The Lakeland evening telegram. (Lakeland, Fla.) 1911-1922, 1916-03-13
ED HANNA ON THE OIL QUESTION
fFrom Auburndale News.)

1t has been said that Florida car
match any product of any other state
in the union. Now as proof comes
one NJ. F. Hetherington, of Lakeland
editor of an alleged daily newspaper
called the Telegram, and bids fair to
set himself up as rival of the ia
nous Coal-oil Johnny Rockefeller.
With aquiline beak and Desperate
Desmond moustache, and needing
only a silk hat and a cigarette to
look the typical deep-dyed villain,
he comes forth in the pages OF the
said Telegram to the center OF the
stage and with malice prepense tries
to start an oil boom for Florida in
citing the populace to seek for the
black blight which he calls BLACK
gold" asserts it underlies this fair
land in great gobs, and calls on all
and sundry to defile the beauteous
landscape with derricks, tanks,
grease, and evil odors. Cur-r-ses!
Well foil you yet, Montmorency de
Hetherington...
Had Hetherington ever visited a
typical oil region, we feel sure he
would never have made such a ter
rible wish. Florida right now has
all the sources of wealth that could
be desired, and not in thousand
years will their possibilities be ex-
haustcd. 1t has in addition some
thing that all the money of the
Standard Oil could never buy-a
beauty of landscape and vegetation
beyond compare. But if oil is discov-
cred, this is what will happen. Our
orange groves and pine forests will
be cut down to make room for der
ricGs. The spray from the gushers
and the leakage of pipes will cover
and blight all vegetation. The oil
soaked ground will become sterile,
and never again shall it grow bount-
eous crops. Our beautiful lakes will
be turned into storage reservoirs, be-
cause a lake makes the best possible
tank, since oil floats on the water
and cannot be lost by seepage, as it
does in dirt tank The ,gamey bass
and trout will of course perish. The
fires that inevitably start wherever
oil wells are will sweep away our
woods and homes.
And in a few years the oil pockets
will be exhausted, the gushers will
gush no more, the pumps will draw
up nothing, and only the hideous
blackened landscape will be left, bar
rem of all life and all means of sus-
tenance. How can one CONTEMPLATE
such a change without shudder and
a cry of horror? God forbid that it
shall ever come to pass! Let the
Garden of Eden stay beautiful as it
is, or grow more so each day, but
keep this blight born of mans mon
ey madness away from us, Rather
would we continue to dwell in mod
est comfort in lovely land of milk
and honey than revel in high places
with gold got at the price of our
ravished beauty and fer
tility!
And let even those who might
be willing to make such a shameful
sale remember that the discovery of
oil here will in the end profit the
mass OF our people nothing. When
all the shuffling and scrambling is
over, the profit will all be made by
foreign corporation, the Standard
Dill Company, as it always was here
ofore and always will be in all oil
fields.
If villain Hetherington' efforts
cad to the discovery OF oil, We hope
hat the first gusher may be brought
n on the shores of pretty little Lake
Mirror, so that its spray may strike
irst the beautiful portals of the Gre
;ian temple in which the Telegram
$ published, so that his eyes may
'e first to burn with the sight
If the universal ruin which the
Black Blight wreaks. But We sim
'erely hope and pray that this awful |
urse from the regions of He'll may |
lever break forth in any least spot
# fair Florida