The star-progress. (Opelousas, La.) 1917-1921, 1919-11-29
LOUISIANA Is FAST
BECOMING ALAND
OF VAST RICHES
Storehouse of Inconceivable
Wealth Being Added to
Almost Daily
WHAT OIL is DOING
FOR COMMONWEALTH
Gahagan, in the Bull Bayou
Field, is the Latest Petro-
leum Metropolis"

New Orleans Times-Picayune.)
Cagliostro, Paracius, all the an
cient aIchemists, with retort and fur
mace, mixing the elements, adventur-
ing into strange and curious bypaths
of science, with ancient script and
incarnation and formula, sought but a
single end to make, gold. Were these
wise men alive today, gold would
have no place in their dusty, secret
laboratories now in the chamber of
their thoughts. Instead they would
seek oil.
Oil! The dirty, marvellous, stick,
Notwithstanding, melodorous,
magical, all-conquering liquid, with
out which industry halts, crippled
and powerless; nations must have ere
they declare war; the viscid, evil
looking mixture, brewed in the cru
chile of the earthly womb, without
which the world would be sans air
planes, sans swift motorboats, sans
automobiles, sans submarines, sans
anilinc dyes, sans potent drugs, sans
full one-half of its twentieth century
marvels.
Without oil the conquest of the air
and the depths OF the sea would not
have been achieved. 1t was Ameri-
cas- command of oil that aided ma
terially in saving the world from the
Hun.
Speaking in terms of oil, North and
South Louisiana are as remote from
each other as the poles. In the north
ern parishes oil is on the tongues of
men every minute of the day. In the
south e the state, it receives but in.
consequential mention. And yet
Development Every Day
In Northern Louisiana there is de-
veloping, swiftly, day by day, a won
drous region land of vast riches, a
storehouse of inconceivable wealth, a
development that is, in the near fu-
ture, to place Louisiana among the
richest spots on the globe. Beneath
the smiling countryside, all unsus-
pected through aeons of time, there
has been rolling a sea of treasure-a
vastly deep of precious oil, a huge,
cavernoals hidden chamber of gas.
awaiting but the touch of human ge-
MUS to set it free.
Now, it has been tapped, and the
spouting geysers of Homer and Cad
do, the kissing, whistling mouths of
the gas wells of Ouachita, fairly
shout of unthinkab1y huge pressures
beneath Mother Earth, in travail, is
seeking to give birth to the dazzling
twin children of her womb-oil and
gas.
While in the south of the very state
which is the scene of this remarkable
discovery little is heard of the great
things afoot in the north of the COM |
monwealth, its fame has penetrated
to remote regions. Millionaires from |
New York and Chicago, oil operators
OF hundred Fields scattered from the |
Bosphorus to California, the great
English syndicate controlled by Lord
Cowdry, who dominates the wonder
full oil fields of Mexico, have found |
their way to Shreveport, from which
they have journeyed in radiating
lines through the oil fields which sur
round that thrice-fortunate city.
These men have seen and apreci-
ated what is going forward in Caddo,
Bossier, Webster, Claiborne, Union, |
Morehouse and Ouachita parishes.
They are pouring their gold and their
Influence and their experience into
these fields, and will, in time, make it
one of the richest and most produc-
tive mineral sections in a country
famed for its mineral marvels.