The Sun.
London, England, 1865-10-21 00:00:00

very justly be zesented by all as most oppressive
and exorbitant. The State tax on petroleum is a
dollar a barrel, the tax which the dealer nd con-
sumer voluntarily put on themselves 13.,- their curi-
ous neglect of the roads by which their produce
must come down is pi. But people wont set about
permanent improvements to a region about which
their only desire is to quit when ithey have made
their "pile," and thus everything—roads, cities,
works, tanks, machinery, and all that belongs to the
transactions of business life are of the roughest and
most temporary kind, and a people so shrewd as
the Americans do not seem to see that those who
give them means of transit for their oil must in the
end earn the largest and most certain profits of any.

As with the roads and the cities so with the
people who inhabit them. Everything is in the
rough. The company in the small, ill-cleansed
apartments of the hotels here resemble nothing to
be seen in other parts of America—resemble no-
thing, in fact, but themselves. To be greasy,
muddy, ragged, and ill-dressed is common to all.
The representatives of millions of dollars jostle and
live side by side with teamsters, penniless adven-
turers, carpenters, bricklayers, workers at wells,
millionaires like themselves, stage drivers, boatmen,
and, in fact,. all whom business, want of employ-
ment, love of adventure, or love of money bring to
this most curious place. Neither dress nor manners
give the least clue to the aristocracy of " Oil
Dorado." Your neighbour, no matter how
wretchedly clothed, or how detestably vulgar his
ways and speech, may be so far your superior in
money's worth that in the community where wealth
is the only recognised distinction he is held to be in-
finitely your superior. Oil and money are the only
things required here, and as a general rule the more
ill-dressed and dirty a man is the more rich he is
likely to be. To be tolerably clean—that is to say,
with whole clothes not absolutely covered with mud
and grease, is to be a stranger to Petrolia, and, as a
general rule, to be a stranger in Petrolia means to
bo poor. You may be as ragged and dirty as you
like, and yet treated with as much consideration as
if you were worth a million, for rags and dirt
show a sojourner in the land, and no one has
any right or reason to suppose that a person
who has dwelt in Petrolia is not worth a
million. The democratic principle adhered to
in the oil business is, that all men, rich
or poor, teamsters or well-owners, are equal. The
well-owner's source of riches may go dry in a week,
and his teamster's 16th in a flowing well may in a
single day rise from a value of $250 to $200,000.
These instances of the instability of fortune are so
constantly and so strongly impressed on the minds
of all Petrolians, that they know perfectly well
that no matter what a man's wealth, as long as he
remains speculating in the oil regions, he may lose
it in a week, and they know also that no matter
what a man's poverty, as long as he, too, remains
speculating, he may be a millionaire in a day. Thus
both classes come pretty well to the level of the
lowest, all alike must conform to the rough man-
ners of the place and descend to the plain off-handed
slang absolutely necessary to the establishment of
any pleasant and therefore profitable intercourse.
" Airs" are absolutely of no account whatever. A
gentlemanly bearing does not impress in the least.
The common courtesies of a business transaction
may or may not be required, but in no case are they
either valued or depended on. Gentlemen, in fact,
are at a discount here ; not that they are not here,
but at least they are in a minority, and while they
stay here have to assume the manners of Oil City
to get on at all, just as they have to wear their
oldest clothes and most muddy boots. When, how-
ever; I have said this of Petrolia I have said the
worst, for a more industrious and peaceful popula-
tion never existed. Every man goes armed with
knife and revolver. Why ?No one can say. There
is no more reason, as they themselves admit, for
carrying such weapons than their would be for their
taking them to church. The first people who come
here did it, then others did it, then all the rest, be-
cause others did it. Every man says it is wrong,
and that he hopes that when Oil City gets its muni-
cipal rights this November that the carrying of
arms of any kind will be forbidden. It is, however,
almost a work of supererogation to forbid their
being carried, for, long as they have been worn
hitherto, I have never been able to trace or dis-
cover a single instance in which they have been
used. As a proof of this I may mention that I
examined several, and did not find one that had
not been loaded for months. The caps were cor-
roded on the nipples, and all I saw, and I saw
many, would as weapons of defence be about as
efficient as umbrellas. About two years ago a resi-
dent of Oil City was found murdered in the woods,
when a vigilance committee was at once formed,
and all bad characters hunted from the scene. Since
then two or three teamsters, while returning at
night through the woods, have, as they say in
Australia, been " stuck up" and eased of a few dol-
lars, but this ends the catalogue of crimes in Pe-
trolia.

There is probably no part of the world—certainly
not of America—where the proportion of drones to
working bees is so small as here. The people not
only come to work, which is one thing, but they do
work, which is quite another thing. From dawn
till night all are busy, and if Satan found mischief
only for idle hands to do, his vocation would be gone
in Petrolia. There is, however, one great stimu-
lant to this excessive industry, which is, that unless
a man works hard he cannot exist. The prices of
everything by which a man must live—food, cloth-
ing, shelter—have all more than trebled throughout
America since I was here four years ago. In Petro-
lia they have increased tenfold at least, on the prices
charged throughout the state. The cost of labour
here is enormous, and the cost of labour is only
another term for the cost of living. What is the
use of a teamster earning $4O dollars a day when
the price of keeping himself and two horses amounts
to $3O. He saves $lO a day, but he saves it at an
amount of exposure, discomfort, and rough living,
which, hardy as he may be, he would shrink from
encountering elsewhere on the same terms. Thus
it is that only the strongest and most hardy can
stand the wild life of this region at all, and it is,
therefore, claimed to be healthy because the rate
of sickness is not high among its iron population of
miners, labourers, or seasoned adventurers from
California. lam inclined, however, to disbelieve
in the healthiness of a district where the two
diseases are typhus and typhoid dysentery, and
where both are pretty rife. These complaints are
not caused by any want of good living, as far as
eating is concerned, nor by any excess in drinking,
for during all the time I have been in Petrolia I
have never seen a tipsy man, nor even one whom,
according to the euphemism of police reports, I could
say was under the influence of liquor. The favou-
rite vices here appearto be gambling and blasphemy.
The former is almost naturally induced bythe whole
style of oil-well speculations, the latter has comp to
be a mere "facon de parler," a dialect of the district
which almost every one uses, till the stranger's very
ears creep at the way in which the most sacred
names and things are spoken of, not so much as im-
precations, but as the ordinary garniture to the
most common conversation. In one very important
virtue, however, the Petrolians have few equals, and
that is in their hospitality to strangers. It is offered
freely to all ; but, above and beyond all, it is given
with a welcome to Englishmen. If you come as a
speculator, you are fair game, and woe betide you
and your unlucky dollars then if you are ignorant
of the country and its ways. These dull, quiet, phleg-
matic looking Pennsylvanians have over-reachedthe
shrewdest New England men and " down Easters''
have sold them a few acres of " dry territory" for
hundreds of thousands of dollars, which, as oil land,
was not worth a red cent. Yet, if you disclaim the
character of an investor or speculator, you are safe;
and, if an Englishman, you are taken care of by all,
and each man strives for the merit of entertaining
you. When I first visited Petrolia I came here alone,
without a person knowing either my name or vocation
came, in fact, as that idlest of human beings, an
English holiday traveller. Yet as soon as it was
known that such a curiosity-hunter was in the town,
one after another of the well-owners came in a kind,
rough way to see if they could be of use to me, to
place horses at my disposal, to offer me guides, and,
as they say here, to " put me through," from
first to last ; and all this w
Englishman
wishing to sec the because I was an
oil-wells. Offers