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Author: Ida Minerva Tarbell Publisher: Library of Alexandria ISBN: 1465583351 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 360
Book Description
One of the busiest corners of the globe at the opening of the year 1872 was a strip of Northwestern Pennsylvania, not over fifty miles long, known the world over as the Oil Regions. Twelve years before this strip of land had been but little better than a wilderness; its chief inhabitants the lumbermen, who every season cut great swaths of primeval pine and hemlock from its hills, and in the spring floated them down the Allegheny River to Pittsburg. The great tides of Western emigration had shunned the spot for years as too rugged and unfriendly for settlement, and yet in twelve years this region avoided by men had been transformed into a bustling trade centre, where towns elbowed each other for place, into which three great trunk railroads had built branches, and every foot of whose soil was fought for by capitalists. It was the discovery and development of a new raw product, petroleum, which had made this change from wilderness to market-place. This product in twelve years had not only peopled a waste place of the earth, it had revolutionised the world’s methods of illumination and added millions upon millions of dollars to the wealth of the United States. Petroleum as a curiosity, and indeed in a small way as an article of commerce, was no new thing when its discovery in quantities called the attention of the world to this corner of Northwestern Pennsylvania. The journals of many an early explorer of the valleys of the Allegheny and its tributaries tell of springs and streams the surfaces of which were found covered with a thick oily substance which burned fiercely when ignited and which the Indians believed to have curative properties. As the country was opened, more and more was heard of these oil springs. Certain streams came to be named from the quantities of the substance found on the surface of the water, as “Oil Creek” in Northwestern Pennsylvania, “Old Greasy” or Kanawha in West Virginia. The belief in the substance as a cure-all increased as time went on and in various parts of the country it was regularly skimmed from the surface of the water as cream from a pan, or soaked up by woollen blankets, bottled, and peddled as a medicine for man and beast. Up to the beginning of the 19th century no oil seems to have been obtained except from the surfaces of springs and streams. That it was to be found far below the surface of the earth was discovered independently at various points in Kentucky, West Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania by persons drilling for salt-water to be used in manufacturing salt. Not infrequently the water they found was mixed with a dark-green, evil-smelling substance which was recognised as identical with the well-known “rock-oil.” It was necessary to rid the water of this before it could be used for salt, and in many places cisterns were devised in which the brine was allowed to stand until the oil had risen to the surface. It was then run into the streams or on the ground. This practice was soon discovered to be dangerous, so easily did the oil ignite. In several places, particularly in Kentucky, so much oil was obtained with the salt-water that the wells had to be abandoned. Certain of these deserted salt wells were opened years after, when it was found that the troublesome substance which had made them useless was far more valuable than the brine the original drillers sought.
Author: Ida Minerva Tarbell Publisher: Library of Alexandria ISBN: 1465583351 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 360
Book Description
One of the busiest corners of the globe at the opening of the year 1872 was a strip of Northwestern Pennsylvania, not over fifty miles long, known the world over as the Oil Regions. Twelve years before this strip of land had been but little better than a wilderness; its chief inhabitants the lumbermen, who every season cut great swaths of primeval pine and hemlock from its hills, and in the spring floated them down the Allegheny River to Pittsburg. The great tides of Western emigration had shunned the spot for years as too rugged and unfriendly for settlement, and yet in twelve years this region avoided by men had been transformed into a bustling trade centre, where towns elbowed each other for place, into which three great trunk railroads had built branches, and every foot of whose soil was fought for by capitalists. It was the discovery and development of a new raw product, petroleum, which had made this change from wilderness to market-place. This product in twelve years had not only peopled a waste place of the earth, it had revolutionised the world’s methods of illumination and added millions upon millions of dollars to the wealth of the United States. Petroleum as a curiosity, and indeed in a small way as an article of commerce, was no new thing when its discovery in quantities called the attention of the world to this corner of Northwestern Pennsylvania. The journals of many an early explorer of the valleys of the Allegheny and its tributaries tell of springs and streams the surfaces of which were found covered with a thick oily substance which burned fiercely when ignited and which the Indians believed to have curative properties. As the country was opened, more and more was heard of these oil springs. Certain streams came to be named from the quantities of the substance found on the surface of the water, as “Oil Creek” in Northwestern Pennsylvania, “Old Greasy” or Kanawha in West Virginia. The belief in the substance as a cure-all increased as time went on and in various parts of the country it was regularly skimmed from the surface of the water as cream from a pan, or soaked up by woollen blankets, bottled, and peddled as a medicine for man and beast. Up to the beginning of the 19th century no oil seems to have been obtained except from the surfaces of springs and streams. That it was to be found far below the surface of the earth was discovered independently at various points in Kentucky, West Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania by persons drilling for salt-water to be used in manufacturing salt. Not infrequently the water they found was mixed with a dark-green, evil-smelling substance which was recognised as identical with the well-known “rock-oil.” It was necessary to rid the water of this before it could be used for salt, and in many places cisterns were devised in which the brine was allowed to stand until the oil had risen to the surface. It was then run into the streams or on the ground. This practice was soon discovered to be dangerous, so easily did the oil ignite. In several places, particularly in Kentucky, so much oil was obtained with the salt-water that the wells had to be abandoned. Certain of these deserted salt wells were opened years after, when it was found that the troublesome substance which had made them useless was far more valuable than the brine the original drillers sought.
