Business
As I San? It
HALF A CENTURY
WITH SINCLAIR
Second Printing $3.75
See back flap for notes
on the coyer photographs
THE OIL BUSINESS
AS I SAW IT
For more than sixty years W. L. Connelly
has been active in the oil business. His jobs
have ranged from those of a raw roustabout
in the fast-developing Bradford, Pennsyl-
vania, field in the late 1880's to the office of
vice president and chairman of the board of
the Sinclair Oil and Gas Company. The oil
business as we know it today has thus de-
veloped under his observant eyes. The story
he tells is at once authentic, lively, and
amusing.
Generally speaking, successful business
careers are achieved by men who know the
value of decision. In no other field is this
quality more important than in oil, whose
modern industrial structure was based upon
the intuitive judgments of men who knew
little about geology, engineering, or the true
physical character of oil reservoirs or traps.
How these men carried forward the search
for oil and continue to do in an age of
scientific and engineering marvels is re-
lated in a modest but highly effective way
by the author of this book.
Mr. Connelly's career is associated with
the exciting oil developments of many areas
Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kansas (where he
met and became associated with the young
Harry F. Sinclair) , Oklahoma, Texas, Wyo-
ming, Mexico, Venezuela, Angola in South-
west Africa, even Germany and Austria. He
saw oil boom towns rise and decline, and has
lived to see such former infants as Tulsa,
Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth, Shreveport,
and Oklahoma City rise to industrial great-
ness.
(Continued on back flap)
THE OIL BUSINESS AS I SAW IT
W. L Connelly
THE OIL BUSINESS
AS I SAW IT
Half a Century with Sinclair
NORMAN: UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA PRESS
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 54-10213
Copyright 1954 by the University of Oklahoma Press
Publishing Division of the University
Composed and printed at Norman, Oklahoma, U.S.A.
by the University of Oklahoma Press
First edition, September, 1954
Second printing, October, 1954
To the Memory of My Beloved Wife
Who, for More Than Fifty-five Years,
Put up with
the Trials and Tribulations of an Oilman
FOREWORD
THE LITERATURE of the country is becoming rich in the biogra-
phies of individuals who have contributed to the American
advance in science, in industry, and in politics. However, there
has been a notable dearth of what might be called biographies
of business organizations. This book is not in any sense an
attempt at one, but it gives an idea in typical American style
of the stuff from which corporations are made.
This volume tells of men and their methods, of ventures
and adventures, of the pioneering instincts which actuated
those who lived and moved in a time that was ripe from their
exploits. While the incidents recounted are unrelated, never-
theless when fitted together they cast a shadow which is recog-
nizable as the early profile of the Sinclair Oil Corporation.
The author, William L. Connelly, long regarded as the
dean of petroleum executives in the great Midcontinent area,
has been persuaded to record these recollections. Perhaps
without intent, he tells about the laying of foundations upon
which are built many of our great business structures.
Through the knowledge born of daily business contact for
many years, he reveals the strength and driving force of
Harry F. Sinclair, which ultimately resulted in the great com-
vii
THE OIL BUSINESS AS I SAW IT
pany bearing his name. The biography of this company is still
to come, but the present work of Mr. Connelly's is an absorb-
ing forerunner which will be greeted with interest by oilmen
everywhere. Much too rare in the petroleum industry are
volumes like this one. Much too seldom have men of Mr.
Connelly's vast experience and knowledge taken the pains to
present the industry lore which is petroleum's.
P. C. LAUINGER
Tulsa, Oklahoma
May 24, 1954
SPUDDING IN
FOR MORE than sixty years my work has been oil. Thus it is
that, on approaching the job of making a book, the term
"spudding in" comes to mind, for in oil-field jargon that
describes the initial step in drilling a cable-tool well.
It has been suggested to me many times that a narrative
of my experiences in an industry which has revolutionized the
world's way of life should be preserved in printed form. It was
not without misgivings that I decided to undertake the task
involved, for I have no false notions about my qualifications
for it. I am an oilman, not a writer.
It is true, however, that my life has touched virtually
every phase of the oil business. I have been a roustabout,
pumper, foreman, district superintendent, landman, and di-
vision superintendent. I have been vice president, president,
and chairman of the board of many companies, the highest of
these official posts being vice president of the Sinclair Con-
solidated Oil Corporation. I was president of the Venezuela
Petroleum Corporation. Recently I resigned as chairman of
the board of the Sinclair Oil and Gas Company.
In the interests of my company I have visited Canada,
Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia, Russia, Germany, France,
tx
THE OIL BUSINESS AS I SAW IT
Italy, Switzerland, Panama, Costa Rica, Portugal, and
Angola, West Africa. I have traveled horseback; in buck-
boards and automobiles; on freight trains, de luxe trains, and
private cars; on slow and small steamers, luxurious liners, and
airplanes; and once for a short distance in Russia, on a camel.
Owing to my long association with Harry F. Sinclair and
the Sinclair companies, much of my story will naturally
center around them. It will embrace other important com-
panies. I have been associated with Harry Sinclair from 1906
to the present day.
What I personally have done or failed to do is not of
consequence here, except as it throws sidelights on a stirring
time in a marvelously interesting business. But I submit that
many of the events described, the men who figured in them,
and the spirit in which those men worked and played are of
significance, for they had a part in the shaping of a nation.
So, with some qualms, I send this story on its way. If the
indulgent reader gets as much pleasure out of reading it as
I have had in putting it together, we both shall be happy.
Especially do I hope that those of my friends who partici-
pated in incidents recounted will find enjoyment in reawak-
ened memories. For they know, along with me, the adventure,
the good luck and the bad, that have marked a fascinating
field of work.
For their help in providing information and checking
details in this account, I wish to express my deep appreciation
to C. C. McDermond, E. L. Steiniger, C. F. McGoughran,
Elbert Isom, Joseph von Beverin, F. H. Rhees, and W. F.
McBreyer.
W. L. CONNELLY
Tulsa, Oklahoma
April 7, 1954
CONTENTS
FOREWORD BY P. C. LAUINGER Vii
SPUDDING IN ix
1 THE OIL REGION BECKONS 3
2 FOLLOWING THE TREND WESTWARD 11
3 EARLY YEARS WITH SINCLAIR 24
4 CHASING A CHEROKEE 36
5 AN OIL EMPIRE RISES S3
6 BUSINESS, BULLETS, ANTS IN THE PANTS 71
7 THE CEASELESS QUEST 79
8 TEAPOT DOME AND BAKU 86
9 SINCLAIR ENTERS VENEZUELA 102
10 STRANGE PLACES AND STRANGER PEOPLE 110
11 MORE GLOBE-TROTTING 121
12 MERGER AND CONSOLIDATION 130
13 TIME EXPOSURE 144
14 THE BIG BRASS 154
APPENDIX: CONNELLY'S FIRST LEASE 165
INDEX 169
ILLUSTRATIONS
Golf at Independence, 1910 facing page 34
Oil field travel, 1918 35
The launch Claro 35
Tankers on the Panuco 50
Oil flowing into earthen tanks 50
Seventy thousand barrels a day 5 1
Two wells on fire 66
Early arrivals on Teapot Dome 67
Teapot Dome 82
Well No. 14, Teapot Dome 82
Standard drilling rig 83
Large gas well, Teapot Dome 83
Steam drilling boiler 83
Oil dudes who went to Baku 98
When a big well goes wild 99
Locating a well in Venezuela 99
Fording a river 99
Harry F. Sinclair, 1944 1 14
Some of the Big Brass, 1949 US
Rocky Mountain Oil and Gas Association Pioneers 1 1 5
Fiftieth wedding anniversary 146
THE, OIL BUSINESS AS I SAW IT
Wet, bone tired, but happy
The best walk a man ever took
The productive wilderness
xtv
THE OIL BUSINESS AS I SAW IT
THE OIL REGION BECKONS
MY FATHER, William Connelly, and Ms brother, Uncle
John A. Connelly, were running a boiler shop at 27
Center Street, Cleveland, Ohio, at the time of my birth in that
city on January 31, 1873 (a long time ago).
The young oil region of Pennsylvania had begun to stir
wide interest, and it was recognized that a budding industry
was offering a promising field for shops like the one Father
and Uncle John operated in Cleveland. So plans for expansion
were soon laid. Father opened a boiler shop and hardware
store (that is what they called supply stores in those days)
in Petrolia, and Uncle John set up a similar business in
Bruin. These two Pennsylvania oil-boom towns were in
Butler County.
The industrial events in which my family were involved
during the first half-dozen years of my life made no profound
impression upon me. Nor did the budding oil industry in which
my people became quickly and inextricably interested. I was
simply aware that they existed. But in the then roistering oil-
boom town of Petrolia occured a misadventure which might
easily have forestalled this book, besides reducing drastically
THE OIL BUSINESS AS I SAW IT
the ultimate number of living Connellys. I was only six at
the time.
At the rear of the shop operated by Father flowed Bear
Creek. Ordinarily a well-behaved stream, it was given now
and then to boisterous moods. At this point, a small island
poked its head above the water. On the island stood a large
but unimpressive wooden structure called the Coliseum. The
building was devoted primarily to the seven-day walking
matches popular in that period. Cash prizes and a champion-
ship belt went to winners. Passage to the island was by way
of a crude bridge.
On July 21, 1879, while one of these walking matches was
in progress, Father got word that a man who owed him money
and who studiously avoided payment had been noticed enter-
ing the Coliseum. He decided forthwith to go over and see if
he couldn't collect. My plea that I be allowed to go with him
was granted. The creek was high, but there was no sign of
danger. Reaching the Coliseum, we took seats while Father
glanced about in a search for the slippery individual with
whom he sought an interview.
Suddenly, before anybody could reach safety, a billowing
mass of water inundated the island, swept the building from
its foundations, and carried it downstream along with a crazy
assortment of debris. Crushed barns, oil derricks, chicken
coops, lumber, pigpens, and old-fashioned privies whirled
about and bumped each other. Folk who a few minutes earlier
had been occupied with nothing more exciting than a some-
what monotonous endurance test were now bobbing about in
the swirling current; clutching at anything that offered hope
of escape.
This startling conversion of an untroubled scene into one
of terrifying confusion had been caused by one of the so-called
flash floods which at times turned Bear Creek into a roily
river. No flood like this one, however, had ever before been
THE OIL REGION BECKONS
experienced. A torrential rainfall farther up the creek valley
had rapidly swollen the little stream into a racing tide, which
overran its banks and left ruin in its wake.
When the swiftly rising swell caught the Coliseum, my
father grasped me, but he himself was struck by something
in the wreckage and suffered a leg fracture, thus losing his
grip on me. But he succeeded in reaching home safely. Mean-
while, a man named Blackburn drew me up on a log with him.
Thus insecurely balanced, we sailed downstream. After a
precarious voyage of several miles, Mr. Blackburn managed
to get us ashore, but not on our side of Bear Creek.
It was late that night when I got home, a drenched, be-
draggled figure. My parents were frantic, for they had
received no word concerning my fate. My safe arrival caused
an outburst of joy, but I was disconsolate. I had lost my hat.
The Coliseum never was rebuilt. Bear Creek later became
a subdued little stream flowing meekly between banks about
fifteen feet apart. The space once occupied by the island is
now the site of a pretty school ground.
By this time, Father and Uncle John had sold their interest
in the Cleveland boiler shop to my Uncle Dan Connelly. The
shop subsequently fattened on the growing oil business and
on the growth of the city itself, and ultimately became one of
the largest enterprises of its kind in the United States. It
remained in the ownership of Uncle Dan's family for more
than sixty years, until 1937, when it was sold to the Babcock
& Wilcox Company, and its last manager of the family name,
W. C. Connelly, the eldest son of Uncle Dan, left it and sub-
sequently became president of the Ohio Seamless Tube
Company.
By 1880, Bradford became the oil region's red-hot town,
and we moved there from Petrolia in 1882. Arriving at Brad-
ford late in the afternoon, we took a hack (horse-drawn, of
course) to the St. James Hotel, at the end of Main Street, five
THE OIL BUSINESS AS I SAW IT
or six blocks from the depot. The streets were unpaved, and
we became stuck in the mud several times on the short route
to our destination.
After we had settled ourselves in the town, Father and
Uncle Tom Connelly (it must be apparent by now that the
Connellys were and are a numerous family) opened a boiler-
repair shop there. In a short time they also began to develop
some oil production on their own account. Father built a house
at 95 Congress Street, where we lived for the several years
that we remained in Bradford.
I attended St. Bernard School at first, and later the Public
School on Congress Street. One winsome teacher in the latter,
Miss Barr, captured my juvenile adoration. It was a hope-
lessly one-sided romance, for she had no suspicion of the
heart-fluttering interest she had awakened. After the lapse of
seventy years, she remains in my memory a fine lady. While
living in Bradford, I made my only stage appearance in a
school play at the Wagner Opera House. The play was Snow
White, the Fairy Queen, and the Seven Dwarfs. Florence
Haskell, now Mrs. Ed Bartlett of Tulsa, Oklahoma, was also
in the cast.
I had an evening paper-route and sold the Bradford Star,
which we boys called out as the "Even Ink Star."
Among the few people I know now living who attended
school with me is Harold Cosgrove of Tulsa. A few former
schoolmates may still be living in Bradford. Here in school
I met Tom Donoghue, who was to become first vice president
of the Texas Company. We were to be neighbors in Houston,
Texas, and to have much business together there. John H.
Markham, Jr., was a fellow student. John, who later made a
profound impression upon the oil industry, and I were to be
associated in many transactions in Tulsa. Bradford has fur-
nished citizens for many towns in the oil states Sistersville,
West Virginia; Toledo and Lima, Ohio; Robinson, Illinois;
THE OIL REGION BECKONS
Tuisa 7 Oklahoma; Fort Worth and Houston, Texas, and
many others.
For the generations as yet unborn during my Bradford
years I should perhaps explain what the world looked like at
the time. Society then was dependent upon the horse and
buggy for local transportation, and roads of the period were
rough, often muddy, and rutted. In dry weather they produced
a considerable amount of dust. We had trains and the tele-
graph, but the telephone was so recent as to be a curiosity
rather than a common means of communication.
To say that society was simple is to invite a complicated
explanation. We were in those days still hewers of wood and
drawers of water. For women who cooked over wood- or coal-
burning stoves, life was anything but simple; and for boys
who had to care for horses and see to a multitude of household
chores, there was less time for mischief than may have become
the case in a later day. We had no movies, no electric lights,
much less any others like the modern-day triumphs of radio
and television. If there had been a Hopalong Cassidy in my
boyhood, none of us could have known about him except
through the dime novels of Messrs. Beadle and Adams, com-
mon enough, it is true, but not always available to growing
youngsters.
It is a little hard, even for me, to think of a time three-
quarters of a century ago when the automobile was still a
distant development. The question may logically be asked,
therefore, "Why was Bradford so bustling a place?" The
answer is the oil of Pennsylvania was used for kerosene lamps,
for the lubrication of a growing American industry, for over-
seas trade, and even for medicinal purposes. The need for
gasoline and for canned lubricants was not yet. But the aggre-
gate consumption of oil was even then quite great. Bradford
was the heart of oil production in that era.
Actually, we were then only a quarter of a century away
THE OIL BUSINESS AS I SAW IT
from the beginnings of domestic oil production, for the first
of the Pennsylvania wells, the Drake, had been drilled in at
Oil Creek in August, 1859. Many hundreds of miles away, in
the Indian Territory, the Ross well was brought in the same
year, but the area in which it was developed could have no
bearing upon the oil industry for many years to come, nor
upon my own career until even later.
Whale oil, for illumination, was far from obsolete in the
world of my boyhood. The facilities for distributing refined
petroleum were still primitive. Except for the gathering of oil
in limited field areas, pipe lines were a development of the
future. Artificial gas was almost everywhere current, and it
supplied most of the illuminating, and a small part of the
heating, requirements of large cities.
It was a time, also, of great mobility on the part of indi-
viduals and of families. We Irish, once transplated to the
New World, knew no hindrances to movement. Late in my
grade-school career, we moved from Bradford back to Cleve-
land, where we lived a short time. There I attended St.
Patrick's School and later St. Ignatius' Preparatory School,
now John Carroll University. The Lima oil fields were just
getting into full swing when we moved, once more, to Toledo,
Ohio. Father had a boiler shop there. I was now old enough
to be employed as one of the office force and to make trips to
towns in the oil fields. During these trips I met men who were
to become lifelong friends and with whom I was to have sub-
stantial business dealings. Among them were D. J. O'Day,
Mart Moran, Jim McMahon, Joe Dutton, Joe Dowling, and
many more whose names are now part of the essential history
of the American petroleum industry.
The Toledo boiler shop was destroyed by fire, and, with
but little insurance to meet this loss, my father was out of
business. This disaster prompted me to start a small boiler
THE OIL REGION BECKONS
repair shop at Woodville, Ohio, and later one at Prairie Depot,
Ohio. At Woodville I met A. H. (Herb) Black, who had a
small tank shop not far from my boiler shop. Here began a
friendship which has lasted through the years. Herb sub-
sequently became a successful businessman and one of the
most industrious I ever knew. He went on to organize the
Black, Sivalls and Bryson Tank Company, which, after many
years of operation, he sold for several million dollars. At
Prairie Depot I became acquainted with Jim O'Neill, who in
later years was to head the Prairie Oil and Gas Company and
become an officer of the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey.
In these connections I was to have many dealings with him,
and our acquaintance ripened into warm friendship.
During the period I ran the little boiler shop at Prairie
Depot I went out with different crews to make repairs on
drilling or lease boilers. While I was repairing a boiler on a
lease for Nolan and Griffin, Henry Harmon, a farmer, asked
me if I knew anybody who would drill a well on his farm. I
told him I would find someone. I went to Toledo, where I
talked with Charley Johnson and Herman Phillips. We
agreed that each of us should take a one-third interest in the
drilling of the well, and we put up a deposit of three hundred
dollars, which was to be forfeited in case we did not start the
well in the time specified. I didn't have one hundred dollars.
I went to Spencer D. Carr, the president of the Ketcham
National Bank in Toledo, and told him my situation. He lent
me the hundred on an unsecured note. To this day I wonder
why he let me have the money. But that money started me
in the oil business.
It must be kept in mind at this point that drilling costs in
that period were insignificant in comparison with those which
prevail today. A complete outfit of cable tools could be pur-
chased for not more than three thousand dollars. A rotary rig
THE OIL BUSINESS AS I SAW IT
today, to drill to a depth of fifteen thousand feet, costs from
five hundred thousand to six hundred thousand dollars, de-
pending upon the amount of stand-by equipment.
Johnson and Phillips were my first partners in the produc-
ing business. We three acquired forty acres (Harmon and
Whitman Farm) near Plain Church, about six miles west of
Prairie Depot, in Wood County, Ohio. Our first well came in
for about one hundred barrels daily, and for the first oil we
sold we received $1.27 a barrel (North Lima prices). We
drilled several additional wells and then sold the property. 1
Then in 1896, at the age of 23, 1 joined James Donnelly,
J. E. Quinn, Michael Donnelly, and A. K. Detweiler in or-
ganizing the Donnelly Oil Company. James Donnelly and
Quinn were personal friends of mine. Our first wells were
drilled in the East Toledo field and at Curtis, Ohio. We also
drilled a number in Wood County.
When I proposed to, and was accepted in marriage by,
Miss Elizabeth Conlisk a couple of years later, the pattern of
my roving life in the oil business was already pretty well
defined, and she must have known it. Despite the prospect
that I should be often absent from home, she joined me at the
altar of St. Patrick's Church in Toledo, before the Reverend
Edward Hannin, on October 4, 1898. However many the miles
of distance that may have separated us at times, we really
were never apart in all those years.
1 A copy of the lease agreement for this, my first oil venture, appears in
the Appendix to the present volume.
10
FOLLOWING THE TREND WESTWARD
I HAD NOT been part of the oil business long when some of its
folklore became standard equipment with me, at least for
the time being. "Doodlebug" and "oil-smeller" are terms
applied to the curious array of oil-finding devices which once
had a large and enthusiastic following. The geologist and
geophysicist, plodding their precise and painstaking ways in
the middle of the twentieth century, are able to locate under-
ground structures favorable to the accumulation of oil, but
they leave it to the drill to determine whether oil is actually
present.
In contrast with the conservative attitude maintained by
the scientific explorer, the man with an oil-finder was usually
very positive concerning his ability to pick the exact spot
where oil was to be found. And sometimes, the laws of chance
being what they are, he did it, too.
Pithole, in Venango County, Pennsylvania, considered by
some the most spectacular boom town in the annals of
petroleum, owed its brief, robust career to a well drilled before
my time, in January, 1876, four miles from the nearest
previous production on a site selected by Thomas H. Browne
with the guidance of a hazel twig. The well came in flowing
11
THE OIL BUSINESS AS I SAW IT
650 barrels daily, with oil selling at eight dollars a barrel.
Ninety days later a city with an estimated population of six-
teen thousand had sprouted around the spot. But production
suddenly fizzled and the miracle city vanished as swiftly as
it had risen.
Among queer superstitions which were slow dying was one
that if a dry stake was used in marking the location for a well
the well would be a failure. A green stake, cut from a living
tree, was insisted upon. Dry stake, dry hole; green stake, wet
hole, was the formula. Preparations for drilling a well in a
western field were under way one day when a workman started
to drive a location stake, using a stick from a seasoned board.
Observing this blunder, the superintendent barked, "What the
hell are you doing there? Want this to be a dry hole? Pull that
stake out and get a green one! "
Before geology began to play an important part in the
finding of oil we looked for scrub oaks and creeks as indica-
tions of oil deposits. As a matter of fact, it is pretty difficult to
explain the term "wildcatter 77 (one who discovers oil where
others did not know, or would not believe, that it could exist)
except in terms of this kind of judgment. Those who succeeded
at it in the early days of the oil business used the knowledge
and the intuition (mostly intuition) available at the time.
While I was not early in my career, nor subsequently, a wild-
catter, I think I know what a man has to substitute for geo-
logical and geophysical knowledge when neither has yet been
developed for oil exploration purposes.
In August, 1897, 1 saw for the first time a really big well
drilled in. It was known as the "Klondyke." An "oil-smeller,"
as we called "doodlebugs" in those days, had located a well
on a small tract of land (Miller Farm) east of Ironville, Ohio.
Ironville was six or seven miles east of Toledo. Farther east
than where this well was located were some small pools.
The doodlebugger was from Napoleon, Ohio, and he had
12
FOLLOWING THE TREND WESTWARD
Induced some friends of his in that town to put up the money
to drill the well. The contract to drill (with cable tools, of
course) was given to Stickle and Byers. Billy Stickle was the
father of Frank Stickle, now of Tulsa. Elwood Byers later
became an associate of mine in the Byers Drilling Company in
Oklahoma. The two men had taken a small interest in the well.
The men who were putting up the money for the drilling
were novices in the business and made no attempt to secure
leases on any tracts save the one that they were to drill on.
As a result, other oil men leased the acreage around the Miller
Farm. Most of the tracts were small, from town lots to small
farms, and none was larger than forty acres.
I had taken a lease on one of these tracts and was much
interested in the Miller well for that reason and because the
site had been determined by an oil-smeller. Later I sold an
interest in the lease.
On the day that the sand (the Trenton Rock) was reached,
I was at the well. The sand was penetrated for about fifty feet,
the customary depth in those days, and was absolutely dry.
Not even a rainbow of oil could be detected on the water.
Gloom prevailed. The locater had predicted at least a 1,000-
barrel well.
It was decided to give the well a shot of nitroglycerin. As
I remember, a fair-sized shot was used, maybe 80 or 100
quarts. The result was amazing to those of us who watched.
Oil shot one hundred feet or more above the crownblock and
kept up a steady flow. It took some time to get the well under
control and, as I remember, the first twenty-four hours' pro-
duction (saved) was over two thousand barrels. The locater
was elated. He had the world by the tail on a downhill pull (so
he thought).
At least twenty wells were started on adjoining leases
within the next few days, including one on the lease in which
I was interested. Moreover, another well was started on the
13
THE OIL BUSINESS AS I SAW IT
Miller Farm. The results of these wells were wonderful
almost all were dry! Some very small wells were brought in,
but few ever paid out.
The second well on the Miller farm was what the industry
called a "stinker/ 9 just enough oil to tease you into spending
money to put it pumping. The well in which I had an interest
was better than the Miller well. It was no stinker. It was dry.
I never knew how the locater fared in later attempts to
discover oil fields, but his first experience was disastrous to
many of his contemporaries. He and his associates made a
little money from the oil sold from the first well. That well
declined rapidly, but did pump a few barrels for several years.
Only cable tools were used in drilling wells in those days.
It was supposed that the driller had to turn the tools, and for
this purpose a stick, such as a sledge handle, was fastened with
a rope to the Manila cable from which the drilling bit hung.
The driller would grasp the stick and walk round the hole,
round and round, almost constantly, for the twelve hours of
his tour.
A tour (pronounced tower) designates the shift worked
by oil-field hands. During the early days of the industry a tour
meant twelve hours > continuous work. The changes in tours
were made at noon and midnight. Lease workers often put in
fourteen or fifteen hours' additional work in a week, without
extra pay.
Lease houses usually were provided for pumpers. Tool
men had to find boardinghouses, and they drove to and from
the well with a horse and buckboard. Those were in truth
horse-and-buggy days. There were no paved roads in the vicin-
ity of well locations. In spring and fall deep mud made the
going so hazardous for horse-drawn vehicles that foot travel
often was chosen as preferable.
Samuel M. Jones, the founder of the S. M. Jones Com-
pany and also an oil producer (as mayor of Toledo he became
14
FOLLOWING THE TREND WESTWARD
nationally known as "Golden Rule" Jones) , was, as far as I
know, tlie first man to attempt to introduce fairer working
hours on wells and leases. About 1900 he asked contractors
who were drilling wells for him to run three tours of eight
hours each. The contractors were willing to do this, provided
they were not required to pay any more in wages than they
did for two crews. The three-crew plan, on that basis, proved
a failure, and the twelve-hour tour remained in vogue for
many more years. Eight-hour tours now prevail in all branches
of the oil industry, with overtime paid for all time worked in
excess of forty hours in any one week.
While I was still a member of the Donnelly Oil Company
I visited Beaumont, Tex., at the time the great Spindletop
field was opened in January, 1901. I saw the famous Lucas
well flow wild and was there when it was shut in. The event
was far vaster than even my 28-year-old imagination could
compass. Here, in fact, was the beginning of the modern
petroleum industry. All that had preceded it was puny and
insignificant when compared with this mammoth develop-
ment.
In 1904 the Donnelly Company, having acquired from the
Department of the Interior leases on certain Indian lands
under suitable royalty arrangements benefitting the Osage
people, drilled its first well in the Osage Nation, Indian Terri-
tory, on a lease northeast of Pawhuska. Later it drilled wells
in section 2-224-R10, near the present town of Barnsdall.
This was my first oil venture in what is now Oklahoma. The
wells and leases were sold afterward, and the Donnelly Oil
Company was dissolved.
Somewhere I have heard that, in business and industrial
history at least, the study of business judgment is of the es-
sence. It may therefore be worth while to do a short post-
mortem on the Donnelly undertaking. Dr. James Donnelly,
the president of the company, was a practicing physician and
IS
THE OIL BUSINESS AS I SAW IT
surgeon in Toledo. The other members were J. E. Quinn, a
horse-collar manufacturer of Toledo, A. K. Detweiler, a real-
estate dealer, also of Toledo, Michael Donnelly, an attorney
in Napoleon, Ohio, and myself.
These men had little acquaintance with the oil business,
and while they had wealth and were in a position to pursue the
gains they had made in the Southwest, particularly in the
Osage country of the future state of Oklahoma, they did not
have the venturesomeness that comes from familiarity with
this type of operation. Hence their decision to sell out in 1904.
The developments that were to occur in this same area would
have made their investment, or an increased amount of money
put at the disposal of the company in the year of its dissolu-
tion, immensely valuable.
The very locations at which the company brought in its
earliest wells continued to produce in a moderate way, but
the great area of the Osage Nation was still undeveloped. Had
the company continued to take leases here, the oil production
that was begun in that period would have continued to the
present day, as subsequent pages in this account will make
clear.
Now, I should say something about the Osage country,
because many of my associations and operations were to take
place there in the years to come.
In some senses, the Osage Indians, who in historic times
had resided in Missouri, Kansas, and Arkansas, were given
the biggest bonanza in the history of the United States, when
the tribe was removed from its ancient hunting grounds to a
portion of the Cherokee Outlet in Indian Territory after the
Civil War. No one knew at the time that, beneath these lovely
grass-covered hills, lay one of the great oil pools of North
America. But so it was, and in two short generations the tall
Osage, hunters of buffalo and ancient enemies of the Coman-
che in the West, were to share in vast oil wealth.
16
FOLLOWING THE TREND WESTWARD
Their ability to profit from these developments traces to
an almost unique legal provision governing their lands.
Although prospecting for oil started in the Osage Nation as
early as 1896, when James Bigheart, principal chief of the
Osage, and Edwin B. Foster executed a lease to all of the
Osage lands in behalf of Foster for a period of ten years, it
was not until 1906 that Congress passed an act which reserved
the mineral rights to these lands to the tribe as a whole. The
act itself was concerned principally with the allotment of
Osage tribal lands to individual members of the tribe, as
statehood for Oklahoma approached and land in severalty
became an apparent necessity in the new order of things.
But the Osage tribal representatives bargained shrewdly
with Congress when they saw that individual ownership of
these millions of acres could no longer be forestalled. They
came away with the provision reserving the mineral rights to
the tribe, and on the conclusion of the Osage tribal roll in
1907, each holder of a "head right" would in the future share
equally with all other such individual members of the tribe
in the income derived from the subsurface of Osage County.
It is worth remarking at this point that by 1945 these
acres had produced 2 per cent of the total oil produced in the
United States since 1859. It is also worth remarking that no
sale whatever of portions of the surface of Osage lands can
alienate the subsurface from the tribe. Many thousands of
acres have passed into the hands of white ranchers and other
non-members of the Osage group without disturbing the
operation of this legal principle.
The Foster interests, with whom James Bigheart of the
Osage had signed the blanket lease in 1896, had subleased
limited areas. It was through such arrangements that the Don-
nelly Oil Company had undertaken some of the operations I
have mentioned. Everything, however, was under the close
and constant scrutiny of the Department of the Interior,
Office of Indian Affairs.
THE OIL BUSINESS AS I SAW IT
In a way, the Osage development, as I experienced it in
the years immediately following the turn of the century, was
an extension of oil production in Kansas. Independence,
Kansas, had started things off.
In the days before the oil excitement, Independence was
an unobtrusive town of about thirty-five hundred population.
Its chief support came from farmers living around the
countryside. It had the advantage, also, of being county seat
of Montgomery County. But after the Independence Gas
Company began developing an oil and gas pool, which it dis-
covered West of town, oil producers from Pennsylvania, West
Virginia, Ohio, and Indiana quickly appeared.
Prairie Oil and Gas Company, which had somewhat earlier
located its headquarters in Neodesha, Kansas, now moved to
Independence, bringing many families with it. The Kansas
Gas Company also established its main office there. Other or-
ganizations and individual operators flocked to the scene of
the new oil boom. There was a scramble for homes. Population
grew rapidly, and Independence, roused from its wonted com-
posure, was soon running a fever.
Paul Bateman and I, who were among the early migrators
to this area, alighted from a Missouri-Pacific train at Inde-
pendence in the afternoon of February 3, 1903. We had
traveled from Toledo, Ohio, where Paul was an auditor with
the National Supply Company. This organization had opened
supply stores in the new Midcontinent Oil Field. One of these
stores was at Independence, and another at Bartlesville, Okla-
homa. Paul was to be auditor for the new district. I had come
to Kansas representing Donnelly, and was to obtain oil and
gas leases for that company. During the past year, more and
more favorable reports concerning oil in Kansas had reached
Toledo, and increasing numbers of prospectors had gone to
Independence and secured oil leases.
The afternoon of our arrival, Paul and I discovered that
18
FOLLOWING THE TREND WESTWARD
the only hotel in Independence deserving the name was the
Caldwell, run by Mr. and Mrs. Hoober, whose son Roy later
was to become a vice president of the Sinclair Oil and Refining
Corporation. The hotel was overcrowded, so I tried to obtain
a room in a private residence. Someone told me that the T. H.
Stanfords had a large home, and that two of their four boys
were away at school.
I went to see Mrs. Stanford. She said that she had never
taken a roomer and would not care to do so. While I was talk-
ing with her, I noticed on her piano a photograph of Professor
Ewing of the University of Notre Dame. I remarked that I
knew the professor quite well. That changed Mrs. Stanford's
attitude immediately and I got the room.
The two Stanford boys away at school were Grattan and
John. Grat later became general counsel of the Sinclair com-
panies in New York, and John became a vice president of the
Mexican companies controlled by Sinclair, with offices in
Houston, Texas.
Leland (no kin to the young man in whose memory Leland
Stanford, Jr. University was created) was the third son of
this family, and was about fourteen at this time. He was much
interested in anything that pertained to the oil business. As I
gradually became part of the Stanford household, he fre-
quently asked me to take him into the field with me. I recall
that on one occasion my associates and I had a drilling well
nearing completion on the Eisiminger Farm, west of Inde-
pendence, and I promised to take young Leland out to see the
well shot. Fulfilling my promise, I took him to the farm, but
the well was not ready. The nitroglycerin shot had to be de-
layed because there was more sand to be drilled. I decided that
we would stay at the well until all the sand and "pocket" had
been drilled. This took until about three o'clock the next
morning. The shooter that is, the man who was to place and
detonate the nitroglycerin necessary to get oil flowing from
19
THE OIL BUSINESS AS I SAW IT
the surrounding oil sands into the well hole was to be back
about six that morning, so it seemed better not to drive back
to Independence for the short time that we would be there.
Mr. Eisiminger, the farmer, asked me to accompany him
to his home. This we did, and at 5:30 that morning we had
breakfast with the family. I have seen many a boy eat, but I
never saw any other person, man or boy, stow away as much
at one meal as Leland did then. The subsequent shooting of
the well presented a sight that enthralled this youngster.
Today he is a director of the Sinclair Oil Corporation in New
York City.
The Independence of my first month there was a town
which contained all the excitement one usually associates with
oil-boom developments and at the same time many of the
attractive features that Southern Kansas towns have always
had, it seems to me. I was soon picking up bits of history, more
interesting in the light of my oil preoccupation, perhaps, than
for their value to social or cultural history as such.
I quickly discovered that McBride and Bloom, a firm of
drilling contractors of Independence, had had a large hand in
Kansas developments, not only at Independence, but at many
other places. This firm had taken oil and gas leases on several
hundred thousand acres around Cherryvale, Independence,
Bolton, and Caney, and had organized the Independence Gas
Company to develop and operate these leases. The company,
which later changed its name to the Consolidated Oil and Gas
Company, would farm out whatever acreage a prospector con-
tracted to start drilling on. The Bolton and Wayside fields
were thus opened up.
