eyes and nearly blinding her little daughter. A woman at Rouseville poured glycerine, mistaking it for lard-oil, into a frying-pan on the stove, just as her husband came into the kitchen. He snatched up the pan and landed it in a snow-bank so quickly the stuff didn't burst the combination. The wife started to scold him, but fainted when he explained the situation.

The wonderful explosion at Hell-Gate in 1876, when General Newton fired two-hundred tons of dynamite and cleared a channel into New-York harbor for the largest steamships, brought to the front the men who always tell of something that beats the record. A group sat discussing Newton's achievement at the Collins House, Oil City, as a Southerner with a military title entered. Catching the drift of the argument he said:

"Talk about sending rocks and water up in the air! I knew a case that knocked the socks clear off this little ripple at New York!"

"Tell us all about it, Colonel," the party chorused.

"You see I used to live down in Tennessee. One day I met a farmer driving a mule that looked as innocent as a cherub. The farmer had a whip with a brad in the end of it. Just as I came up he gave the mule a prod. Next moment he was gone. It almost took my breath away to see a chap snuffed out so quick. The mule merely ducked his head and struck out behind. A crash, a cloud of splinters and the mule and I were alone, with not a trace of farmer or wagon in sight. Next day the papers had accounts of a shower of flesh over in Kentucky and I was the only person who could explain the phenomenon. No, gentlemen, the dynamite and Nitro-Glycerine at Hell-Gate couldn't hold a candle to that Tennessee mule !"

The silence that followed this tale was as dense as a London fog and might have been cut with a cheese-knife. It was finally broken by a Derrick writer, who was a newspaper man and not easily taken down, extending an invitation to the crowd to drink to the health of Eli Perkins's and Joe Mulhatten's greatest rival.

William A. Meyers, whom every man and woman at Bradford knew and admired, handled tons of explosives and shot hundreds of wells. He had escapes that would stand a porcupine's quills on end. To head off a lot of fellows who asked him for the thousandth time concerning one notable adventure, he concocted a new version of the affair. "It was a close call," he said, "and no mistake. In the magazine I got some glycerine on my boots. Soon after coming out I stamped my heel on a stone and the first thing I knew I was sailing heavenward. When I alighted I struck squarely on my other heel and began a second ascension. Somehow I came down without much injury, except a bruised feeling that wore off in a week or two. You see the glycerine stuck to my boot-heels and when it hit a hard substance it went off quicker than Old Nick could singe a kiln-dried sinner. What'll you take, boys?"

So the darkest chapter in petroleum history, a flood of litigation, a mass of deception, a black wave of treachery and a red streak of human blood, must be charged to the account of Nitro-Glycerine.

HITS AND MISSES.

A Bradford minister, when the Academy of Music burned down, shot wide of the mark in attributing the fire to "the act of God." Sensible Christians resented the imputation that God would destroy a dozen houses and stores to wipe out a variety-theater, or that He had anything to do with building up a trade in arson and figuring as an incendiary.

46

He struck a match and the gas exploded;
An angel now, he knows it was loaded.

Mariar, what book was you readin' so late last night?" asked a stiff Presbyterian father at Franklin. 'It was a novel by Dumas the elder." "Elder!' I don't believe it. What church was he elder on, Ish'd like to know, and writ novels? Go and read Dr. Eaton's Presbytery uv Erie."

Hymn-singing is not always appropriate, or a St. Petersburg leader would not have started "When I Can Read My Title Clear" to the minstrel melody of "Wait for the Wagon and We'll All Take a Ride!" At an immersion in the river below Tidioute, as each convert, male or female, emerged dripping from the water, the people interjected the revivalist chorus:

"They look like men in uniform,

They look like men of war!"

Mr. Gray, of Boston, once discovered a “non-explosive illuminating gasoline." To show how safe the new compound was, he invited a number of friends to his rooms, whither he had taken a barrel of the fluid, which he proceeded to stir with a red-hot poker. As they all went through the roof he endeavored to explain to his nearest companion that the particular fluid in the barrel had too much benzine in it, but the gentleman said he had engagements higher up and could not wait for the explanation. Mr. Gray continued his ascent until he met Mr. Jones, who informed him that there was no necessity to go higher, as everybody was coming down; so Mr. Gray started back to be with the party. Mr. Gray's widow offered the secret for the manufacture of the non-explosive fluid at a reduced rate, to raise money to buy a silver-handled coffin with a gilt plate for her departed husband.

The speech of a youth who goes courting a lass,
Unless he's a dunce at the foot of the class,

Is sure to be se ison'd with natural gas.

Grant Thomas, train-dispatcher at Oil City of the Allegheny Valley Railroad, is one of the jolliest jokers alive. When a conductor years ago a young lady of his acquaintance said to him: "I think that Smith girl is just too hateful; she's called her nasty pug after me!" “Oh,” replied the genial ticketpuncher, in a tone meant to pour oil on the troubled waters, "that's nothing; half the cats in Oil City are called after me!" The girl saw the point, laughed heartily and the angel of peace hovered over the scene.

What's in a name?" so Shakespeare wrote.

