7S9 
a 
Scientific. 
THE DRIVEN WELL TROUBLE. 
The tube or driven well controversey ap¬ 
pears to be exciting a very unusually lively in¬ 
terest among farmers throughout the country 
just now. Messrs. W. D. Andrews & Bro., the 
owners or agents of N. W, Green's patent, 
appear to be extraordinarily busy collect¬ 
ing “ royalty ” from the owners of driven 
wells everywhere. In this State alone be¬ 
tween 1,000 and 8,000 well-owners who have 
refused to pay $10 royalty for each well of 
the kind, have been summoned from all quar¬ 
ters to appear before the T T . 8. Circuit Court 
at Utica in a few days. To do this person¬ 
ally must entail heavy expense for travel, 
loss of time and hotel expenses; to appear by 
counsel must entail an outlay nearly as large 
as the claim for “ royalty,” even if the har- 
rassed well-owners of each neighborhood 
should club together to defray expenses. A 
judicial decision against the claims for 
“ royalty,” however, would be a compensa¬ 
tion for the annoyance and loss of time and 
money; but judging from the issue of half 
a dozen, or so, cases which have been al¬ 
ready brought to trial before the U. S. Cir¬ 
cuit Courts, a favorable decision can hardly 
be expected from these tribunals, each of 
which appears to feel bound to follow the pre¬ 
cedent set by any other. A careful review of 
the case, however, leads us to believe that an 
appeal to the United States Supreme Court 
would be much more likely to free the driven- 
well owners of the country from the annoy¬ 
ance and exactions to which they are sub¬ 
jected. The expenses of such an appeal, how 
ever, would be so heavy that they could only 
be met by contributions from all those inter¬ 
ested in upsettiug Green's patent. Whatever 
the decision of the Supreme Court, the fol¬ 
lowing truthful sketch of the cutely history of 
the driven well clearly proves that equity cer¬ 
tainly does not require that the public should 
be heavily taxed to reward the individual 
talent, outlay or labor involved in the inven¬ 
tion of this method of well-making. 
The essential difference between the imme¬ 
morial dug and artesian well, and the modern 
tube well, is, that in the two former the earth 
removed from t he hole is brought to the surface, 
while in the last it is forced aside by a pointed 
drill driven down to the water-bearing strata. 
With a few rare exceptions, this drill consists 
of an appropriate length of wrought iron 
pipe, perforated at the bottom, and tipped 
with an adjustable, conical point, having a 
short stem fitting into the tube ami a circular 
shoulder projecting slightly beyond it. When 
the perforated part has been submerged in the 
subterranean water a pump is attached to the 
upper end, and henceforth the tubular drill 
serves both as a curb to the well and a suc¬ 
tion pipe to the pump. 
The earliest account published in the country 
of the tube well-process of well-making occurs 
in an American reprint of “MacKenzie’s 
5,0(XJ Receipts,” issued in Philadelphia in 188!) 
by Jas. Kay, Jr. & Bro. On page 888, a re¬ 
cipe “ to raise water in all situations,” tells us 
that the finest springs may lie formed by forc¬ 
ing an iron rod into the ground, withdrawing 
it on reaching water, and inserting in the 
aperture a pipe for the passage of an abund¬ 
ant stream. Apart from the suggestive head¬ 
ing of this recipe, it is likely enough that 
flowing wells were chiefly, or maybe, exclu¬ 
sively contemplated by it; but the process of 
making a well, not the method of getting 
water out of it, is the question involved in 
Green's patent , and the process described in 
his specification and covered by his claim is 
substantially identical with that set forth in 
Mac Kenzie's antedeluvian recipe-book. Of 
this household work three large editions had 
been scattered through the country, before the 
process clearly advocated by it. first occurred 
to Green’s inventive genius in 18(31. 
During tin's year the rumored death of some 
of our soldiers, by drinking from poisoned wells 
in Virginia, caused much speculation among 
the troops about to visit the hostile territory 
as to the best method of obtaining pure water. 