A few steps further back in history: from about 1880 to
1890, many wells were drilled in Miami County, Kansas, near
the town of Paola. These wells were about three hundred feet
or less in depth but did not produce much oil. In 1892,
McBride and Bloom drilled a well by contract on the Norman
20
FOLLOWING THE TREND WESTWARD
Farm near Neodesha. The depth was less than nine hundred
feet, and the well was good for fifty barrels a day. This well
was owned by a man named Mills. Mr. Mills later interested
Guffey and Galey, an oil producing firm of Pittsburgh, Penn-
sylvania, in coming to Neodesha. Guffey and Galey took leases
on several hundred thousand acres of oil land and drilled eight
wells. They saw, however, that the work in Kansas would re-
quire much more money than they wished to invest there, and
since they had rather large operations going at the same time
in the state of their origin, Pennsylvania, they sold all their
properties in Kansas to the Forest Oil Company, a subsidiary
of the Standard Oil Company.
In 1897 or 1898, a refinery of five hundred barrels daily
capacity was built at Neodesha by the Standard Oil Company
of Kansas. This organization was a processor of much of the
petroleum produced in this area in the early days. The Forest
Oil Company producing properties were located principally
around Neodesha, but by 1901 they were sold to the Prairie
Oil and Gas Company, and in a subsequent merger of Prairie
with Sinclair, about which I shall have something to say later,
these properties finally came into the hands of the latter
organization.
I recall that W. J. Young, of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,
was the first president of the Prairie Oil and Gas Company.
He was succeeded early in the history of the company, how-
ever, by John F. Archbold, on March 31, 1906.
My memory of these producing leases is still quite green.
In fact, the equipment used was of such a character as to leave
an indelible mark upon my consciousness. It was certainly
varied and unique. Much of it had been home-made by the
pumpers, but it all worked, and the wells actually produced.
A happy sequel is that many of the wells are still producing,
half a century later.
My sojourn in Independence was only a couple of years
21
THE, OIL BUSINESS AS I SAW IT
old when an interesting development began to take shape.
Early in 1905, many oil producers became dissatisfied with
the treatment accorded them by the Standard Oil Company,
of which Prairie Oil and Gas Company was at the time a sub-
sidiary. Prairie was carrying through its pipe lines much of the
oil produced in the area. The oil producers were mostly of two
classes, those who drilled wells and produced the oil for a
living, and those who sold large quantities of stock at a small
price per share to public. As I remember it, most of Prairie's
trouble was with the stock-selling producers. In any event,
some politicians, newspapers, and interested individuals urged
that the state of Kansas build an oil refinery and enter into
competition with Standard Oil.
It has to be remembered that this was the period of
populism, when state ownership, or socialism, in the latter-day
phrase, held no terrors for many thousands of agrarians and
small townsmen in the Middle West, from the Dakotas to the
Gulf of Mexico. It was also the period of trust-busting and the
development of public sentiment against large corporations, in
which President Theodore Roosevelt had a leading role.
In any event, a war soon developed between the partisans
of the state of Kansas, on the one side, and the Prairie Oil and
Gas Company, on the other. Most of the newspapers in the
state opposed the demand for a state owned and operated
refinery.
Edward W. Hoch of Marion was elected governor, and on
January 9 7 1905, was sworn into office. On the same date, the
legislature convened. Immediately upon the opening of that
body, many plans, suggestions, and bills were offered to aid
the oilmen in their fight against the Standard Oil Company.
On January 12, 190S, Senate Bill 30 was introduced by
Senator Sam Porter of Montgomery County. This bill was
entitled, "An Act to provide for the construction, mainten-
ance, and operation of a state oil refinery and to provide the
22
FOLLOWING THE TREND WESTWARD
necessary funds for such construction, maintenance, opera-
tion, and management thereof under State control." Needless
to say, this bill immediately produced a large amount of activ-
ity among oilmen, either in support or in denunciation. Dele-
gations of oilmen appeared before the legislature and the
battle grew in fury.
The controversial character of this measure can partly be
understood simply in terms of the liberal versus conservative
tendencies of the time. The sums involved were very large,
considering the fact that we had then a very hard dollar. The
bill provided, for example, for an appropriation totaling two
hundred thousand dollars for building a state refinery, plus
ten thousand dollars for housing, feeding, and guarding the
convicts to be used as its laborer force. An additional two
hundred thousand dollars was appropriated for the operation
of the plant, which was to be located at Peru, Chautauqua
County. Governor Hoch had suggested that an experimental
plant be built at Lansing, and that fifty thousand dollars be
appropriated for it. However, the much more ambitious enact-
ment envisaged in Senate Bill 30 was passed by both branches
of the legislature and became law.
Then came bitter arguments regarding the validity of this
act. Enough pressure was brought to bear that it was carried
to the Supreme Court of Kansas for a ruling. On July 7, 1905,
the Supreme Court handed down an opinion rendering Senate
Bill 30 null and void.
W. S. Fitzpatrick, president of the Kansas Senate, was an
opponent of the bill and made biting speeches against it when
it was being considered in the Kansas legislature. Fitzpatrick
was subsequently to become (in 1909) a member of the legal
staff of the Prairie Oil and Gas Company, as assistant to B. F.
Gates, general counsel.
23
EARLY TEARS WITH SINCLAIR
FROM THE vantage point of Independence, if one can call it
that, I was operating not only in the Osage Nation, as I
have already described, but in other areas of Indian Territory
as well. In what was to become Nowata County in future Okla-
homa, four or five of us were operating as an independent
group. We put down a well near Alluwe, on the Patrick Henry
Farm, but it was a duster. In subsequent years production was
developed on this very lease, and it has since then all come
into the fold of the Sinclair-Prairie Oil Company, with which
I was soon to become associated. Such are the fortunes of the
oil business.
It was in Independence that Harry F. Sinclair, who was to
become a powerful figure in the oil world, started his interest-
ing and eventful career. His home was in that city, where I too
lived, and he was getting oil leases for the Cudahy Oil Com-
pany of Chicago. But he soon branched out for himself.
Associated with him were John F. Overfield, A. C. Stich, and
Bill Zevely, of Muskogee, Oklahoma. R. S. Litchfield and
Colonel Finely, of Topeka, Kansas, joined him later.
Sinclair and I met for the first time at a social gathering
in Independence, at a dance, as I recall it. He was a strongly
24
EARLY YEARS WITH SINCLAIR
built man then, even as now, tall,- broad, with an impressive
head, thin dark hair, and two piercing blue eyes.
Not many months later I found myself in association with
him. I was drilling some wells for him by contract when, one
day in April, 1906, 1 went to his office to present a bill. While
I was waiting for the check, we visited. Harry asked me where
my office was. I told him I had none. He said, "There is a
vacant desk in the next room. You are welcome to use it.' 7
This I began doing. Harry had me do work for him, such as
checking leases, drilling wells, and taking leases.
After this had gone for about four months, during which
time I had used my own money for expenses, I was getting
down to the bottom of my bank account. (The bottom was
always close to the top in those days.) In talking over some
matters with Harry one day, I asked him if I was working for
him. "Sure," he replied. "Why do you ask that question?" I
explained that for several months I had received no salary
and no expense money. Harry expressed surprise and asked
me what salary I expected. The salary question was quickly
settled. He called in Ernest Huston, the office manager, and
told him to have me taken care of. Thus began a relationship
that has endured for almost half a century.
Among others I met in Independence were men with whom
in later years I was to become associated in business. Besides
Harry Sinclair and his brother Earl, who soon joined him in
his enterprises, there were Ed Chandler, John Manion, Jim
Flanagan, Bill O'Neill, Jim Blake, Tom Flannelly, who was
Judge of the District Court at that time; Grattan, John, and
Leland Stanford; Albert E. Watts, P. J. and Tom White;
Nelson Moody, Sam and Horace Fitzpatrick; Ernest Huston;
and many others. After retiring from the bench some years
later, Tom Flannelly became general counsel for the Prairie
Oil and Gas Company, and he remained in that position until
the merger occurred between the Sinclair and the Prairie com-
25
THE OIL BUSINESS AS I SAW IT
panics. He then became counsel for Sinclair Prairie Pipe Line
Company at Independence, Kansas.
Having been brought up in the boiler and machine-shop
businesses, I found friends and witnessed developments in
these fields, which have from the beginning been closely as-
sociated with the oil business. Pennsylvania and Ohio were
long centers of machinery and tool production, but it was
remarkable how swiftly the equipment tons of it required
for oil exploration and production was made available in a
place as far from the center of things as Independence was just
after the turn of the century. As activity quickened here dur-
ing the oil-boom days, drilling contractors needed tools, sup-
plies, and repair facilities the list ran into hundreds of heavy
and light pieces, from massive steel forgings to springs hardly
larger than those required for a watch.
Early on the scene to meet this demand was David
Bovaird, the head of Bovaird and Company, Bradford. In
1904 he built what was then considered a large shop in Inde-
pendence. Bovaird had established a tool-manufacturing busi-
ness in Shamburg, Pennsylvania, in 1871, later moving to
Titusville, Pennsylvania, and then to Bradford. His son, Wil-
liam J. Bovaird, was placed in charge of the Independence
shop. Jim Flanagan was made office manager.
The firm later incorporated as the Bovaird Supply Com-
pany, with William J. Bovaird as president. Its first supply
store was opened in Sapulpa, Oklahoma. Flanagan went to
Sapulpa as secretary-treasurer of the company. William J.
Bovaird remained in Independence, and shortly before his
death in 1937 his son Mervin Bovaird succeeded him as presi-
dent. The company now has stores in oil fields of Oklahoma,
Kansas, and Texas, and is still growing. Its general head-
quarters are in Tulsa.
Following Mervin's death in 1949, his brother Davis D.
Bovaird, was made president. Davis's son, William J.
26
EARLY YEARS WITH SINCLAIR
Bovaird II, is assistant to the general manager of stores. His
son, William J. Bovaird III, is a lusty young man of 4 years
who gives every promise of helping to maintain the family's
high place in the oil industry. I feel quite ancient when I con-
template how I have known five generations of the Bovaird
family.
At about the same time that the Bovaird Company en-
tered Kansas, the Independence Iron Works opened a
machine shop. This company was owned by John Finley, of
Lima, Ohio. Patsy Mack, one of the best known oil-country
machinists, was placed in charge. W. D. (Bill) O'Neill, of
Lima, was secretary-treasurer. The drilling of wells moved
south into Oklahoma. Finley died, and this concern lost busi-
ness and closed up. O'Neill, who had previously been an oil
correspondent for the Oil City (Pa.) Derrick, a Pat Boyle
publication, then joined Boyle when the latter established the
Oil and Gas Journal in Tulsa.
The largest corporation supplying mechanical needs of the
oil industry is the National Supply Company, organized in
Ohio as the Buckeye Oil Well Supply Company. W. M. Hill-
man, experienced as a supply man in Pennsylvania, induced
Shaw, Kendall and Company, who dealt in plumbing supplies,
to join him in establishing the Buckeye company. Its first
store was opened at Cygnet, Ohio, where big wells were many.
The name of the company was later changed to National Sup-
ply Company. This corporation has had a phenomenal growth
and now has branch stores and many large manufacturing
plants in all of the oil states. It also has branches in foreign
lands. I mention this company because I have known it from
its birth. I also knew Shaw, Kendall, Hardee, Hillman, and
Wolcott, founders of the corporation. I have done business
with the firm for over fifty years.
The Continental Supply Company, a subsidiary of the
Youngstown Sheet & Tube Company, was organized in 1912.
27
THE OIL BUSINESS AS I SAW IT
Alf Heggam, its first president, was succeeded by W. K.
Hughes, who in turn was succeeded by H. B. Gutelius. Officers
now are W. J. Morris, chairman of board; F. M. Mayer,
president; F. I. Brinegar, vice-president. Continental is one
of the really important supply companies in the industry.
After leaving Continental, Gutelius organized his own con-
cern under the name of United Supply and Manufacturing
Company, and he has built up a large and substantial follow-
ing among producers and oil-well contractors.
Some months before my formal association with Harry F.
Sinclair began, I was able to witness another of the great
events connected with the history of petroleum development
in North America. In November, 1905, the greatest strike up
to that time, in Oklahoma at least, was made at Glenn Pool by
Robert Galbraith and Frank Chesley. Quickly, I found myself
becoming interested in that area, where I succeeded in getting
some leases.
Many of us said at the time (and we were pretty far
wrong), "There will never be another pool like this one." It
was prodigious. Oil was found at a relatively shallow depth,
where it was easy to produce, and the horror of it was that
there wasn't enough pipe-line capacity at the time to take care
of the production. The idea of shutting in production in those
days was a nightmare. It was generally assumed that if a well
was choked back or cut off entirely, even for a period of hours,
it might be ruined. This has subsequently been proved to be
nonsense, as all oilmen know, but a great many of the now
accepted engineering facts were not available to us when the
oil business was young.
In the wide world of developing oil activity, I suppose
Glenn Pool may serve as an example of what was going on,
although admittedly the pool was a good deal more sensational
than most that were developed in the period from 1900 to
1910. It was discovered in fairly open country, with a slight
28
EARLY YEARS WITH SINCLAIR
roll to it, and the discovery well went to a depth of only a little
over fourteen hundred feet. Most of the subsequent produc-
tion, however, was from the Bartlesville Sand, which is some-
what deeper and dipping to the west. There was no clearly
defined well-spacing in that era, except insofar as an operator
or company chose to utilize the principle of putting wells far
enough apart to get maximum recovery from the oil sands.
Wooden derricks, then used almost universally in the oil
fields, could be constructed, and the cable drilling tools got
into operation, in five or six days. Going to a depth of fourteen
hundred to two thousand feet in that area required only
another eighteen to twenty days, if my memory serves me
right. Quickly a locality which had been strictly rural began to
mushroom. Wells were drilled on seven- or eight-acre spacing,
with variations, because there were many leases in the field,
until the whole countryside had a bristling appearance from
the hundreds of wooden derricks rising to the sky. There were
as many as fifty to one hundred wells drilling at a given time,
and, of course, hundreds of earlier wells, also with their der-
ricks, producing the oil pool that had already been tapped.
The whole scene was made eerie at night by scores of
visible gas flares. At that time, we used as much of the gas
produced by a given well as we might need for fuel purposes
on the location, and the rest was flared, that is, lighted and
allowed to burn indefinitely. This was so because the pools
were developed very fast, and there were really no marketing
facilities for the natural gas thus produced.
Moreover, this was the period before the advent of gaso-
line plants, which were to convert natural gas into motor fuels.
It is easy to look back and call this wastefulness, just as it is
possible to make similar assessments of such industries as
mining, farming, lumbering, and railroading in their earlier
days. The chemical and engineering accomplishments which
were later to utilize every cubic foot of natural gas and gallon
29
THE OIL BUSINESS AS I SAW IT
of oil for the production of an infinite number of by-products,
as well as lubricants and fuels, had yet to be approached even
at the laboratory stage.
It is easily possible in this part of my story to overlook
chronology, which I do not wish to do. On the other hand, I
can explain the gigantic character of oil development at the
time only by telescoping a good many phases, some of which
I had the good fortune to witness in the decade or more after
the opening of Glenn Pool.
It was like a series of fingers extending down from the
Kansas country into the Osage Nation, into future Nowata
County, south into future Tulsa County, south again to Glenn
Pool and Creek County; while westward, the fingers extended
to Garber in Garfield County, south and westward into the
Ponca City area, down to Healdton, and by a wide half -moon
over into Gushing, Drumright, Bald Hill, and other areas.
We followed, or tried to follow, all of the leads that new
drilling turned up for us. We followed the trend until it played
out. Gradually, the production which had begun in a hesitant
way in Kansas and northern Oklahoma spread ever south-
ward, while simultaneously that which had begun in southern
Texas extended itself northward, and the two sets of fingers
were to meet at the Red River separating the two states.
All along the lines of this development were boom towns
galore. There was frantic movement of oil field equipment
over roads that had seen no paving. Much of the equipment
was moved by teams rather than by power-driven trucks. Oil
was money, and the scramble for it was earnest and relentless.
Men learned to snatch sleep where they could get it. Meals
were taken at boarding houses, at cheap restaurants, in a sack
from a grocery store, in fact, wherever it could be got, and the
cost was almost never small.
The whole character of this activity has to be understood
in terms of slow transportation, for the automobile and the
30
EARLY YEARS WITH SINCLAIR
truck, although they were already with us, came equipped
with tires which were easily blown out on the rough roads.
Heavy traffic in producing areas created road blocks in the
form of rutting that kept everything at a snail's pace. Men
consequently had to be away from home for long periods of
time, and although the boom towns developed rapidly, they
did not offer a solution to the home and housing problem that
might be supposed. For oil development was then and forever
beyond the next hill, and the whole industry literally moved
across the countryside from month to month.
There were times when I wondered about the purpose of
all our straining activity. Some of the automobiles then in
vogue could hardly have been the cause of it. For example:
One day while living in Independence, I had to make a trip
to Bartlesville, Oklahoma. The business in hand required an
attorney, so I took R. W. (Bob) Kellough with me. We started
off in my E. M. F. automobile. About a mile out of Dewey
the car quit.
We got out, and for two hours I worked over the machine's
innards, pulling out this, pushing in that, turning something
else. Bob meanwhile, being a lawyer, bestrewed advice
copiously. At last I got the engine running. Triumphantly I
wiped some of the grease off my hands and got behind the
wheel.
I threw in the clutch, applied the gas, and we began mov-
ing BACKWARD! I tried all the gear shifts in the book. The
result was always the same. The machine made a joyous leap
to the rear every time. Bob hinted that we might just head
the car for Independence and thus reach Bartlesville. I
treated the suggestion with the contempt it deserved.
Finally, after diving into the ditch twice, we left the car
where it was and walked to Dewey, where we hired a livery
rig and drove to Bartlesville. There we sent out a car to haul
in my machine for repairs.
31
THE OIL BUSINESS AS I SAW IT
Shortly after I had become "formally" associated with
Harry Sinclair and Glenn Pool was getting under way, we
acquired a lease on an allotment near Sapulpa. It was a piece
of Indian land, the surface to which had been leased by a
white farmer. We were ready to move in, but the farmer de-
manded much higher damages than we believed we should pay
for the right to move across his land with our equipment and
set up a well location.
Howard Galbreath, one of our superintendents, went to
Sapulpa and tried to effect a settlement of the dispute with the
farmer. He got exactly nowhere. Harry Sinclair then sent me
down from our office in Independence to give Howard a hand.
We adopted a course of action which looked promising. Teams
hauling rig timbers were to be sent to the lease. Howard and I
would follow in a buckboard, driving at a rate that would
allow us to overtake the teams a few minutes after they
reached the lease.
The teams were at the lease, as we planned, when we drove
up. The farmer was sitting on a chair just inside the gate with
a businesslike expression on his face and a still more business-
like rifle across his knees.
With the air of one in unquestionable command of the
situation, I dropped from the buckboard and walked to the
gate. Keeping my eyes off the rifle as much as possible, I de-
livered a dignified address. It was a masterful presentation of
our case, closing with a forceful demand that we be permitted
to enter.
The farmer eyed me with stony composure. His response
to my speech was an unqualified "No!" to which he added a
concise appendix to the effect that he would shoot any white-
liver so-and-so who tried to pass him.
I forthwith opened the gate, and with a gesture that meant
I would stand for no nonsense, I told the teamster in the lead
to drive in.
32
EARLY YEARS WITH SINCLAIR
"Not on your life!" he replied.
"Well; get down then," I snapped. He obeyed with
alacrity.
With something of that high valor which glued the youth-
ful Casabianca to the burning deck whence all but him had
fled, I mounted the seat and sharply ordered, "Giddap!"
The horses barely had their heads past the gateposts when
the farmer rasped a strident "Whoa! " The team stopped. The
farmer strolled over to the wagon, jabbed the muzzle of the
rifle against my midriff, and growled "Now, you lousy thus-
and-so, if you drive an inch farther I'll drill a hole through
you! " Giving the rifle a vicious poke, he mumbled an insulting
epithet which reflected upon my parentage.
I was profoundly impressed by his words and manner. So
was Howard, who shouted, "Get down, Billy! for God's sake,
get down!"
I was already down.
Howard and I drove to Sapulpa and conferred with the
Indian agent there. Accompanied by a policeman from the
Indian Agency, we returned to the lease, where, under the
protection of the officer, we moved our rig onto the location.
When I recounted our experience to Sinclair, he said, "He
wouldn't have shot you. Why didn't you go on in?"
"Well," I replied, "that rifle looked a lot bigger when it
was shoved into my anatomy than it could look from the office
here in Independence, one hundred miles away."
And to this day I believe that farmer was a man of his
word.
The present size and elaboration of oil companies are apt
to obscure the condition of things in an earlier time. A com-
pany president of a half century ago ,was very accessible for
personal interview or conversation by local or long-distance
telephone. This was owing to the strength of an adage, even
then of long and reputable standing in the oil industry, to the
33
THE OIL BUSINESS AS I SAW IT
effect that "oil and gas are where you find them." A successful
oil man had to be alert and responsive to any lead whatever
that might give him a chance at new production.
Sinclair one day received a long-distance telephone call
from a Mr. Green, in Dalhart, Texas ; who wanted a capable
man sent to Dalhart at once to investigate a "gas find." Green
agreed to have two hundred dollars deposited in an Indepen-
dence bank to cover the cost of the investigation. He did not
want his gas discovery to become generally known and asked
that the man sent to Dalhart use a fictitious name and give
Kansas City as his address in registering at a hotel. I was
assigned to the job.
I arrived in Dalhart at about 4: 30 A. M. during a blizzard,
went to a hotel, and got to bed immediately. At about 7 o'clock
I was awakened by Green, who announced that he was ready.
I called attention to the storm, but he said that wouldn't inter-
fere because the gas field was only a block or so from the hotel.
After breakfast Green escorted me to a men's furnishing
store on the main street, near the hotel. He explained that he
had only recently purchased the place and furnished it as a
haberdashery. A restaurant had been conducted there previ-
ously. The cook formerly had worked in Cherryvale, Kansas,
and thus was familiar with gas as a fuel.
One evening as the restaurant was about to close, the
dishwasher struck a match in the kitchen and there was an
explosion. The dishwasher was badly burned. Green usually
ate his meals in the restaurant, and the cook convinced him
that there was a gas field under the building. So Green bought
the place, closed the restaurant, and installed the haber-
dashery. At the rear was a cesspool. Green told me that he
had run a half-inch pipe from this cesspool to the kitchen and
had obtained enough gas through it to boil an egg.
We put some snow (there was plenty of that around) and
two eggs in a small pail and opened the door of the kitchen.
34
t
Golf at the Independence, Kansas, Country Club, 1910. Top row,
left to right: Pink White, Fritz Wilhelm, C. A. McAdams, E. T.
Patterson, W. A, Love, Ike Montgomery, E. W. Sinclair. Middle
row: J. B. Robinson, W. F. Gates, H. F. Sinclair. James McCleland,
and caddies.
Oil field travel, Mexico, 1918 the roads were rough.
'if
***.*
The Claro, a noble launch until she burned.
EARLY YEARS WITH SINCLAIR
There was no sign of any gas. We hung the pail on Green's
pipe, applied a lighted match to the end of the pipe, and waited
for gas to ignite. Nothing doing. We went out into the yard
and investigated the cesspool. No gas.
I decided that gas had accumulated in the pool and,
through a leak in the floor, had entered the kitchen, igniting
and causing the explosion. After the restaurant had been
closed, no more grease was dumped into the cesspool, so no
more gas was formed. I went back to Independence. Thus
was added another to the long list of disappointments in the
gas business.
35
CHASING A CHEROKEE
MUCH HAS BEEN written about the vanishing Indian since
the white man took over in this country. One Indian's
proficiency in the art of vanishing afforded an exciting experi-
ence that exhausted all my resources of strategy, ingenuity,
and persistence. Stealthy pursuit, sly escapes, a special train
chartered in an emergency these were among features of a
memorable battle of wits in which an oil lease was the prize
awaiting the winner. My campaign developed a thrilling man
hunt which came to be referred to as "Chasing a Cherokee."
In the fall of 1906, the region embraced by future Nowata
County, Oklahoma, was a scene of active exploratory drilling.
Good wells were being brought in, and there was an avid quest
for leases. I found that Frank Tanner, a 20-year-old Cherokee
Indian, had an allotment of 1 10 acres in a 160-acre tract which
was looked upon as a particularly promising spot. A short-
term lease on the Tanner property, held by Theodore Barns-
dall, would expire when Tanner became of age on February
14, 1908. Barnsdall had not drilled because there was no
assurance that his lease would be renewed when Tanner
attained his majority.
Individual Indian land holdings, as I have said earlier in
36
CHASING A CHEROKEE
connection with the Osage, were relatively new to members
of the tribes residing in Indian Territory. For this and other
reasons, a considerable amount of supervision was given these
Indian land holders by the U.S. Indian Office, Department of
the Interior. Thus, a lease on an Indian minor's allotment
could be sold by a master in chancery, and the lease would
remain in force until the minor had reached his majority, at
which time it was cancelled automatically. He could then
make a lease on his own terms to anybody of his choice.
This applied particularly to Indians of the Five Civi-
lized Tribes Cherokees, Choctaws, Creeks, Chickasaws, and
Seminoles of eastern, northern, and southern Oklahoma. In
this these tribesmen differed from the Osage, the subsurface
values in whose lands were held in common by the Osage
Tribe, as previously outlined.
Perhaps I should explain also that lease terms for oil pro-
duction were then, and remain now, rather standard. The
customary royalty terms provided that a lease holder should
receive one-eighth of the sums realized from the production
of oil from the area under lease by an oil producing company.
Added financial benefits to the lease holder were not uncom-
mon, however. A bonus might be paid, for example, to the
lease holder on his signing a lease agreement. This could be
anywhere from fifty cents an acre to eighteen hundred or two
thousand dollars an acre even more. Sometimes an over-
riding arrangement was allowed whereby the lease holder
would receive the first several hundred or several thousand
barrels of production of oil, and thereafter receive the cus-
tomary one-eighth.
The important points to remember about Tanner and his
lease are, that he was within months of attaining his majority,
when the lease previously held by Barnsdall might or might
not be renewed by Tanner when he attained the age of 2 1 ;
and that the game was essentially a struggle between two oil
37
THE OIL BUSINESS AS I SAW IT
organizations to produce oil on Tanner's property. Under
prevailing lease and bonus arrangements, Tanner himself
stood only to gain.
I looked up the young Cherokee with a view of persuading
him to make a lease to us. I offered him a bonus of twenty
thousand dollars with the stipulation that until the lease
should be approved by the Secretary of the Interior we were
to give him one hundred dollars a month toward payment of
the bonus. Upon such approval, the remainder of the twenty
thousand dollars was to be paid. He accepted this proposition.
I took him to the office of W. D. Humphrey, a lawyer, and we
signed an agreement closing the trade. I knew that the con-
tract was not enforceable, but thought that it might impress
Tanner. Many others besides me were dogging the young
Indian, and I had difficulty holding him in line, but the bonus
was no small prize.
I found out that Tanner was a baseball player and a
promising pitcher. Harry Sinclair owned the Independence
Baseball Club at that time, and he agreed with me that if
Tanner were signed as a pitcher for the next season's team it
probably would help us in our efforts to land that lease. Tanner
signed up and was satisfied for a short time, but began to get
nervous again.
Fred Clarke, who managed the Pittsburgh Pirates in the
National League, lived at Akron, Kansas, near Winfield. I had
met Clarke previously and now arranged to meet him in Win-
field on the next Saturday. I explained our case to him, and
he agreed to take Tanner on the training trip with the Pirates,
we to pay Tanner's expenses; but we had failed to keep in
mind that the trip would not start until March, so that was out.
I persuaded Clarke to write Tanner explaining that I had
urged him to give the Indian a chance to break into the big
league. The letter was to say that if Tanner put up a good per-
formance with Independence in 1908 Clarke would give him
38
CHASING A CHEROKEE
a tryout the next spring. Tanner received the letter and
proudly showed it around Nowata. I felt that we were making
progress, but realized there must be no letup until the lease
was actually in hand.
Earl Weible, who owned a furnishing store in Nowata, was
a friend of Tanner 's. He was to leave for Chicago the latter
part of January to buy his spring stock. Earl agreed to take
Tanner on the trip. I was to meet them in Chicago and try to
have the lease signed there while Tanner was away from dis-
tracting influences. For some reason the trip was called off.
This was a setback, so I had to intensify my campaigning.
John Payne of Oil City, Pennsylvania, who had an oil
lease on the Pyburn twenty-acre piece which adjoined Tan-
ner's place, planned to start a well on it in four or five weeks.
I induced him to start within two weeks by agreeing to pay
for the drilling. If the well should prove a dry hole, I could
abandon my chase after Tanner.
During the week preceding February 14, Sinclair had gone
east. He was to stop in Pittsburgh on his way home and ask
John A. Bell, Sr., to put up the twenty-thousand-dollar bonus
which had been promised Tanner and take an interest in the
lease. Bell, a banker and oilman, was a friend of Sinclair's.
Sinclair was to advise me when the arrangement with Bell had
been completed. But in his conference with Sinclair, Bell was
unable to name the exact day on which he could have the bonus
ready or even give positive assurance that he would provide it.
He said he would wire Sinclair his decision the following day
while Sinclair was on the train.
In the meantime, I had secured from Charles and Ida
Tanner, Frank's parents, affidavits that Frank's birth date
was February 14. This was done to protect us on that point.
Sinclair arrived in Independence on a Sunday morning.
He told me then that while he was in the Union Depot at St.
39
THE OIL BUSINESS AS I SAW IT
Louis he had received a wire from Bell to the effect that the
latter would go along on the deal.
I left Independence Sunday afternoon for Nowata to see
Tanner. I could not find him in any of his usual haunts, and I
feared someone had "stolen" him. While I was sitting on the
porch at the Carey Hotel, McConnell Elder, an oilman,
stopped there for a few minutes. He was carrying a grip,
which made me feel that he had been trying to persuade Tan-
ner to lease to him. I was immediately suspicious that Elder
had spirited Tanner away and was on his way to the hide-out.
When Elder got on a late train for the north, I was right
after him, and when he got off the train at Coffeyville, I fol-
lowed. He took a hack, and I heard him tell the driver to go
to the Mecca Hotel. I followed in another hack but waited
outside the hotel until Elder had registered. Then I went in
and registered. I noted that Elder had been assigned Room
32, say. I needed to know if Elder had left a call and for what
hour. There was no elevator in the hotel, and as I started up
the stairs I stopped and called back to the clerk, asking him
to call 32 (Elder's room) at 6:30.
The clerk looked at his card and said, "I have a call for
that room at 7, but it is not your room."
I apologized for momentarily "forgetting" my room num-
ber. In the morning I was in the lobby when Elder came down.
He went into the dining room and I followed shortly. When
he left the hotel he went to a lawyer's office. I could not follow
him into the office, but thinking Tanner might be at his par-
ent's home, I went there. Mrs. Tanner said that Frank had
been at the house the evening before, but that he was taking
a trip some place with Joe Rogers, a pal.
I went back to Coffeyville and after persistent investiga-
tion found the hack driver who had driven Tanner and Rogers
to the Katy Railroad station that morning. They had bought
tickets for Guthrie. I called Sinclair and told him the story of
40
CHASING A CHEROKEE
my devious travels. "Come on home/ 7 he said. "You have lost
Tanner."
"No," I replied; "you call Mrs. Connelly. Have her pack
a grip for me and give it to a conductor on the Interurban Rail-
way. Til pick up the grip and go to Guthrie."
I took a train out of Coffeyville twenty-four hours after
my quarry had gone. I had been up since 6 o'clock that morn-
ing and was tired and worried. I went to bed with instructions
to the Pullman conductor to call me in time to be up when we
reached Osage Junction, where Katy trains for Tulsa left the
branch line and took the main line. Osage Junction was also
an eating place for train passengers. I thought Tanner and
Rogers might have left Guthrie and be heading for Tulsa.
On getting back on the train after eating breakfast, I cau-
tioned the conductor not to fail to awaken me in case I should
fall asleep. I did not go back to bed. The train was bound for
Oklahoma City, and it was necessary to change cars for
Guthrie at Fallis. I woke up from a doze just as the train was
pulling into Oklahoma City. The conductor had failed me.
While waiting twenty minutes for a train back to Fallis,
I called on Tom Boland, an old friend of mine, who was with
a wholesale grocery company. Its plant was close to the depot.
I found Tom and asked him to check the hotels for Tanner
and Rogers and to call me at Guthrie if he learned anything
about them.
On arriving at Guthrie I went to the lone Hotel. There I
was told that the objects of my hunt had checked out the
evening before and were on their way to Denver. This was a
stunner. I knew only one man in Denver, an attorney. I called
him and told him enough of my story to arouse his interest.
He agreed to have Tanner picked up by the police on some
holding charge and detained until I could reach Denver.
I scarcely had left the telephone booth when I was called
back. Boland was on the line. He had located Tanner and
41
THE OIL BUSINESS AS I SAW IT
Rogers in Oklahoma City. They were with Charles J. Wrights-
man and Gene Blaize, two well-known and smart oil pro-
ducers. I knew then that I had a real fight ahead. Boland
agreed to keep track of Tanner as well as he could. I was to
get to Oklahoma City by rail as soon as possible, which would
be early in the evening. There were no taxicabs available.
Boland met me at the Oklahoma City station and told me
that he had followed Wrightsman and Blaize until Wrights-
man called a policeman and had him taken into custody.
Boland was released at the police station, and he at once
resumed his chase. He found Wrightsman and Blaize at the
Huckins Hotel.
Tanner and Rogers were in a rooming house on Main
Street. Boland had a friend who ran an all-night restaurant
directly across the street from the rooming house. Boland and
I went to see his friend. I obtained permission to use a seat
at the desk in the front part of the restaurant whenever
I wished.
I went to the Threadgill Hotel for a few hours' sleep, and
at 7 o'clock the next morning I was at the desk. At about
9 o'clock the two boys came over to the restaurant and sat
down for their breakfasts. I left the desk, went outside, and
stood in a doorway to wait and watch. When the two came out
they walked to the Huckins Hotel and separated. Rogers went
upstairs, presumably to report to Wrightsman and Blaize.
Tanner went to the washroom, where I joined him. He began
to explain how he happened to be in Oklahoma City. I cut him
short by telling him that Fred Clarke wanted me to bring him
to Pittsburgh at once.
Tanner was elated, but said that he had no money and no
good clothes. I told him that I could furnish the money (I had
about forty dollars with me), and that we would get some
"real clothes" in Pittsburgh. He agreed to go with me but
wanted to tell Rogers where he was going. I talked him out
42
CHASING A CHEROKEE
of that. We bought tickets for Coffeyville, where I intended
to take the Interurban to Independence. It was my plan to
meet Sinclair there and after midnight of February 14 to close
the lease deal, giving Tanner what was still due on the bonus.
About four minutes before the train left, Wrightsman and
Blaize ; with Rogers, drove up to the station in a Thomas
Flyer, one of the fastest automobiles of that day. They came
into the car, picked Tanner up bodily, carried him to their
car and rode off. The car was driven by a fifth man, whom we
did not recognize.