Well, a good deal when fellows vote,

Want a check cashed, or sign a note;

And when an oilman sinks a well,

Dry as the jokes of Digby Bell,
Dennis or Mud fits like a shell.

XIV.

THE STANDARD OIL-COMPANY.

GROWTH OF A GREAT CORPORATION-MISUNDERSTOOD AND MISREPRESENTED-IMPROVEMENTS IN TREATING AND TRANSPORTING PETROLEUM-WHY MANY REFINERIES COLLAPSED-REAL MEANING OF THE TRUST-WHAT A COMBINATION OF BRAINS AND CAPITAL HAS ACCOMPLISHED-MEN WHO BUILT UP A VAST ENTERPRISE THAT HAS NO EQUAL IN THE WORLD.

"Genius is the faculty of growth."-Coleridge.

"In union there is strength."-Popular Adage.

"Success affords the means of securing additional success."--Stanislaus.

"We must not hope to be mowers

Until we have first been sowers."-Alice Cary

"Fortune, success, position, are never gained but by determinedly, bravely striking, growing, living to a thing "-Townsend.

"The goal of yesterday will be the starting-point of to-morrow."--Ibid. "That thou art blam'd shall not be thy defect."--Shakespeare.

"Amongst the sons of men how tew are known

Who dare be just to merit not their own."-Churchill. "The keen spirit seizes the prompt occasion."-Hannah More.

COMPARED with a petroleum-sketch which did not touch upon the Standard Oil-Company, in different respects the greatest corporation the world has ever known, Hamlet with "the melancholy Dane" left out would be a masterpiece of completeness. Perhaps no business-organization in this or any other country has been more misrepresented and misunderstood. To many wellmeaning persons, who would not willfully harbor an unjust thought, it has suggested all that is vicious, grasping and oppressive in commercial affairs. They picture it as a cruel monster, wearing horns and clovenhoofs and a forked-tail, grown rich and fat devouring the weak and the innocent. Its motives have been impugned, its methods condemned and its actions traduced. If a man in Oildom drilled a dry-hole, backed the wrong horse, lost at poker, dropped money speculating, stubbed his toe, ran an unprofitable refinery, missed a train or couldn't maintain champagne style on a lager-beer income, it was the fashion for him to

JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER.

pose as the victim of a gang of conspirators and curse the Standard vigorously and vociferously!

The reasons for this are various. The Standard was made the scapegoat of the evil deeds alleged to have been contemplated by the unsavory SouthImprovement Company. That odious combine, which included a number of railroad-officials, oil-operators and refiners, disbanded without producing, refining, buying, selling or transporting a gallon of petroleum. "Politics makes strange bedfellows" and so does business. Among subscribers for SouthImprovement stock were certain holders of Standard stock and also their bitterest opponents; among those most active in giving the job its death-blow were prominent members of the Standard Oil-Company. The projected spoliation died "unwept, unhonored and unsung," but it was not a Standard scheme.

Envy is frequently the penalty of success. Whoever fails in any pursuit likes to blame somebody else for his misfortune. This trick is as old as the race. Adam started it in Eden, Eve tried to ring in the serpent and their posterity take good care not to let the game get rusty from disuse! Its aggregation of capital renders the Standard, in the opinion of those who have "fallen outside the breastworks," directly responsible for their inability to keep up with the procession. Sympathizers with them deem this "confirmation strong as proof of Holy Writ" that the Standard is an unconscionable monopoly, fostered by crushing out competition. Such reasoning forgets that enterprise, energy, experience and capital are usually trump-cards. It forgets that "the race is to the swift," the battle is to the mighty and that “Heaven is on the side with the heaviest artillery." Carried to its logical conclusion, it means that improved methods, labor-saving appliances and new processes count for nothing. It means that the snail can travel with the antelope, that the locomotive must wait for the stage-coach, that the fittest shall not survive. In short, it is the double-distilled essence of absurdity.

Any advance in methods of business necessarily injures the poorest competitor. Is this a reason why advances should be held back? If so, the public could derive no benefit from competition. The fact that a man with meagre resources labors under a serious disadvantage is not an excuse for preventing stronger parties from entering the field. The grand mistake is in confounding combination with monopoly. By combination small capital can compete successfully with large capital. Every partnership or corporation is a combination, without which undertakings beyond individual reach would never be accomplished. Trunk railroads would not be built, unity of action would be destroyed, mankind would segregate as savages and the trade of the world would stagnate. Combinations should be regulated, not abolished. Rightful competition is not a fierce strife between persons to undersell each other, that the one enduring the longest may afterwards sell higher, but that which furnishes the public with the best products at the least cost. This is not done by selling below cost, but by diminishing in every way possible the cost of producing, manufacturing and transporting. The competition which does this, be it by an individual, a firm, a corporation, a trust or a combination, is a public benefactor. This kind of competition uses the best tools, discards the sickle for the cradle and the cradle for the reaper, abandons the flail for the threshing-machine and adopts the newest ideas wherever and whenever expenses can be lessened. To this end unrestricted combination and unrestricted competition must go hand-in-hand. A small profit on a large volume of business is better for the consumer than a large profit on a small business. The man who sells a