304 The American Geologist. May, isyi 
serious attention to West Virginia. This date, however, is a 
"red letter" one in our oil history, for it marks the opening of 
Doll's Run, Mannington, and the rise of Eureka to prominence. 
These three developments brought the Standard Oil Company to 
realize that here in West Virginia was to be the great oil field of 
the future and that much berated monopoly has come into our 
state to take possession of its oil business. How many hundred 
thousand acres it has leased or purchased I do not know, but the 
territory it controls is a vast one, and the million and a half dol- 
lars it has expended in building a pipe line from Morgantown to 
the sea attest that it is with us to stay. Just what its influence 
will be upon our young commonwealth remains to be ascertained. 
It is here at the capitol asking for legislation necessary for carry- 
ing on this vast business enterprise of producing and marketing 
the million barrels of oil which lie hidden in our rocky state. If 
what it asks be fair it is only right that it should be given. Most 
of us have only seen the dark side of this monster corporation. 
It is too true that its immense proceeds have been used in this 
country to crush out rivals whom it could not purchase, but at the 
same time, only the power of such aggregated wealth could meet 
and vanquish the Nobells and Rothchilds of Europe in the con- 
test with the cheap oils of Russia. To meet this competition, 
and hold as well as extend the foreign market for American oils, 
this much abused corporation has often sold oil for months far 
below its cost, and had this not been done, the price of our oil 
would not be more than 50 cents a barrel to-day. This is one of 
the benefits that aggregated wealth confers, of which we hear very 
little. 
It is my firm belief that this great oil belt which has come 
down to our state through a distance of 200 miles, will extend 
clear across the same from Hancock to Logan. Only to-day I re- 
ceived a telegram that a large now of gas had stopped the drill at 
a well in Gilmer, while Maj. Hotchkiss, the eminent Virginian 
who has so eloquently depicted our rich mineral resources this 
evening, and who, although a native of another state, has done 
more to develop ours than any citizen in it, tells me that a well 
being drilled by his company in Lincoln, has had to shut down 
from the same cause. The gas wells at Warfield, on the Big 
Sandy, and those at Burning Spring, above this city complete the 
chain of evidence that the oil belt will extend entirely across our 
