The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-07-03

tax ilst or only about eiglt hundred thousand dollars, and yet for agEicu!
 tural purposes the soil of this county is equally as productive and profitable as that of Wood county. The country is seemingly perfectly level, ard tF'e soil Is black muck. For miles and miles in all directions the land seems to be ss level as a floor. Everywhere are seen the towering oii-derric..s. Eight ir Bowling Green there a-e none, but be- fore t!ie city is reached on the journey from Toledo and to the west and south derr!cks are visible everywhere. Passing through Bowling Green some ten miles to the south, we go through prosperous little hamlets, each the cen ter Of some unusually rich oil territory, and adjacent to which the land is thick ly studded with derricks. We soon ar rived at a just completed well, which we hoped to see shot as they say, but was unfortunately an hour or so too late. This well was an oil lease located on one of the most famous of the oil lodges, from which several hundred thousand dollars worth of oil had al- ready been taken. Within six hundred feet of this new we'll was one of the greatest wells @ few years since in the United States. the daily production be- ing over eight thousand barrels.
 The shooting process in an oil we'll takes place after the we'll has been drilled down to the oil, and consists of putting down a tube containing some two hundred and fifty quarts of nitro glycerine, which is then exploded by dropping a heavy iron through the three or four inch drill hole, some twelve hundred feet, which is the usual depth of the well. The result is that q. great cavity is torn up at the bottom of the we'll. and oil and water shoot up from the drill hole many hundreds of feet into the air, and continue to pour forth for from five to ten minutes. In the carrier days when the natural gas had not been so thoroughly exhausted the shooting of we'll was often fol- lowed by fire, which sometimes contin- ued for days before it could be eXtin- guished. There is not much natural gas, and there are few, if any, wells which shoot the oil up into the air eth- CT in Ohio or Pennsylvania in these days. Nearly all wells are now pumped. For this purpose twenty horsepower gas engine is usually usel. The gas is natural gas which is found in sufficient quantity in connection with nearly every well to keep the engine in operation. From one to sixty wells within a radius of one mile from the en- zine can be connected with the pump by this power. The pumping rod in the drill hole is connected with the engine by long slender rods about fifteen feet each in length. connected with each other and supported every few feet by standards which rest on the ground. With this arrangement the rods can be made to move backward and forward, and a well which is nearly mile away from the engine can be pumped as read fly as if it were but few feet distant. The ail is pumped into central tank. or great wooden rogshead holding two hundred and fifty barrels more or less. This central tank Is connected by a pipe line with the great receiving tanks of the Standard Oil company. or the Sun oil company, and as soon as it is filled the agents of one of these compa nies empty it by the mere turning of faucet, and give receipt for she num- Der of barrels to the oil producer, for which he received cash immediately on sending it in to the company, at the rate of eighty-eight cents per barrel, which is the present price of Ohio crude
 
 dark green color of a not very desirable odor. Salt water often accompanies the oil, and in most cases the oil and water are pumped at the same time into one great tank, the oil rising to the top and the water going to the bottom. The water is thrown out as waste on the ground and the oil is run off into the big tank adjacent. This salt water In the yells makes it possible to con tinue the pumping during the coldest weather in the winter at which time almost as much oil Is produced as in the summer. No oil wells are pumped on Sundays throughout the Ohio oil field, except where it is an imperative neces- sity to keep the water from flooding the wells, as they say, and shutting off the flow of oil. Most wells in this sec tion produce from one to hundred barrels of oil day. When well is first "shot" the production is known as the flush production" and is greater than that which is later known as the settled production" which it reaches in from one to six months. Owing to the fact that so many wells can be attached to one pumping engine and all under the care of one man, if the well is pumped for twelve hours, and two men, if it is pumped for twenty-four hours, the wells which have a production of but quarter barrel per day, or even less, can be operated to advantage.
 There are many oil producers in this section, and the largest naturally among them is the Standard oil com pany, which operates in Ohio under the name of the Ohio Oil company in the production of oil. The tracts of oil land arc as rule from ten to one hun- dred acres each. The land is in most cases still owned by it's original owners, who plant their crops as do other farm CTS, but have leased their oil rights. some of them for fifteen years, others perpetually. These rights for oil and companies who pay bonus to the oil land owner of a lump sum of money, which is of course as small as they can make it, and agree to give him 8 royal ty of one sixth of all the oil that shall