At this time Green, who had been educated 
partly at West Point, was the colonel of a 
volunteer regiment quartered near his home 
in the village of Cortland, N. Y. During a 
discussion among the officers of the regiment 
on the hydraulic problem, the Colonel sug¬ 
gested that water might be obtained by insert¬ 
ing a tube into n hole made in the ground by 
an iron bar, and directed one of his lieuten¬ 
ants, named Mudge, to make the experiment. 
The spot selected for this was on the margin 
of a neighboring stream. An iron bar was 
worked down a short distance by lifting and 
dropping it alternately. On its withdrawal 
the water rose to within a few feet of the 
brink of the hole into which a common tin 
boat pump was then inserted, and an attempt 
made to pump it dry. Contrary to general 
expectation this was found to be utterly im¬ 
practicable, for the water of the adjacent 
stream swept through the thin barrier of in¬ 
tervening sand into the vacuum produced by 
the action of the pump. 
By Green’s order Mudge continued, for some 
time, his experiments with this unsatisfactory 
result. In every case a “drive rod” to make 
the hole was indispensable. To ascertain w hen 
this had reached water, repeated withdrawals 
were often necessary. The fall of loose earth, 
sand and pebbles from the sides of the empty 
hole added annoyance and delay to increased 
labor. Moreover in loose, friable formations 
there was always danger of the entire work 
collapsing w’henever the rod was withdrawn. 
Into this rickety hole a sheet-iron cylinder 
was gingerly introduced to servo as a wall to 
the well, and a guard to an inner lead-pipo 
for the passage of the water. The entire 
operation was more complicated, hazardous 
and uncertain, and hardly less expensive 
than the old mode, and not a single well sunk 
by Mudge under Green’s direction turned 
out a permanent success. 
In October 1861, Green’s regiment went 
south; but Mudge returned home in the follow¬ 
ing January, and two months later was fol¬ 
lowed by Green who had been dismissed from 
the army for shooting the Major of his regi¬ 
ment. This deed brought upon him much 
public opprobrium and imbittered the three or 
four ensuing years of his life by the legal pro¬ 
ceedings to which it gave rise. This worri- 
ment, however, was not without subsequent 
compensation. In it he found a valid legal ex 
cuse for four years’ negligence in asserting any 
claim to the invention of this process, and al¬ 
so for his marvelous ignorance of the public 
use o*bei-s were, meanwhile, making of the 
discovery, a knowledge of w'hich, without a 
protest, would have nullified liis tardy claim 
to” patent, in 1866. 
After his return Mudge drove a few' wells 
on his own account, but speedily tired of the 
profitless occupation and sought more remu- 
merative employment, whereas Green, all 
whose labors in the matter had hitherto been 
pleasantly vicarious, took no further interest 
in it now that a prosecution of it would have 
involved personal exertion and outlay. His 
legal embarrassments, indeed, left him little 
money and less heart for experimenting in a 
sordid occupation for which his education 
had naturally given him a gentlemanly con¬ 
tempt. 
Meanwhile James Suggett, an old well dig¬ 
ger of the village, who had been hired by 
Mudge as an assistant in his early experi¬ 
ments, continued to drive an occasional well 
whenever he could contrive to get an order for 
it. Such an order gladdened his heart in Sep¬ 
tember 1868, yet it sorely puzzled his head how¬ 
to fill it. The well-making business had of late 
been dull and unprofitable, and the old man's 
funds eked out by his credit could not pur¬ 
chase a sufficiency of tubing. In the previous 
May he had begun to substitute gas-pipe for 
sheet-iron as a well-curb, and in his [(resent, 
impecunious dilemma the ingenuity in make¬ 
shifts, bora of galling poverty, urged an es¬ 
cape from the expense of lead pipe by the use 
of a single gas pipe to discharge the combined 
functions of the two tubes hitherto deemed 
essential to success. At the same time a for¬ 
tunate difficulty iu obtaining the loan of a 
“ drive rod,” suggested another tentative in¬ 
novation. By forging to a point the end of the 
gas pipe which his limited means had pur¬ 
chased, he transformed it into a stout tubular 
drill, auil thus, all unconscious of the ultimate 
results of his labor, insured the permanency 
of the process, and forged the instrument 
that was presently to open the way to his own 
rapid enrichment. 