This was a body blow. I feared that I was licked. I went
over to see Boland, and we speculated as to where the Thomas
Flyer would go. There were no paved roads and few garages
in that period. We figured that the fleeing men would stick to
the bigger towns. I called the police of Shawnee, El Reno, and
several other towns and told them it was vital that we locate
the car, owing to an emergency affecting one of the men in it.
At noon I called Sinclair by the telephone, knowing he
usually arrived at his office in Independence about that time.
I explained the case to him. "You can handle Blaize," he said,
"but Wrightsman is too fast for you. I'll go down to Oklahoma
City and join you."
Sinclair arrived in Oklahoma City about 10 o'clock that
evening. I met him at the station and brought him up to the
minute on what had taken place. I had spent a busy afternoon.
I had found out that the Thomas Flyer was owned and driven
by Oscar Dick, who kept it in a small garage in the city. I went
to this garage at about 7 o'clock and told the man in charge
that I had to know where Dick would be that night; that if
he could obtain this information I would give him twenty
dollars. As a guarantee I cut a twenty-dollar bill in two, gave
him one-half and promised that the other half would be given
to him as soon as he provided the desired information con-
cerning Dick's whereabouts.
43
THE OIL BUSINESS AS I SAW IT
At about 9 o'clock he called me at the hotel and said that
he had news for me. I hurried to the garage. Dick had tele-
phoned that his party would be at Hennessey that night, but
he did not know where they would go the next day. I sur-
rendered my half of the twenty-dollar bill and left.
Upon Sinclair's arrival he said that until I had phoned
him he had no idea we were in a battle with Wrightsman, that
Wrightsman was a clever man, and that if we outwitted him
we would have to go some. He first scouted the idea that the
car was at Hennessey, but when I called attention to the fact
that the garage man had known who was with Dick ; he agreed
that it might be true. We went to the Huckins Hotel, where
Sinclair registered. After we had reached his room he said,
"We might find out if that car is at Hennessey by calling the
night marshal. ?? This we did, but the marshal reported no
soap. I then left for my hotel.
I was just getting into bed when the phone rang. Sinclair
said that the marshal at Hennessey had called him to say that
the four were in Hennessey. The question now was where
they might go from there. I pointed out that Enid was about
20 miles north of Hennessey and that Guthrie was southeast;
that Enid could not be reached quickly by rail, but that a
train for Guthrie would be along soon, "Let's go!" exclaimed
Sinclair.
We had about fifteen minutes to catch the train. I finished
dressing in the cab on the way to the station. At Guthrie we
spent a few hours in bed. Lieutenant Governor Bellamy, who
resided in Guthrie, owned one of the few autos in Oklahoma.
Through some wire-pulling, Sinclair achieved the loan of the
Lieutenant Governor's car and driver and had the car parked
in front of the hotel. We thought that Wrightsman and Blaize
might come through Guthrie, and that if they did and we saw
them (a long chance), we would use the Bellamy car to follow
them. In the meantime I was busy on the phone trying to
44
CHASING A CHEROKEE
locate the Thomas Flyer for the "emergency message" that
I said I had for Tanner.
Sometime in the afternoon Chief of Police Al Thrasher at
Enid called me and said, "Your people are here, but I don't
know whether they will stay here tonight or try to go into
Guthrie. As soon as I hear what they intend to do I'll call
again.' 3
So, once more I gnawed my fingernails and walked ten
miles around the hotel lobby. If Wrightsman and his party
were coming to Guthrie, Sinclair and I could act as a reception
committee, but if they stayed in Enid, we had to get there.
About 5 o'clock Chief Thrasher called with news that on
account of the rain (it had been raining at intervals all day)
the Wrightsman party would stay in Enid.
In oil-country parlance, we were in "one hell of a fix."
The last train for Enid that day had already left. We were
afraid to try to drive to Enid in the Bellamy car, owing to the
rain, the muddy roads, and the darkness. Our only alternative
was to hire a special train. But we had no money.
While we were trying to figure that one out, Charles Owen
of Caney, Kansas, came into the hotel. He was a friend of
both of us. Sinclair braced him for some money. Owen had
only about twenty-five dollars in cash, but he had a draft for
two hundred dollars. This draft he gave to Sinclair. I went to
the Santa Fe station with it and arranged for a special train
from Guthrie to Enid. The agent agreed to take the pay for
the train, eighty-five dollars, out of the draft.
At 7 o'clock Sinclair and I were at the station. Our train,
consisting of an engine, baggage car, and a coach, was on the
track ready to go, but the agent had changed his mind about
accepting the draft. Sinclair argued and he can do a good
job as an arguer but the agent was adamant. We went back
to the hotel to cash the draft, but the cashier did not have
enough money on hand to help us. The owner of the hotel was
45
THE OIL BUSINESS AS I SAW IT
in his room, suffering from a bad cold, but after Sinclair ex-
plained our situation, he cashed the draft.
Back we went to the station, but during our absence the
agent had dismissed the crew. By the time the train was ready
again it was almost midnight.
I have the receipt for the payment for the train in front of
me as I write this. It is written on an Atchison, Topeka &
Santa Fe Railway form No. 201 and reads: "Received of
W. L. Connelly, eighty-five dollars ($85.00) for one ticket
from Guthrie to Enid Form 60 Number 27345 via special
train. N. Cochrell, Agent." It is stamped "February 13, 1908."
While we were held up by the train mix-up ? I had again
called Chief Thrasher at Enid and asked him to meet us at
the station there. When we arrived at Enid early in the morn-
ing of February 14, the chief met us. He said that Wrightsman
was at the Lowden Hotel and that Blaize and the two boys
were in a small hotel at the edge of the city. He agreed to try
to have Tanner in his office early in the morning and to hold
him there until he heard from me.
Sinclair and I went to the Lowden, arranged for our rooms,
and then called on Wrightsman. This was about 2 o'clock in
the morning. Wrightsman was utterly dumbfounded when he
saw us. "I thought I left you at the Katy station in Oklahoma
City," he said to me. I agreed that this was where he had seen
me last but added that I had moved around some. He wanted
to know how I had found him. I divulged nothing, but since
then I have told him the whole story. Wrightsman and I, ever
since that night, have been close friends, and the company has
made many trades with him. He is still active in business and
is located in Fort Worth, Texas.
Wrightsman invited us into his room, and we proceeded
to discuss the Tanner lease. After we had argued for an hour
or more and made no progress, Wrightsman suggested that
we meet again at 10 o'clock that morning, giving us his word
46
CHASING A CHEROKEE
that he would make no move in the interim. This suited me
exactly, for I needed sleep.
At about 8 o'clock that morning Chief Thrasher called
me to say that Tanner was with him at his office ready for us.
In accordance with the agreement made the day before,
Wrightsman and Blaize came to Sinclair's room at 10 o'clock,
and we resumed our discussion. Sinclair proposed that a fair
settlement would be for Wrightsman and Blaize to have a
one-half interest in the lease and we the other half. Wrights-
man and Blaize proposed that they take 75 per cent and we
25 per cent. No deal. Wrightsman then suggested a 66% and
33% per cent division. Sinclair replied that he would take
50 per cent or the entire interest. Wrightsman and Blaize had
a hearty laugh. Thereupon I called the chief of police and
asked him to bring Frank to our room. Wrightsman and
Blaize were astounded.
Within 10 minutes Frank Tanner was in our room. Com-
ing directly to me he declared, "I want you to have my lease."
That settled the whole business.
Sinclair and Wrightsman that afternoon formed a new
company. That the tense weeks through which we had passed
had left no bitterness and had spoiled neither man's sense of
humor is evidenced by the name they gave the new organiza-
tion, the Chaser Oil Company, one-half of the stock being
owned by Wrightsman and Blaize, the other half being owned
by Sinclair, Bell and myself.
I went to Nowata and had John Payne drill in the Pyburn
well, which came in for about 500 barrels at 630 feet.
Tanner was given what was due on his twenty-thousand-
dollar bonus, but he never became a big-league pitcher. The
Chaser Oil Company drilled six or eight wells on the Tanner
lease, each good for four hundred to six hundred barrels. We
sold our half interest to the Prairie Oil and Gas Company.
Wrightsman and Blaize later sold their half to the same
company.
THE OIL BUSINESS AS I SAW IT
Twenty-five years later, in 1932, at the time of the merger
of the Prairie Oil and Gas Company with the Sinclair Oil and
Gas Company, this lease came back home. During the life of
this lease until December 31, 1950, it had produced under
primary and gas repressuring a total of about 1,300,000 bar-
rels, and after forty-four years it is still producing more than
thirty barrels daily. We are now arranging to start a water-
flood project which I believe will yield an additional 700,000
to 750,000 barrels of oil under this relatively new method
devised by engineers for revitalizing old fields.
This episode of the oil country has been written up many
times, but the persons participating in it have never before
been named correctly. Following this lease transaction came
another one covering the Clyde, Albert, Lillie, and Zoma Tan-
ner allotments. All of these allotments had been leased to
Jennings Brothers and John A. Bell, Sr. The leases were about
to expire, and the holders were having difficulty in getting
them extended.
Roger Kemp was in charge of the Jennings and Bell
interests in Oklahoma. He sent several leasemen to try to get
the leases. None was successful. Then Roger himself tried it.
No better results. A law firm of Bartlesville, Oklahoma,
Veasey and Rowland, then took over. They had no better
luck.
I had the answer. Mr. and Mrs. Tanner were taking my
advice on what they should do. I had told Sinclair that I could
get these leases for him. He would not listen. He said that
John Bell was a partner of his and that he would have no hand
in taking Bell's leases away from him. Sinclair finally agreed
that if the others failed to make a deal with Tanner I could
do my bit. I was elated at that decision. I knew that the Jen-
nings brothers and Bell would never get the leases. Bell and
his son, John A. Bell, Jr., came out from Pittsburgh and got
into the trade themselves, but Tanner still was immovable.
48
CHASING A CHEROKEE
The Bells finally decided that they were licked. They planned
to go back to Pittsburgh, stopping off at Independence to visit
Sinclair en route. This was my undoing.
During the visit the elder Bell said he had been much dis-
appointed over his inability to make the Tanner trade. He
asked Sinclair if he could help.
Sinclair said, "I can't, but there is a man in the next room
who can." He called me into his office and said, "Billy, I want
you to go to Coffeyville with Mr. Bell and help him get the
Tanner leases."
That was a blow to me. I had counted confidently on get-
ting these leases for Sinclair. I gulped a few times and said
"O.K." We met with Jim Veasey, of Veasey and Rowland,
the next morning in Coffeyville to discuss ways of handling
the trades. I could tell that he had no idea that I would be
able to do what a dozen high-powered landmen, Roger Kemp,
the Bells, Rowland, and Veasey himself had failed at.
We had made an engagement with the Tanners for the
afternoon. I insisted that I do the talking with them. For once
I was giving orders to bankers and lawyers. We came away
with the deal all settled. I never made a deal in my life that
afforded me less pleasure than this one. I was cutting my own
throat every time I urged Tanner to close the trade. The only
person in the group who sensed my feelings was Jim Veasey.
He seemed to understand what a strain I was under. Many
times since then Jim and I have discussed what took place
that afternoon, and he has been lavish in his compliments.
Each compliment is a grain of salt in the wound of a lost
cause!
The Jennings brothers and Bell, after drilling a number
of wells on these leases, sold the leases to the Prairie Oil and
Gas Company. In 1932, at the time of the Sinclair-Prairie
merger, they came back to the Sinclair Prairie Oil Company.
They will be in the group that will be under the water-flood,
49
THE OIL BUSINESS AS I SAW IT
along with the Frank Tanner and other leases in the Childers
area, looking to a large volume of secondary recovery of oil.
Sinclair certainly was Santa Clauses little helper (for the
Jennings brothers and Bells) that afternoon. Tanner and his
estate realized nearly $250,000 in the next forty-five years,
and under the water-flooding now begun, he and his heirs
should realize another $100,000 to $125,000.
Me? I was only the chaser.
But there are other ways of wasting time and losing
money.
Some time before we moved our offices from Independence
to Tulsa, Harry Sinclair asked me to discuss with Tom Flan-
nelly, judge of the District Court, the merits of the younger
members of the Montgomery County bar, and to get the Judge
to name three of the most capable among them. The Judge
recommended the following in the order given: Edward BL
Chandler, Grattan T. Stanford, and Oscar O'Brien. Harry
asked me to have Ed Chandler come to the office. Ed came
over. Harry explained that we were about to move our offices
to Tulsa, that he needed a full-time attorney, and that he
would like to have Ed join the organization. As a result of this
conference Ed joined us on January 1, 1913.
Before we moved to Tulsa a lease broker telephoned
Harry that he had found a joe Buckskin" (not his real name) ,
a full-blood Creek who had an allotment which had never been
leased for the reason that "Joe" bad disappeared. The allot-
ment looked good for oil. This broker said he had "Joe" * n
Muskogee and that he could get a lease on the allotment for
Harry. The price for the lease and the broker's services and
expenses would be twenty thousand dollars in cash no
drafts or checks.
"Go to Muskogee," Harry directed me, "and if things are
50
Tankers loading at docks in the Panuco River, Mexico, 1918.
Freeport Mexican Oil Company well on Guiterrez Farm, Panuco,
Mexico, flowing 8,000 barrels per day into earthen tanks, 1918.
This well was located not as a normal offset, but close to water. The
later, normally placed wells were small ones. Maybe I was lucky.
Sinclair Mexican Oil Corporation well on Lot 25 1, Amatlan,
Mexico, 1920; maximum production, 70,000 barrels per day.
CHASING A CHEROKEE
O. K. take the lease, but be sure that you have the real Joe."
This caution was prompted by the fact that many leases had
been given by phony owners.
"Maybe you had better take Ed Chandler with you,"
Harry added. "He may as well get into these deals now."
Ed and I took twenty thousand dollars in cash and left for
Muskogee. The broker, whom I knew only slightly, met us at
the Katy Hotel. He had with him a part-blood Creek. We will
call the broker "Jim." "Joe Buckskin" was in a small hotel
near by, with one of "Jim's" friends watching so that "Joe"
would not wander away. Chandler and I accompanied "Jim"
to meet "Joe" at the latter's hotel. "Jim" had a lease form
ready to fill out in the name of the company to which the lease
would be made.
The deal had to be made at once, we were told, because
another company was anxiously waiting to sign if we didn't.
(Old stuff, started at the time of the Drake well.) We were
assured that we had the first chance because of the broker's
great admiration for Harry and his regard for me.
We demanded proof that the Indian was "Joe Buckskin."
Many papers were produced for our benefit, but none con-
vinced Ed or me that they were genuine. We asked for a couple
of hours' delay, which was given, but not graciously.
Ed and I then went to the Indian agent's office. Dana H.
Kelsey was the agent. I had never met Kelsey, but understood
that he was a live wire and knew his lines. We explained our
case to him and said that we wanted to bring "Joe" to Kelsey's
office to have him identified.
"I have been trying to get 'Joe' in here for several years,"
said Kelsey. "If you can bring him in I will feel that I should
give you not only my thanks but at least a box of cigars."
Kelsey was of the same opinion that we were, that a ringer
was being used.
On returning to "Jim's" hotel, we told him that we had the
51
THE OIL BUSINESS AS I SAW IT
whole matter taken care of, that we all would go to Kelsey's
office and on Kelsey's endorsement of "Joe" we would make
the contemplated trade. Our proposition was promptly re-
jected. It was explained that "Joe" was afraid Kelsey might
put him in jail for something the Indian had done in the past.
"Jim" also had many other reasons why "Joe" should not go
to Kelsey's office.
Ed and I packed our bags and returned to Independence
with the twenty thousand dollars intact.
52
AM OIL EMPIRE
OIL BUSINESS was moving at an accelerated pace from
JL Kansas to Oklahoma production, pipe-line capacity,
and (more gradually) refining. Tulsa was becoming, as it later
proudly proclaimed, the "Oil Capital of the World." Its total
population in 1912 could not have exceeded twenty-five thou-
sand, but there was no denying its destiny.
Harry Sinclair's holdings in Oklahoma had become many
times more valuable than those he had assembled in Kansas.
Glenn Pool was by now in full swing. Sinclair was interested in
many leases there, and he was pushing an extensive drilling
campaign. I was spending most of my time in Tulsa, at Glenn
Pool, and on other Sinclair leases. In September, 1912, my
family moved to Tulsa, and I purchased a residence at 1407
South Carson.
Sinclair's first offices in Tulsa were at Third and Main
streets. Later we moved into the Palace Building at Fourth
and Main. In 1918 we moved from there to the eight-story
Sinclair Building at Fifth and Main. But our business soon
outgrew these quarters and we overflowed into offices in
three other buildings. Now, a scant thirty-five years later, we
53
THE OIL BUSINESS AS I SAW IT
have just completed and occupied a building at Boston Ave-
nue and Tenth Street large enough to accommodate all our
office force and still permit expansion in the future.
I had watched Tulsa rise from a village. It was too insig-
nificant to find a place in any standard atlas published at the
turn of the century. But by the time of our removal there, it
already had acquired some of the basic grace and attractive-
ness which have since made it one of the fairest cities in the
land. Angie Debo has told the story well in Tulsa: From Creek
Town to Oil Capital, and I need not repeat it here. It had been
a Creek Indian place, Lochapoka Tulsey, in the nineteenth
century; then a small trading center; and, finally, with the
coming of oil after 1905, a swiftly growing, progressive young
city straddling the Arkansas River. Only Muskogee sixty
miles southeast rivaled it.
There were two landmarks across the Arkansas from the
city proper in West Tulsa the Constantine Refinery east
of the highway leading to Sapulpa about twenty miles away,
and the Cosden Oil and Gas Company Refinery on the East
side of the highway. They were the beginnings of refinery
operations in the area, and were to become very large in later
years.
Many independent oil operators were then located in
Tulsa: R. A. Josey, Charles Page, Sinclair and White, Guns-
berg and Foreman, and Jack Crosby, all of whom were pro-
ducers, and many others. During the period, most of the oil
in Oklahoma and the Southwest was handled by independents
rather than by large integrated companies. As a matter of fact,
integration was a relatively new principle, even among the
so-called majors, and of the latter, the Standard organization
was obviously the pioneer.
The coming of the great war in Europe in August, 1914,
was not slow In making itself felt, demand-wise, in the oil
industry. Almost immediately the Sinclair organization got
54
AN OIL EMPIRE RISES
the impact of increased demand. We were then occupied prin-
cipally with production and had no refinery installations. But
we had a market for every barrel of oil that we took out of
the ground from shortly after hostilities started until well
after the war closed. By late 1915 we were producing in Okla-
homa, Kansas, Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana. We con-
tinued to expand our producing areas during the war, so that
by 1919 we were even producing in Wyoming.
It must be understood that, while the armies of Europe
were not yet mechanized as they were to become at a sub-
sequent date, nevertheless the requirements of both military
and domestic consumption of oil were moving into their mod-
ern phase a phase which possibly would not have arrived as
fast had the war not occurred.
Our large and constantly growing oil production was going
into essential lubricants, gasoline, and other fuels and lubri-
cating products. Gasoline at that time was principally a frac-
tion made in the refining of crude petroleum, a method quite
different from that now employed in the production of motor
fuels. But a certain amount of casing-head gasoline (that is,
gasoline made from natural gas) was even at that time being
produced. As I recall it, there was only one premium grade,
and it, like all the rest, was white gasoline.
By this time I had become a stockholder in most of the
companies that we were operating. I was also interested, with
E. E. Byers, in some cable drilling tools. Gushing, with its
flood of oil, was at its crest in the period from 1913 to 1915,
and we were drilling a great many wells. We were building
steel storage tanks of 55,000 barrels capacity at the same time
to take care of the oil produced. Oil was going into some of
them before the roofs were finished.
The whole organization, including Harry Sinclair himself,
was working about eighteen hours a day, usually seven days
a week. Harry F. and Earl W. Sinclair, P. J. White, and his
55
THE OIL BUSINESS AS I SAW IT
brother Thomas White were the principal stockholders in
these companies, with F. B. Ufer holding stock in some of
them. I took the leases on many properties, drilled them, and
they were even sold without Harry Sinclair's ever being in on
them. Sinclair was the kind of man who, if he thought you
knew your business, gave you a free hand. If you didn't know
your business, you didn't stay with him.
Many of our leases were sold to the Prairie Oil and Gas
Company, but most if not all of them were to come back to
the Sinclair Company in the merger effected with Prairie in
1932. Harry was a far-sighted builder and a shrewd seller.
And sometimes I think it is even better to know when to sell
than when to buy. In this connection it may be pointed out to
future analysts of the oil industry that finance capital was
slower in coming to the oil country than the sheer logic of
developments would indicate might have been the case. The
pattern of leasing, getting oil production on a small invest-
ment, thereby "proving up" the property and perhaps a whole
area, and then selling the producing lease and part or all of the
blocked-up country around it was general in the early years of
this century. This is how we got ready cash for similar or even
larger enterprises. The tempo and thrusting and probing that
resulted were then essential features of the oil game, particu-
larly in the exploratory and drilling phases.
The oil business has always required large sums of money
as well as raw courage and bottomless energy for its develop-
ment. It has required its followers to look always to the future.
But in the war years, a lot of oil folks just looked good. Wages
went high, and on Saturday nights the members of drilling
crews came out in wide candy-striped silk shirts costing up to
twenty dollars apiece. This was a kind relief from grinding
toil, very long hours, and certain physical risks that had better
be forgotten than recalled.
The war was not a year old when Harry Sinclair was be-
56
AN OIL EMPIRE RISES
ginning to think of the forging of a "big" company. The word
needs quotation marks because by this time almost everything
in the oil business was big. Costs were high but still growing;
the sums needed for daily operations were sometimes stagger-
ing; and anything that resembled integration (production,
refining, and marketing, all joined under one management)
called for really great resources.
But late in 19 IS differences between Sinclair and Pat and
Tom White arose, necessitating the sale in January, 1916, of
the producing properties which had formerly been operated
by this group. These were very extensive properties, and the
sale to produce a division of assets was a complicated affair.
With Frank Haskell, president of the Okla Oil Company,
I put in many days and nights inspecting the properties and
working over the production and equipment records. After
several meetings in Tulsa, Haskell said he liked the properties,
and that if a satisfactory price could be arrived at his com-
pany would like to acquire them. He asked Sinclair and White
to go on to New York and meet with his principals. The
Whites left for New York, as did Sinclair and I. After we
arrived in New York, Sinclair decided that it would be wise
for Edward EL Chandler, general counsel for the Sinclair Oil
and Gas Company, to be with us, and accordingly Chandler
joined us. We met with Dickson Q. Brown and Robert Mc-
Kelvey at the New York offices of the Tidewater Oil Com-
pany. The Okla Oil Company was a subsidiary of the
Tidewater.
A trade was finally closed, and the Okla Oil Company
became owner of the Kathleen Oil Company, the Scioto Oil
Company, Only Oil Company, and Oil Production Company,
besides some small companies and individual leases.
Sinclair and Chandler remained in New York to draw up
a contract between Sinclair and the Whites and the Tidal;
also a contract between Sinclair and the Whites whereby Sin-
57
THE OIL BUSINESS AS I SAW IT
clair purchased the Whites' interest in the undrilled acreage
owned jointly by them and Sinclair.
On Sinclair's return to Tulsa, he organized the Sinclair
Oil Company. The stockholders were H. F. Sinclair, E. W.
Sinclair, Edward H. Chandler, W. A. Martin, O. E. Dough-
erty, Albert E. Watts, and myself. H. F. Sinclair was presi-
dent, Chandler and I were vice presidents, and E. W. Sinclair
was secretary and treasurer. Watts was placed in charge of
the land department. I was given charge of the drilling and
production. We at once started drilling the acreage purchased
from the Whites.
Harry Sinclair now began the realization of his long-
cherished dream of building a large, fully integrated oil
company.
On November 20, 1915, W. H. Isom, president of the
Cudahy Refining Company, in Chicago, wrote to Sinclair the
following letter:
November 20, 1915.
Personal & Confidential
Mr. Harry F. Sinclair,
Tulsa, Okla.
My dear Mr. Sinclair:
At different times I have talked with you, you seemed to be
more than interested in the refinery and pipe line business, and
have expressed a desire to get in the game, and on one deal you
proposed, or offered, to take considerable stock in the project with
the Cudahys. At that time I told you the Cudahy Refining Co. was a
close corporation, and had no outsiders in it, and this, for that
matter, is the case at present, but in the final closing up of the
Michael Cudahy Estate, it has been necessary to change about many
of the corporations connected with the Estate, and among them the
Cudahy Refining Co., and in making the change in this Company,
there will be $300,000 to $500,000 Capital Stock to place. The plan
has been to have different members of the family take over this
58
AN OIL EMPIRE RISES
stock. Now I have had the feeling I wanted some "new blood" with
us, and those that could do us some good in the way of securing
business, supply of crude oils, etc., and have partially secured con-
sent to let some outsiders have some of this stock, and this made
me think of yourself. Will you kindly advise if you are still in the
mood to consider an investment of this kind and if so, would you
care to take a block of this stock? It goes without saying that it is a
profitable investment, and will stand the most rigid investigation.
It is true there has not been much "hurrah" about us and our
methods of doing business. We go ahead in our quiet way, but the
fact remains, we "get there," and always have. Personally, I should
like to have with us a few "live ones" like you are, and this is why
I am writing you. It is not money we need, and the stock need not
go begging one moment, and offered on the market with the showing
we make, would be snapped up quickly, but I want to see it go where
it will do us the most good.
With kindest personal regards, I remain
Yours truly,
[signed] W. H. ISOM
This was one of those not quite fortuitous situations
(Harry Sinclair had already approached the Cudahy interests
about a refining connection) in which both sides are not only
willing but actually need each other. Sinclair had a lot of pro-
duction but no refining outlets of his own; the Cudahys had
the refinery but were in need of a producing connection to
supply it.
Shortly after receipt of the foregoing letter, Sinclair visited
Isom at the latter's office in Chicago and discussed with him
the idea of making the Cudahy Refining Company a part of
the new integrated oil company which Sinclair had in mind.
Isom was impressed and said that when Sinclair's idea had
been made a reality he would recommend that the Cudahys
go along. So the state was set for a refinery to be one of the
units in Sinclair's projected company.
59
THE OIL BUSINESS AS I SAW IT
Meantime, I had a few chores of my own. After closing a
trade for the Ardsworth Oil Company at Ardmore, I started
for Tulsa. It was necessary to change trains at Oklahoma
City. While I was in a hotel there waiting for train time, Al
Watts called me from St. Louis and asked me to be in Paw-
huska the next morning, to purchase some of the producing
leases that had been drilled by T. N. Barnsdall. The secretary
of the interior had declared these leases to be excess acreage
beyond the legal limit established for Barnsdall in the Osage
Leasing Act, and had ordered them sold.
At the sale the next day, April 21,1916,1 accordingly pur-
chased the following Barnsdall tracts: Lot 54, with 259 bar-
rels production, for $241,355.84; Lot 68, 58 barrels, $46,505;
Tract 22, 26 barrels, $31,661; Tract 40, 12 barrels, $4,670;
Tract 90, 46 barrels, $71,880; Tract 96, 59 barrels, $51,127:
a total of $447,198.84. Since that April day thirty-eight years
ago, many of the leases purchased have continued producing
and are still owned by the Sinclair Oil and Gas Company. The
Prairie Oil and Gas Company also purchased many leases at
this sale, and they also are now owned by the Sinclair Oil and
Gas Company under the subsequent merger which I have
noted.
I reported to Sinclair on the leases that I had purchased
at the Pawhuska sale and the amount of money spent. "Good
work, Billy," he said. "But you should have spent another
$500,000. We will make a lot of money on that deal. Those
leases will be producing twenty-five years from now." And so
they are, and then some.
While we were purchasing these companies and leases,
Sinclair had decided upon the character and structure of his
large integrated company. He left for New York, accom-
panied by Chandler, and organized the Sinclair Oil and Re-
fining Company, with a capital of fifty million dollars.
The meetings in New York were held in the offices of
60
AN OIL EMPIRE RISES
Spooner, Cotton and Franklin, attorneys. On April 22, 1916,
newspapers carried the story of this new giant in the oil world.
It was of great interest to the entire oil industry, especially
the Midcontinent field. The following article appeared in the
Tulsa World of April 22, 1916:
GIGANTIC OIL CORPORATION FORMED BY HARRY SINCLAIR
WITH $50,000,000 CAPITAL
WILL BE FOURTH LARGEST IN THE ENTIRE COUNTRY
To Combine Production of Cudahy, Chanute
and Milliken Refineries
DEAL IS COMPLETED
Five Leading New York Banks With Tulsa Man
Behind Enterprise
(By J. A. M'Keever)
Formation of a gigantic oil corporation for the purpose of produc-
ing, refining and marketing crude oil and its products was an-
nounced here yesterday by H. F. Sinclair, wealthy oil producer and
former baseball magnate on his return from New York City, where
he had been for several weeks. The new company, which will be
headed by Mr. Sinclair, has a capital stock of $50,000,000 and will
be known as the Sinclair Oil and Refining Company. Mr. Sinclair
is president of the corporation.
With physical assets of over $55,000,000 this company takes
its position as one of the four largest oil corporations in the United
States. The new company will combine the production of the Sin-
clair Oil Company and possibly other well known producing firms
with the production, pipe lines and plants of three of the largest
independent refining companies in the west, according to reports,
which, while not authorized by the organizer, are undoubtedly true.
The three refining companies which have gone into the new com-
bination are the Cudahy, Chanute and Milliken refining companies.
The physical properties of the new corporation to start with will
61
THE OIL BUSINESS AS I SAW IT
have, at a very conservative calculation, a value of $55,000,000.
The new company will be the largest strictly independent oil con-
cern in this country.
Mr. Sinclair returned to Tulsa at noon yesterday from New
York, where he has been successful in organizing the new company
and placing its securities, and stated that five of the largest banks
In New York were behind the proposition. He declined at this time
to give the names of the banks in the deal.
"I have been studying this proposition for a long time," said
Mr. Sinclair, "and I believe the time is ripe for just the kind of an
organization we intend this to be. The combining of the producing,
refining and marketing ends of the oil industry under one manage-
ment gives the ideal method of 'playing the game. 7 "
"Never before in the history of the oil industry," continued
Mr. Sinclair, "did conditions look so bright as they do now. The new
automobiles to be put into service this year alone will receive the
entire gasoline output of sixty thousand barrels of crude petroleum
per day, to say nothing of the vast amount of new tractors, gasoline
engines, etc,, that are being built and the automobiles already in
service. This new company will have ample financial backing to go
into most any kind of a proposition, I want to deny the report that
it is organized to compete with the Standard Oil Company. We
expect to produce oil, to refine it and to sell it in the markets of this
country and the world in competition with anybody."
WON'T DIVULGE DETAILS
Mr. Sinclair declined to give out additional details as to the
plans of the new company beyond admitting that incorporation
papers would be taken out in New York on the 27th of the present
month, giving the organization a great latitude in conducting its
varied lines of business.
However, from very good authority it can be stated that the
new company plans to build a pipe line to the east, where more than
likely a large refinery will be built in addition to the plants now in
operation, to take care of demands for refined products in territory
not reached by the refineries to be taken over by the new corp-
oration.
62
AN OIL EMPIRE RISES
The Sinclair Oil Company which Mr. Sinclair heads since the
dissolution and sale of the producing properties of the famous part-
nership of White and Sinclair, a few months ago, has been rapidly
acquiring production in Oklahoma and today has about 7,000 bar-
rels per day with options on other properties. This production com-
bined with the production owned by the refineries and others inter-
ested in the new company give the Sinclair Oil and Refining
Company a daily production of over 14,000 barrels a day to
start with.
MILES OF PIPE LINES
Several hundred miles of pipe lines owned by the three refineries
go into the deal. The Cudahy Company has 112 miles of pipe line,
the Chanute refinery 128 miles and the Milliken Company 121 miles
in Kansas and Oklahoma.
The three refining companies together own five refining plants
with a total daily refining capacity at the present time of 16,000
barrels of oil per day. These capacities can be easily increased and
all the plants are strictly modern with improved processes for ex-
tracting more gasoline.
Several smaller tracts in other fields were purchased and Thurs-
day W. L. Connelly bid in several hundred barrels of production at
the Osage sale. These properties and others which are under con-
sideration will give the Sinclair Oil and Refining Company a big
start in the production end.
The Milliken Oil Company, subsidiary of the Milliken Refining
Company, owns a half interest in the Minnehoma Oil Company
property at Gushing which has a daily production of six hundred
barrels. 112 miles of main lines owned by the Cudahy Company and
the Milliken Refining Company has a total of 121 miles making a
total of 361 miles of main lines owned by the new concern in Kansas
and Oklahoma.
IMPORTANT FACTOR
The size of the new interests, together with the fact that it will
be an important factor in the oil history of this country, leads to
63
THE OIL BUSINESS AS I SAW IT
the belief that a pipe line to eastern seaboards is only the matter of
a short time.
The size of the refineries purchased by the Sinclair company
compare favorably with any in this part of the country. The Milli-
ken refinery, located at Vinita, Okla., was built in 1910, at a cost of
$1,000,000, but since that time a wax plant has been added and
other improvements added, which will bring the value of the plant
to over $2,000,000. This plant has a capacity of six thousand barrels
daily and this plant has also expended over $35,000 on the Snelling
process for extracting more gasoline from oil than is possible with
the accepted methods.
TAKES OVER CHANUTE
The Chanute Refining Company, another concern taken over
by the new company, has two plants, one of two thousand barrel
capacity, located at Chanute, Kan., and the other, a most modern
affair, with a capacity of four thousand barrels, located at Cush-
ing, Okla.
These plants were built in 1914 and cost $300,000, but addi-
tions to both plants put the combined value up to nearly one and
one-half million dollars.
The Cudahy Refining Company has a large plant at Coffey ville,
Kan., built in 1908, at a cost of $1,000,000, and a small plant built
in 1905, at a cost of $95,000. The capacity of the plants are three
thousand and three hundred barrels respectively.
The other refining companies included in the merger all have
some production, and the Chanute people are drilling several wild-
cat tests. The Sinclair Oil Company has thousands of acres of leases,
several hundred acres of which look mighty good now.
Harry Ford Sinclair, who has organized and who will be the
president and active head of the company, has had a meteoric career
in the oil industry since his entry, about seven years ago. Several
times he has built up fine producing properties and sold out at a big
profit each time, his last sale coming a few months ago when he and
his recent partner, P. J. White, realized close to $10,000,000 from
their production.
64
AN OIL EMPIRE RISES
BASEBALL MAGNATE
Two years ago he appeared on the baseball horizon as one of
the principal factors in the baseball fight between organized ball
and the Federal League. As one of the big backers of the Federal
League he became a power in baseball, as well as in oil circles, and
was largely instrumental in bringing about peace. In return for the
money he put into the new league, Sinclair was given the right to
dispose of many Federal League stars, which he did at a big price.
Although no statement was to be had as to where the general
offices of the new company would be located, it was intimated they
would be in Tulsa, which will largely add to the prestige of this
city as the leading oil center of the world.
