The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1896-11-27


thoughtfully; 1.-The newspapers ha6
hardly a line about it; even the public
that was aware of it either didn't real
ize it or didn't care; yet in ten years
| hundreds of millions of property went
uD in smoke. and a great natural
store of energy, which would have
determined the commercial supremacy
Of four states for the next half cen
fury was gone forever"
1t was what he called the stupen-
dous wastage of natural gas that the
! old gas man was speaking. The full
story of this stupendous folly, the old
gas man went on to say, has never
| been told. and it never will be, be-
cause in the first place, of the utter
| impOssibility of obtaining any statiS-
| tics that will be worth anything, and
! since the story is so scattered in its
details that it would be difficult to
| gather it together. But L 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 came on about 10 or II years ago.
While it lasted it was as wild a boom
as this country ever saw. 1t is rather
odd, on the whole, that it did not come
long years before. In Fredonia, n. Y,
near Buffalo, for example, the gas
wells have been burning pretty near
from the beginning of the century. One
of the big fields of PENNSYLVANIA was
80 years old before people began to
wake UP to the fact that gas was
widely distributed and that the great
reservoirs of nature could be tapped
for q song.
But When the boom came it was
with . rush 1t seemed a new way to
make millions, and very soon millions
were made in it, and then everybody
tried to take a hand. The result was
that people were boring for gas every
where. 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 a few days, and
then whisper gas, to command all the
money he wanted. Curiously enough it
was to the ''wild-catter'' that the wide
extension of the gas fields was due, and
undoubtedly without his reckless, gam
bling spirit many rich fields would
have remained undiscovered to this
day. 1 believe it is an incontestable
fact that no expert ever located new
field, and my observation has been
that the higher priced he was, the less
he found.
THE HALF WILL NEVER BE
KNOWN.
1 said that there exist no statistics
on the matter that are at all illus
trative of what followed. The govern
ment tried for years to get at the mat
ter and in The census of 1890 attempted
to compute the actual production of
the wells for the year of 1889. That
year the flow was set down at $50, 000,-
100000 feet, and its value at S11. co., OVJ.
But this really doesn't mean much, and
in particular it 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 attempting to find out
how much coal the gas wells had dis
placed In this way the report on the
industries of the country show
the production of natural gas ranged
from little less than $5,000,000 in 1885,
to $12,000,0 coo for the last year. This,
you understand, does not represent the
actual value of the gas, nor any meas !
ure of it's production, but simply the
latter rose from 100000 in 1885 10
SO, 600 900 in 1885, S15, 600, 900 in 1887 and /
$22, 900 900 in 1889. These two years of /
1888 and 1889 were the star years. Then /
the boom was at its height. There /
after the fields began to fail and ever
since the production has been going +
down steadily. Computed in this way, |
as to the displacement of coal. it was !
SIS, 600 900 in 1890, SIS 900 in 1891, S14- |
100000 in 1892 and 1898, and, as L said, /
about $12, 100000 last year.
TOWNS THAT WE'RE BUILT ON |
GAS.
But these figures really mean little, /
for it was not in the old industries /
where coal was displaced, but in the |
new ones which were built up on nat
ural gas alone, that the chief value
Of the latter lay. When the gas boom
came on, whole new furnaces and fac
tories, whose capitalization mounted /
easily into the hundreds of millions.
Some of these towns Sprang up in
night and a day. The town of Grape
vile, little way from Pittsburg, was
only one example in many. 1t is a lit
eral fact that one fall the hills wnere
his town now stands were bare almost
Of so much as a dwelling house. and
n the following fall there was a thriv-
ng, booming town of $4,000 people, and
something like 40 factories. 1t had all +
he convenienceS, all the modern i'm
of a b. CiJy.
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
RUG all over western Pennsylvania and
Ohio and Indiana. From so miles east
# Pittsburg almost to Chicago there
vas string of these gas towns. Find
ay, Fostoria, Muncie, Anderson and a
aft of others, where men grew rich
n a day. Sometimes the gas was found
n scattered localities, and again it
seemed to lie in huge fields. The big
rest of the latter, what was known as
he Murrayville field, was something
ike II or Is miles wide and fully 40
niles long. The latter, 1 believe, is
till going.
Sometimes the wells were found in
he very midst of little towns. and then
gain, and perhaps for the most part,
N the farms. Hundreds of farmers
hat had been able to make only
themselves wealthy. When the boom
truck the country everybody was more
r less looking around, hoping that he
would strike we'll next. The latter
lid not cost very much to put down,
nd it was a big gamble, for where a
ich we'll was struck, it often meant a
ortune.
OF WELLS NEVER
USED.
I say often. This is where one of
he big parts of the waste came in. If
me man struck gas, everybody else for
niles around likewise went boring for
t. Gangs of well borers went through
he country striking a job wherever
heV could Sometimes Inev mt doxx-r,