The well constructed uuder these difficulties 
was the fust brilliant success, and Suggett’s 
makeshift expedient soon came to be regard¬ 
ed in the light of provideut impi-ovement re¬ 
flecting no small credit on his inventive in¬ 
genuity. Thirteen months later, in Septem¬ 
ber 186:!, he filed an application for a patent 
covering his tubular drill, its point and per¬ 
forations, and on the 29th of the following 
March this patent was granted. No sooner 
had Suggett obtained it than he hasted to sell 
territorial rights under it, before its value 
could be lessened by rival claims, or infringe¬ 
ments. 
In those restless days of flush pockets, and 
feverish Speculation, tube well rights soon be¬ 
came popular as investments among those in¬ 
terested in domestic hydraulics, as oil well 
stock among the general public. Hence Sug¬ 
gett’s luck ditt'ored as much from that of or¬ 
dinary patentees as his method of invention. 
From the first he found a ready sale for his 
rights and presently investors Hocked to him 
with nearly as much eagerness as ordinary in¬ 
ventors exercise in searching for them. Ere 
the close of the year the piecemeal sale of his 
entire patent had lifted the lucky well-digger 
from indigence to affluence, and lodged him 
snugly among the capitalists of the village. 
His financial success, quite as much as the 
obvious shortcomings of his crude but sugges¬ 
tive devices, soon flooded the country with 
auxiliary patents, covering a few needed and 
a host of superfluous improvements. Of these 
some substituted an adjustible point, of va¬ 
rious shapes and materials, for Suggett’s clum¬ 
sily forged makeshift. Others excluded sand 
from the suction pipe by screening it® perfor¬ 
ated end internally or externally, with wire- 
gauze or minutely perforated sheets of differ¬ 
ent metals. Suggett, with characteristic sim¬ 
plicity, had imperfectly accomplished this 
during the process of driving by economical¬ 
ly packing the perforated end of the drill with 
rags to be Ashed out with a hook attached to 
the end of a long rod, when water had been 
reached. The bulk of these patents, however, 
differed from each Other merely in trifles so 
absurdly immaterial that imposition not im¬ 
provement must have been the aim of their 
owners. Of tube wells throughout the coun¬ 
try fully four-fifths have already contributed 
in their cost to the [(rice wrung from well- 
drivers for territorial rights under some one 
of these patents, 
It was not in human nature that that 
Mudge should witness Suggett’s rapid enrich¬ 
ment without attempting to profit in like 
manner by the schemo which it was now ex- 
asperatingly evident he had himself aban¬ 
doned prematurely. Accordingly in August 
1775 he applied for a patent for MacKenzie’s 
process of well-making, and this was readily 
granted on the 24th of the following October. 
.Six months’ trial, however, demonstrated the 
fatal advantages of the pointed and perfor¬ 
ated drill protected by Suggett’s patent, all 
claims to which he had frankly repudiated in 
liis own application. Finding, however, that 
his patent, in its present form, was useless, 
and still worse, unsalable, he surrendered it 
on the 5th of March, 1866, and boldly sought 
an amended reissue covering a perforated 
pipe and point in addition to the process 
claimed in his surrendered patent. 