The officers of the new corporation were: H. F. Sinclair,
president; Joseph M. Cudahy and W. H. Isom, vice presi-
dents; E. W. Sinclair, secretary and treasurer; E. B. Huston,
assistant secretary and treasurer; A. E. Watts, assistant to
the president. The directors were: H. F. Sinclair, E. W. Sin-
clair, W. H. Isom, Joseph M. Cudahy, 0. M. Gerstung, E. B.
Huston, William Hutteg, E. R. Kemp, J. W. Perry, W. L.
Connelly, G. W. Davidson, J. Fletcher Farrell, Samuel L.
Fuller, H. B. McCune, J. R. Manion, Ray Morris, Acosta
Nichols, Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., H. P. Wright, and Albert
Strauss.
The following subsidiary companies were organized to
handle producing, pipe-line, and refining activities:
Sinclair Refining Company: W. H. Isom, president;
Joseph M. Cudahy and C. A. Bradley, vice presidents; J. R.
Murray, secretary; J. Fletcher Farrell, treasurer; D. S. Par-
melee, assistant secretary and treasurer.
Sinclair Oil and Gas Company: H. F. Sinclair, president;
Joseph M. Cudahy and E. R. Kemp, vice presidents; E. W.
65
THE OIL BUSINESS AS I SAW IT
Sinclair, secretary and treasurer; E. B. Huston, assistant
secretary and treasurer.
Sinclair-Cudaliy Pipe Line Company: Joseph M. Cudahy,
president; H. F. Sinclair and W. L. Connelly, vice presidents;
E. W. Sinclair, secretary and treasurer; E. B. Huston, as-
sistant secretary and treasurer; John R. Manion, general
manager.
All of the properties of the Sinclair Oil Company de-
veloped or purchased prior to or during the organization of
the Sinclair Oil & Refining Corporation were transferred to
the respective companies handling production, pipe lines, and
refineries of that corporation.
Through these consolidations and new companies we
acquired all of the properties previously described and new
production at Garber, Oklahoma, and through the Milliken
Oil and Refining Company we acquired the Slick Oil Com-
pany, the Katy Oil Company, and a one-half interest in the
Leta Kolvin Lease at Drumright. The title to the Kolvin
Lease was to become the subject of litigation extending over
thirty years. Within the last three years the dispute was
finally settled in Sinclair's favor. The price paid for the Milli-
ken Oil and Refining Company, $10,000,000, was at that time
the highest ever paid in Oklahoma for an oil company.
In addition to these properties the following companies
and their producing properties had been purchased: Healdton
Oil and Gas Company, Ardsworth Oil Company, Toxoway
Oil Company, Beaver Oil Company, and Ufer and Galbreath.
Some smaller properties were also purchased.
The New York offices of the Sinclair interests, in the
Equitable Building, 120 Broadway, were rented from Charles
J. Wrightsman, our old friend of the Chaser Oil Company
adventure. All branches of the corporation were busy. My
activities were almost entirely confined to the pipe line com-
pany, with occasional outside assignments. One of these was
66
Zaxamixtle (Golden Lane, south of Tampico, State of Vera
Cruz, Mexico) , about 1918. Two wells on fire, one of 20,000
and one of 40,000 barrels per day.
\V. L. 'Co^Sy^TETWaHs^aM^E. Dougherty,' on
Teapot Dome, December, 1922 the winters were cold.
AN OIL EMPIRE RISES
the purchase of the Adams-Linn Farm in Butler County,
Kansas. Again a trade with Charley Wrightsman.
On another mission I made a trip to Wyoming to look
over some lands owned by the Cudahy family. I went first
from Tulsa to Lander, Wyoming. After inspecting the Cudahy
holdings, I drove to Lost Soldier, where a well was being
drilled with a small Star drilling machine. This well was- com-
pleted in June, 1916, in the First Wall Creek sand, coming in
for about two hundred barrels of oil at a total depth of 269
feet. I little thought that sixteen years later these Lost Soldier
leases were to be part of the properties in the merger between
the Sinclair and Prairie companies. From many different sands
they have produced millions of barrels of oil, and they will
produce many more millions.
Sinclair had no pipe-line organization. We reached into
the Prairie Pipe Line Company and engaged the services of
John R. Manion as general manager; Frank Hadley, chief
engineer; Jim Blake, general superintendent. From the Texas
Company we took J. W. (Jack) Jordan, who was made chief
gauger. Many other pipe-liners were hired away from other
pipe-line companies, and an organization was quickly formed.
Jack Jordan went into the army in World War I, and after his
discharge I put him in charge of properties at Damon Mound,
Texas. When Jim Flanagan wanted a superintendent in
Louisiana, Jack went to Homer. From there he went with me
to Wyoming, then to a vice presidency, and finally to the
executive vice presidency.
A refinery was to be built at East Chicago, Illinois. We
had to build a pipe line from Drumright to East Chicago to
supply oil to it; also many field and gathering lines. The East
Chicago line was for months in 1916 and 1917 the cause of
many headaches in the entire organization. It was a day-and-
night job. Manion and I spent almost all of our nights on
sleepers. During the day we purchased pipe, pumps, engines,
67
THE OIL BUSINESS AS I SAW IT
and the hundred and one other needed requirements. The
right-of-way across Illinois posed a terrific problem, but
finally the line was completed, and oil was being pumped into
the refinery which had meantime been completed.
The building of this line was the subject of much sport
among some of the larger companies. It was declared that we
should have built our refinery in central Illinois, that we never
would get into East Chicago with a pipe line. Again Sinclair
showed up his critics. Manion and Blake deserve much credit
for the successful completion of the line. So also do the right-
of-way men, who fought their way under tremendous diffi-
culties. But with H. F. urging us on, there was never a
thought of failure.
Aside from being one of the largest Midcontinent pro-
ducers of oil, Sinclair, after the formation of the integrated
company in 1916, swiftly became one of the largest purchasers
of crude oil as well. The added quantities of oil were needed
to supplement our own production in supplying our newly
acquired refinery and pipe-line properties. For the purposes
of purchasing crude, we had organized the Sinclair Crude Oil
Purchasing Company.
We as a nation were now only months away from involve-
ment in World War I. The pressure for oil in all its forms in-
creased from week to week. This meant, among other things,
that refiners had to buy steadily, and, when necessary, set the
pace in buying. On December 20, 1916, the Sinclair Oil and
Gas Company advanced the price of Midcontinent oil to
$1.30 a barrel, an increase of 10 cents over the prevailing
price. This was the third time since the Midcontinent field had
been opened that the price on the local market had been
changed by any company other than the Prairie Oil and Gas
Company.
In the meantime, our refineries, under the direction of
W. H. Isom, had been functioning to their capacity. Berry
68
AN OIL EMPIRE RISES
Griffith came into the oil company as a vice president at this
time. He later was elected to the presidency.
The company had been operating for over a year., and
we officials began to have some leisure. I had taken up golf,
but was, and remained, only a dub at it. One afternoon in
July, 1917, Jim Flanagan, John Harrington, and I decided
to play a round. The Tulsa Country Club, as I remember,
had the only golf course in Tulsa. We were members, so there
was where we were to play. The membership of the club was
made up of oilmen, bankers, and businessmen. I can remem-
ber seeing men like Dr. W. A. Cook, T. K. Smith, Tom Chest-
nut, Henry N. Greis, A. E. Bradshaw, John H. Markham, Jr.,
Ernest Connelly, Doug Franchott, S. G. Kennedy, Roger
Kemp and Frank Moore among those who played there.
We joked and chaffed each other as we drove out to the
club that day. We had shoved aside work and we welcomed
the relaxation and companionship in prospect. There was the
usual good-natured banter as we teed off.
A few dark clouds appeared while we were playing the
first seven holes, boding nothing more serious than a possible
shower. We were about to drive from the No. 8 tee when a
rainstorm blew up. We decided to play the hole anyway.
Flanagan and Harrington both drove ahead of me (every-
body always did) . I sliced my drive and had trouble finding
the ball. The two others played on and were a shot ahead of
me. Both were on the green, and I was about twenty-five feet
away when a flaming bolt of lightning crashed.
I was stunned momentarily. When my mind began to
function again, I realized that I was holding my head with
both hands. My caddy, Orville Sinclair, was standing near
me, crying. I noted a red streak on one of his forearms. "Mr.
Flanagan is calling you," he managed to say.
I looked about and saw Jim circling aimlessly some thirty
feet from the green and holding a handkerchief to his mouth.
69
THE OIL BUSINESS AS I SAW IT
I tried to go to him, but had difficulty in controlling my legs.
"What's the matter, Jim?" I asked when I eventually
reached him.
"I'm all right/' he gasped, "but look at John he's dead! "
There lay John, face down, on the green, with his head
over the cup. We turned him over. There was no sign of life.
"A pulrnotor ! " exclaimed Jim, and he started for the club-
house to telephone for one.
One of the caddies had already started to summon help.
The two others stayed with me.
Another cracking flash of lightning split the sky. It sent a
shiver along my spine, but caused no further damage. The
caddies and I then started for the clubhouse. Meantime R. D.
Stauffer and Police Commissioner Al Funk, who had been in
the clubhouse, got into a car and started driving across the
links to the No. 8 green. Al said I fell down twice in the short
distance I had covered before the two reached me. Stauffer
got me into the car and took me to the clubhouse. Funk went
to where Harrington lay.
Jim had got in touch with the Tulsa Fire Department, and
a few minutes later a squad of firemen, with a pulmotor,
arrived. But John was beyond resuscitation. The lightning
bolt had killed him instantly. He was buried at Wellsville,
New York, his birthplace.
My ears were affected by the shock I had experienced, and
for several days I was partly deaf.
70
6
BUSINESS, BULLETS,
AJYTS IN THE PANTS
EARLY IN 1917 Harry F. Sinclair made a trade with E. M.
Sims, of Houston, Texas, by which he acquired the Free-
port and Tampico Oil Corporation. This corporation owned
as subsidiaries the Freeport Mexican Fuel Oil Company and
the Freeport Mexican Transportation Company, as well as
a refinery at Mereaux, Louisiana, later. The name of the Free-
port Mexican Fuel Oil Company was later changed to Mexi-
can Sinclair Oil Corporation, and I was then elected president.
The Freeport Mexican Transportation Company owned
two tankers, the Panuco and the Tamest, each of about thirty
thousand barrels carrying capacity. It also owned two Ohio
River tank steamers, which hauled barges loaded with oil
from Panuco on the Panuco River to a small terminal at Tam-
pico, near the Gulf of Mexico. There this oil was transferred
to the tankers, some to be taken to Mereaux, where it was
refined, and the rest to Galveston, Texas, where it was sold
as fuel oil. The Panuco and the Tamesi were the start of the
magnificent fleet of tankers now owned by the Sinclair Oil
Corporation.
At the time of these purchases from Sims, I was moved to
Houston from which point I was to supervise Mexico opera-
71
THE, OIL BUSINESS AS I SAW IT
tions. Al Watts was made president of the three companies,
and I vice president. The Sinclair Refining Company now
began construction of the Houston refinery on the ship chan-
nel. I was made a vice president of this company. In addition
to the posts named, 1 was elected a director of the Union
National Bank, Houston ; and I served in that capacity during
the remainder of my residence in the city. The manifold re-
sponsibilities I had accepted kept me busy.
James P. Flanagan, of Tulsa, was elected treasurer of
these various Sinclair units and sent to Houston. When the
Sinclair Oil and Gas Company of Louisiana established its
main office in Shreveport, he moved to that city as president
of the corporation. He was succeeded as treasurer in Houston
by John W. Stanford of Independence, Kansas.
It was necessary for me to make many trips to Tampico.
Most of them were made to our tankers. Some were made by
rail, but Mexico was in such a turbulent state that rail travel
was slow and dangerous. Friendly relations prevailed among
oil companies operating in Mexico and owning tankers, and
it was not unusual for me to ride to and from Tampico on ships
other than our own.
In November, 1917, I made my first trip to Mexico. Al
Watts, John Manion, N.G.M. Luykx, and some others were
in the party. The trip was made by train through Laredo,
Texas, to Tampico. It was a dilly. No Pullmans, no diners.
Manion and I came back on a Standard Oil Company tanker,
the Charles D. Pratt, and had a pleasant time. Watts and the
others drove back to Laredo by auto a nightmare trip.
Manion and I spent a week or more in Mexico visiting the
properties and arranging for future work.
Dan Moran, then vice president in charge of affairs for
the Texas Company in Mexico, had a nice house in the foreign
colony district of Tampico, and I spent many of my nights
with Mm while in that city.
72
BUSINESS, BULLETS, ANTS IN THE PANTS
Henry W. Sharp was our resident manager, with an office
in Tampico, and Walter Tschudin was assistant manager. Oil
produced from the wells at Panuco, as I have previously indi-
cated, was taken down the Panuco River in wooden barges
pushed by stern-wheel steamers of the Ohio River type and
pumped into tankers for delivery at Houston and at Havana
and other ports in Cuba ; as well as to our refinery at Mereaux ;
Louisiana. It was a slow and costly procedure, as the Panuco
River was full of turns and twists. We later built a pump
station on the Zurita lease, put in eleven miles of pipe line,
and delivered oil to barges below most of the curves. This
pipe line eliminated thirty-two miles of river hauling. In addi-
tion we built near the entrance of the Panuco into the Gulf
of Mexico a large terminal and tank farm, also large docks,
where we could load two tankers at one time.
Our operations were extended to the southern field, par-
ticularly to the Golden Lane, a narrow oil belt between Taxn-
pico and Tuxpan. The largest well that I remember our drill-
ing was No. 1, Lot 114 Chinampa. As I remember, this well
produced sixty thousand to seventy thousand barrels daily.
None of the wells lasted long, because we produced them to
their full capacity and naturally they drew in salt water fast.
This No. 1 Chinampa was the first well in Mexico, to my
knowledge, to be produced under back pressure, which, sim-
ply stated, is the controlled application of natural gas pressure
in the sand to the natural lifting or flow of oil up the well.
On one of my visits to the Golden Lane I stopped at this
well. It had been shut in for several months. I wondered if
the well would again produce oil if the valves were opened
only a little; in other words, if the valves were "cracked." We
decided to try out this theory. After several days' production
of salt water only, the well started to produce oil. In the mean-
time the Atlantic Refining Company, which had been running
the oil to its station about four miles distant, had taken out
73
THE OIL BUSINESS AS I SAW IT
its eight-inch pipe line. After several conferences we induced
the company to replace its line, and we produced about one
thousand barrels of oil daily from this well for quite a long
period. As I remember, we sold the oil at 51 cents a barrel
at the well.
The Zurita lease at Panuco had a wonderful recovery.
No. 3 well must have produced about 20,000,000 barrels of
oil during its life. This was a heavy black oil, 11.2 degrees.
Revolutions were almost always on tap in Mexico at that
time, and we were continually in trouble with one or another
of the many self-appointed leaders.
During one of my visits to Mexico we took a trip in a
company-owned launch, the Clara, to view some leases that
had been offered to us. Accompanying me were Walter
Tschudin, assistant manager of Sinclair operations in Mexico;
Grover Clark, W. T. Lestergette, two Mexican boatmen, and
Wan Wang, a Chinese cook. The leases were up the Tamesi
River. The launch had good eating and sleeping accommoda-
tions and was quite comfortable in general.
On the return trip we decided to put in to shore, catch
some fish, and have our dinner, then proceed to Tampico. Just
as we were about to give the order to the boatmen there was
an explosion, and the forward part of the boat burst into
flames. The two boatmen were caught in the fire and both
jumped overboard, swimming to shore. The Chinese cook,
who could not swim, also leaped into the water. Clark made
an effort to save him but failed, and Wan Wang drowned.
Tschudin and Lestergette tied a rope to the rail of the boat
at the stern and swam to the shore, taking with them the other
end of the rope, which they tied to a tree. I went hand-over-
hand on this rope to the shore.
There was a small native house near where we landed.
Clark and Lestergette secured a boat, made grappling-hooks,
and rowed to the spot where Wan Wang had sunk. They re-
74
BUSINESS, BULLETS, ANTS IN THE PANTS
covered his body. Late that night a native boat came down
the river. We hailed it and were taken aboard and on to Tam-
pico. We put the cook's body in a small boat and towed it
with us. The launch meantime had burned to the water's edge
and sunk.
We were a sorry-looking outfit when we arrived at Tam-
pico. We had used our shirts to make bandages for one of the
Mexican boatmen, who had been badly burned. We had lost
our boots, and I had lost my glasses.
Another time, Tschudin and I went to Tampico from the
lower country. We were in a fast launch belonging to the com-
pany. While we were going through the Chihole Canal, bandits
on the shore started shooting at us. Walter and I at once lay
down in the bottom of the boat. Antonio, our boatman, sat at
his post, opened the engine to its top speed, and ran us through
the fusillade without anyone's being hurt.
I had been told that these Mexican outlaws were notori-
ously poor marksmen, and our experience tended to sub-
stantiate this view. Nevertheless, the emotion stirred by those
whistling bullets was something less than pure delight.
While well No. 1 on Lot 1 14 Chinampa was being drilled,
we had our camp about three-quarters of a mile south of the
well site. We walked between the camp and the well on the
narrow-gauge railroad which had been built to transport oil-
field supplies. After spending a night at the camp, Tschudin
and I rose early one morning to walk to the well, which was
about ready for completion.
He had gone a short distance when Walter began slapping
his legs, jumping, and dancing about in a most undignified
fashion. I watched his antics in amazement. Although a good-
natured fellow, Walter had never shown any disposition to
play the clown. Besides that, the expression on his face indi-
cated clearly he was far from being in a frolicsome mood. He
never had shown the smallest sign of mental derangement, but
75
THE OIL BUSINESS AS I SAW IT
what could be wrong? To my urgent demand, "What's the
matter, Walter?" he made no reply.
After several minutes of this arresting acrobatic perform-
ance, Walter started on a dead run for the camp, emitting
wild yelps and strange, blood-freezing maledictions. I fol-
lowed him back to the camp, where I ascertained the cause of
his highly original show. During the night, while he slept, an
army of ants had crawled into his trousers and camped there.
They gave no evidence of their presence until he began to
move briskly about. Then they gave plenty. "Ants in the
pants" was something more than a figure of speech.
The next year, in 1918, the American Oil Producers in
Mexico engaged the services of James R. Garfield, former
Secretary of the Interior, and Nelson Rhodes, a Los Angeles
attorney, to appear before the Mexican government for con-
sideration of a proposed amendment to the Mexican consti-
tution. Garfield, a member of the Cleveland law firm of Gar-
field, Garfield and Howe, was a son of the martyred president.
The amendment under discussion affected the interests of
Americans with oil holdings in Mexico.
Al Watts was selected to go to Mexico City with these men
to counsel with them on matters as they developed. Watts
asked Henry Sharp, our manager in Mexico, and me to accom-
pany him on the mission. We spent several weeks in the con-
ferences that followed. During our stay there we made many
new acquaintances, among them Jules Bertheir, a mining man.
Bertheir one day invited Watts, Sharp, Garfield, Rhodes,
Van Trees, an export agent, Carl H. Smith, a banker, and me
for dinner at his home. It was arranged that Van should call
at the hotel to accompany Watts, Sharp, and me to Bertheir's.
Sharp was indisposed and unable to go with us. Before we left
the hotel Van asked me how much money I had with me. "A
couple of hundred dollars," I replied.
76
BUSINESS, BULLETS, ANTS IN THE PANTS
"That's not enough/' Van responded, with a shake of his
head. "We're going to play poker after dinner."
"Who's been talking to you about my poker playing and
giving you the idea that two hundred dollars isn't enough for
an evening?" I asked.
"No one/' he returned, "but we undoubtedly will play a
stiff game."
Thus forewarned, I went to Sharp's room and borrowed
six hundred dollars from him. I felt sure I wouldn't lose that
much, regardless of how stiff the game might be. Watts,
equally desirous of being prepared for whatever eventualities
the game might hold, went across the street to the Sanborn
Restaurant and cashed some traveler's checks.
Following the dinner, Garfield and Rhodes, having some
business to attend to, left. We then went to Bertheir's gun
room. A card table had been set up there, with chips at the
five chairs placed around it. Under each stack of chips was a
slip of paper marked "2250." Interpreting this as meaning
$2,250, I made a quick resolution to play cautiously, for
sterner competition than I was accustomed to seemed to be
in prospect.
Watts is a worse player than I am. (Ask H.F.S.) Getting
him aside, I advised in an undertone, "Play 'em close; I'll do
the same." And we exchanged glances which meant that if we
were headed for defeat we at least would go down fighting.
As we were about to begin playing, Bertheir handed Smith
a folded sheet of paper, remarking as he did so, "Carl, I'd like
to have you read this aloud when we finish the game. I'm sure
it will be of interest to our friends from New York." His action
stirred a moment's curiosity in my mind, and then was for-
gotten in the excitement of the game.
We played till about midnight. Luck had been gracious
to both Watts and me. Imposing stacks of blue chips stood
77
THE OIL BUSINESS AS I SAW IT
in front of us. A rough calculation indicated that our com-
bined winnings were in the neighborhood of four thousand
dollars. We were about to cash in when Bertheir said casually,
"Well, Carl, it's time to read our letter now."
The "letter" revealed that the game to which Watts and I
had devoted our utmost craft and strategy was the kind regu-
larly played by Bertheir and his friends and that the chips
stacked in front of us at the start had represented, not $2,250,
but 22.50 pesos, or about $11.25 in United States currency.
There was a moment of silence as Watts and I awoke to
the fact that we were victims of a practical joke, then laugh-
ter, in which all joined. Any chagrin which Watts and I felt
was not produced by the sudden deflation of our evening's
loot, but by the realization that we had been taken in so guile-
lessly by those three conspiring pranksters.
Mrs. Bertheir entered the room at this juncture. She was
returning from a Red Cross meeting, for this was during
World War I. Watts and I handed our "four thousand dollars"
to her for the Red Cross.
78
7
THE CEASELESS QUEST
By THE TIME the war had closed in November, 1918, the
Sinclair Oil and Refining Company, parent of all our com-
panies and the center of their integration, had expanded
greatly in all of its operations production, pipe lines, refin-
ing, and sales. We had established the Sinclair name widely
in the marketing of fuels and lubricants. We were now well
established also as purchasers and refiners, as well as
producers.
All through the war, the motor car and truck manufactur-
ing industries had been growing. Now, as peace returned, the
nation and the world were to see an enormous expansion of
these industries, the construction of thousands of miles of
public highways, paved streets, and all of the other appurten-
ances necessary to fast transportation by motor car, bus, and
airplane. For the war had not only provided the impetus for
the extension of family transportation to America's millions,
but had taken the airplane out of the curiosity stage and made
it a potential of tremendous importance to our future. All of
these developments were to have a profound effect upon the
oil industry in general, and upon the Sinclair companies in
particular.
79
THE OIL BUSINESS AS I SAW IT
By well-planned purchases and extensions, the Sinclair
companies were to achieve in 1919 and after an excellent dis-
tributing organization. In June, 1919, for example, Harry
Sinclair purchased the controlling interest in the Union Oil
Company of Philadelphia. This company had many filling
stations, which gave us outlets for gasoline and refined
products. During these years also the refining company had
been erecting filling stations in various locations. The refinery
on the ship channel at Houston had been completed, also a
refinery at Kansas City, Kansas. To these extensive refining
and marketing facilities was added the Pierce Oil Corporation
a decade later, by purchase in June, 1930. This company had
a good refinery at Tampico, Mexico, and filling stations in
many cities of Mexico. It also had a small refinery at Sand
Springs, Oklahoma, which we acquired at the time of
purchase.
The New York office had meantime been moved from 120
Broadway to the Liberty Tower Building, 45 Nassau Street.
The corporation purchased the building in February, 1921,
where it remained until it moved to 630 Fifth Avenue, New
York. Here it retained offices until July, 1951, when it moved
to the Sinclair Oil Building at 600 Fifth Avenue, New York.
Soon after the Sinclair Oil and Refining Company came
into existence, other oil companies were organized. Some of
these grew into huge corporations. Some fell by the way or
were merged with others. Among the signally successful ven-
tures was the Skelly Oil Company, which, under the leader-
ship of W. G. (Bill) Skelly 3 has had a remarkable growth.
Bill Skelly was and is a real oilman. He learned the busi-
ness the hard way. He was a tool-dresser, a driller, and did all
the work that must be done on an oil lease. He is the only man
in Tulsa who was at the head of a large oil company thirty
years ago and still holds the same position. The heads of all
the other large companies have been changed many times.
80
THE CEASELESS QUEST
Bill has surrounded himself with able lieutenants, including
C. C. Herndon, Al Cashman, J. A. Freeman, and others of
like ability.
Warren Petroleum Corporation is another of the success-
ful producing companies. It was organized in March, 1922,
with $300,000 capital, and from an humble start has grown
to a corporation with a capital and surplus of $50,000,000.
Bill Warren is an able executive with plenty of vision. With
the assistance of Joe LaFortune, Howard Felt, Jack Padon,
Jim Allison, Don Connelly, Ed Calvert, Sam Hulse, Bill
Hartz, and others, he has built one of the outstanding com-
panies in the Midcontinent.
E. W. Marland, like many another in his time, started out
with a great head of steam for large accomplishments. His
progress was more by spurts than steady, as John Joseph
Mathews has shown in his excellent biography of Marland
entitled Life and Death of an Oilman. His ambition was for a
great integrated company, but he fell upon hard times, bor-
rowed heavily, and in the end lost control of the Marland Oil
Company, which was absorbed by Continental as the Great
Depression began. In his subsequent political career, as a
representative in Congress from Oklahoma and as governor
of the state, he proved himself capable of constructive think-
ing, even of an imaginative grasp of many of the problems of
his time. But he seemed to have lost some of the great resolu-
tion of his youth, and at the close of his governorship, he
retired to private life and died shortly thereafter.
J. S. (Josh) Cosden, a colorful character, organized the
Cosden Oil and Gas Corporation and operated the Cosden
Refinery in West Tulsa, now controlled by the Mid-Con-
tinent Petroleum Corporation, which in recent years has
attained a capacity of 45,000 barrels per day. This large and
efficient oil company is headed by R. W. McDowell as
president.
81
THE OIL BUSINESS AS I SAW IT
Phillips Petroleum Company was incorporated in 1917 by
Frank and L. E. Phillips. Frank was president of the com-
pany from its incorporation until April ? 1938, when he was
elected chairman of the board of directors. This title he re-
tained until his death on August 23, 1950. In April, 1938,
K. S. (Boots) Adams was elected president. Adams was made
chairman of the board on April 24 ? 1951, and Paul Endacott
succeeded him as president on the same date.
This company has grown from a modest little enterprise
to one of the large integrated oil companies. Much of the
credit can be attributed to the leadership of Frank Phillips.
Frank was a clever businessman and an oil executive who
believed in research, which has richly paid off in his company.
During the last few years of Frank's life he paid little atten-
tion to details, leaving most of them for Boots to handle, and
the job was well done. While I am not so well acquainted with
Mr. Endacott, I know him for an able successor to the com-
pany's splendid former heads. In Charles P. Dimit, vice presi-
dent in charge of production, the Phillips Petroleum Com-
pany has, in my opinion, one of the best men in the producing
part of the business.
Henry L. Doherty was the organizer and the man behind
the gun for Cities Service Company. He built it into one of
the great integrated organizations of American oil. Doherty
was, I believe, the first man to advocate the unitization of
leases. The idea was slow to be adopted, but is now an ac-
cepted practice in the industry. In fact, nearly all companies
are strongly in favor of it, and many units are now formed
each year. Because it is one of the great advances in the field
of conservation, I should describe it for the reader's informa-
tion as well as for the record of Henry L. Doherty.
Unitization is the oil industry's own interpretation of the
law of the conservation of energy. It works like this: if five
companies have adjoining leases in an unproven area, they
82
.** &*
-^A**^V-,--:,
x :H;;,:^^-r ..'
> A ' * <" * fr%^* '
--^^J
^
Teapot Dome 39 miles north of Casper.
Well No. 14, SW 1 4 2-3S-78, Teapot Dome, flowing at a rate of
2,000 barrels per hour, 41 gravity oil, through 12 1 /> -inch casing from
a depth of only 1,515 feet in shale. Drilled October 5, 1922.
Standard (wooden) drilling rig
used in the early 1920's.
Large gas well on Teapot Dome
being closed in ( W. L. Connelly far
right; Jack Jordan closing valve).
Steam drilling boiler of the type
used in the early 1920's with stand-
ard drilling tools (cable), fueled
from gas on location, or oil, coal,
or wood.
THE CEASELESS QUEST
may join together and drill one well, instead of seperate wells
upon five properties. A necessary adjunct of this is the unitiza-
tion of royalty interests, thus bringing all five royalty owners
to share in a common royalty pot. Thus, if oil is produced from
the single well drilled under unit management, the working
interests of the oil companies and the interests of royalty
holders are both split five ways. More than one well, ob-
viously, can be drilled, but unit operation applies also to all
wells drilled beyond the first.
Great savings can be achieved by unitization, but there
are always two sides to a question. Individual interest still
counts for much, and it is not always possible to realize the
advantages, including the long-term production of larger
amounts of oil in a given area, from unitization. But the
helter-skelter drilling, production, and other activities in the
beginnings of the great Oklahoma City field should rise to
haunt those who oppose rational methods in the production
of oil.
Doherty's empire is now headed by Alton Jones, as chair-
man of the board of Cities Service. Under his able leadership
the company has grown tremendously. The producing unit of
this company has been a great factor in the producing end of
the oil industry as a whole. A. W. Ambrose was president for
a number of years and was universally recognized as an able
executive. After his retirement, Pete (as he was known to
many of us) and his wife were victims of an automobile acci-
dent while driving from Tulsa to Bartlesville. His successor
as president is S. B. Irelan.
The Sunray Oil Corporation, by purchasing and merging
different producing and refining companies and properties,
and by adding to its own pipe-line division, has, under the
able management of F. B. Parriot, Clarence H. Wright, W. C.
Whaley, and F. L. Martin, grown into one of the really large
integrated independent oil companies.
83
THE OIL BUSINESS AS I SAW IT
The growth of the Continental Oil Company occupies, in
reality, the period of the last quarter century from the time
Continental took over the faltering Mar land empire, with Dan
Moran, one of the hardest-hitting oil executives in the history
of the industry, in the position of main responsibility as presi-
dent. What drive, efficiency, and imagination can do in the oil
business was demonstrated with extraordinary brilliance by
Dan, who, like many another top executive, died relatively
young. He was succeeded by L. F. McCullum, and the com-
pany, with its far-flung holdings and extensive interests, from
production and refining to marketing, continues its growth.
No traveller to Ponca City, Oklahoma, will fail to be im-
pressed with the evidences of Continental's vast operations
there.
In referring to these companies and their development,
I am interested less in tipping my hat to contemporaries who,
in typically American fashion, have built great properties
from small beginnings, than in sketching what I consider a
good deal more important. It is organizational qualities, with-
out which the oil industry fails to be an industry at all and
could occupy a position no more important than a one-man
sluicing operation in the early days of gold. Oil is an extractive
industry, to be sure, but the men and companies I have men-
tioned have helped to give it scope, orderly development, and
a destiny closely associated with the best welfare of man.
Money, success, size of operation these things, I must
admit, are important to us all. But more than sixty years of
association with oilmen has convinced me that the genuine,
fourteen carat oilman is one who thinks and acts in industrial
terms, rather than as if he were constantly on the verge of
developing a big bonanza. In fact, a good many people who
developed bonanzas either failed to realize big profit from
them or subsequently went broke.
I think it can be reduced to this: oil began as a game and
84
THE CEASELESS QUEST
has ended up as large-scale industry. In the last half-century
I have never been far away from the latter type of develop-
ment. Maybe I like it best that way.
85
8
TEAPOT DOME AND BAKU
I REMAINED in charge of our Mexican operations until the
latter part of 192 1, when I was called to the New York office
to look after some special work, but retained my residence in
Houston. I returned to the Houston office in 1922. In April of
that year I was called to New York again and was told that
the Mammoth Oil Company had been organized, that it had
obtained a lease on Teapot Dome in Wyoming, and that I was
to have charge of the operations. I could move to Denver or
to Casper. After my first visit to Casper I decided that this
city, which was much closer to the scene of operations than
Denver, would be the better place for my office and residence.
Accordingly, I moved my family to Casper, where we lived
for six years.
I thoroughly enjoyed the people of Casper and acquired
among them many lasting friends. Here I met Pat Sullivan,
who had been an early mayor of the city and was later a state
senator. He was subsequently appointed by Governor Frank
Emerson to fill an unexpired term in the United States Senate.
I also met E. J. Sullivan, Judge T. Blake Kennedy, and P. C.
Spencer. Harry Hynds was among close friends that I made
in Wyoming. Charles (Red) Hill, of Denver, who spent much
86
TEAPOT DOME AND BAKU
of his time in Wyoming, was another. There too I met W. H.
Geiss, a geologist, who later went to Los Angeles, where he
attained prominence as an independent oil producer. Other
warm friends included James Donoghue, R. S. Shannon, and
Fred Goodstein.
When I moved to Casper I had a real job on my hands,
and no organization. Frank Algeo was in Casper as manager
of the Sinclair interests, which included some production in
Salt Creek and at Osage. With his aid I recruited a force.
There were twenty-two wells to be started at once. M. J.
Delaney, of Dallas, Texas, an old friend of mine from the
Ohio days, moved in his Shamrock Drilling Company and
went to work. Elmer M. Cooper, of Chanute, Kansas, also
moved in a number of drilling tools and did some of the
drilling.
The Dome was forty miles from Casper, with only nine
miles of paving, and this was on the east half of the road only.
The west side was unpaved. This paving, by the way, was the
only hard-surface road in Wyoming at that time. We first
built four and one-half miles of road from the main Salt Creek
road into the Dome, and over fifty miles of telephone line.
We then established a temporary camp to house three hundred
men. Later we built ten four-room modern houses. We also
built two large dormitories and a mess hall to seat ISO at a
time, with a suitable kitchen. Next came a warehouse, built
on the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad track at Casper,
a large warehouse at the Dome, a machine shop, and a large
garage. Nearly fifty miles of water and gas lines were laid,
buried five feet deep. A sewage-disposal plant was con-
structed. All of the material needed on the Dome had to be
hauled from Casper. Several 55,000-barrel tanks were erected,
and a pipe line was laid to Kansas City.
During all this time we were bringing in wells, some good,
some fair. The work was started in June. The first organiza-
87
THE OIL BUSINESS AS I SAW IT
tion that I got together was not up to handling the job in the
way I wanted it done. I made many changes and called in Jack
Jordan from Homer, Louisiana, and made him superinten-
dent. We had better results from then on. Eventually, I suf-
fered a breakdown and had to leave the job for about four
months.
In October, 1922, we drilled in the biggest well ever com-
pleted in Wyoming. This was No. 1 on the southwest half of
Section 2-38-78, and was the fifteenth well drilled. The well
came in unexpectedly at a depth, in shale, of 1,655 feet. It
flowed through 1,555 feet of 12 y 2 -inch pipe, a solid stream of
41-degree gravity oil. The stream struck the crown-block be-
fore it broke. We had no line to the well, and the ground was
full of ravines and cracks. Most of the oil was lost. By mid-
night we had a pipe line to the well, but before we had it con-
nected the well quit flowing. I am positive from tests made by
damming up a gully there that the well made at the start over
two thousand barrels an hour. It was the biggest well that I
have ever seen in the United States, save one, the Lucas
gusher at Spindletop, Texas.
