 ened to equal and even did eclipse Penn- 

 sylvania. Then California discovered they 

 had an abundance of oil to run locomotives, 

 to make good roads, and who can tell what 

 else"? Then away across the waters (where 

 they seem to have forgotten the oil craze, 

 and gone into a craze for killing each 

 other), great developments ensued, especial- 

 ly in Russia. 



Reader, have you ever stopped to think 

 what the world would be now if it had not 

 been for that discovery of oil and gas? 

 There would have been no millionaires like 