Author: Raymond B. Fosdick Publisher: Plunkett Lake Press ISBN: Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 485
Book Description
“Mr. Fosdick has written a biography in its formal meaning — fully documented, chronologically precise — and not simply a personal tribute to a friend of more than forty years’ standing. The book, in consequence, is both biography and history, satisfying all the rigorous canons of personal and social analysis. It is to be read as part of the history of our time and as the record of a man of as much consequence to us as have been those other leaders and creators among his contemporaries who have affected public conduct. What we have here, then, is the narrative of a rich man who overcame the almost impossible handicaps of great wealth, limited religious upbringing, and a narrow and protective family circle. He might have become defensive and suspicious, or a recluse cultivating private and expensive hobbies, or a popular leader and therefore a demagogue (such patterns of the behavior of men of inherited fortunes are familiar throughout history), but instead he was able to grow and to assume great, national obligations. What might have been a puzzle slowly disappears under Mr. Fosdick’s skillful scholarship and his deep regard for his friend. The young Rockefeller (he is called throughout the book ‘JDR Jr.’), as early as 1910, when he was 36, severed his direct connections with business: did he do so because of a real or unconscious rejection of his father? Quite the contrary; father and son early forged strong bonds of mutual affection and respect, but while there never was hostility on the part of the son, neither was there subservience. JDR Jr. continued to support the philanthropies founded by the older man, the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, the General Education Board, and the Rockefeller Foundation, and to expand them; did he do this because he, like other men in public life — like Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Louis D. Brandeis — was inevitably swept up in the ‘reform movement’ of the day? That was only a part, and possibly a minor one, of his development. For as his tastes became surer and his vocation clearer, he ranged wider and wider until his interests were as large as those of his country and his world. As one goes over the catalogue of his benefactions and interests — none ever representing a perfunctory concern, most requiring long years of careful planning with a devotion to exact detail that only the truly outstanding seem to possess — one grasps the sweep and boldness of JDR Jr.’s mind. Williamsburg; the Cloisters; Rockefeller Center; the Museum of Modern Art; the restoration of the Athenian Agora; Rheims, Versailles, Fontainebleau; Negro education; the four International Houses; Jackson Hole and the Jersey Palisades; the Library of the League of Nations at Geneva, and the site of the U.N. at New York; the interdenominational movement; the long battle to achieve industrial understanding in two decades marked by bitter strife between management and labor: this is only a partial list. Mr. Fosdick seeks the key to the Rockefellers in some observations made by Frederick T. Gates, that restless and fascinating man who had such a great influence on the lives of both father and son. In 1905, Gates wrote to the father: ‘Two courses are open to you. One is that you and your children while living should make final disposition of this great fortune in the form of permanent corporate philanthropies for the good of mankind... or at the close of a few lives now in being it must simply pass into the unknown, like some other great fortunes, with unmeasured and perhaps sinister possibilities.’ In 1929, Gates was satisfied, for he put down in a private document these remarks concerning JDR Jr.: ‘I have known no man who entered life more absolutely dominated by his sense of duty, more diligent in the quest of the right path, more eager to follow it at any sacrifice.’” — Louis M. Hacker, The New York Times “The central theme of Raymond B. Fosdick’s book is its subject’s career as a philanthropist... This is not an impartial book and was not so intended. Mr. Fosdick is an admiring friend and associate of the man of whom he writes. But if the book is understandably friendly to John D. Rockefeller, Jr., it is also an honest book.” — John D. Hicks, The Saturday Review
Author: Grace Goulder Izant Publisher: Cleveland : Western Reserve Historical Society, 1972 [c1973] ISBN: Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 344
Book Description
For more than sixty years, Rockefeller called Cleveland home: it was where he married and raised his children, where he launched his business career, where he kept a secluded retreat, and where he was buried.
Author: Ida Minerva Tarbell
Author: Ida Minerva Tarbell
Author: Allan Nevins
Author: Marcus Monroe Brown
Author: Allan Nevins
Author: Marcus Monroe Brown
Author: Allan Nevins
Author: John Davison Rockefeller
Author: Raymond B. Fosdick
Author: Marcus M. Brown
Author: Grace Goulder Izant