Another large well was No. 25, drilled on the northeast
part of the Dome. This well came in for over two hundred
barrels an hour. It was flowing wild, and we made every effort
to shut it in, at the same time scraping a basin to hold the flow.
We would pick up the oil from the pond thus formed and pump
it into the storage tanks. A team of horses slipped into the
pond and drowned. During our efforts to shut the well in there
was a terrific rain and electrical storm. The well was making a
great amount of gas, which, on account of the rain, settled
close to the ground. This greatly increased the danger of ex-
plosion and fire from lightning. This well and the big shale
well were the only big ones drilled on the Dome. No. 25 was
flowing from the Second Wall Creek sand.
While development of Teapot Dome was under way, the
88
TEAPOT DOME AND BAKU
United States government instituted a suit for cancellation of
the Mammoth Oil Company lease. Two receivers for the prop-
erty were appointed by Federal Judge T. Blake Kennedy in
his court in Cheyenne. Admiral Joseph Strauss was appointed
the Navy representative and Al Watts, Mammoth's repre-
sentative. I was appointed manager for the receivers.
If you want to know what nerve-wrenching distraction is,
just try to obey orders from two receivers with conflicting
interests. Admiral Strauss gave up in disgust and resigned.
Commander Harry A. Stuart was then named Navy receiver.
Stuart was a fine gentleman, and he and I got along well.
Stuart wound up his career as an admiral. The Navy had
another official on the ground in the person of Commander
W. H. Osgood, who filled the post of observer. He was quite
fair, and the four of us Watts, Stuart, Osgood, and I had no
great difficulty in working together smoothly.
The first trial of the suit for cancellation of the lease was
before Judge Kennedy, at Cheyenne, and it was decided in
favor of the Mammoth Oil Company. An appeal was taken
by the government to the Circuit Court of Appeals at St. Paul,
Minnesota. This court reversed the opinion of Judge Ken-
nedy. Mammoth Oil Company appealed to the United States
Supreme Court. The Supreme Court, in 1927, upheld the Cir-
cuit Court decision that the lease to the Mammoth Oil Com-
pany was illegal and subject to cancellation.
We were ordered to close the receivership and turn the
lease over to the Navy. All of the tanks, pipe lines, buildings,
wells, and equipment went with the lease, and at midnight on
December 31, 1927, Teapot Dome was shut down, probably
like grandfather's clock, "never to run again." So ended nearly
six years 3 expenditures of money, time, and effort. Inciden-
tally, the receivers paid into the court over $3,000,000.
Before the receivership was established, I had suffered the
breakdown already mentioned and had been advised by my
89
THE OIL BUSINESS AS I SAW IT
doctors to take a trip away from Casper. The altitude, about
5,200 feet, was producing a nervous condition. Mrs. Con-
nelly and I, Mr. and Mrs. Elmer M. Cooper, and my secre-
tary, Margaret Dougherty, left for Texas. After a short time
in Houston, we went to Mexico City for three weeks, then to
Tampico, where we spent ten days. We next took a trip on our
tanker, the A. E. Watts, and went to Havana, where we spent
two weeks more. By this time I was feeling fine. We went to
New York, then to Washington, where our children were in
school, and then back to Casper. We were there only a short
time when we made our first trip to Yellowstone Park.
While in Wyoming I organized the Repollo Oil Company,
to function as a wildcat operator. I selected three or four
names, but the secretary of state rejected each because of its
similarity to a name already adopted by some other company.
I often have been asked how I came to hit upon the name
eventually approved. Here is the answer: the company's
auditor in Wyoming was Sinclair Reekie; the treasurer was
\V. W. Pollock. Using part of the name of each of these men,
I came out with "Repollo." The company was merged later
with the Sinclair Wyoming Oil Company, which in turn was
merged into the Sinclair Oil and Gas Company.
Also while I was living in Casper, the Rocky Mountain
Oil and Gas Association was organized in 1922. Among those
attending the first meeting, held in the office of the Consoli-
dated Royalty Company, were former Governor B. B. Brooks,
Clarence Richardson, E. J. Sullivan, James P. Kern (later
United States senator from Missouri), M. J. Foley, Bob
Ellison, and myself. Brooks was elected president, and I vice
president.
This organization, starting with a dozen or so names on
its roll, now has a membership of several hundred, exerting an
important influence in its field. In view of the development
which already has taken place in the Rocky Mountain states
90
TEAPOT DOME AND BAKU
and the further development in prospect, the association could
easily become the largest of its kind.
The fact that I am still alive and writing this account at
the age of eighty-one cannot be traced to any tranquillity in
the Casper years. I have outlined briefly the main course of
events between 1922 and 1927. In the midst of these busy
times, in May, 1923, I received a wire from Al Watts asking
me to come to New York as soon as possible. I left that same
afternoon and stopped between trains in Toledo and ordered
a suit of clothes.
On my arrival in New York I reported to Watts's office.
He said that Harry Sinclair wanted to see me at once. When
I called on Sinclair his greeting was, "Have you a passport?"
"I knew that New York was fast filling with foreigners,"
I replied, "but I hadn't heard it was necessary to have a pass-
port to enter."
"It is not so bad as that," laughed Sinclair, "but we are
leaving on Saturday for Europe, and you are to be one of the
party. We will arrange for passports tomorrow morning.
Watts will give you all the necessary information about the
trip."
This was on Thursday at about 11 A. M., and we were to
leave on the Homeric at 10 o'clock Saturday forenoon. Our
children were in school in Washington. I made arrangements
for them to come to New York that afternoon, to be with me
at my sailing. Watts was unable to say how long we would be
gone, but believed it would be at least two months.
I called Mrs. Connelly in Casper and told her of the Euro-
pean trip. It would be impossible for her to get to New York
before we sailed. I had quite a bit of shopping to do, as I had
come to New York with only a small wardrobe. I called the
tailor in Toledo and told him I had to have that suit by Sat-
urday morning. He promised it, and it was delivered to me
at 2 A. M. Saturday.
91
THE OIL BUSINESS AS I SAW IT
Friday was a hectic day getting ready. Part of the morn-
ing was taken up in getting the passports, and the rest of the
time was devoted to shopping. I foolishly bought a trunk.
Never again in all the sea voyages I made did I ever burden
myself with one. After taking that confounded trunk as far
as Paris I stored it there, to be picked up on my return.
On the trip for the Sinclair interests were Harry F. Sin-
clair, Elisha Walker, A. E. Watts, William S. Mowris, Archie
Roosevelt, Thomas W. White, Grattan Stanford, Rod Cran-
dall, I, and a male secretary. Also in the party were Bill
Loucks, Bob Law, and Mason Day, these three representing
the Barnsdall International Oil Company.
Not until we were aboard the ship did I learn the whole
purpose of the journey. The Russian government had confis-
cated all oil properties owned by foreign companies and was
operating them for the government. Mason Day had obtained
from the Russians a contract giving a number of concessions
in the Baku area to the Barnsdall International Oil Company.
In accordance with an agreement which Day had made with
Sinclair, our company was to take an interest with Barnsdall.
Some of us were to visit Baku, inspect these leases, and start
the drilling of some wells.
We landed at Southampton and proceeded to London. We
spent two weeks in London, always keeping in touch with a
Russian named Krassin, who represented the Soviet govern-
ment there. We had plenty of time to visit places of interest in
and around London. We crossed the Channel and spent sev-
eral days in Paris.
It should be explained here that the weeks spent in sight-
seeing were no part of the plans formulated before we left
New York. And developments revealed that our party need
not have been in such a feverish rush to sail from home. Rus-
sia was our destination, but we could not go to that country
until we received word that Soviet officials were ready for us.
92
TEAPOT DOME AND BAKU
So we decided that instead of cooling our heels in a London
hotel we might as well see points of interest within easy reach.
Tom White and I, with ancestral roots in Ireland, decided
that here was an opportunity to visit the island, for which we
both entertained a warm feeling. None of the rest of the
party went. We landed at Kingston early on a Sunday morn-
ing. The customs officials examined our baggage. We were
then searched for arms. As a soldier who was to search me
approached, we both laughed. He was at least 6 feet 6 inches
tall. I am 5 feet 5. 1 suggested that he give me a box to stand
on. As I had no weapons, the search was soon over.
Monday we spent doing Dublin. On Tuesday morning I
took a train to Newry, in County Down, northern Ireland.
The Newry River, dividing line at that point between southern
and northern Ireland, was fortified on both sides with barri-
cades of sandbags. Both sides bristled with soldiers. The
hostile feeling between these two sections of Ireland at that
period was the cause of the warlike preparations.
In Newry I hired a Dodge car and a driver and drove to
Burren Chapel, the ancestral home of the Connelly family.
Burren Chapel is a small hamlet. We stopped our car at a
small grocery and notion store. A girl sat on the store porch.
"Are there any Connellys around here?" I asked.
"Glory be to God, there's nothing but Connellys and their
relations!" she cried. "I'm one."
With such a prospect confronting me, I decided to seek
out the nearest related Connelly whose name had been given
me, an Owen Connelly, and I inquired for him. My friend on
the porch said he lived down the road about a mile. Before we
reached his home we saw three men at a gravel pit. Two were
working and one was looking on. I made a mental bet that the
one looking on was a relation. We stopped the car, and I asked
if they knew Owen Connelly. The watcher came over to the
car and said, "I am Owen Connelly." I won my bet.
93
THE OIL BUSINESS AS I SAW IT
Owen got into the car with us and we drove to his home,
which was small but comfortable. His wife made tea and
served it with small cakes. A man named McCoy, who had
married a sister of Owen's, lived across the road. We visited
his home. McCoy claimed to be one hundred years old, but
his sight was so good he wore no glasses. He said he knew my
grandfather and grandmother, who had left Ireland in 1842
for the United States.
We drove down the road about a mile, where McCoy
showed me an iron gate hung on a stone post. This gate was at
a lane which entered the grounds of my great-grandfather's
place. The ruins of a stone house of fair size were still there.
McCoy said that my great-grandfather was a "gentlemin"
who had race horses, wore a silk hat, and carried a gold-
headed cane. At one time he had owned four hundred acres
of land and a linen mill at Warren's Point. The mill had been
taxed out of business by the English. (Taxes entered the eco-
nomic picture in those days too.)
While we were at this gate, which was called "Billy's
Gate," McCoy asked me if I had ever heard the story of my
great-grandfather's bull. I told him I had listened to a lot of
bull in many places, but not in Ireland. McCoy explained that
the place where we stood was in northern Ireland and that
one July 12, which is Orangemen's Day, a parade of Orange-
men came past the farm with banners flying, wearing scarlet
coats, and with a band playing. Great-grandfather had a
blooded bull in the pasture. The bull, excited by the band
and angered by the scarlet coats, jumped the fence, charged
into the parade, and injured some of the marchers. McCoy
continued, "And almost every Sunday after that, for a long
time, the Catholics in the area around the farm would come
to look at Billy Connelly's 'papal bull. 5 "
We visited the graves of my great-grandfather and great-
grandmother and those of other relatives of less remote gen-
94
TEAPOT DOME AND BAKU
erations. In all, I had an eventful day. I returned to Dublin
that evening, and later that night I took the boat from King-
ston back to Wales, and a train to London.
When all of us had reassembled in London, we learned of
the plans for the Russian trip. Sinclair, Stanford, Walker,
Loucks, Law, Day, and the secretary were to go directly to
Moscow. The others, including Cliff Longshore, who had
joined us in London, were to head for Batum.
On leaving the United States we had no visas on our pass-
ports for Russia; we were told by the State Department that
we would enter that country on our own responsibility. The
United States at that time had no diplomatic relations with
the Soviets.
Krassin had finally informed us that we could leave for
Russia, so on June 23 we left London for Calais, France,
where we boarded the Oriental Limited for Constantinople.
Watts and Mowris got aboard the wrong train but rejoined
us in Paris. We went from Switzerland into Italy through the
Simplon Tunnel. Our first stop in Italy was at Milan, where
we went sightseeing for several hours. Just before we arrived
at Milan two of our bright boys conceived the brilliant idea of
hiding their money in the railroad coach. They took the cover
off a small recess in the side of the coach and put their money
in it, then screwed the cover back into place.
As we approached the station after our tour of the city,
we saw a train moving out. Someone yelled, "That's our
train! " We all rushed through the station, through a baggage
car, and scrambled onto the train. Still panting from our wild
dash, we discovered it was not our train. An engine was
merely switching a few cars. On getting off we were accosted
by gendarmes, who demanded the reason for our mad race.
It took some time to find an interpreter who could explain
our hurry. We were told to go and sin no more. As soon as we
got back on our own train the money which had been so
95
THE OIL BUSINESS AS I SAW IT
cleverly cached was hastily removed from its hiding place.
After arriving in Constantinople, we spent several days
futilely endeavoring to obtain passage on a ship to Batum.
Our days of waiting were filled with sightseeing in this ancient
and thoroughly cosmopolitan city. Before the first World
War, Constantinople was overrun by thousands of stray dogs,
protected from death by the Moslems. When the Germans
came, they started cleaning up the city. They gathered up
hordes of these dogs and moved them to an island near by. A
plague of cats then infested the city, and when we were there
the streets and walks were overrun with them. They carried
fleas, which discovered in me a special dainty. After every
trip outdoors I had to apply all my cunning to the task of
catching the little demons. Watts insisted on painting the bites
with iodine, with the result that I became so spotted that a
leopard would have envied me.
After all our efforts to find a boat had proved fruitless, we
were told by Admiral Bristol, the United States commissioner
to Turkey, that he was sending a destroyer on a practice trip,
and that it might as well go to Batum as anywhere else. He
put us aboard the destroyer Gilmer y which after forty hours
landed us at Batum.
It was July 4. News that a United States naval vessel was
coming to the dock had spread, and a crowd was on hand to
see us land. Among the gathering was an American named
Anderson, from Syracuse, N.Y., in charge of the Near East
Relief station in Batum. He was as glad to see us as though
we owed him money.
During the afternoon we took in what there was to see in
Batum, at that time a city of about fifty thousand population,
on the eastern shore of the Black Sea. It is the capital of
Adzhar, an autonomous socialist Soviet republic. The Rus-
sians had a large installation of storage tanks and pumps
located there. It is the western end of the pipe line from Baku.
96
TEAPOT DOME AND BAKU
We spent the greater part of two days examining this installa-
tion and then boarded a train for Baku.
We of course were not familiar with train customs in
Russia, and this ignorance caused us some annoyance. Bill
Mowris and I went into a compartment, planning to take both
the lower and upper berths. While we were talking, two old
women climbed into the upper berth with their baggage. All
this time they were talking to Mowris and me, in Russian
presumably, though it might have been Turkish or Greek so
far as we knew.
Anderson, who was still on the platform, came to our aid.
He told us that had we been sitting in the two berths we could
have held them, but that as the women had taken the upper
berth we were out. I told Bill to take the lower and I would
bunk somewhere else. All of the berths were taken. Several of
our fellows offered to give up their berths, but I went back to
the first compartment and sat on the lower berth with Mowris
until it was time to turn in. Having borrowed several steamer
rugs from the other fellows, I made a bed on the floor.
The railroad track was rough, and both of the old women
became carsick. That night stands out as one of the most un-
pleasant in my life. Adding to the bitterness of my dark mood
was the fact that I had $5,000 with me, and here I was trying
to sleep in a traveling pigpen. Bill and I were certainly glad
to see daylight. We got out on the rear platform of the train
and drew some clean air into our lungs.
The first place of importance at which we stopped was
Tiflis, the capital of Georgia, another Soviet republic. Our
train was held up here for several hours. In fact, the ride from
Batum to Baku, on a dirty, unsanitary train, took forty-eight
hours. With intense relief we left the foul, malodorous coaches
at Baku, which was the center of the Russian oil industry.
Upon our arrival at Baku we went to the Roma Hotel.
The members of the party now were Watts, Mowris, Roose-
97
THE OIL BUSINESS AS I SAW IT
velt, White, Crandall, George Lord, Al Miller, Elbert Isom,
and I. Lord, Miller, and Isom had joined us at Batum.
Our quarters at the hotel were on the top floor, and they
comprised a string of connecting rooms. There was only one
bathroom on the floor. There were no screens on the windows,
nor could we buy anything to use as a substitute. If we used a
light in a room, the room was immediately filled with all kinds
of flying pests, so when we spent an evening inside it was
in the dark.
Whenever members of our party left the hotel, they were
trailed by secret police. There would be one secret policeman
for each member of our party. This continued all the time that
we were in Baku. When we visited an oil field our shadows
came along. One day we used two "speeders" on the railroad
to visit a pump station. About forty miles out of Baku two
other speeders began trailing us. We had taken lunches with
us, but when we were ready to eat we changed our minds. The
lunches smelled too high. We turned them over to our
shadows, who ate them with gusto. We afterwards heard that
two of the men became violently sick that night.
We spent nearly three weeks in and around Baku visiting
the different oil fields, refineries, and other installations. Our
guide on these trips was a Russian Jew named Edelstein. He
could speak English, and he became a helpful and companion-
able member of the party. His title of "boring master" was
embroidered on his cap. All wells were guarded by soldiers,
and Edelstein was not permitted to go onto a lease unless he
wore his cap,
Edelstein invited our party for dinner one evening, asking
us to choose between 7 and 10 o'clock as the hour. He ex-
plained that before the revolution he had owned a comfortable
home, but that the government had taken it over and had
moved another family in with his. The kitchen and dining
room thereafter were used in common. The other family, he
98
The oil dudes who went to Baku and were thrown for a loss.
Left to right: W. S. Mowris, W. L. Connelly, A. E, Watts,
Thomas W. White, at Batum, July 4 ? 1923.
Above, left: What sometimes happens when a big well goes wild:
Lago Petroleum Corporation's Punta Benitez Well No. 148 in Lake
Maracaibo, Venezuela, pouring oil at thousands of barrels per day,
after demolishing the drilling equipment; only to disappear sub-
sequently in a crater., January, 1928. Above, right: Andrew McKen-
zie, W. L. Connelly, and Joe Waldo sizing up the location for first
well drilled by Venezuela Petroleum Corporation in Venezuela,
February, 1929 it was a dry hole. Below: When the roads weren't
rough in the oil business, they were often wet. Fording a river in
Venezuela, 1929.
TEAPOT DOME AND BAKU
explained, would allow him to choose the hour for our dinner.
We selected 10 o'clock. We had a good dinner, prepared and
served by Edelstein's wife and daughter, who did not dine
with us.
Edelstein also had a small house on the shore of the Cas-
pian Sea. He invited us there for a dinner and overnight stay.
We rode in autos to within a couple of miles of his house. The
sand was too deep for the cars to get closer. All but Mowris
were given mules to ride the rest of the way. Mowris was given
a gig, with a horse drawing it, and he drove in style. We had
an excellent meal and spent a delightful evening. As the house
was small, Edelstein had placed cots in a shed for us. Except
for being crowded, we had an enjoyable experience.
Edelstein had a daughter who was with the Metropolitan
Opera Company in New York. Neither he nor his wife was
allowed to write to her. When we arrived back in New York
we gave her several letters that had been entrusted to us. I
heard later that Edelstein had been shot by order of the gov-
ernment. He was accused of having given certain information
to the Shell Oil Company.
We had many meetings with the local chapter of the oil
industry's governing body. This chapter had three members
a machinist, a carpenter, and a sailor. The sailor was chair-
man. These were the men with whom we had to discuss oil
operations. Try to imagine the maddening job we faced in
trying to make them understand what we were talking about.
Edelstein was really a life and time saver here.
We spent a large portion of each day visiting oil pools and
refineries. All of the equipment, both in the field and at the
refineries, was in poor condition. There had been no replace-
ments of any kind during the war.
The oil-field workers were Russians, Persians, and Tar-
tars. Most of the drillers were Persians. As I remember, they
were paid about fifteen dollars (in terms of United States
99
THE OIL BUSINESS AS I SAW IT
money) a month. In addition they were given an allowance of
tobacco and black bread. Baku's refineries, pipe lines, tank
cars, tankers, and oil wells were the property of the Soviet
government, following their confiscation from private owners.
Among the former owners was the Shell Oil Company.
While we were in Baku, the Barnsdall International Oil
Company made a deal for the drilling of two wells in one of
the pools not far from Baku. These wells were later drilled,
but they were taken over by the Russians. This, fundamen-
tally, was the principal consequence of a long, toilsome, and
expensive expedition. It is always difficult to understand a
government in an industrial role, but a communist government
so occupied was doubly so for us. We had simply made the
mistake of believing that an engagement by the Russians to
permit us to produce at Baku would be honored. It wasn't.
We got paid for completing two wells, but that was all.
The work for which we had been sent to Russia having
been completed, our party began to break up. Watts and
Roosevelt went to Moscow. Lord, Miller, and Isom left for
Constantinople by way of Tiflis and Batum. They encoun-
tered difficulty in getting away from Batum and were delayed
there for about ten days before their passports were visaed so
that they could leave Russia. The rest of the party, In con-
trast, had no trouble. White, Longshore, and I remained in
Baku for some days after the others had left. The three of us
then boarded a train for Moscow.
This trip required three and one-half days and three
nights. The sleeping cars were clean and comfortable, and the
dining-car service was fairly good. Though long in hours and
miles, the trip had its compensations. We passed through some
fairly large towns and many villages. There were no build-
ings on the farms. The peasants live in villages located at the
center of the farming communities, and go to and from the
farms. This practice, we were told, was adopted to afford
100
TEAPOT DOME AND BAKU
greater safety from raids of roaming Tartars in earlier years.
Our trip took us through the Ukraine, famous for its agri-
culture. We passed close enough to the Sea of Azov to get a
glimpse of it. We arrived in Moscow on a Sunday evening in
a violent wind and rain storm.
The Russians placed at our disposal a house which pro-
vided much better accommodations than we could have
obtained at a hotel. It had belonged to a banker who had been
"liquidated" by the government, with confiscation of his
property. The house, a large one of about fifteen rooms, was
well furnished and comfortable, but had only one bathroom,
a small one. A butler, chef, and many other servants were at
our service. This staff was changed completely every three
days. We surmised that this was done either because the
servants were to spy on us or because the government was
fearful that we might obtain secret information if we had
time to make friends of the servants. In any event, we were
well taken care of while in Moscow.
Few foreigners were living in Moscow at that time. The
United States had no representative there. We saw one Ameri-
can during our stay. This was "Big Bill" Haywood, of I.W.W.
fame. I understand that he was later expelled from Russia
and finished his days in Constantinople. The city was well
lighted, had well-paved streets and many fine buildings, and
was up-to-date in all ways. Many of the buildings showed the
effects of the civil war which had raged there.
When we applied for the visas for our passports, so that
we could start for home, we were told that ordinarily this
would mean a delay of at least two weeks. We were given par-
ticular consideration, and the job was done in about twenty-
four hours. We were then free to leave Russia. Sleeping cars
not being available, we took a day coach for Riga, the capital
of Latvia, and from thence we went to Rotterdam, London,
and New York, where Mrs. Connelly met me.
101
9
SINCLAIR EJlfTERS VENEZUELA
i
DECEMBER, 1928, the Sinclair Consolidated Oil Corpora-
.tion acquired a majority interest in the stock of the Vene-
zuelan Petroleum Company, and the following were elected
officers: H. R. Kunhardt, Jr., chairman of the board; W. L.
Connelly, president; J. Fletcher Farrell, vice president and
treasurer; M. L. Gosney, vice president and assistant trea-
surer; P. W. Thirtle, vice president and comptroller; W. B.
Heroy and W. S. Mowris, vice presidents.
Venezuelan Petroleum had royalty interest under Gulf Oil
Company leases in Lake Maracaibo and held concessions
from the Venezuelan government on many thousands of
hectares. These concessions had to be evaluated, those that
seemingly had merit to be retained and the others to be sur-
rendered. To start this work, W. B. Heroy and I made a trip
to Venezuela in January, 1929. Besides being a vice president
of the company, Heroy was a geologist of note. We left New
York on January 16 on the Red D Line steamer Caracas.
Edgar Pew, of the Sun Oil Company, was among the passen-
gers. On January 21 we anchored at San Juan, Puerto Rico,
and while the ship was unloading and loading cargo we spent
102
SINCLAIR ENTERS VENEZUELA
several hours sightseeing. We visited Moro Castle, the uni-
versity, and a number of state buildings. The people were
clean and comfortably dressed.
We left the same day for La Guaira, Venezuela. No little
excitement developed when a small boat was sighted adrift.
Our captain swung the Caracas out of its course to investigate.
But no one was aboard the drifting boat, so the inevitable
question of what had become of its passengers remained. We
arrived at La Guaira early on the morning of January 23
seven days out of New York. Now it is done in about twelve
hours from Miami, Florida, by air.
At La Guaira we were joined by Andrew N. MacKenzie,
the company manager in Venezuela. MacKenzie had worked
for me as a geologist on Teapot Dome. We drove from La
Guaira to Caracas over a road which was a succession of twists
and curves. The road distance was twenty-eight miles; by air,
eight. We registered at the Middleton Hotel. As I walked into
the lobby I met Joel Lipscomb, an attorney for the Atlantic
Oil Company with whom I had been well acquainted in Tam-
pico, Mexico. I met many other old friends and acquaintances
from Tampico during my stay in Caracas. Among them was
Gene Templeton, a former geologist for Sinclair, whom I had
last seen in Moscow, Russia.
Our Venezuelan offices were in Valencia, about 110 miles
from Caracas. The drive was over good roads, kept in top
shape, possibly for the reason that the president of Venezuela
spent much of his time in Valencia and made the trip between
Caracas and that city often.
We desired first to make a trip to Maracaibo and view the
Gulf's producing leases in Lake Maracaibo. Heroy, Mac-
Kenzie, and I drove to Puerto Cabello, a seaport. Here we
saw the navy yard and a prison where most of the political
offenders were confined. We left by boat about midnight for
Wilhelmstadt, on the Island of Curagao, Dutch West Indies.
103
THE OIL BUSINESS AS I SAW IT
We spent two days on this island and left for Maracaibo,
where we arrived the next morning.
Chester Cribbs, who was in charge of the Gulfs interests
in this part of Venezuela, met us at the dock, assisted us
through the customs, and then took us to his camp, where
we were guests of the Gulf. While in the living room at
Cribbs's home we were treated to a mild earthquake. Windows
shook, dishes rattled, and the floor swayed. No large damage
was done, however.
The situation in Venezuelan oil production when we came
to that country was roughly as follows :
Oil seeps had been known and exploited in a primitive
way in the vicinity of Maracaibo from prehistoric times. It
was not until a year or two preceding World War I, however,
that production in any determined way had been undertaken.
But by 1920 Venezuela was ascending fast among oil-produc-
ing countries especially since revolutionary disturbances in
Mexico had caused many producing and refining companies
to proceed cautiously in the latter country. In the late twen-
ties (the time of our arrival), Venezuela had moved up to
second position among the world's oil nations, only the U.S.
surpassing her.
The Lake Maracaibo area was a well-proven, heavy-
producing field. We had, as I have indicated, royalty interests
there, but it seemed to the Sinclair companies, and especially
to its geologists, that the part of good sense dictated explora-
tions in the interior and away from the already heavily ex-
ploited Maracaibo basin. This we proposed to do on the cur-
rent trip, directing principal attention to our own concessions.
Let us say here that our trip forecast some of the difficul-
ties to be met in future oil operations in this rugged, over-
grown country, and confirmed some of the already-known
problems that had been encountered by other producers who
had preceded us.
104
SINCLAIR ENTERS VENEZUELA
On January 30 we left the Gulf camp in a launch furnished
by Cribbs and spent several hours visiting the Ambrosia, La
Rosa, and Lagunillas fields in the lake. A strange sight to us
was a tanker loading oil at docks surrounded by derricks,
tanks, and boiler stations, on foundations in water. This was
long before off-shore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. It was
9:30 that night before we returned to the camp.
We drove into Maracaibo the next morning and called on
C. C. McDermond, a friend of Tampico days. Mac was
handling a scouting service, providing news of interest to com-
panies having concessions in that part of Venezuela. We
drove to a concession in Larrain and made a location for a
well; we also drove to a location for a well of the Union Oil
Company in the same vicinity.
On February 3 we left Maracaibo on a Gulf launch for
Altagracia, where we were met by a truck in which our bag-
gage was to be hauled, and a small car in which we were to
drive across Venezuela, visiting several concessions and end-
ing our trip at Maturin. The trip, with stops at camps and for
interviews with geologists and torsion-balance crews (geo-
physics had entered oil explorations in the late twenties) took
us eighteen days. Counting side trips, it covered nearly two
thousand miles over some of the worst roads in any country.
The first night out we spent at the camp of the Richmond
Oil Company, where we had an excellent dinner and a good
bed. After an early breakfast we resumed our drive, which
was to carry us during the day into the Andes Mountains.
The roads were well made but narrow and characterized by
very steep grades, with drops of one hundred to one thousand
feet.
We spent that night in TJriche, in a native hotel. We had
brought hammocks for sleeping, as few hotels in the small
towns and villages had beds. Hooks had been screwed into
the walls, and we hung the hammocks from them. Doors were
105
THE OIL BUSINESS AS I SAW IT
left open, and frogs, toads, dogs, chickens, and other repre-
sentatives of barnyard life wandered in at will. If a hen
hopped onto your face to investigate its possibilities as a
roosting place, you brushed it off with whatever accompani-
ment of language you might feel appropriate.
Notwithstanding these tranquilizing conditions, I was
restless that night and tumbled out of my hammock. I landed
on a pig, which squealed lustily and struggled to get out from
under me. I yelled and called the pig unkind names, at the
same time fighting with passionate zeal to separate myself
from the animal. Every time I tried to break away, the pig
apparently was seized with a wild impulse to lunge in the
same direction. As a result, we bumped around in a mad-
dening stalemate.
Then dogs began to bark. Other creatures added squawks,
quacks, cackles, and yelps to the nocturnal clamor. Heroy,
MacKenzie, and Elder (our truck driver) leaped from their
hammocks in the raucous confusion and wanted to know what
was the matter. Eventually the pig and I managed to dissolve
our ill-starred association, and quiet was restored.
We were on the road by 7 o'clock the next morning. We
had some mountain driving on fair roads. After taking lunch
at the Universal Hotel in Barquisimeto, we continued our trip
and crossed several rivers, most of them showing only a
trickle. During the day we passed from the state of Lara into
the state of Portuguesa, and at nightfall reached Espino. Our
hotel beds had no mattresses, so we put blankets on the
springs.
The next morning we again hit the road early and drove
to Guanare for breakfast. Later we forded the Portuguesa
River, after MacKenzie had waded into it to locate a crossing,
and then in succession we forded six rivers and were ferried
across the Rio Bocono. The roads all day were bad. Late in
the afternoon we reached Barinas, the capital of the state of
106
SINCLAIR ENTERS VENEZUELA
Zamora. The town had about two thousand people, but was
said to have had nearly fifty thousand at one time. I cannot
see why. Marquis Bocono, the Spanish governor of the dis-
trict, who died in 1811, is buried there. We had headquarters
for several geological parties and a torsion-balance party in
Barinas.
The next morning MacKenzie, Waldo, one of our geolo-
gists, and I drove to Barinitas, a hamlet not far from the
camp. Here a structure had been located, a suggested location
for a well had been recommended, and thus we drilled our
first well in Venezuela.
On February 10 MacKenzie, Heroy, and I, with Elder
driving, left in a small car to return to the office in Valencia.
Out of camp only a short distance we slid off the crossing in
the Santa Domingo River. After trying for some time to get
out under our own power, and failing, Elder walked back to
camp, got a truck and driver, and pulled us out. During this
day we again forded six rivers and were ferried across one. It
was 2 A. M., February 11, before we arrived at Valencia
nineteen hours on the road.
We spent the next day in the office there. Then MacKen-
zie, Heroy, Elder, and I drove to Caracas. Here we spent two
days with our attorney and visiting some of the Venezuelan
officials, whose cordial interest in our operations made our
stay a pleasant one and greatly facilitated our future work.
We then returned to Valencia. Driving through the city
we saw President Juan Vicente Gomez and an escort. Later
in the day we left Valencia for El Sombrero, and on to Matu-
rin. On this part of our trip we were repeatedly requested to
show our passports and our vaccination certificates. There
were numerous cases of smallpox in the country. Again we
slept in hammocks, but with no tumbles or pigs to enliven the
journey. In fact, nearly all of our nights until we reached
Maturin were spent in hammocks. The next day we left El
107
TEE OIL BUSINESS AS I SAW IT
Sombrero without breakfast. We had but one meal during the
day and that one at about 11 o'clock. The night was spent at
the Americano Hotel at Larazoza. The next day we drove to
Barcelona. We had been stuck for some time in sand and also
in a river. We had a good hotel here, with good food. The
following day we drove to Maturin, where we were guests of
the Creole Petroleum Corporation at its staff house, and we
were made very comfortable.
The Creole Petroleum Corporation was then, and remains
today, the largest producer of oil in Venezuela and one of the
largest producers in the world. It is a subsidiary of the
Standard Oil Company of New Jersey.
The next day, accompanied by representatives of the
Creole, we drove to that company's property at Quire-Quire.
There were two wells in this field producing 16-degree oil.
One "blew in 77 at a depth of 2,338 feet and was good for 2,000
barrels. It sanded up and could not be made to produce more
than 300 barrels after being worked over. The other was mak-
ing about 300 barrels from a depth of 3,343 feet. A third well
was drilling, and a rig was being built for a fourth. The driller
on tower had worked for me in Oklahoma. The drive was
through a country of wonderful scenery. We returned to
Maturin for the night. The next day was spent in visiting mud
volcanoes and the Venezuelan Petroleum leases in the vicinity
of Maturin.
We were on the road early the next day, on our return to
Barcelona, where, after pulling a Gulf scout out of a river,
we were in turn stuck and pulled out by a truck.
Then on February 21, eighteen days after our overland
travels began, we were ready to depart. We left Barcelona
before breakfast and drove to Guanita, where we had break-
fast about 7 o'clock. Here we parted company with Elder and
the car. He returned to Valencia. We took the Commewigne
and sailed for Port of Spain, Island of Trinidad. From there
108
SINCLAIR ENTERS VENEZUELA
we progressed by easy stages, visiting a number of the Carib-
bean islands, to New York.
Though the trip was a hard one in many ways bad roads,
poor food and beds, and much nasty weather I felt well
repaid. Unpleasant incidents are to be expected in the life of
an oilman, at home and abroad, and I gained valuable knowl-
edge concerning South America and our holdings there. The
Venezuelan Petroleum Company was to obtain substantial
production from its concessions in Venezuela in later years.
As for the Republic of Venezuela, I can only say that many
of its splendid cities Caracas and Maracaibo notable among
them reflected then the importance and benefits great petro-
leum resources had conferred. In the years since, as any South
American traveler knows, Venezuela has witnessed great
development, so that these same cities, and the country as a
whole, for that matter, are among the best and most forward-
looking as well as the wealthiest in the Western Hemi-
sphere.