By t his time Suggett’s success and the wide¬ 
spread use of the system that had sprang from 
it, had roused Green to a lively sense of the 
vast possibilities of fortune still latent in the 
novel enterprise. Mudge’s early experiments 
ordered by him were constructively liis; and 
Mudge’s late patent gratuitously proved that 
a process of making a hole in the ground was 
patentable. Suggett's application had em¬ 
braced a claim for this which the underlings 
of the patent office had so unfeelingly ridi¬ 
culed that liis agent—Hon. R. H. Duell, Con¬ 
gressman from Onondaga Co., in those days 
and Commissioner of patents later on—pru¬ 
dently docked the instrument of this preten¬ 
tion. Yet Green might well have hesitated 
about contesting Mudge’s conceded claims had 
not the latter voluntarily resigned the van¬ 
tage-ground of possession. Outhis missmove 
his alert rival filed, 12 days later, an applica¬ 
tion for a patent for the process of sinking 
wells by forcing down a rod into the water 
under the ground, then withdrawing it and 
inserting iu its place a tube, perforated but 
not closed at the bottom, for the purpose of 
extracting the water. This process was iden¬ 
tically the same covered by Mudge’s surren¬ 
dered patent, anil substantially the same de¬ 
scribed iu Mac Kenzie's ancient repertory. 
In view of the reciprocal infringements of the 
rival clqjms of Suggett, Mudge and Green, 
the Patent Office, on the 81st of March 1866, 
declared au interference between the three. 
After three diverse decisions, as many succes¬ 
sive ap[(eals, and 22 months' litigation, the 
U. S. Court for the District of Columbia fin¬ 
ally decided that Suggett's patent and Green’s 
claim wore equally valid, and that the luck- 
ess Mudge had no rights which the Patent 
Office was bound to recognize. 
Without money to introduce his patent, 
Green at an early day made an agreement 
with an extensive manufacturer of iron pumps, 
whereby, for a certain consideration, in selling 
his patent rights he insisted on the exclusive 
use of the pumps of this nianufact rer. 
Straightway the other [jump manufacturers 
combined to test the validity of the patent. 
The case, however, was decided against them 
in 1876, and although they talked a good deal 
at first about taking an appeal to the Supreme 
Court of the United States, they have hith¬ 
erto made no movement in that direction. 
Several other test cases have been tried before 
U. S. Circuit Courtsin various parts of the 
country, but as there was no new evidence as to 
the use ot Green’s, or, rather, McKenzie’s, 
method of well making before 1861, the Courts 
in every case have followed the precedent set 
at the first trial. At no time has the country 
been so thoroughly ransacked as it is at [(res¬ 
ent for fresh evidence to invalidate the pat¬ 
ent. In the absence of such evidence we are 
sorvy to he compelled to own that we can see 
no probability of upsettiug the patent other¬ 
wise than by au appeal to the United States 
Supreme Court, ana there the issue would be 
very doubtful. Much as we would desire to 
free the farmers of the country from exactions 
made under this patent, truth and a regard 
for their l>est interests force us to make this 
declaration. We are now investigating the 
subject and bog of our readers to forwa rd to 
us any new information they may have of the 
matter, and in order to post them thoroughly 
on what has already been ascertained we shall 
return to the subject in our next issue, or so 
soon thereafter as we shall have collected the 
information for which we are now searching. 
iVlbccllancous. 
THE RED RIVER VALLEY. 
Another Letter upon its Soil, Products, 
Cities, Towns etc. 
MESSRS. HOLMES AND SWEETLAND. 
[Special Correspondents of the Rural New-Yorker.! 
October, which to more southern climes 
means the sere and the yellow leaf, here in the 
Red River Valley, brings the frosts which 
strip the trees of their variegated foliage, 
not in pairs, but in perfect showers, dropping 
to earth to bee nne a part, of the enriching 
soil. The portion of the country considered 
in this letter lies in the very heart of the great 
wheat-growing region of the Northwest; the 
land made famous by that grade of Spring 
wheat termed “ No. 1 Hard,” which has be¬ 
come of such value through the introduction 
of roller flouring mills. The counties through 
which we journeyed to obtain the data for 
this letter, were parts of Polk and Clay in 
Minnesota and parts of Grand Forks, Trail 
and Cass in Dakota. These counties will con¬ 
tribute this year not less than 6,399,100 bush¬ 
els of No. 1 wheat which at the prices at the 
time of writing ($1.85) would give the farmers 
of this district $8,728,775. From an able ar¬ 
ticle from the pen of J. S. Hansen we quote. 
