The daily worker., 1927-02-23
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Bunny had yielded to the i'm
portunities Of his sister; wouldn't
he have the decency to help out the
estate in at least one way--look
into those reports which Vernon
Roscoe had rendered concerning the
Prospect Hill field? Verne asserted
that more than half the wells were
off production, and BERTHE suspected
one more trick to rob them. BERTHE
wouldn't know an oil well of pro-
duction from a hen-coop; but Bunny
would know, and couldn't he go
down there, and snoop around bit,
and find out what other oil men
thought about the fields and its
prospects? Bunny took Rachel with
him-she went everywhere with her
new husband, of course. They had
got one of the oldest of the Ypsels
to run the magazine office, and
Rachel was just manager and editor,
very high and mighty. Bunny was
a one-arm driver again, and the
automobile was lopsided, and Rachel
was nervous when he drove fast,
because the gods are jealous of such
rapture as hers.
Rachel had never seen an oil field
at close range. SO Bunny took her
to the discovery we'll" and told
how Mr.. Culver had had his ear
drums destroyed, trying to stop the
flow with his head He showed her
the first we'll that Dad had drilled,
and on which Bunny had helped to
keep the mud flowing. That had
been the beginning of Dads big
wealth; he and perhaps a score of
others had got rich, and to balance
it, there were in Beach City many
thousands of people who had their
homes plastered with mortgages,
representing losses from the buying
of "units." That was the way most
of the money had been made in
Prospect Hill--selling paper instead
of oil. It was a fact, as Paul had
cited, that more money had been
put into the ground than had been
taken out of it. Here had been a
treasure of oil that, wisely drilled,
would have lasted thirty years; but
now the whole field was con the
pump" and hundreds of wells pro-
ducing so little that it no longer
paid to pump them. One sixth of
the oil had been saved, and five
sixths had been wasted!
That was your blessed "competi-
tion," which they taught you to love
and honor in the economics classesi
Another aspect of it was those
frightful statistics, that of all the
thousands of men who had worked
here, seventy-three out of every
hundred had been killed or seriously
injured during the few years of the
fields lifel 1t was literally true
that capitalist industry was a world
war going on all the time, unheeded
by the newspapers.
Bunny did his checking up of the
Ross wells; he couldn't do any
"snooping," because some of the
old hands knew him, and came up
to greet him. He talked with a
number of men, and found their re-
ports about the same as Verne's.
Then, towards evenings, as he and
Rachel were getting ready to leave,
they came to bungalow, dingy and
forlorn, black with oil stains and
grey with dust, with storage-tank
in the back yard, and a derrick
within ten feet on the next lot, and
on the other side a shed which had
housed the engine of another der
rick Bunny stopped, and read the
number on the front of the bunga-
low, 5746 Los Robles Blvd. Here's
where Mrs. Groarty lives! Paul's
sunt-it was in that house we had
the meeting about the lease, and I
first heard Paul's voice through the
window therew
He told the story of that night,
describing the characters and how
they had behaved. Paul said it was
a little oil fight, and the world war
had been a big oil fight, and they
were exactly the same. While they
were talking, the door opened, and
there emerged a stout, red-faced
woman in a dirty wrapper, and
Bunny exclaimed, "There's Mrs.
Groarty!" How many years it had
been since she had seen him; he
had to tell her who he was, that
little boy grown up, and with wife
well, well, would you believe Il,
how time does fly! And so Mr..
Ross was dead-Mrs. Groarty's hus-
band had read the sad news out of
the paper. She knew that he had
got to be very rich, so she was
thrilled by this visit, and invited
them in, but all in flutter because
her house wasn't in order.
They went in, because Bunny
wanted Rachel to see that stair
case, and to have a laugh on her
afterwards, because she wouldn't
notice anything, but would think
the staircase led to a second story
lin a one-story bungalow! There
was the room-not thing chang
ed, except that it seemed to have