109
10
STRANGE PLACES
AND STRANGER PEOPLE
ON JULY 26, 1929, 1 embarked on an adventurous journey
which was to introduce me to strange places, stranger
people, and exciting scenes. It was to embrace the refinement
of cultured European homes and the heathenish rites of naked
tribesmen in the remote recesses of Africa.
Accompanied by Mrs. Connelly, our daughter Elizabeth,
our son Harry, and my secretary, Miss Margaret Dougherty,
I sailed from New York on the Homeric, of the White Star
Line, for Europe. From there I was to go to Angola, West
Africa, a distance of four thousand miles, on a slow boat.
The purpose of this trip was twofold: to tour some of the
countries and cities of Europe with my family, and to transact
some business. The Compania de Petroleo de Angola had
obtained an oil concession on forty million acres of land in
Angola. The Sinclair Consolidated Oil Corporation had a large
stock interest in this company and had charge of the opera-
tion. Several wells had been drilled, but no oil in commercial
quantities had as yet been unearthed. Since the drilling of the
last well, the company geologists had done more work and had
recommended that a well be drilled on a newly discovered
110
STRANGE PLACES AND STRANGER PEOPLE
anticline. The stock holdings, other than Sinclair's, were in the
hands of Belgian and Portuguese groups. I was to call on these
people in Brussels, Belgium, and Lisbon, Portugal, explain to
them that we desired to drill another well, and ask for their
consent also get their share of the funds required for this
further effort at production.
We landed at Cherbourg, France, and spent several weeks
sightseeing in that country, Switzerland, and Belgium. In
Paris I was in touch with Harry A. Hassan, our Paris repre-
sentative; and in Brussels, with Richard M. Gross, our
representative in Belgium. Aside from business matters, we
had splendid visits at both places through the cordial atten-
tiveness of these men and their families. Harry Hassan has
since become a Sinclair vice president at Houston, and Dick
Gross is now treasurer of the Richfield Oil Corporation in
Los Angeles.
After I had left for Africa, the others toured England,
Ireland, and Scotland, then returned home.
While in Brussels, I had made reservations on the Blue
Star Liner Avalona for Lisbon. I was told that the boat train
would leave London for Tilbury at noon. At about 10 : 30 A. M.,
after reaching London, I went to the office of Thomas Cook
and Sons to pick up my tickets, which I had paid for in Brus-
sels. I was informed the boat train had left for Tilbury at
10 o'clock and that I had missed my boat. There ensued a
lively exchange of strong language, with the Cook force at
the receiving end most of the time.
I persuaded the office manager to put one of the higher-up
clerks in a taxi with me for a quick drive to Tilbury in an effort
to catch the ship. All insisted that it was a foolish attempt,
that the boat would be gone. They refused to phone a request
that the ship be held until I arrived. On the ensuing run to the
docks, I am confident that the taxi driver never made a faster
trip through London than he made that day.
Ill
THE OIL BUSINESS AS I SAW IT
We arrived at the dock just in time to see the Avalona
steaming out of the harbor. A motorboat was lying at the
dock. The Cook clerk and I piled in and told the boatman to
overtake the liner. While we were racing through the water,
the clerk and I stood up in the boat and waved and shouted.
Finally someone on the Avalona noticed us, and the steamer
was slowed down. Our motorboat ran alongside. A line was
lowered for my baggage, a Jacob's ladder was lowered for me,
and I climbed aboard while the liner was still under way.
The following appeared in the London News of August IS,
1929: "An American businessman caught the Blue Star Liner
Avalona at Tilbury today by engaging a taxi in London and
catching up with the liner when she was under way in a
motor launch."
The man from Cook's who had accompanied me to Til-
bury and had seen me board the liner called on Mrs. Connelly
at the Hyde Park Hotel to tell her about my adventure. She
had in her hands a copy of the London News and had just read
the item telling of the unconventional fashion in which I had
caught the liner.
The captain invited me to sit at his table during the trip,
declaring that anyone making the fight that I had to board his
ship was entitled to recognition. Of course I accepted. I had
to make that ship, for I had an important engagement in Lis-
bon with some of our partners in the African development.
I was busy while in Lisbon, an old and delightful city, but
friends saw that I visited most of the interesting spots. Dur-
ing my stay, while waiting for a ship to Africa, I met two
young Swiss fliers who were about to take off in an airplane
for New York. I gave them a letter of introduction to Al
Watts. The letter never was presented. The two airmen, about
nineteen or twenty years old, were lost at sea on the flight.
On August 20 I left on the steamer Mozambique for
Angola. With me was a rig builder, who was to use native help
112
SINCLAIR ENTERS VENEZUELA
in erecting the drilling derrick. While we were still in the
Tagus River one of a group of prisoners who were being trans-
ported to Angola for long terms jumped into the water in an
attempt to escape. He was pulled out by a man in a fishing
boat and was returned to our ship. He did escape later, how-
ever, while we were anchored at the Island of Madeira.
The first days of our trip were in heavy weather, and the
boat rolled violently, but I was not bothered. By this time I
was a pretty fair traveler. Yet, in spite of periodic stops at
Madeira in two days, at San Thome in eleven this was not
my idea of fun. The boat was making only nine knots an hour,
and the trip was deadly monotonous. There were none of the
forms of entertainment that ordinarily are provided on a
transatlantic voyage.
Finally, on September 4, we anchored off Luanda at 9:30
A.M. My rig builder and I were met at the ship by Walt Small,
our manager; Captain de Barros, the concession attorney;
and our office manager, Jose Barradas. Customs officials were
courteous. We had a nice house at the camp and a clean eating
house. Arthur C. Veatch, Sinclair's chief geologist, came in
from the bush that evening.
We made our first trip into the bush to Cacoba Dome,
where we had made a location to drill a well. Brown, the rig
builder; Cranford, a mechanic; Veatch; and Small accom-
panied me. We crossed the Cuanza River in a steel power boat.
Our land conveyance was a truck, which had hard springs.
The road to Cacoba, where we crossed the river, was, more-
over, vile. But Cacoba Dome looked good to us, and that,
really, was why we were taking this beating.
On the way back to camp, where we arrived after dark,
I found myself wondering rather sourly how many thousands
of miles I had been bounced about on wretched caricatures
of roads on oil business in Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia,
Indiana, Illinois, Kansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Wyoming,
113
THE OIL BUSINESS AS I SAW IT
Montana, Utah, New Mexico, Mexico, Russia, Venezuela
and now in Africa! Were there no good roads in the world?
Despite Cacoba Dome, I could not confine my interest to
oil alone. Here were people like none I had ever seen before,
of course black as night, living in villages like those that
evidently had been in use for centuries, pursuing game and
small farming, with maize as one of the principal crops and a
staple of diet. Their dwellings were of thatch, and on the
coastal plain they needed every bit of protection from the sun
possible, for the tropical rays there were murderous. The
interior is, in the main, a more hospitable place for these
natives and for the limited white population of Angola. The
plateau there is from 3,500 to nearly 6,000 feet in elevation.
We used natives for a variety of tasks during this trip of
exploration and location. One was said to have been a can-
nibal. He looked the part. The women were like women every-
where, resourceful and durable. Like American Indians, they
carried children slung on their backs. They and their men
wore clothes enough, but simple ones, to cover their naked-
ness. I should guess, from information gathered in several
quarters, that there were more than two and one-half million
blacks in Angola when we made our trip.
The country is vast for this population pretty close to
five hundred thousand square miles situated on the west
coast of Africa, southwest of the Belgian Congo. It contained
then an abundance of game buffalo, zebra, sable antelope,
roan antelope, giraffe, leopard, and lion. It has since become
of considerable importance as a producer of cotton, coffee,
sisal, and corn, as well as diamonds, which were perhaps the
most valuable of its mineral resources in 1929. Its oil is of no
consequence, but more of that later.
During our stay, Veatch, Captain de Barros, Small, and I
called on the high commissioner for Angola. He received us
graciously and provided refreshments. The commissioner im-
114
Harry F. Sinclair, 1944.
Excluding the man on the left, some of the Big Brass, 1949. Left to
right: W. L. Connelly, P. W. Thirtle, P. C. Spencer, H. L. Phillips.
Rocky Mountain Oil and Gas Association pioneers, 1953.
Sitting: C. S. Lavington, Denver; Warren Skelton, Casper; George Jarvis,
Casper; A. E. Brainerd, Denver; Joseph Minton, Salt Lake City; A. J.
Hardendorf, Lander; John Rouse, Denver; Edward J. Boos, Casper; James
Donoghue, Denver; S. A. Lane, Garnett, Kansas. Middle row: Louis Hoffman
(guest), Washington; H. C. Bretschneider, Denver; Charles J. Hares, Boulder;
W. L. Connelly, Tulsa; T. S. Harrison (Moderator), Denver; E. J. Sullivan,
Casper; C. B. Richardson, Casper; Warwick Downing, Denver; H. Leslie
Parker (Moderator and President), Denver; Paul Stock, Cody; W. H. Fer-
guson, Denver. Standing: Earl Foster (guest), Interstate Oil Compact Com-
mission; Frank Barrett (guest), U. S. Senator, Wyoming; Mr. Froyd (guest),
Lusk (?), Wyoming; Ira Wetherill, Denver; Carleton Clymer, Denver;
Martin Rathvon, Casper; George Jenkinson, Tulsa; H. A. Stewart, Wash-
ington; Dan B. Carroll, New Orleans; Robert Connaghan, Cheyenne; Mike
Boyce, Casper; George Brimmer, Cheyenne; Frank Kistler, Glenwood
Springs; Joe Juhan, Glenwood Springs; Harold Nutting, Denver; Harry
Aurand, Denver.
STRANGE PLACES AND STRANGER PEOPLE
pressed me as a man of ability. He expressed much interest in
our work (as a matter of fact, lie wanted us to find oil). We
discussed the possibilities at some length, but the ultimate
truth was to wait on our drilling operations.
A Mr. Vilhena, one of the Belgians interested in the con-
cession, was at a diamond mine in the Congo. Capt. R. M. de
Sarra Guedes, of the Angola Company, whom I had met in
Lisbon, asked me to be sure and call on Vilhena and talk over
our plans with him. In order to do this it was necessary for me
to go into the northwestern part of Angola. I was glad of it
because the trip afforded an opportunity to see the working
of a diamond mine and to see more of the country.
A narrow-gauge railroad runs from Luanda to Malange,
about 135 miles. Mr. and Mrs. Small accompanied me on the
rail trip. The high commissioner and a party of officials were
also aboard the train. As Malange is the end of the line, we
arranged for a car to take us from that city to the mine, sev-
eral hundred miles distant.
On our arrival at Malange, there was a celebration in
honor of the commissioner. We were invited to attend, but
for lack of time we had to decline, and we left about noon for
the mines. We spent the night at Quintapa, where all three of
us slept in the same room, which had a dirt floor and uncom-
fortable beds. For a change, the roads were fair! Many road
gangs, consisting mostly of women, were working to put the
roads in shape for the commissioner and his party, who were
also headed for the mines.
We arrived at Saurimo at about S P.M. and were assigned
to rooms in the diamond company's guest house. The governor
of the province lived in this town, also several other white
persons, mostly army officers and officers of the penitentiary
located there.
We left early the next morning and arrived late that eve-
ning at Lunda, which was the post and headquarters of the
115
THE OIL BUSINESS AS I SAW IT
diamond company. The post guest house was filled, so we were
quartered in the hospital. Colonel de Milo, the local military
commander, gave a tea for us the afternoon of our arrival.
We had dinner with Mr. and Mrs. S. T. Kelsey, Californians.
ELelsey was superintendent of the mines. We had a pleasant
evening.
After breakfast at Kelsey's, early the next morning, we
drove about seventy-five miles to a diamond mine. Again the
roads, built and maintained by the company, were good. Our
first stop was at the pickup or sorting station. Here the gravel
carts, sealed at the mine and containing gravel repeatedly
screened, were opened by authorized officials, and the gravel
was dumped onto the sorting tables. The workmen, all
blacks, sorted the conglomerate and skillfully picked out the
diamonds.
At the office we were shown about one thousand carats of
uncut diamonds, which represented about two days 7 yield
from the group of mines. Diamonds were worth about twelve
dollars a carat uncut. Most of the stones from these mines
made about one-fourth carat after being cut. The largest stone
found up to the time of our visit was 54-carat.
From the sorting-rooms we went to one of the mines. The
mining is a stripping process. About three feet of the soil is
taken off by a steam shovel, exposing the gravel, which is dug
into with a pick. The gravel is loaded onto a conveyor, which
dumps it into a small car. The car carries the load to a series of
screens. Silt is washed out; the coarser material is eliminated;
and the remainder, about 10 per cent, is sent to the picking
house.
On our way to the mine we passed a village where a
batuka, or native dance, was in progress. We stopped to see it.
A witch doctor, in fantastic garb, was doing a solo and putting
all his enthusiasm into his job of turning, twisting, jumping,
waving his arms, and yelling at the top of his voice. Other
116
STRANGE PLACES AND STRANGER PEOPLE
dancers formed a circle around the witch doctor and danced
much like Indians in the United States. Music was produced
with a home-made drum, which, though not of surpassing
tonal quality, lacked nothing in point of booming penetration.
We had lunch with the local superintendent, a Belgian,
and then returned to the main camp. While at the camp, I had
a conference with Vilhena. He agreed with me as to the loca-
tion of the new well and promised that on his return to Lisbon
he would report favorably to the Portuguese and Belgian
groups on our plan for drilling a well and would endeavor to
have them raise their share of the money needed.
We left early the next morning on our return to Luanda,
but did not make Xassengue until 10 o'clock that night. It was
1 1 before we got to bed. The rooms were hot and dirty. It was
about 2 A.M., and we had scarcely fallen into a light sleep,
when we were routed out of bed by three soldiers and taken
to the commandant's office. There we were directed to show
our passports. This was a highly irregular performance, but
it was quickly apparent that the commandant had been im-
bibing something stronger than coffee. He had acquired
delusions of grandeur and an ambition to impress foreigners
with his transcendent importance.
Mrs. Small, who could speak Portuguese, made it clear to
the commandant, in a few incisive words, that he had blun-
dered. She showed him the high commissioner's safe-conduct
letter. Her pointed little speech had an immediately sobering
effect. The commandant dropped his imperious manner and
offered abject apologies.
As soon as we were through breakfast we left Malange,
and then drove to Donda, where we spent the night. This was
our longest day's drive. We found our beds that night were
well tenanted with vermin. We turned out at once and spent
the rest of the night sitting up. David Livingstone, on his trip
in the middle of the last century, took four months to get to
117
THE OIL BUSINESS AS I SAW IT
Luanda from Donda. Of course he had to cut trails and build
rafts to ferry the rivers. It took us eight hours to make this
trip from Donda and we were back in Luanda at noon of that
day, after a trip of almost two thousand miles.
We did not see a horse or mule on the entire journey. All
hauling was done by oxen. Strings of natives plodded along
the roads, nearly all carrying five-gallon gasoline cans on
their heads. Here was evidence I wanted to see, oil cans. Could
we supply the demand locally?
I spent two days in the office at Luanda and then started
for Boma, in the Belgian Congo, where I was to take a Bel-
gian boat for Antwerp. On this trip, Small, Cranford, and I
visited several oil seeps and some old wells that the Angola
Company had drilled. We carried our camping outfit on a
one-ton truck and camped the first night out near the town
of Lefune. The next day we examined more seeps and camped
that night at Onocula. Mosquitoes kept us busy, even though
we had mosquito-bars over our cots. We got little rest. Besides
Small and Cranford, two natives were with me as guides.
After another day of travel, we visited three old wells.
No. 1 was still flowing oil and fresh water, making about
three-fourths of a barrel of oil and about one-half barrel of
water. There were no roads to the wells, the jungle having
grown up since they had been drilled. We had to cut our own
road. We had picked up a local guide at a village not far from
the wells.
On our return to our camp we received a message from
the chief of a tribe at the town of Macula, saying that a
batuka would be given in honor of the "white chief from
across the sea" (meaning me) . The dance would start as soon
as we arrived at the village. Many of the natives who had
worked for the comany had lived here, and it was the home
of one of the boys who was with us on the trip.
On our arrival at the village we were welcomed by the
118
STRANGE PLACES AND STRANGER PEOPLE
chief. Through one of our black boys he said that his tribe was
honored by my presence, and that he hoped I would give or-
ders to put down some more holes in the ground so that his
people would have much work. This was understandable since
we paid 25 cents a day for labor as against 4^ cents by any
other employer. After his speech and my reply, the batuka
got under way. It was good but not as wild as the ones that
we had seen in the interior. A boy of about seven years was
the star.
We broke camp early the next morning and drove to Quelo
to see another seep. This one was active and produced four
quarts of a heavy black oil daily. There is no question that
this country at one time would have produced oil, but it may
have been thousands of years ago. We knew a good deal about
the geology of Angola and parts of the Belgian Congo then,
but we were subsequently to learn more. Much of Angola is
underlain, at varying depths, by volcanic rock, which, if it
does not mean that oil cannot be found there, at least limits
the depth to which oilmen may go in search of pay.
But this was true of Osage County, Oklahoma, one of the
richest oil pools in the nation a quarter of a century ago. Here
much of the territory was underlain also by a great granite
intrusion. At that depth and below it, no oil was likely ever
to be found. Above it, at shallow levels, millions of barrels of
oil were tapped, as I have shown in earlier chapters.
The twenty wells that the Angola Company, assisted by
Sinclair, had drilled to shallow depths before I made my trip,
were something like the oil seeps that had shown for hundreds,
possibly thousands, of years. There just wasn't much oil
present certainly not enough to be considered commercially
profitable. Now the question was, what might we get by going
down deep say five thousand feet (quite a depth for that
time)?
This question was on our minds as we progressed slowly
119
THE OIL BUSINESS AS I SAW IT
to Quelo, to San Antonio Lazaire, and finally to Banana Point
on the Congo, six miles wide here at its mouth, where I caught
a steamer for Antwerp. Like the trip over, it was a slow,
monotonous voyage, broken by the conversation of bored mor-
tals like myself and by stops from time to time at ports of call.
In Brussels I conferred with the Belgian and Portuguese
interests with whom we were joined in the Angola venture.
We concluded that a "deep test" was in order at Cacoba
Dome, which I thought of as the best possible location. Drill-
ing operations there were subsequently got under way. We
went down to 5,651 feet, where in 1930 we found a good but
not paying limestone formation. This proved what the geolo-
gists knew, that the granite barrier was a good deal deeper;
but it also proved that there was no oil at the most likely spot,
at least not at our depth.
Sinclair and the Belgian and Portuguese interests con-
trolling this concession in Angola some years later relin-
quished it. In 1953 Belgian drilling operations once more tried
to find oil in commercially satisfactory quantities in Angola,
in the same area we had chosen. But at 7,000 feet the pay dirt
is not yet, nor is it ever likely to be.
I still don't like rough roads unless they lead to oil.
120
11
MORE GLOBE-TROTTING
to the office of Harry Sinclair at about 5 :30 o'clock
Vjone afternoon in early August, 1930, I received the sur-
prising announcement that he and Mrs. Sinclair were to sail
for Europe the next day and that he would like to have me
take the trip with them. We would be gone about a month, he
said. Harry sprang this news much as he might nonchalantly
have suggested, "How about a bridge game this evening,
Billy?" This was very much like the Russian jaunt in 1923,
"On what boat do we leave?" I asked as I tried mentally
to list some of the swarm of details that would have to be taken
care of in an extremely short time.
"I don't know," Harry responded. "Jack O'Day is mak-
ing the arrangements. See him."
Jack was our traffic manager. I hurried to his office, only
to find that he had gone for the day. It was 6 o'clock in the
evening and I was to start the next day on an ocean voyage
for which I had not made the smallest preparation. I didn't
know the hour of the sailing. I didn't even know the name of
the boat. I didn't have the money needed for an extended
journey. (It was three months, instead of one, before we re-
turned home.)
121
THE OIL BUSINESS AS I SAW IT
I next tried Earl Sinclair, who was able to provide much
of the information I needed. Our boat, the Aquitania, would
leave New York the following afternoon at 2 o'clock. That
meant that I had less than twenty hours in which to snatch
such sleep as I might and somehow attend to all the minutiae
of preparation.
Having ascertained that our itinerary would make it pos-
sible, I thought that after reaching Europe it would be well
for me to call on our partners in Belgium to discuss our affairs
in Angola, Africa. Getting the data needed for such a confer-
ence kept me at my office late that night.
By dint of fast work, with a generous admixture of good
luck, I was ready to sail when the time came. I had my pass-
port in order, so there was no trouble on that score.
On the crossing to Cherbourg, France, where we were to
land, I asked Harry why he had wanted me on the trip. "I'll
tell you about that when we get to Paris," he replied.
At Cherbourg we were met by Harry Hassan with two
automobiles. Sinclair and Hassan rode in one, Mrs. Sinclair
and I in the other, and we were off for Paris. It was a delight-
ful drive, giving us a much better view of the country tra-
versed than would have been possible by rail. Our lunch at
Bayeux, which Hassan had ordered in advance, was some-
thing to enjoy in retrospect long afterward. Here I had my
first taste of Pont 1'Eveque cheese, and I have been an addict
ever since.
Mrs. Sinclair and I, both Catholics, wanted to pass
through Lisieux, which had been the home of Ste Therese, the
Little Flower. This we did, and we visited the church in which
her body reposed. The casket was in a small room separated
from the main body of the church by an iron grating. Through
this grating the devout as well as those not so devout could
pass any offering they desired to make toward the completion
of a basilica in honor of the saint which was being erected on
122
MORE GLOBE-TROTTING
a hill overlooking the city. When Harry saw these offerings,
he inquired about them, and Mrs. Sinclair explained their pur-
pose. Harry pulled out his purse and tossed in a one-hundred-
dollar bill. (I did not wait to see whether the caretaker fainted
when she picked it up.)
We arrived in Paris that evening after one of the most
enjoyable auto drives I have ever taken. Jim Flanagan, an
old friend from Tulsa, and his wife were in Paris, and having
learned through the Paris edition of the New York Herald
that Mr. and Mrs. Sinclair were in the city, they called on us.
It was a happy reunion. While we were in Paris, Harry told
me that he had brought me on the trip because he thought I
had been working too steadily and needed a rest. (I have
always smelled business on one of Harry's pleasure trips.)
He said that we were going to Carlsbad for three weeks and
that we would leave for that resort in a few days.
I decided that this was a good time for me to go to Brus-
sels for the conference with our Belgian partners. Flanagan
and I engaged a car and driver and drove to Brussels. Here
we met Dick Gross, the treasurer of the Sinclair Company in
Brussels. We spent three days in that city.
I made an appointment to meet our Belgian friends at
their office at 1 1 A.M. one day. It was very hot and I arrived
at the office in a profuse perspiration. The attendant at the
office in which we were to meet was resplendent in full dress.
Our Belgian friends were in morning attire and apparently
were as hot as I was. The meeting was quite formal and pro-
longed. An appetizing luncheon served at the close of the
meeting afforded some compensation for my discomfort. The
conference was in other respects beneficial to both sides.
On our return to Paris we found that Mr. and Mrs. Sin-
clair, accompanied by Mr. and Mrs. Stacy Adams and Harry
Hassan, had gone to Carlsbad. Adams was our company's
manager for Belgium and Holland and was located in Brus-
123
THE OIL BUSINESS AS I SAW IT
sels. I left Paris the next morning for Carlsbad, and on alight-
ing from the train at that point I was greeted by Henry N.
Greis, of Tulsa, who was on a European tour.
The party spent three weeks in Carlsbad. Before we left
there Daniel T. Pierce, assistant to Sinclair, met us. The sale
of the Sinclair half interest in the Sinclair Pipe Line Corpora-
tion and the Crude Oil Purchasing Company to the Standard
Oil Company (Indiana) had been closed on the day he had
sailed from New York. Earl Sinclair had handled all negotia-
tions. The price paid was $73,000,000. We had previously
sold a half interest to the Standard of Indiana.
This sale, while profitable enough in itself to the Sinclair
companies, represented a move toward even larger goals on
our part. We had already started thinking, indeed, negotiat-
ing, for the purchase of the Prairie Oil and Gas Company and
the Prairie Pipe Line Company, which were then two of the
largest oil properties in the Midcontinent area.
The oil business is like any other. When you can acquire
large capital by a large sale, or if you can dispose of one opera-
tion and secure thereby an even better one, the rule is sell!
While in Carlsbad we were visited by Mr. and Mrs. Joseph
Meyer, their daughter, and Karl Hasselmeyer, a geologist for
Pettigrew and Meyer. Karl afterwards married Miss Meyer,
and they now live in Houston. Karl is an officer in the Salt
Dome Oil Company. Joe Meyer's visit was intended to interest
Harry Sinclair in several thousand acres of leases that Meyer
held in northern Germany.
While we were discussing this proposition, Meyer's Ber-
lin office phoned him that a wildcat well drilling near Vienna,
Austria, had come in as a large producer. Harry decided that
we should take a look, so Joe, Karl, and I engaged an auto-
mobile and drove through Pilsen and Budweis (famous for
you know what) and many other cities into Austria. We spent
the first night at an inn just east of the border of Czechoslo-
124
MORE GLOBE-TROTTING
vakla. We had an early start the next morning and crossed
the Danube shortly after dawn. Perhaps it was the Blue
Danube Waltz that had led me to picture that stream as blue.
It was anything but blue. It reminded me of the Arkansas
River after a heavy rain.
It took us some time to find the well, but we finally got
to it. The derrick was a stubby wooden affair about 48 feet
in height, enclosed with a tight 16-foot board fence. Karl, of
course, spoke German fluently, and after he had talked awhile
with the watchman, who had worked on the well, we were per-
mitted to enter the enclosure. The well was dead. It had made
a spurt or two of oil and quit. Karl later made further investi-
gations, but we dropped the idea of trying to find oil in Aus-
tria. After a night spent in Vienna we drove back to Carlsbad.
We were glad we made the trip, if for no other reason than
that it had given us an opportunity to view Vienna, a beautiful
city rich in history.
At the conclusion of our stay in Carlsbad, Pierce left for
Paris. The rest of us went by auto to Oberammergau and saw
a performance of the Passion Play. Mrs. Sam Hildreth and
Miss Gallagher, her niece, friends of Sinclair, joined us at
Carlsbad and accompanied us to Oberammergau. The Pas-
sion Play made a deep impression on all of us. We went from
there to Munich, where Pierce rejoined us. Mrs. Sinclair, Mrs.
Hildreth, Miss Gallagher, and Mrs. Adams went to Paris.
Sinclair, Pierce, Hassan, Adams, and I left Munich by
auto and drove along the Rhine River to Cologne. Leland
Stanford, home director of foreign marketing, met us at Mainz
and accompanied us to Cologne. The company's office for
Germany was here, located in the Hoch Haus, tallest office
building in Europe. After two days in Cologne we drove to
Berlin. In Berlin we met Arthur Veatch, who until a few
months before had been chief geologist for Sinclair's foreign
work. We also met Chet Naramore, a one-time geologist for
125
THE OIL BUSINESS AS I SAW IT
us, and Joe Meyer. This group had leases on thousands of
acres in northern Germany and wanted Sinclair to take an
interest in this acreage and to drill and develop it. We spent a
few days considering this project but decided against it.
Mr. and Mrs. Adams left us in Berlin and returned to
Brussels. The rest of the party went to Paris. Pierce left us in
Paris and returned to New York. Sinclair had some business
to attend to in Paris, where we spent three or four days. Then
Mr. and Mrs. Sinclair, Hassan, and I, with Leland Stanford,
who had joined us at Mainz, left for Rome, where Sinclair
had an appointment to see Mussolini.
While we were in Rome it was our privilege to have a
private interview with His Holiness Pope Pius XI. This was a
great honor for all of us, but Mrs, Sinclair, Stanford, and I
were probably more appreciative of its significance than any
of the others. On this visit to Rome I met Count Enrico
Galeazzi, with whom in later years I was to have much corre-
spondence regarding affairs of the Order of the Holy
Sepulchre. I was to meet the Count again in 1950 on a second
visit to Rome.
Sinclair wanted to stop at Genoa on our way back to Paris,
so we drove to the Port of Ostia, where we took an amphibian
and flew to Genoa. It was my first airplane ride, and it afforded
me a thrill. We maintained a height of seven or eight hundred
feet, which allowed us a clear view of the country. Since this
was a chartered plane, the pilot flew us over the island of Elba,
where Napoleon had lived nine months in exile before he
escaped to throw Europe into another war.
We left Genoa late the evening of the same day by rail for
Paris, where we were met by a Herr Siefert, of the Gewerk-
schaft Elwerath. This company had oil production at Hanover
and wanted to interest Sinclair in some kind of trade which
would include our bulk plants and filling stations in Germany
126
MORE GLOBE-TROTTING
and the production of the German company. Together we were
to build pipe lines and a refinery.
Sinclair viewed the proposition with some favor. After
getting the groundwork for negotiations laid out, he left for
New York. I stayed in Germany, at Hanover, and spent three
weeks examining the leases and studying the daily production
gauges. This was a task, as my knowledge of German was
zero. I sent to Cologne for Ray Smith, who was in charge of
our office there. He came to Hanover, bringing with him seven
or eight young Germans. These lads I broke in as gaugers. The
first few days' gauges were startling. Some wells apparently
made hundreds of barrels a day, and some were making no oil
at all. This strange state of things was soon remedied when
we got the gauges in order.
While we were doing this work, I had made arrangements
through P. W. Thirtle, comptroller of the Sinclair Consoli-
dated Oil Corporation, to have Arthur Young and Company
send auditors from Paris to Hanover and make an audit of
the Elwerath books. After I had obtained this audit, and an
audit of our books in Germany had been made for Elwerath,
we started negotiations. These were carried on for several
weeks with no results. During this time I had shipped to our
Chicago refinery one thousand barrels of oil for analysis. We
finally reached a deadlock in our negotiations, and after mak-
ing arrangements for another meeting in New York in
February, I returned home.
During my stay in Hanover I had been entertained at the
house of a Herr Magnus, a banker and a director of the com-
pany with which we were dealing. Whether he was a descend-
ant of Heinrich Gustav Magnus, the great German chemist
of the nineteenth century, I do not know. His wife was Eng-
lish. During one of our conversations, Magnus said that he
would like to have us take his eldest son into our company
127
THE OIL BUSINESS AS I SAW IT
and teach him the rudiments of the oil business. I promised to
take up his request with Leland Stanford.
I talked the matter over with Leland on my return to New
York, and the son later came to the United States. He first
worked in some of the refineries, and later was transferred to
the producing company working in the East Texas field. He
was a bright chap, and undoubtedly would have made a good
man for any oil company. He had been here for several
months and had arranged to return to Germany when he was
killed in an automobile accident at Troup, Texas.
When Hitler came into power, the Magnus family were
exiled. After spending some time in Switzerland they started
for the United States. They stopped in Cuba for a time. There
Magnus met death in a motor accident in Havana.
The meeting set for February in New York was postponed
and never did take place, so we did not enter Germany as a
producing company. In view of the swift development of the
second World War a decade later, this was probably a for-
tunate thing for us. German scientific genius coupled with de-
termined exploration of the whole area of the Reich, excluding
Austria, turned up in the years preceding the outbreak of war,
a total of 4,074,000 barrels of oil annually. This was only .2 1
per cent of the world's total production, and by 1939, adding
Austria's production to her own, Germany got only another
366,000 barrels a year not enough to face up to the enor-
mously greater production of the U.S.A., of 1,212,254,000
barrels, or of the U.S.S.R., 202,290,000 barrels. You simply
can't fight wars without first possessing oceans of petroleum
and the well-developed talents and facilities for processing
these hydrocarbons into usable forms. And when it was said
early in 1945 that "Japan is running out of gas," those of us in
the oil business knew statistically what that meant.
But it would be a mistake to assume that, because no great
oil structures have so far been located in Germany or Japan,
128
MORE GLOBE-TROTTING
no pools will be found in the future. I personally think great
discoveries are unlikely the geology of these countries tells
us that yet we have been known to find oil in the strangest
places ! In fact, we have in recent years drilled below earlier
U.S. horizons where oil had been found, and down deep six,
eight, twelve thousand feet we have found highly profitable
pools. Also, in areas which seemed, from a geological point of
view, highly doubtful, venturesome wildcatters have often
made their bids and won.
E. DeGolyer, the well-known geologist and geophysicist
of Dallas, Texas, is credited with a neat statement of the open-
mindedness required in the search for minerals. At a recent
meeting of scientists entrusted with stepping up the search for
uranium, he suggested that the Navajos of New Mexico and
Arizona be encouraged to join this effort. When pressed for
his reason, he said, "Because in their search they will be
wholly uninhibited by previous geological knowledge." He
was subsequently proved right, for great new sources of
uranium were discovered by these very Navajos, in one in-
stance between strata of limestone, where, according to
geology, they were supposed not to exist.
129
MERGER AND CONSOLIDATION
UNTIL ABOUT 1930 the Prairie Oil and Gas Company and
the Prairie Pipe Line Company were dominant factors in
oil in the Midcontinent area. The pipe-line company had been
transporting crude oil through its several lines to Chicago,
where some of it was delivered to the Standard Oil Company
of Indiana, and the balance was put through trunk pipe lines
that would deliver it to eastern refineries. It was a source of
high revenue to the company. Some of its eastern customers
were the Ohio Oil Company, Pure Oil Company, and Standard
Oil Company of New Jersey. These companies endeavored to
have the pipe-line company reduce its tariff, but they were
unsuccessful.
These three companies, in 1930, organized the Ajax Pipe
Line Company and built two ten-inch lines from Glenn Pool
station in Oklahoma to Wood River, Illinois. Upon com-
pletion of these lines, the oil that Prairie had been transport-
ing was diverted to Ajax. This took practically all of the
Prairie Pipe Line's business from it.
The fact that the Sinclair Pipe Line Company had sold its
pipe line to the Standard Oil Company of Indiana, which
wanted to use the complete capacity of the lines for its re-
130
MERGER AND CONSOLIDATION
fineries, thus depriving Sinclair of a way to move its oil to
Chicago, was a windfall for the Prairie Pipe Line Company.
Sinclair made a trade whereby the Sinclair oil would be trans-
ported through the Prairie pipe line. This kept Prairie in
business, Sinclair had been working for some time on a trade
whereby the Prairie Oil and Gas Company and the Prairie
Pipe Line Company would be merged with the Sinclair Oil and
Gas Company. When effected, this merger would give the Sin-
clair Company an outlet for the transportation of its oil to
Chicago. These negotiations had been in progress over a
period of several months. H. F. and E. W. Sinclair and Grat-
tan Stanford, assisted by Dan Pierce, Joe Walsh, Reg Rag-
land, and many more members of our organization, put in
days and nights working on the trade. Several times it ap-
peared that an agreement had been reached, but the next
meeting would bring up some objection. W. S. Fitzpatrick,
Clark Kountz, Tom Flannelly, Dana H. Kelsey, Nelson
Moody, and Fred Cook were the principals for the Prairie
companies in the negotiations. But the merger was finally
effected as of April 1, 1932.
