Omaha daily bee., 1896-11-22
WASTED STORES OF WEALTH
Astonishing stOryaof Millions squandercd
in the Natural Gas Belt.
THE RISE AND FALL OF A BOOM
Prodigious wa-tc of Natures Fuel
and Light-Nne neteen-Twcnticths
of the Vast supply Ut
tcrIy Lost.

| in history said the old gas man,
thoughtfully; "the newspapers had hardly
a line about it; even the public that wac
aware OF 1t either didn't realize II or didn't
care yet in ten years, hundreds OF millions
of property went up in smoke, and great
natural store of energy, which would have
determined the commercial supremacy OF
four states for the next half century was
gone forever"
1t was of wnat he called the stupendous
wastage of natural gas that the old gas
man was speaking, apropos of the gas eX-
| position which will be held in New York
| City about the beginning OF the new year.
Satirical, the old gas man called the eX-
! position, because, he said 1t is intended
| to illustrate the immense advance we
have made OF late years in economical
| and convenient means OF using gas for
| fuel, light and power-in short to show
| that gas, even when 1t is manufactured,
is the best form of heat and power we
possess. Yet, he added the people OF
pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio and
| Indiana threw away millions upon mil-
| Ions Of dollars worth Of this precious
| stun, and the prosperity OF many locali-
| ties has been ruined, all because they
| thought 1t wasn't worth while to be eco
| nomcal 1t was going to last forever.
| The full story of this stupendous folly,
the old gas man went on to say, has never
| been told and 1t never Will be, because
In the first place, of the utter impossible
ity of obtaining any statistics that will
be worth anything, and since the story
Is so scattered in it's details that it would
be difficult to gather it together. But
can give you part Of it, he added-the
outline Of IT, as it were. This is the story
he told:
II you are familiar with the matter at
ALL you will remember that the gas boom
about twelve
While 1t lasted, ii was wild a boom
this country ever saw. 1t Is rather odd, on
the whole, thai 1t did not come long years
before. In Fredonia, N Y, near Buffalo,
for example, the gas wells have been burn
ing pretty near from the beginning of the
century. One of the big fields of Penn
sylvania was thirty years old before people
began to wake up to the fact that gas was
widely distributed and that the great reser-
voirs of nature could be tapped for a song.
But when the boom came, 1t was with
rush. 1t seemed a new way to make mil
lionsJ and very soon millions were made in
1t, and then everybody tried to take hand.
The result was that people were boring for
gas everywhere. Those were the days when
the "wild-catter" was in his glory and
he had only to show up in a community,
wander around on the outskirts Of the town
mysteriously for few days. and then whis-
per gas, to command all the money he
wanted. Curiously enough, II was to the
Muu-CdlleI lLHl tue Wlub extension OF lne
gas fields was due, and undoubtedly with
out his reckless. gambling spirit, many
rich fields would have remained undis-
covered to this day. believe it is an in
contestable fact that no expert ever located
new field, and my observation has been
that the higher priced he was, the less he
found
THE HALE WILL NEVER BE KNOWN
l said that there exist no statistics on the
matter that are at all illustrative of what
followed. The government tried for years
to get at the matter and in the census of
1890 attempted to compute the actual pro-
duction OF the wells for the year of 1889 |
That year the flow was set down at $50 OO0,-
100000 feet, and It's value at $11 900 OO0
But this really, doesn't mean much, and in
particular 1t tells nothing at all of the
stupendous waste that went on.
One way the government experts tried to
compute the production by years was by at
tempting to find out how much coal the gas
wells had displaced. In this way the re-
port on the mineral industries of the coun-
try show the production of natural gas
ranged from a little less than 5,00OO 900 in
1885 to 100000 for thp last year. This.
you understand, does not represent the act
ual value OF the gas nor any measure of it's
production, but simply the coal displaced.
The amount of the latter rose from 5000 900
in 1885 to 100000 in 1885, $4,000 900 in 1887
to $4,000, 900 in 1888 and to q, 900 900 in 1889
These two years of 1888 and 1889 were the
star years. Then the boom was at it's
height. Thereafter the fields began to fail
and ever since the production has been going
down steadily. Computed in this same
way, as to the displacement of coal II was
lS,OOO,O0O in 1890, $4,000 900 in 1891, II, ,OOO,-
600 in 1892 and 1898, and, as l said, about
49, 900 last year.
TOWNS THAT WE'RE BULLION GAS.
But these figures really mean little for
1t was not in the old industries where coal
was displaced, but in the new ones which
were bullt uD on natural gas alone, that
the chief value of the latter lay When
the gas boom came on whole new furnaces
and factories, whose capitalization mounted
easily into the hundreds OF Millions Some
OF these towns sprung up in night and
day. The town of Grapeville, a little
way from Pittsburg, was only one example
In many 1t is a literal fact that one fall
the hills where this town now stands were
bare almost of much as dwelling
house, and in the following fall there was
thriving, booming town of 22 900 people
and something like forty factories. 1t had
all the conveniences, all the modern i'm
provements" of a big city, water works
electric lights, street railroads, an opera
house and all the rest. The census OF 1890
does not even name the place. and what
was true here was true all over western |
Pennsylvania and Ohio and Indiana. From |
fifty miles east of Pittsburg almost to Chi
cago there was string of these gas towns,
Findlay, Fostoria, Muncie, Anderson and |
n
day. Sometimes the gas was found in scat |
tered localities and again 1t seemed to |
lie in huge fields The biggest of the latter, |
what was known as the Murrayvile field |
was something like twelve or fifteen miles |
wide and fully forty miles long. The latter,
l believe, is still going.
Sometimes the wells were found in the |
very midst of little towns, and then again,
and perhaps for the most part, on the
farms. Hundreds Of farmers that had
been able to make only a bare living for
years, suddenly found themselves wealthy. ]
When the boom struck the country every /
body was more OF less looking around, hop
Ing that he would strike we'll lext. The
latter did not cost very much to put down.
and 1t was big gamble. fo- where a rich |
we'll was struck 1t often meant fortune
HUNDREDS OF WELLS NEVER USED.
/ say often. This Ia where one OF the big
,arts OF the waste came In. II one man
truck gas, everybody else for miles around
likewise went boring for It, Gangs OF well
,orers went through the country, striking
job wherever they could. Sometimes they
,ut down a we'll for cash, and sometimes
ust on Spec" 1t naturally followed that
Z, where one good well was found, the same
was tapped a dozen or twenty
lines, the value OF all Of them went down |
And sometimes they went ,
own SO far that they were utterly worth
ess. Many farmer or speculator or syn
Iicate put down a WE'LL expecting to get