“The jiccuJwrities this year have been a lack 
of rain during the growing season w hen it is 
usually abundant, and an excess during what 
is generally the harvest season. In order to 
learn the effect in the remarkable wheat re¬ 
gion I made a trip. The wonderful soil 
which enjoys a world-wide reputation, has 
fully maintained its high reuown, even under 
adverse circumstances, and the result of the 
harvest just closed stands a new and strong 
argument in favor of its wonderful productive 
capacity.” 
We have made close and careful investiga¬ 
tions and fully concur in t he statements made. 
Many farms are yielding a larger average to 
the acre this season than last, and while the 
general average may perhaps be somewhat 
less, it will be on account of the lack of proper 
cultivation on the part of the farmer, or else 
neglect in seeding or thrashing. 
Upon the branch of the St. Paul, Minneap¬ 
olis and Manitoba R. R. running north from 
Fargo to Grand Forks have sprang up several 
smart and active little towns. The largest of 
these is Hillsboro (formerly Hill City.) It 
was named for General-manager Hill ot the 
Manitoba line who has large landed interests. 
Last November it was platted, a fact which 
seems incredible as we look now upon its 400 
to 500 population. There are two large ele¬ 
vators, hotels, a dozen stores, lumber yards, 
a good newspaper, a school and many busi¬ 
ness interests. It is ten miles west ot the Red 
River, on Goose River in the very heart of 
the wheat lands of this valley. Buxton (52 
miles north of Fargo, named for T. J. Bux¬ 
ton of Minneapolis) is another handsomely 
located prairie town. It is a good trading 
point a ul already has two elevators, two 
stores, a blacksmith’s shop, a depot, two lum¬ 
ber yards and a really first-class hotel which 
has made it noticeable us a sportmen's resort, 
Another elevator and a schoolhouse are on the 
tapis. As to prices or local interests we re¬ 
fer readers to Budd Reeve Esq., of Buxton. 
Graudin is a new but promising town 28 
miles north of Moorhead and Fargo, named 
from, and situated near, the great wheat 
farm of the Graudin Bros., who are part 
proprietors, AU branches of business are 
needed and its location should insure it a con¬ 
siderable grain market. Messrs Comstock 
and White, of Moorhead, kindly voluteered 
information concerning this section much 
of which space precludes mentioning. Our 
next stop was at those well known western 
cities. 
FARGO AND MOORHEAD 
the dual cities—so called on account of their 
location and conflicting interests. Fargo is 
upon the west and Moorehead upon the east 
bank of the Red River, the former in Dakota 
Territory and the latter in Minnesota. As a 
consequence there has been, is, and will be, a 
| spirit of rivalry, but as far as we could judge 
not of rancor or ill-feeling. Of Fargo who 
has not hea rd, springing up, ns it has, in a de¬ 
cade into a city of great commercial impor¬ 
tance ! In this letter we will briefly summar¬ 
ize the leading points of interest gleaned, giv¬ 
ing our friends a more detailed description 
next week. The population at the time of the 
last census was 2,701; now it is estimated at 
from 4,000 to 3,000, There are six churches; 
two school-houses, with a new one in process 
of construction to cost §85,000; two daily, 
three weekly and one Sunday, newspapers, 
(one of which is Soandanaviau) several civic 
societies; a Chamber of Commerce of 65 mem¬ 
bers, organized m 1879; a U. S. Land Office; 
two local fire insurance companies, and an im¬ 
mense traffic both wholesale and retail, as is 