The producing companies were merged under the name
of Sinclair Prairie Oil Company, and the name of the Prairie
Pipe Line Company was changed to Sinclair Prairie Pipe Line
Company.
The Prairie Oil and Gas Company had a daily production
of 31,467 barrels from 7,034 wells; the Producers and Re-
finers Corporation, 1,862 barrels from 284 wells; the Sinclair
Oil and Gas Company, 32,055 barrels from 2,217 wells.
The producing offices were in Tulsa, and the pipe line
company's were in Independence, Kansas. The officers of the
Sinclair Prairie Oil Company were: W. L. Connelly, chairman
of the board of directors; Henry L. Phillips, president; H. B.
Smith, Dana H. Kelsey, W. W. Baker, H. A. King, vice presi-
dents; A. E. Barms, secretary-treasurer; Edward H. Chand-
131
THE OIL BUSINESS AS I SAW IT
ler, general counsel; H. C. Fitzpatrick, assistant to the chair-
man of the board of directors.
The Sinclair Prairie Pipe Line Company's officers were:
C. H. Kountz, chairman of the board of directors; J. R.
Manion, president; Edward H. Chandler, vice president;
R. B. Hanna, secretary-treasurer.
The Sinclair Prairie Oil Marketing Company was or-
ganized to purchase crude oil for the refinery requirements.
The officers of this company were: Nelson K. Moody, presi-
dent; E. B. Marlow and H. A. Meyer, vice presidents; A. B.
Hookins, secretary-treasurer; Edward H. Chandler, general
counsel. This company's offices were in Tulsa.
The name of the Sinclair Prairie Oil Company was
changed on June 1, 1949, to Sinclair Oil and Gas Company.
In December, 1950, the Sinclair Pipe Line Company was in-
corporated and all pipe lines, both crude and products, were
transferred to it. Roy Tibbetts is chairman of the board and
W. H. Morris, president, J. R. Manion having been retired.
As I had been elected an officer of the Sinclair Prairie Oil
Company, it was necessary for me to transfer my residence
from New York to Tulsa. This was done with pleasure for I
was eager to be located in the heart of the producing fields.
In 1934 the Sinclair Prairie Oil Company purchased the
J. A. Hull Company, with production in Oklahoma and
Kansas, and since then it has made many other purchases of
producing properties. As a result of these purchases, together
with the drilling of wells and repressuring of old leases, the
Sinclair Oil and Gas Company on May 1, 1952, had a daily
net production of 112,897 barrels of crude and 7,080 barrels
of natural gasoline. This production is steadily gaining each
month, and with the increased drilling campaign, and the in-
troduction of water-flooding (a recent engineering technique
for increasing production of oil from old fields) , it should soon
amount to 150,000 barrels a day.
132
MERGER AND CONSOLIDATION
Recently H. B. Smith was made president, and J. W.
Jordan executive vice president of the company. Mr. Smith's
ability and the added authority given him, along with the
splendid organization he heads, should make the production
figure mentioned readily attainable before long.
As an officer of the Sinclair Prairie Oil Company I had,
of necessity, many dealings with the legal department. Ed-
ward H. Chandler was general counsel. His first assistant was
Ralph W. Garrett. Both are able attorneys, and they handled
the manifold legal matters involved with dispatch. Chandler
retired as general counsel in 1947, and Garrett succeeded him.
The merger caused some changes to be made in the per-
sonnel of the New York office. Sinclair still remained chair-
man of the board; W. S. Fitzpatrick became vice chairman;
Herbert A. Gallagher, president; E. W. Sinclair was elected
chairman of the executive committee.
A short two years after the Sinclair-Prairie merger, we
began to acquire by purchase some additional valuable
properties.
The Producers and Refiners Corporation was incorpo-
rated under the laws of Wyoming on May 14, 1917, with
Frank Kistler as president and W. L. Kistler, vice president.
The general offices were maintained in Denver.
Early in 1924, approximately 65 per cent of the outstand-
ing capital stock of Producers and Refiners was acquired by
the Prairie Oil and Gas Company. The offices were transferred
to Independence, Kansas, on March 1, 1928. The Producers
and Refiners had built a refinery and town at Parco, Wy-
oming, and had done considerable field development work.
This construction and development had created a debt of
$13,000,000. All of this amount became due and payable to
the Prairie Oil and Gas Company.
Following the merger of the Sinclair Oil and Gas Com-
pany and the Prairie Oil and Gas Company into Sinclair
133
THE OIL BUSINESS AS I SAW IT
Prairie Oil Company, the indebtedness was assigned to the
Sinclair Consolidated Oil Corporation. In May, 1923, L. R.
Crawford and P. C. Spencer were appointed receivers for the
Producers and Refiners Corporation. About 1926 Spencer
was elected general counsel for Producers and Refiners, and
Crawford was elected president. Spencer and Tom Johnson,
of Wichita, Kansas, were appointed ancillary receivers for
the state of Kansas, and Spencer and Crawford were ap-
pointed ancillary receivers for the state of Oklahoma.
In April, 1934, all the properties of Producers and Re-
finers were sold at receivership sales in the various states
where they were located. Substantially all were purchased
by the Sinclair Consolidated Oil Corporation.
R. W. (Reg) Ragland, assistant general counsel of the
Sinclair Consolidated Oil Corporation, who was located in
New York, came to Tulsa to arrange for the purchase of these
properties. Herb Smith and I attended the sales in Oklahoma
and purchased the refinery in West Tulsa and the producing
properties in Oklahoma. I attended sales in Kansas, Wy-
oming, and Montana, and purchased the refinery, pipe lines,
and producing properties located in those states. Reg accom-
panied me to these sales.
The purchases effected on these occasions have made the
Sinclair Oil Corporation many millions of dollars and will
continue to add more millions as the years go by. The Wertz
Dome oil lease in Wyoming and the gas properties alone will
reimburse Sinclair for the entire amount expended in all the
purchases. Today these properties are worth many times the
amount paid for them at the receivership sales.
Shortly after these sales had been completed, Spencer
moved to New York as assistant general counsel of the Sin-
clair Oil Corporation. Ragland, in the meantime, had been
transferred to Los Angeles as general counsel for the Rich-
field Oil Corporation, one-third of the stock of which was
134
MERGER AND CONSOLIDATION
owned by Sinclair (the remaining shares being held, one-third
by Cities Service, and one-third by the public) . Crawford died
in the latter part of 1934.
Money talked in these years, which formed the trough of
the Great Depression. But from the evidence I have given
earlier in this account it will be clear that, by sound over-all
operations, the steady acquisition of good producing prop-
erties, pipe lines, and refineries, and, when desirable, the sale
of properties for good, hard cash, the Sinclair Consolidated
Oil Corporation was in good position to move forward even
in difficult times. My own end of the business in the Sinclair
Prairie Oil Company, consisting exclusively of production,
contained the usual amount of Depression grief, however.
The big East Texas field came in as the 1930's dawned.
The oil production that resulted was little less than a flood,
and we were heavy producers there. About the time produc-
tion reached its crest in East Texas, the Texas Company
lowered the price of oil to 10 cents a barrel, which was ob-
viously a good deal less than its cost at the well head. But that
flurry didn't last long, fortunately. Through the efforts of
many able men and organizations, proration, or the adjust-
ment of production to demand, and stabilization gradually
took shape. The determined work of Governor W. H. (Alfalfa
Bill) Murray of Oklahoma, the Texas Railroad Commission,
and the governors and corporation commissions and related
agencies of the oil-producing states, deserve special recog-
nition; and to Governor Murray's successor, E. W. Marland,
goes credit for the creation in the mid-thirties of the Interstate
Oil Compact Commission, which effectively controls the bulk
of domestic production of oil in the United States.
By 1938, as the international situation hardened into a
state of impending war, the oil industry was moving ahead in
an orderly fashion. Oil was selling for a dollar a barrel, a price
in line with its cost and pretty well adjusted to the needs of
135
THE OIL BUSINESS AS I SAW IT
the consuming public at the time. We had weathered one of
the worst catastrophes of American history not without cas-
ualties, however, for the harsh requirements of the era had
reduced payrolls, forced operating economies, and made more
painful the risks we have always had to take in the oil busi-
ness. But on the whole we fared as well as our previous fore-
sight had entitled us to do, i.e. better than could possibly have
been the case otherwise.
We were drilling deeper and getting engineering results
that, in easier times, we might not have produced so swiftly.
The great Oklahoma City field, which also got into operation
in the early thirties, exemplified the new drilling ventures.
Here we went down 6,500 feet and more with rotary drilling
tools. The age of deep production was upon us. Now we think
nothing of 12,000 feet, except when we total up the drilling
costs and the dry holes. Costs are distinctly different today!
All through the thirties, we in Sinclair were searching for
and getting new oil production. For it has to be remembered
that producing wells are perishable commodities. Slowly and
inevitably, despite the continuing engineering advances so
necessary to our industry, oil wells decline in yield, until they
give only a trickle like a cow going dry. Moreover, in these
years oil remained what it was before, a highly essential
product for the manifold operations of the motor car industry,
air transport, railroads, buses, and truck lines to name the
obvious transport categories; and for all forms of industry,
seaborne commerce, and the defense services. In other words,
oil was still in relatively high demand even for the reduced
industrial activity.
We were witnessing certain technological changes of great
future importance to our industry and to the nation. Take the
airplane, for example. Air transport during the depression
years was greatly extended, planes were enormously im-
proved, speeds and ranges were increased and more and
136
MERGER AND CONSOLIDATION
better motor fuels and lubricants were in demand. High
octane gasoline began to be a factor of considerable impor-
tance in refinery operations.
Railroads were converting to Diesel motors, which require
oil fuels rather than coal. In the homes of city folk, oil burners
were coming into greater and greater use, again displacing
coal for heating purposes. These are but samples of the trend
which is continuing at accelerated pace today greatly ac-
celerated, because population is growing at a terrific rate.
I hate depressions for the reasons that everyone else hates
them, but only more so : after all, I have sat in on more panics,
recessions, flurries, and honest-to-God depressions than most
people are likely to experience, for the reason that I've lived
longer. But I sometimes get just the glimmer of hope in them.
They seem to provide fertile ground for new ideas, new tech-
nical advances, new and radically different ways of doing
things. It is only a curbstone opinion, but I'd guess we did
some things in the oil industry during the ten years from 1930
to 1940 that we probably wouldn't have done in lusher times.
By 1939 we were producing in every oil state in the coun-
try, with the exception of California, where we were repre-
sented by Richfield, of whose stock we held, as I have said,
one-third. As I have indicated, we had total production of
well over 60,000 barrels a day, and we were processing all
of it in our own refineries.
The opening of the new war in Europe in 1939 did to us
what it did to all other essential lines it put an immediate
and heavy strain upon all of our departments. Then, as it
became apparent that the United States would sooner or later
become involved, the early pilot operations in Germany and
over here for the production of synthetic rubber began to be
of great practical significance. With our entry into the war,
we were a n forced into a war of many fronts in the petroleum
field high-octane fuels for aircraft; lubricants, fuels for
137
THE OIL BUSINESS AS I SAW IT
motor transport, tanks, and steamers and fighting ships; and
now for synthetic rubber.
This is a very large story, with many technical by-paths,
and it needs telling, but not here. What we succeeded in doing
in the oil business was to make our existing steel and the re-
duced amount coming to us on allocation do a fantastic job.
We were proud of personnel and of our industrial know-how,
which produced the results required not by one nation but by
half a dozen. In a war of movement, it was once more a demon-
stration of who got there fustest with the mostest. General
Heinz Guderian was, by all accounts, a master tank tactician;
but even German military genius falls away when fuel tanks
are empty.
At Sinclair, we stepped up our total production to more
than 85,000 barrels a day, and we processed a total much
greater than that because of additional purchases. But this
is in the refining department, and I've never had much to do
with anything but production, where I feel entirely at home.
At the close of the war, the conversion back to peace-time
activities required the better part of two years. But the de-
mand for oil products in the domestic market skyrocketed the
minute rationing of civilian demand was taken off. Since 1946,
Sinclair has greatly extended its production, until today it
approaches 150,000 barrels a day in countless old and new
fields, and overseas. We have steadily increased our drilling
activities, by the way, and water-flooding has contributed a
surprising share of our increased production. This latter tech-
nical development is so remarkable that it merits at least a
simple explanation.
Natural gas is the first lift in most newly opened fields. It
is usually under great pressure in the underground trap where
oil is found. As soon as this trap is penetrated by the drill bit,
the normal consequence is for the natural gas to rush to the
well head, carrying considerable quantities of crude oil with
138
MERGER AND CONSOLIDATION
it. As time passes and gas pressure subsides, pumping opera-
tions are resorted to. These may continue for twenty, thirty,
or forty years, depending upon the character of the oil sands,
the rate of recovery of oil from them, and the relation of
recovery costs to the price of oil.
Gradually the rate of daily production declines, however,
and it would seem that the old pool has been exhausted. This
is where water-flooding comes in. Engineers have found that
a variety of repressuring methods can be employed the
forcing of natural gas back down into the oil sands, the use of
compressed air, and the use of water under considerable
pressure.
It just happens that most of the oil production of the
United States lies in arid and semi-arid regions of the West.
Hence we have had to overcome very large problems of water
supply in effecting the water-flooding programs we have thus
far undertaken. We get water from deep wells, by pipe lines
from rivers, and from artificial catchments such as ponds and
lakes made specifically for our purposes.
Joined with Phillips Petroleum Company and other com-
panies, we have effectively water-flooded some 23,000 acres
in the North Burbank field, which was badly played out after
the war, twenty-five years after its discovery. The results have
been highly satisfactory to everyone concerned, not least of all
to the Osages, the royalty holders on all Osage County lands.
We have other properties under water-flooding operation,
of course. The most recent transaction of importance that I
had a part in was the purchase by the Sinclair Oil and Gas
Company of the producing properties of C. C. Harmon,
Howard J. Whitehill, J. Wood Glass, and others, for water-
flooding. This was in August, 1951.
These properties were located in Nowata, Rogers, and
Creek counties, Oklahoma. There were many leases and wells
and nearly one thousand barrels daily oil production. The
139
THE OIL BUSINESS AS I SAW IT
company's purpose was to obtain leases that were considered
valuable for water-flooding. We already had a water-flood
started on leases that adjoined some of those of Harmon,
Whitehill, and Glass. Mostly these leases are located in the
Delaware-Childers fields. The production is from the Bartles-
ville sand at a depth less than 750 feet. The sellers had some
water-flooding under way, but since our acquisition of these
leases, the production from them has largely increased.
Claude Harmon is an old-timer. He spent more than fifty
years as a drilling contractor and producer and made it pay
off. He was a Pennsylvanian and went to Kansas, making
stops and working in West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, and Illi-
nois. He drilled the first well north of Cody's Bluff field, in
Nowata County, in 1905.
Howard Whitehill is also from Pennsylvania. His father,
Ben Whitehill, was one of the early-day successful producers
in Nowata County. Claude and Howard had been associated
for more than twenty years. I have been acquainted with both
men for many years, and our association has been most
pleasant.
As a matter of fact, water-flooding, like many another
development in the oil business, came from my old stomping
ground, Bradford, Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvania fields
were the earliest commercially profitable operations in the
United States. Hence the need for means of extending the
recovery of oil from them prompted certain engineering
thinking, which has since been of benefit to the entire indus-
try. The pioneering efforts with water-flooding in the Brad-
ford area began about forty-five years ago.
It has been estimated that the Bradford production has
been increased more than 800 per cent by water-flooding since
the time when increased recovery effects were first noted.
While no doubt other, early floods were in existence, most of
140
MERGER AND CONSOLIDATION
them were operated more or less secretly and their results
were not so obvious.
Even though water-flooding was started at an early date
in Pennsylvania, it was not until the late 1920's and early
1930's that larger increases in production were obtained. In
1934 the first planned water-flood was started in Nowata
County, Oklahoma. Here again there had been earlier hap-
hazard operations in eastern Kansas and northeastern Okla-
homa, but these had not produced the impressive results that
were obtained with the pattern-flooding technique developed
at Bradford. As a result of these developments, the water-
flooding production in the United States increased from
approximately 2,000,000 barrels a year in 1920 to approxi-
mately 20,000,000 barrels a year in 1937.
During the next decade there were spasmodic expansions
of water-flooding activities into several new areas, but due to
the distractions of the war effort together with the limited
development supplies available, there were no big increases
until from 1949 to 1950, when another large increase in water-
flooding activities occurred. This most recent increase in
activity has resulted in impressive gains in production in
Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. As an example, at the present
time it is estimated that Oklahoma's water-flood production
alone is more than the water-flood production for the United
States in 1937. Kansas has also shown a large increase, and
recent developments, particularly in west Texas, have indi-
cated that large amounts of water-flood oil will be produced
there also. With the prospects of still further expansions and
applications in many fields and areas that are as yet untried
for water-flooding, it is obvious that there will be much more
oil produced by this process in the future.
As the present century approached the half-way mark, I
was able not only to witness technical developments such as
141
THE OIL BUSINESS AS I SAW IT
1 have described but to do some post mortems on projects
that had been started many years before, either by the Sinclair
companies or by me. One of these was the Venezuela survey,
which, it will be recalled, occurred in 1929.
In April, 1946, Henry Phillips, while in Tulsa, told me
Harry Sinclair had suggested that the next time Phillips went
to Venezuela it might be advisable to have me go with him,
that I had spent some time in that country and might have
some ideas that would be of value. Henry said that he and
Hugh Russell, a vice president of the Venezuelan Petroleum
Corporation, expected to leave New York by plane on April
24 for La Guaira, Venezuela, by way of Miami, Florida, and
suggested that I meet them there on the evening of that day.
I did, and after a twelve-hour flight we arrived in La Guaira.
Ed Steiniger, our manager in Venezuela, met us at the
airport and drove us to Caracas, where, during a four-day
stay, I met many friends of my Venezuelan and Mexican days.
Russell and I then left by plane for Barcelona. Kunhardt and
Jim Evans, superintendent of the terminal at Porta La Cruz,
met us at the airport. We drove to the port, where we spent
the night. The next day Phillips and Steiniger joined us, and
we drove over a good road (a surprise to me) to our camp at
Santa Barbara. Dos Engle, who had been with the Sinclair
Oil and Gas and Sinclair Prairie Oil companies as a district
superintendent in Oklahoma, was in charge of drilling and
lease operations in Venezuela. He spent the next four days
taking me over the properties.
In the seventeen years since I had last been in Venezuela,
much of value had happened to our properties. We had drilled
both in the eastern interior, which is flat delta country, and in
the west, which is mountainous. We had excellent production.
It was clear to me that our earlier survey had been well worth
the time and the jouncing on rough roads, and that our geolo-
gists and engineers had made no mistakes. As a matter of fact,
142
MERGER AND CONSOLIDATION
at the time of the present writing, our total production in
Venezuela amounts to about 18,000 barrels daily. There are
now 4,000,000 shares of Venezuelan Petroleum Company
stock in the hands of investors at about $26 a share.
Our royalty interest in the production at Lake Maracaibo
has paid us handsomely all these years, over and above the
production I note in the foregoing.
The Phillips Petroleum Company was drilling a well about
three miles from our camp. On May 4, 1946, it was drilled in,
but it got away from the crew and went wild. Earnhardt, Rus-
sell, Engle, and I spent the afternoon at this well. A wild well
making one thousand barrels and many million feet of gas is
a thrilling sight. There is always the danger that a fire may
start, not so much the fault of the men working on the well as
from the carelessness of spectators. Guards are stationed to
keep outsiders at a safe distance, but in a jungle such as sur-
rounded the Phillips well someone could easily get through the
lines. I have seen wild wells catch fire and cause the loss of
several lives. But fortunately this well was shut in after a
couple of days of hard and dangerous work.
From Santa Barbara we drove to Barcelona, where we
took a plane for Barranquilla, Colombia. Walter Wilson, our
geologist in charge in Colombia, met us at the airport and we
spent the afternoon in the office at Barranquilla. We took a car
the next morning and spent most of the day driving over our
concessions there. Then we drove into Cartagena, where we
visited the old fort and other historical spots, flying back to
Barranquilla in the evening.
On May 8 we left Barranquilla by plane for Miami, stop-
ping at Jamaica and Cuba. Phillips and Russell flew back to
New York, and I returned to Tulsa by plane through New
Orleans. I can't think of a trip that was more profitable.
143
TIME EXPOSURE
IT is IMPOSSIBLE to live with an industry, a faith, a way of
life for more than three-quarters of a century without being
impressed with progress. I know that this is a much over-
worked word in our language the American language. But
the age of excitement is pretty well past for me, and I should
guess, without becoming dogmatic about it, that progress in
my time has been very real.
Carl Coke Rister, a very first-rate historian, has written
in detail and with accuracy and great interest the story of oil
developments in the Gulf Southwest from the beginnings in
1859 to the middle of our century. 1 I could not hope to do
what he has done in such a book, for mine is not a scientific
record but the impressions of a fairly active life. What I
know is that we began with no more motive power than you
could get from a human or a horse, and we have ended up
with everything but atomic power on the rig floor, at the
pumps, and in the pipe lines, refineries, and distributing arms
of the business.
The oil business has been, in a sense, self-generating.
1 Oil: Titan of the Southwest (Norman, University of Oklahoma Press,
1949).
144
TIME EXPOSURE
Without the combustible fractions developed in the refining
process, we could not have had the internal combustion engine.
Without the internal combustion engine, we would be far
behind present-day operations, for that very engine is of
primary importance in countless ways in the production of oil
itself. Even so, we made progress for at least seventy-five
years by means of the steam engine in drilling operations.
Today we pump wells, for the most part, on an individual
basis, with highly efficient stationary engines, using the
products that we ourselves refine.
If an oil industry fair had been held around 1900, it would
have been a sizable thing, counting all items required for the
then existing operations. But there were no such fairs until
1923 when the first International Petroleum Exposition was
held in Tulsa in April of that year. The show took place in the
Convention Hall, a fairly large meeting place, to be sure, but
it would never do for today's successors to that first effort.
Now, thirty years after this particular kind of progress began,
the show occupies twenty-eight acres along Twenty-first
Street in Tulsa, with numerous large buildings to accommo-
date the exhibits. These exhibits cover almost everything used
in the oil business, from a cotterpin to a rig capable of drilling
twenty thousand feet deep. Only when you see this exposition
can you appreciate the magnitude and the vast technical
developments of the oil business of our time.
Visitors from forty-two countries were registered for the
1953 show, and close to 400,000 people attended. Here they
could get first-hand information on, and demonstrations of,
the methods and technical devices which have greatly facili-
tated operations since we began with more primitive equip-
ment during my early years in oil: rotary bits of infinite hard-
ness, geophysical instruments, special muds used for rotary
drilling operations, high-pressure lubrication systems, and an
innumerable lot of devices, most of them newly developed, for
145
THE OIL BUSINESS AS I SAW IT
achieving with precision what we fumbled for in the begin-
ning years.
My hat is off to the engineers and the pure scientists. What
they have done to transform our industry is clearly evident to
us all. They have done everything but remove the risk of dry
holes, which remain and will always remain the sobering
hazard of our enterprise. When I think of these contributions,
I feel not a little humble. For such men and others, notably
executives from the industry, have honored some of us old-
timers much beyond our deserts. Following is the list of those
who received gold medals at the 1953 International Petroleum
Exposition:
Pioneer of Pioneers Harry J. Crawford, Emlenton,
Pennsylvania, chairman of the Board of Quaker Oil Refining
Company, with sixty-five years of service and an impressive
record of achievement.
Transportation Wallace R. Finney, Scarsdale, New
York, former head of all pipe lines for Standard Oil Company
of New Jersey.
Natural Gas Godfrey L. Cabot, Boston, Massachusetts,
president, Godfrey L. Cabot, Inc.; ninety-two years old and
still active.
Refining Edwin B. Reeser, Tulsa, retired in 1943 as
president of Barnsdall Oil Company; past president of Ameri-
can Petroleum Institute, with distinguished service in many
fields of oil.
Natural Gasoline George G. Oberfell, Bartlesville, for-
mer vice president of Phillips Petroleum Company and now
vice president for research and development of American
Chemical Society.
Supplies and Equipment Wallace D. Wilson, Houston,
president of Wilson Supply Company, with over forty years
of service in the supply business.
Production W. L. Connelly, Tulsa.
146
Mrs. Connelly and I on our fiftieth wedding anniversary.
Wet, bone tired, but happy. The best walk a man ever took.
The wilderness is still very productive.
TIME EXPOSURE
P. C. Lauinger, publisher of the Oil and Gas Journal, was
master of ceremonies and the exercises attending presentation
of the medals. W. G. Skelly, president of the Skelly Oil Com-
pany, made the presentations. A medal was awarded Miss
Ernestine Adams, of Dallas, as the outstanding woman of the
oil industry. It was presented by W. K. Warren, chairman of
the board of Warren Petroleum Corporation. It was the first
time such an award had been made. B. L. Majewski, president
of the Great American Oil Company, Chicago, was the prin-
cipal speaker.
There is no denying the fact as I made clear early in
this book that I was married first to the oil business and
only several years later to my wife. If anyone made a splendid
partner in the scrambled, hurried, haphazard life which the
oil business exacts, she was that one. Her devotion to me and
my business affairs New York, Europe, Mexico, Venezuela,
Angola (if I could only forget those rough roads!) is the
stuff of which saints are made.
On October 4, 1948, Mrs. Connelly and I had been mar-
ried fifty years. Our daughter and son, Elizabeth and Harry,
decided that it would be nice to have a celebration for us on
our golden wedding anniversary. A good friend, Bishop
Eugene J. McGuinness, of Oklahoma City, gladly consented
to attend the celebration and say a pontifical high mass. The
mass was celebrated in Christ the King Church, Tulsa. There
must have been at least five hundred of our friends present.
Later a luncheon was given at the Tulsa Club.
Among those present at both the mass and the luncheon
were two persons who had been present at our marriage, my
brother, E. J. Connelly, of Oklahoma City, and J. J. Cooney,
of Toledo. At the luncheon the Bishop read a cablegram from
the Vatican bestowing on Mrs. Connelly and me the papal
blessing and conferring on Mrs. Connelly the honor of Lady
of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre.
147
THE OIL BUSINESS AS / SAW IT
She was to enjoy half a dozen more years of life, until the
summer of 1954, when she passed away.
It becomes pretty easy, after you pass seventy, to tell other
people how to live. In fact, it's a kind of perpetual temptation,
apparently. Up to this point I have resisted it stoutly. But now
that I must account in print to the younger generations, I
may as well state a few convictions.
Simple piety is something we can all seek, with spiritual
and moral profit to ourselves and our contemporaries. Attain-
ing it is the work of two lifetimes.
Religious and racial tolerance have made more genuine
progress since my boyhood than any of us born in the last
quarter of the nineteenth century could have thought possible.
To assist people of every faith to their own fulfillment has
always seemed to me a first order of business.
To say that one has received great benefits from his church
is to risk the obvious, self-directed question, "How much did
you put into it?' 3 The answer is, "Not enough." Be that as it
may, Pope Pius XI, with whom I had had a private audience
on my first visit to Rome, accorded me, in 1933, the decoration
of Knighthood in the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre
of Jerusalem. In 1935 I was advanced to Knight Commander
and on May 3, 1937, to the rank of Grand Cross. I became at
that time president of the Western Lieutenancy of this order
in the United States. Later I became lieutenant, and after a
second term was succeeded by P. C. Lauinger of Tulsa.
In 1950, with Mr. and Mrs. William J. Sherry, I made the
Holy Year Pilgrimage to Rome. Mrs. Connelly had planned
to go, and we had delayed our departure in the hope that she
would be able to do so, but in the end she did not feel strong
enough. In Rome we were able to witness all of those solemn
and impressive ceremonies which were in progress during our
stay there. Moreover, we were received in private audience by
the Pope. In excellent English he stated that he was delighted
148
TIME EXPOSURE
that so many Americans had made the pilgrimage, and that
he was a sincere admirer of the United States and had once
visited us (shortly before his election to the Papacy). On
being told, in answer to a question, that we were from Okla-
homa, he remarked, "An oil state." He conversed with us for
about ten minutes, gave us each a Holy Year medal, and be-
stowed his blessing upon our families and our business. For all
his seventy-five years, he was active and alert. Our private
and public audiences inspired a feeling of reverence which
will always endure.
There remains a conviction about which I have no reti-
cence, qualms, or restraint. I am firmly convinced that the
average person doesn't get in half enough fishing during a life-
time. If I had my life to live over again, I would join a move-
ment, pay fees, and do anything else necessary to see that all
men (and women) got the opportunity, at least, to fish often.
And in this I subscribe to an often-repeated criticism directed
at us by people from abroad: that we don't know how to relax.
That's right. We don't. And that includes me.
In the time I have been able to give it, I have had immense
enjoyment from fishing in waters from Canada to South
America. But the friendships I have made in this pleasant
diversion have given me the greatest pleasure of all people
like Scotty Petty, Horace Fitzpatrick, E. E. Kirkpatrick, Mr.
and Mrs. Hal C. Price, Jack Jordan, Dana Kelsey, Jim and
Kathrine Gallagher, Herb Rhees, the Sherrys I can't name
them all (maybe I got in more fishing trips than I thought).
One unforgettable fishing expedition was on a yacht owned
by Erie P. Halliburton, president of the Halliburton Oil Well
Cementing Company, named the Vida, in honor of his wife.
It was a beautifully appointed boat in every detail, 236 feet
long, 34-foot beam, 14 feet of draught, and powered with two
1,100-horse-power diesel engines. Erie bought the boat prin-
cipally for the use of his gold mining company in Honduras,
149
THE OIL BUSINESS AS I SAW IT
but he decided to entertain some of his friends before putting
it into that service. Several hundred were his guests on moon-
light cruises during the week of the oil show in 1935 in Hous-
ton, and a few weeks later Claude P. Parsons, a top executive
of the Halliburton Company invited thirty-two representa-
tives of Midcontinent oil companies to take a fishing trip on
the Vida.
The party, which was to assemble at Port Aransas, Texas,
included Harry Weiss, John Suman, and Jim Anderson, of the
Humble Oil Company; Ray Kelly and Ken Covel, of Pure
Oil; and representatives of other companies. Claude had told
me to bring six or seven Sinclair men with me. I asked Paul
McDermott, Dana Kelsey, Fred Cook, Nelson Moody, and
Horace Fitzpatrick.
On Friday, May 26, 1935, we put out from Aransas Pass.
It was a beautiful evening. We had a most delicious dinner,
with all that would make it enjoyable. We headed for the
Eighth Pass, in Mexican waters, intending to enter the pass,
anchor in deep water, and fish from small boats; but our plan
had to be changed, as the Vida drew too much water to cross
the bar. It was decided to lower the launches from the Vida
and cross the bar in them.
The first boat lowered took off several fishermen without
mishap. The second, of which I was an occupant, was beset
by trouble from the start. The sea was high, and the boats
bobbed up and down on the swells. As Fred Cook stepped
from the stairway, the boat took a sudden drop and he landed
in the Gulf. He was pulled out wet but unhurt, save for ruffled
dignity. Fred was urged to change his clothes, but he loftily
refused. It was warm and his clothes would soon dry, he said.
So across the bar we went.
We had gone only a short way into the pass when our
engine stopped. With all that oil-field talent aboard, we should
150
TIME EXPOSURE
have been able to make repairs, but some small gadget was
broken and we just rolled around on the sea.
The first boat was now about two miles from us, and as its
occupants were catching fish, they paid no attention to our
plight. The third boat soon entered the pass, however, and it
came to our assistance. An engineer on it boarded our boat.
He could do nothing with the broken part, so he put all the
passengers from his boat into ours and started back to the
Vida for repair parts. Our overloaded boat was so crowded
that we had no room to fish.
The engineer's boat broke down before he reached the
yacht, and there was no other boat to get men or parts to us.
Finally Boat No. 1 came to our help and took some of our
passengers into it. We then had room to do some fishing. And
it was good fishing. The first boat stayed fairly close, so that
it could tow us if we wanted to move.
The sea began to get rougher, and it was agreed that it
would be best for all of us to return to the Vida. Boat No. 1
hooked onto us, and we started for home. Then No. 1 devel-
oped trouble, with the result that both boats were helpless.
Soon a shrimp boat came along, hooked onto both our boats,
and again we were on our way. It was now getting dark, and
we were all drenched by the waves breaking over us. When
we reached the bar, the sea was so high that the shrimper
would not attempt to pull us over it.
Our party disembarked on a sand bar, which we named
"Mosquito Point" in recognition of its principal attraction as
a vacation spot. Here we spent the night. No food, no beds, no
cigars, and all wet to the skin. We could look across the water
about two miles and see the Vida, all lighted up and dancing
on the waves. It was easy to imagine what kind of time those
on board were having. Most of us scraped out hollows in the
sand, lay down in them, and got what sleep the mosquitoes
151
THE OIL BUSINESS AS I SAW IT
would allow. So the night passed. Those who didn't try to sleep
did some fishing.
Early in the morning the boat that had gone in for repair
parts appeared at our ocean resort and took us to the Vida,
where we put in some heavy work at the breakfast table.
While we had been marooned, things were happening at
the Vida. The boat in which Nels Moody rode had remained in
the Gulf proper to fish there. When the waves became violent
it returned to the Vida. By this time the Gulf was so fierce
that it was not safe to bring the launch close enough to the
yacht to transfer the fishermen. A boom and rope ladder were
used to unload the launch. Several of the men negotiated the
ladder safely, but Nels Moody, after catching the lowest rung,
could not raise himself for a foothold. While he was dangling
and the boatman was maneuvering to get the boat under him,
T. L. Lewis, of Houston, fell overboard from the launch. All
hands yelled, "Man overboard!" Then Moody lost his hold
on the ladder, and he too slipped into the water.
There was great commotion, with all hands trying to help
in a rescue. The two men managed to get a hold on the launch,
but attempts to haul them into it were unsuccessful. A sailor
finally dived from the Vida and got a life preserver on Moody.
A rope had been tied to the preserver, and with some of the
men in the launch pulling on the rope and others grabbing
Moody's arms, belt, or shirt, the floundering man at last was
hauled into the launch. Soon afterward Lewis was drawn in.
All this time the waves were shooting the launch into the
air one moment and sinking it in the sea the next. Both Moody
and Lewis were exhausted, and it was at least an hour before
they were able to board the Vida. In the meantime they had a
bobbing session on the waves. In a couple of hours they had
fully recovered from any ill effects. Of course, we who were
marooned on Mosquito Point knew nothing of all this excite-
ment until we returned to the Vida in the morning.
152
TIME EXPOSURE
All of this was, however, but the adventurous prelude to a
terrific fishing success which followed. We caught fish of many
varieties, on bait, on lures, by trolling, and with hooks set to
run deep. Many forces of nature have conspired to make this
area one of the great fishing spots of the world.
153
THE BIG
I CANNOT CONCLUDE this book without some notes on Harry
Ford Sinclair and other men I have known in the oil busi-
ness. I have been associated with many of the great and near
great in the oil game. Some of these men were intimate friends
and some were business acquaintances; but Harry Sinclair,
to my mind, has a quality of distinction all his own. I know
no other of his caliber. He is the only one of his model. He
apes no one but stands on his own platform. He has always
fought for what he considered right, even if he fought alone.
He built a mighty oil empire. I know of no other man who
could have done quite the job he did. Countless difficulties
and obstacles arose to hinder and harass him, but his determi-
nation and supreme faith in himself carried him to his goal,
to found a great oil company.
During many of his really dark days he was surrounded
by only a handful of sincere friends, but he never lost faith
in himself. In half a century he has put the Sinclair name in
every state of the Union (in the Far West through the Rich-
field Oil Corporation) . Almost single-handed he won the fight
against the Anglo-American Oil treaty. He is a man of tre-
mendous drive and energy and expects these attributes from
his associates. He has never wheedled or coddled. He gave
154
THE BIG BRASS
orders and expected them to be executed, but when he gave
his friendship it stuck as long as it was deserved.
Sinclair is exceedingly charitable. Many individuals,
churches, and organizations have been the recipients of his
generosity. I remember an amusing incident in this connec-
tion. While his offices were in Tulsa he received a letter from a
widow who lived some place in Kansas, telling him that her
cow had died, that she had no money to purchase another, and
that she needed milk daily for her children. She asked him if
he would send her the money to purchase another cow. He
sent her a check that in those days would have bought two or
three cows. The widow acknowledge his gift in a nice letter
and said that the only way that she could show her gratitude
was to name the cow Harriet. H. F. got a great kick out of this.
Many members of the Sinclair Oil Corporation have re-
ceived a helping hand from H. F. when the going was rough
for them. I have been with him for nearly fifty years, from
the time when his office consisted of three rooms over the old
post office in Independence. I have spent a great deal of time
with him in driving over oil leases, first in buckboards and
then in autos; in the office, on trains and ships, and on Euro-
pean trips. I believe that I know him.
He can be kindly and considerate or as tough as a Kansas
cyclone. He is taking life easier in these days, but I am sure
that he would prefer being out on the firing line as he was
thirty-five or forty years ago. If he could do this I would want
to be with him. In May, 1954, he retired from the Board of
Directors of the Sinclair Oil Corporation, but he remains hon-
orary chairman of it. As long as the organization he built bears
his name, Harry Sinclair will continue to breathe and think
and dream oil. For it is the stuff by which he and all of us
who were associated with him made an impression upon the
industrial structure of America and forwarded the develop-
ment of the world.
155
THE OIL BUSINESS AS I SAW IT
Earl W. Sinclair died on September 21, 1944. His death
was a blow to the corporation. He was one of the most likable
of men. His temperament was entirely different from that of
his brother Harry, and he was a balance-wheel during many of
our difficult days. His death, a distinct misfortune to Harry,
was felt keenly by all of us, and I always feel his absence when
I visit the New York office. I think that the death of Earl
Sinclair hit all of the organization harder than that of any
other person.
Percy Craig Spencer, who now heads the Sinclair Oil
Corporation as president, was born in 1893 in Jasper, N.Y.
In 1903 his family moved to Cody, Wyo. He may well be
called a Wyomingite. After graduating from high school, he
attended the University of Nebraska. In 1912 he returned to
Cody as editor of the Cody Enterprise. Later he completed
work in the Law School at the University of Nebraska and
received his degree. He joined the army in 1918 and on dis-
charge became secretary to United States Senator Francis E.
Warren of Wyoming. In 1922 he was made executive secretary
of the Wyoming Republican State Committee. Two years
later, when Judge T. Blake Kennedy retired as chairman of
the committee, Spencer was chosen to succeed him.
I have already explained his entry into the Sinclair organi-
zation, on the purchase of Producers and Refiners Company
in 1934. Serving first as assistant general counsel, he was ad-
vanced to general counsel, executive vice president, then
president. In June, 1949, he received the degree of LL.D.
from the University of Wyoming. A number of us from the
Sinclair organization had the pleasure of attending this
ceremony.
I would not detract one iota from the wonderful work
performed by Harry Sinclair in thirty years of organizing and
building the Sinclair Oil Corporation and guiding it to its high
place in the industrial world. No one but Harry could have
156
THE BIG BRASS
done this. But "Spence" is the man most qualified to build
upon these solid foundations. He has farseeing vision, and his
executive ability is of the highest order. He is unceasingly at
work on new programs for the progress of his corporation. He
is understanding and considerate in his dealings with sub-
ordinates ; who give him their best not because he is boss but
because he enjoys their unqualified good will. His standing in
the oil industry, moreover, is surpassed by no other person.
Sinclair made a discerning choice in the selection of his
successor. Under Spence's guiding hand the Sinclair organiza-
tion cannot be stopped by anything short of a calamity.
I know the warmth of this man's personal friendship,
which is returned in the fullest degree. Owing to my advanced
years I cannot hope to give him the active help I would like,
but I never shall forget his kindnesses.
I first met another of today's top executives, Marvin Gos-
ney, at a meeting in Chicago. Fletcher Farrell gave a luncheon
for Harry Sinclair and some of us who were on an inspection
trip. Marvin was among those present. He was a nice looking
boy of about 23 or 24 years, with pink cheeks and a rather
quiet manner. After he had been with the organization a short
time he shed his retiring disposition. He came into the Sinclair
Refining Company, which at that time had its principal offices
in Chicago, through Farrell. Both had been with the Fort
Dearborn National Bank.
Farrell was at this time treasurer of the Sinclair Refining
Company. Marvin was made his assistant. Later Earl Sinclair
resigned as treasurer of the holding corporation, and Farrell
was elected to that office, moving to New York and taking
Marvin with him as assistant treasurer. On FarrelPs death,
Marvin was elevated to the treasurership of the Sinclair Con-
solidated Oil Corporation. He had worked with Farrell so long
that there was no interruption of any of the treasury activities.
He handled all of the thousand and one things that would
157
THE OIL BUSINESS AS I SAW IT
come up day by day in such a large organization. All of the
treasurers of subsidiary companies reported to him, asking
his advice on matters that perplexed them.
On Harry Sinclair's retirement as president of the corpora-
tion, Spencer was elevated to that office, and Marvin became,
through merit, the executive vice president. In this position
he has become Spencer's right-hand man. He is widely known
among bankers. He is a tireless worker, and takes home with
him evenings enough work to keep him busy until night, but
he is one of the first on the job in the morning. Whenever he
can get away from it all for awhile, he goes fishing, and accord-
ing to his companions on those trips, he catches what he goes
after.
On May 26, 1952, he received an LL.D. from the Univer-
sity of Tulsa, a well-deserved recognition. He is understand-
ing and agreeable, but, when the occasion demands, he can be
as hard-boiled as anybody. He probably has retained his
youthful appearance to a greater degree than any other per-
son in the corporation.
It was in Peru, Kansas, back in 1903 or 1904 that I first
met a man whose name has appeared often in my account.
Al Watts was destined to fill a major role in the Sinclair com-
panies. At that time he was in charge of a store for the Oil
Well Supply Company. He remained with that company until
January, 1916, when he came into the Sinclair organization.
When the Sinclair Oil and Refining Corporation was organized
in May, 1916, Watts was made an officer and director, and
he moved to New York. He has had charge of many of the
corporation's subsidiaries during the thirty-five years that
have elapsed since then. He was in charge of the Sinclair Navi-
gation Corporation, the Sinclair Cuba Oil Company, Freeport
Mexican Oil Corporation, Mexican-Sinclair Oil Corporation,
and many other subsidiary companies. He has been a factor
in advancing the corporation to its high position among lead-
158
THE BIG BRASS
ing corporations of the country. He is at the present time a
vice president and director of the Sinclair Oil Corporation.
In June, 1916, Henry L. Phillips came to me at the office
of the Sinclair Pipe Line Company, in Tulsa, to see if there
might be an opening for him in the organization. He had
graduated in law at Ohio State University, had been admitted
to the Tulsa County Bar, and was employed by Charles Page,
the oil producer, industrialist, and philanthropist of Sand
Springs.
I introduced Henry to Ed Chandler, the head of our legal
department, and it was arranged that the young man should
enter the Sinclair Pipe Line Company service on July 1.
Henry spent some time there and then was moved into the
Sinclair Crude Oil Purchasing Company as president. From
there he went to the Sinclair Oil and Gas Company as presi-
dent. At the time of the merger with Prairie, the Sinclair Oil
and Gas Company name was changed to Sinclair Prairie Oil
Company, and later to Sinclair Oil and Gas Company.
Henry moved into the New York office in 1941 as the New
York contact for all producing and pipe-line matters. He is
now chairman of the Board of Directors of Sinclair Oil and
Gas Company. In addition, he is a vice president and director
of the Sinclair Oil Corporation and a director of the National
Bank of Tulsa.
As New York representative of the oil company, Henry
has been a tower of strength to the operating forces, not only
in Tulsa but wherever located. He served for years as board
chairman of the Venezuelan Petroleum Corporation.
Besides the men already mentioned, I am indebted to
many others in the New York office for warm good will mani-
fested throughout the many years of the Sinclair companies'
existence. I cannot enumerate all of them here, but I would be
derelict if I failed to mention Joseph P. Walsh, general coun-
sel, who repeatedly has gone out of his way to extend kindly
159
THE OIL BUSINESS AS I SAW IT
offices to me and members of my family. And how can I refrain
from naming such good friends as Byrne McDonald, Sheldon
Clark, Fred Bush, Hugh Russell, Percy Thirtle, Charley
Allen, and W. F. Dau? Among my treasured memories are
those of pleasant hours spent with all
During my years as a company officer in Tulsa I came to
know and esteem hundreds of the men and women who were
giving their best efforts to Sinclair growth and expansion and
to the varied tasks assigned them. For their loyal support I
owe more than I ever can repay. I am sorry that all their
names cannot be given here. It would mean listing virtually
all the names on the payroll.
There are two whom I should especially mention. During
my entire business career I have had but two secretaries.
They perhaps can say whether I am hard to get along with.
Miss Margaret Dougherty filled the position from November,
1912, until March IS, 1934. She moved with us to Houston
in 1917, to Casper in 1922, to New York in 1928, and back
to Tulsa in 1932. In 1934 she resigned and was married to
J. E. Rocheford. She now lives in Oakland, Calif. Mrs. J. E.
(Margaret) Patterson was one of the staff of the Sinclair
Exploration Company in New York. When I moved there
she assisted Miss Dougherty in some of the latter 5 s duties,
and on Miss Dougherty's resignation I asked Mrs. Patterson
to take Miss Dougherty's place. Accordingly she came to
Tulsa and after twenty years is still with me.
This suggests that I am still at work. As a matter of fact,
I am, even though I retired from active participation in oil
affairs on January 31, 1950, my seventy-seventh birthday,
when I resigned the chairmanship of the Board of Directors
of the Sinclair Oil and Gas Company. There are still a good
many odd jobs for a man of eighty-one to do, and having a
reasonably strong heart, I still find the doing of them zestful.
The pursuit of any goal, it seems to me, stops short only at
160
THE BIG BRASS
oblivion. One never has enough of what one is after, which, as
the after-dinner speaker is wont to remark, reminds me of a
couple of stories.
Gunsberg and Foreman were large producers in Oklahoma
around 1908 and for many years afterward. They had a lease
near Delaware in which Paul Lovell owned an interest. Driv-
ing past this lease one morning, I noticed that workers there
were about to shoot a well.
In those days we shot a well "open," with the result that
a great mass of fluid, mixed with sand, would be blown into
the air forty to one hundred feet above the top of the mast
on a Star drilling rig. It was a stirring sight and I never failed
to get a thrill out of it. Johnny Larkin and Ernest Connelly,
who then owned the Eastern Torpedo Company and now own
the Larkin Torpedo Company, burned up thousands of quarts
of nitroglycerin each month in these shooting operations.
I was well repaid for stopping to see this particular well
shot. It was a magnificent spectacle, and when the well started
flowing, it was apparent that it was good for five hundred to
seven hundred barrels a day.
Davy Gunsberg was at the well, but Paul was not. I
turned to Davy and congratulated him on his nice well.
"My God!" he exclaimed. "That Paul Lovell is a lucky
man!"
Gunsberg and Foreman owned seven-eighths interest in
the well, and Paul one-eighth!
This insatiable drive for more barrels is illustrated also
in the story of the oilman's heaven.
An oilman died and appeared at the pearly gates for dis-
position of his case.
"Your name and occupation?" asked Saint Peter.
"I was an oilman," the newcomer told him.
After consulting his book, Saint Peter announced: "You
are entitled to enter, but we have had such an influx of oilmen
161
THE OIL BUSINESS AS I SAW IT
recently that the quarters provided for them are overcrowded.
We are building additions, but it will be a few days before
they are ready. Just rest outside the gates, with the assurance
that you will be taken care of soon."
The oilman considered the situation for a moment and
then came up with an idea (he must have been a Sinclair
landman) . "If you'll let me have ten minutes with your oil-
men," he said, "I'll guarantee that you'll have plenty of room.
You won't need any additions."
"Highly irregular," returned Saint Peter. "However, your
proposition sounds good to me. But only ten minutes, mind
you. Not a second more." Then, calling an angel, he directed,
"Take this man to the oilman's section. Keep your eye on him,
and have him back here in ten minutes."
Five minutes later the heavenly calm was shattered by a
stampede of oilmen, shouting excitedly. "Open the gates! Let
us out!"
The startled Saint Peter unlocked the gates. In amaze-
ment he watched the disorganized stream of oilmen race head-
long to the edge of the celestial precincts, where they leaped
off. As the commotion died out, the angel and his charge
reappeared.
"What happened?" demanded Saint Peter, as he stooped
to recover a bunch of keys which had slipped from his hand
in the excitement. "In all the centuries that I have been here
nothing like this ever happened."
"Well," grinned the oilman, "I walked over to a crowd of
fellows who were swapping stories about boom oil towns, and
I said, 'Hello, boys! I have news for you. A 10,000-barrel
wildcat well has just been drilled in at 4,000 feet!' 'Where?'
they yelled. 'In Hell, 7 1 answered. 'Leases are available.' And
the rush was on."
With St. Peter's tacit approval, the oilman returned to the
now unoccupied oilmen's section of Heaven. But it proved to
162
THE BIG BRASS
be a very lonesome place. No one to talk to. No one to talk
about. No reminiscing about Burkburnett, Whizbang, El
Dorado, Bowlegs, Tampico, East Texas, Glenn Pool, Louisi-
ana, Oklahoma City. Was this really Heaven?
Approaching St. Peter again, this time cautiously, the oil-
man asked if the great gates could be opened for him.
"Why do you ask this?" said St. Peter.
"I have been thinking," said the oilman, "about that
rumor of oil in Hell. There might be something to it."
163
APPENDIX
W. L. Connelly's First Oil Lease
This agreement Made
G. H. HARMAN & W. H. WHITMAN and entered into this
TO 21 day of February
WILLIAM L. CONNELLY A.D. 1895 by and be-
tween G. H. Harman
and W. H. Whitman of the County of Wood and State of Ohio
of the first part and William L. Connelly of Toledo, 0. of the
second part. Witnesseth That the said party of the first part
for and in consideration of the agreement herein after men-
tioned, has granted demised and let unto the party of the sec-
ond part for the purpose and with the exclusive right of drill-
ing and operating for petroleum and gas all that certain tract
of land situated in Portage Township Wood County and State
of Ohio being in Section Number 23 said Township and
bounded and described as follows to wit: The East half (>^)
of the East half (^) of the North half (J^) of the South
West quarter less one half (^) acre out of the North East
Corner and The West half (y 2 ) of the North West quarter
(J4) of the South East quarter (%) of said section twenty
three Township four (4) North of Range Eleven East Con-
165
CONNELLY'S FIRST OIL LEASE
taining thirty nine & one half (39J4) acres be the same more
or less. Together with the right of way over said premises to
the place of operating the right to lay pipes to convey water
oil and gas, and the right to remove any machinery or fixtures
placed on said premises by the party of the second part. The
party of the second part are to have and to hold the said
premises for and during the term of five years from the date
hereof and as much longer as oil or gas is found in paying
quantities. The said first party shall fully use and enjoy said
premises for farming purposes, except such parts as may be
necessary for said operations and no well shall occupy more
than one acre. In Consideration of said grant and demise the
said party of the second part agree to give or pay to the said
party of the first part the full equal one sixth (%) part of
all oil produced or saved from the premises and to deliver the
said free of expense into tanks or pipe lines to the credit of
the first party and should gas be found in sufficient quantities
to justify marketing the same the consideration in full to the
party of the first part shall be 200%oo per annum for the
gas from each well so long as it shall be sold therefrom and
gas free of cost for household use on the premises also from
oil wells for two stoves. It is agreed that there shall be no wells
drilled within three hundred feet of the buildings now on the
premises with out consent of the first party. It is further
agreed that the party of the second part shall complete three
wells on the above described premises by the 1st day of June
1895 unavoidable delays excepted or in default thereof to pay
to the party of the first part three hundred dollars. It is fully
understood by and between the parties hereto, that the rights
and privileges herein conferred shall be construed to mean
simply a lease of privilege to drill and operate as above set
forth for gas and oil and any attempt on the part of the second
party to exceed the privileges granted as so construed shall
render the same liable for trespas and furthermore shall
166
THE OIL BUSINESS AS I SAW IT
work a forfeiture of all rights conferred, and this instrument
shall become null and void. Second party is to have the right
to use gas, oil or water for operating but not for drilling and
further second party agrees to drill and complete six wells on
said land in manner following to wit first three as above stated
and one well each successive sixty days thereafter until all are
completed. Should second party fail to comply with or sur-
render this lease each well drilled thereon shall retain six
acres surrounding it. Also the second party is to deposit
$300%oo to the credit of the first party in Ketcham's Na
Bank of Toledo, O. for the faithful performance of this con-
tract if he should fail to drill the first three wells it is forfeited
to first party when first three wells are completed to forfeit
$100%oo for each well there after not completed as above
set forth. It is understood that all the terms and conditions
between the parties hereto shall extend and apply to their
respective heirs executors administrators and assigns. In
case the first well is not a paying well second party is to sur-
render this lease and the said $300 %oo deposited is to revert
to second party. In Witness Whereof the said parties have
hereinto set their hands and seals the day and year first above
written.
In Presence of G. H. HARMAN (seal)
W. C. CORDREY W. H. WHITMAN (seal)
STEPHEN A. AUGUS W m L. CONNELLY (seal)
, On this 21 st day of February
State Ohio I A.D. 1895 before me a Notary
County of Wood ( SS Public in and for said County
J personally appeared the above
named G. H. Harman and W. H. Whitman and acknowledged
that they did sign and seal the within instrument and the same
167
CONNELLY'S FIRST OIL LEASE
is their free act and deed for the use and purposes therein
named.
(notarial) STEPHEN A. AUGUS
(seal) Notary Public
In consideration of the sum of Two Hundred Dollars to me
in hand paid by Charles B. Johnson and Herman Phillips of
Toledo Ohio I do hereby transfer to said parties two thirds
interest in the within lease subject to the terms thereof.
Dated at Toledo, O March 29 189S
Witnesses. W. L. CONNELLY (seal)
Received April 3 rd 1895 CHRIS FINKBEINES
Recorded April 10 th 1895 Recorder
This lease was written in longhand, for in 1895 there were
no standard lease forms. W.L.C.
168
INDEX
Adams, Miss Ernestine: 147
Adams, K. S. (Boots) : 82
Adams, Mr. and Mrs. Stacy: 123, 125,
126
Adams-Linn Farm, Butler County,
Kans.: 67
Africa, oil in: 119-20
Algeo, Frank: 87
Allen, Charley: 160
Allison, Jim: 81
Ambrose, A. W.: 83
Anderson, Jim: 150
Anderson, Mr.: 96
Anglo-American oil treaty: 154
Angola Company: 115
Archbold, John F.: 21
Ardsworth Oil Company: 60, 66
Atlantic Oil Company: 103
Atlantic Refining Company: 73
Austrian oil production: 128
Babcock and Wilcox Company: 5
Baker, W. H.: 131
Baku, Russia: 92 ff., 97 ff.; description
of, 98
Bald Hill, Okla.: 30
Barnsdall, Theodore: 36, 60
Barnsdall International Oil Com-
pany: 92, 100
Bartlesville sand: 29, 140
Barradas, Jose: 113
Barros. Capt. de: 113, 114
Barrus, A. E.: 131
Bartlett, Mrs. Ed (Florence Haskell) :
6
Bateman, Paul: 18
Batuka (African dance): 118-19
Batum, Russia: 95, 96-97
Beaver Oil Company: 66
Bell, John A., Jr.: 48, 49
Bell, John A., Sr.: 39, 48, 49
Bertheir, Jules: 76
Bigheart, James, principal chief of the
Osage: 17
Black, A. H. (Herb) : 9
Black, Sivalls and Bryson Tank Com-
pany: 9
Blackburn, Mr.: 5
Blaize, Gene: 42, 47
Blake, Jim: 25, 67, 68
Bolton field, Kans.: 20
Boland, Tom: 41
Bovaird, David: 26
Bovaird, Davis D.: 26
169
THE OIL BUSINESS AS I SAW IT
Bovaird, Mervin: 26
Bovaird, William J.: 26
Bovaird, William J., II: 26-27
Bovaird, William J., Ill: 27
Bovaird and Company: 26
Boyle, Mr.: 27
Bradford, Pa.: 5-7
Bradley, C. A.: 65
Bradshaw, A. E.: 69
Brinegar, F. I.: 28
Bristol, Admiral: 96
Brooks, B. B.: 90
Brown, Dickson Q.: 57
Browne, Thomas H.: 11
Buckeye Oil Well Supply Company:
27
Burren Chapel, County Down, Ire-
land: 93
Bush, Fred: 160
Byers, Elwood: 13, 55
Byers Drilling Company: 13
Cabot, Godfrey L.: 146
Cacoba Dome, Africa: 113, 120
Calvert, Ed: 81
Carr, Spencer D.: 9
Cashman, Al: 81
Gates, B. F.: 23
Chandler, Edward H.: 25, 50, 51, 57,
58, 131-32, 133, 159
Chaser Oil Co.: 47
Cherokee Outlet, I.T.: 16
Chesley, Frank: makes Glenn Pool
strike, 28
Chestnut, Tom: 69
Chinampa well, No. 1: first well in
Mexico, 73
Cities Service Company: 82, 135
Clark, Grover: 74
Clark, Sheldon: 160
Clarke, Fred: 38, 42
CochreU, N.: 46
Cody's Bluff field, Okla.: 140
Compania de Petroleo de Angola: 110
Conlisk, Elizabeth: see Mrs. William
L. Connelly
Connelly, Uncle Dan: 5
Connelly, Don: 81
Connelly, E. J.: 147
Connelly, Elizabeth (daughter of
W. L.) : 108, 147
Connelly, Ernest: 69
Connelly, Harry (son of W. L.) : 108,
147
Connelly, Uncle John A.: 3
Connelly, Owen: 93-94
Connelly, Uncle Tom: 6
ConneUy, W. C. (son of Dan) : 5
Connelly, William (father of W. L.) :
3ff.
Connelly, William L.: birth and early
life, 3ff.; opens boiler shop, 8ff.;
drills first well, 10; marriage, 10;
meets Harry F. Sinclair, 24; be-
comes formally associated with Sin-
clair, 32; chases an Indian, 36ff;
part in formation of Sinclair's "in-
tegrated" company, 57ff.; super-
vises Sinclair's Mexican operations,
71 ff.; negotiations with Mexican
government, 76; in Wyoming,
86 ff.; receiver for Teapot Dome,
88-89 ; visits ancestral home in Ire-
land, 93-95 ; looks for oil in Rus-
sia, 96 ff.; surveys the Venezuelan
situation, 103 ff.; to Angola, West
Africa, for oil, 112ff.; visits dia-
mond mine, 116 ; opinion of oil pos-
sibilities in Africa, 119-20; visits
shrine of Ste Therese, 122-23 ; looks
for oil in Germany and Austria,
124-27; audience with Pope, 126,
148-49; receives gold medal, 146;
celebrates golden wedding, 147 ; re-
ceives decoration, 148; on fishing,
149; characterizes Sinclair, 154-55;
retirement of, 160
ConneUy, Mrs. William L.: 10, 90,
170
INDEX
110, 148; made Lady of the Order
of the Holy Sepulchre, 147
Consolidated Oil and Gas Company:
30
Continental Oil Company: 81, 84
Continental Supply Company: 27
Cook, Fred: 131, 150
Cook, Dr. W. A.: 69
Cooney, J. J.: 147
Cooper, Elmer M.: 87, 90
Cooper, Mrs. Elmer M.: 90
Cosden, J. S. (Josh) : 81
Cosden Oil and Gas Company: 81
Cosden Refinery: 81
Cosgrove, Harold: 6
Covel, Ken: ISO
Crandall, Rod: 92
Cranford, Mr.: 113
Crawford, Harry J.: 146
Crawford, L. R.: 134
Creek County, Okla.: oil activity in,
30
Creole Petroleum Corporation: 108
Cribbs, Chester: 104
Crosby, Jack: 54
Cudahy, Joseph M.: 65, 66
Cudahy Oil Company: 24
Cudahy Refining Company: 58
Cushing, Okla.: oil activity in, 30, 55
Dalhart, Texas: oil activity near, 34-
35
Damond Mound, Texas: 67
Dau, W. F.: 160
Davidson, G. W.: 65
Day, Mason: 92
Debo, Angie: 54
DeGolyer, E.: 129
Delaney, M. J.: 87
Delaware-Childers fields: 140
Depression and recovery: 135 ff.
Detweiler, A. K.: 10, 16
Dick, Oscar: 43
Diesel motors: 137
Dimit, Charles P.: 82
Doherty, Henry L.: 82
Donnelly, Dr. James: 10, 15
Donnelly, Michael: 10, 16
Donnelly Oil Company: 10, 15
Donoghue, James: 87
Donoghue, Tom: 6
"Doodlebug": see oil-finding devices
Dougherty, Margaret: 90, 110, 160
Dougherty, O. E.: 58
Dowling, Joe: 8
Drake well, Pa.: 8
Drumright, Okla.: 30
Dutton, Joe: 8
Eastern Torpedo Company: 161
East Texas field: 135
Edelstein (Russian guide): 98 f.
Eisiminger, Mr.: farm of, 19, 20
Elder, McConnell: 40, 107
Ellison, Bob: 90
Emerson, Gov. Frank, of Wyoming:
86
Endacott, Paul: 82
Engle, Dos: 142, 143
Evans, Jim: 142
Ewing, Prof., of Notre Dame: 19
Farrell, J. Fletcher: 65, 102, 157-58
Felt, Howard: 81
Finely, Col.: 24
Finley, John: 27
Finney, Wallace R.: 146
First Wall Creek sand: 67
Fitzpatrick, Horace C.: 25, 132, 149,
150
Fitzpatrick, W. S., president of Kan-
sas Senate: 23, 25, 131, 133
Five Civilized Tribes: 37
Flanagan, James P.: 25, 26, 67, 69,
72, 123
Flannelly, Tom: 25, 50, 131
Foley, M. J.: 90
Forest Oil Company: 21
171
TEE OIL BUSINESS AS I SAW IT
Foster, Edwin B.: 17
Franchott, Doug: 69
Freeman, J. A.: 81
Freeport and Tampico Oil Corpora-
tion: 71
Freeport Mexican Fuel Oil Company:
71
Freeport Mexican Transportation
Company: 71
Fuller, Samuel L.: 65
Funk, Al: 70
Galbreath, Howard: 32
Galbraith, Robert: makes Glenn Pool
strike, 28
Galeazzi, Count Enrico: 126
Gallagher, Jim and Kathrine: 149
Gallagher, Herbert A.: 133
Gallagher, Miss: 125
Garber, Garfield County, Okla.: oil
activity in, 30, 66
Garfield, James R.: 76
Garrett, Ralph W.: 133
Geiss, W. H.: 87
German oil production: 128
Gerstung, O. M.: 65
Gewerkschaft Elwerath: 126
Glass, J. Wood: 139
Glenn Pool, Okla.: oil strike, 28ff ., 53
Golden Lane oil belt, Mexico: 73
Gomez, Pres. Juan Vicente, of Vene-
zuela: 107
Goodstein, Fred: 87
Gosney, M. L.: 102, 157
Great American Oil Company: 147
Green, Mr.: 34
Greis, Henry N.: 69, 124
Griffith, Berry: 68-69
Gross, Richard M.: Ill, 123
Guderian, Gen. Heinz: 138
Guffey and Galey: 21
Gulf Oil Company: 102
Gunsberg, Dave: 161
Gunsberg and Foreman: 54, 161
Gutelius, H. B.: 28
Hadley, Frank: 67
Halliburton, Erie P.: 149
Hanin, Rev. Edward: 10
Hanna, R. B.: 132
Harmon, Claude: 140
Harmon, Henry: 9
Harmon and Whitman Farm: 10
Harrington, John: 69
Hartz, Bill: 81
Hassan, Harry A.: Ill, 122, 123, 125
Hasselmeyer, Karl: 124
Haskell, Frank: 57
Haywood, "Big Bill": 101
Healdton, Okla.: 30
Healdton Oil and Gas Company: 66
Heggam, Alf: 28
Henry, Patrick, farm near Alluwe,
Okla.: 24
Herndon, C. C.: 81
Heroy, W. B.: 102, 107
Hill, Charles (Red) : 86
Hildreth, Mrs. Sam: 125
Hfflman, W. M.: 27
Hoch, Gov. Edward H., of Kansas:
22, 23
Hoober, Ray: 19
Hoober, Mrs. Ray: 19
Hookins, A. B.: 132
Hughes, W. K.: 28
Hull, J. A., Company: 132
Hulse, Sam: 81
Humphrey, W. D.: 38
Huston, Ernest: 25, 65, 66
Hutteg, William: 65
Hynds, Harry: 86
Independence, Kan.: 18, 20
Independence Gas Company: 18
Independence Iron Works: 27
Indian lands and oil leases: 37
Integrated company: 68
International Petroleum Exposition
172
INDEX
(Tulsa, Okla.) : 145 ; gold-medal
winners in 1953, 146-47
Interstate Oil Compact Commission:
135
Irelan, S. B.: 83
Isom, Elbert: 98
Isom, W. H.: 58-59, 68
Jennings Brothers: 48, 49
Johnson, Charley: 9
Johnson, Tom: 134
Johnson and Phillips: 10
Jones, Alton: 83
Jones, Samuel M ("Golden Rule") :
14-15
Jordan, J. W. (Jack): 67, 88, 133,
149
Josey, R. A.: 54
Kansas, state of: war with Standard,
22
Kansas Gas Company: 18
Kathleen Oil Company: 57
Katy Oil Company: 66
Kellough, R. W. (Bob) : 31
Kelly, Ray: 150
Kelsey, Dana H.: 51, 131, 149, 150
Kem, James P.: 90
Kemp, E. R.: 65
Kemp, Roger: 48, 49, 69
Kennedy, Judge T. Blake: 86, 89, 156
Kennedy, S. G.: 69
King, H. A.: 131
Kirkpatrick, E. E.: 149
Kistler, Frank: 133
Kistler, W. L.: 133
Kolvin, Leta, lease (Drumright,
Okla.): 66
Kountz, Clark H.: 131, 132
Kunhardt, H. R., Jr.: 102, 142, 143
Krassin (Russian agent): 92, 95
La Fortune, Joe: 81
Lake Maracaibo, Venezuela: 104, 143
Larkin, Johnny: 161
Larkin Torpedo Company: 161
Lauinger, P. C.: 147, 148
Law, Bob: 92
Lestergette, W. T.: 74
Lima, Ohio, oil fields: 8
Lipscomb, Joel: 103
Lisieux, France: 122
Litchfield, R. S.: 24
Longshore, Cliff: 95
Lord, George: 98
Loucks, Bill: 92
Lovell, Paul: 161
Lucas well at Spindletop: 15
Luykx, N. G. M.: 72
McBride and Bloom: 20
McCoy, Mr.: 94
McCullum, L. F.: 84
McCune, H. B.: 65
McDermond, C. C.: 104
McDermott, Paul: 150
McDonald, Byrne: 160
McDowell, R. W.: 81
McGuinness, Bishop Eugene J.: 147
Mack, Patsy: 27
McKelvey, Robert: 57
MacKenzie, Andrew N.: 103, 107
McMahon, Jim: 8
Magnus, Herr: 127, 128
MajewsM, B. L.: 147
Mammoth Oil Company: 86, 89
Manion, John R.: 25, 65, 66, 67, 68,
72, 132
Markham, John H., Jr.: 6, 69
Marland, Ernest W.: 81, 135
Marland Oil Company: 81
Marlow, E. B.: 132
Martin, F. L.: 83
Martin, W. A.: 58
Mathews, John Joseph: 81
Mayer, F. M.: 28
Mexican Sinclair Oil Corporation: 71
Mexico: revolutions in, 74
173
THE OIL BUSINESS AS I SAW IT
Meyer, H. A.: 132
Meyer, Mr. and Mrs. Joseph: 124, 126
Midcontinent oil field: 18
Mid- Continent Petroleum Corpora-
tion: 81
Miller, Al: 98
Miller Farm, Ironville, Ohio: 12
Milliken Oil and Refining Company:
66
Milo, Col. de: 116
Mills, Mr.: 21
Moody, Nelson K.: 25, 131, 132, ISO,
152
Moore, Frank: 69
Moran, Dan: 72, 84
Mo ran, Mart: 8
Morris, Ray: 65
Morris, W. J.: 28, 132
Mowris, William S.: 92, 97, 102
Murray, J. R.: 65
Murray, Gov. William H. (Alfalfa
Bill), of Okla.: 135
Mussolini: 126
Naramore, Chet: 125
National Supply Company: 18, 27
Neodesha, Kans.: 18
Newry, County Down, Ireland: 93
Nichols, Acosta: 65
Nolan and Griffin: 9
Norman Farm, Neodesha, Kans.: 20-
21
Nowata County, Okla.: 24
Oberammergau Passion Play: 125
Oberfell, George G.: 146
O'Brien, Oscar: 50
O'Day, D. J.: 8, 121
Ohio Seamless Tube Company: 5
Oil consumption, increase of: 137
Oil and Gas Journal: 147
Oil-drilling equipment: 29
Oil-finding devices: 11
Oil industry, advancement of: 144-45
Oil production: beginning of domes-
tic, 8; drilling costs, 9-10; in Okla-
homa, 18; in Kansas, 18; character
of following Glenn Pool, 30 ff.;
unitization, 82-83
Oil Production Company: 57
"Oil-smeller": see oil-finding devices
Oklahoma: site of oil industry, 53 ff.
Oklahoma City field: 136
Okla Oil Company: 57
O'Neill, W. D. (Bill): 25, 27
O'Neill, Jim: 9
Only Oil Company: 57
Order of the Holy Sepulchre: 126
Osage Indians: 16 ff., 139; and oil
leases, 60
Osage Nation, I. T.: 37
Osgood, Com. W. H.: 89
Overfield, John F.: 24
Owen, Charles: 45
Padon, Jack: 81
Page, Charles: 54, 159
Parmelee, D. S.: 65
Parriot: F. B.: 83
Parsons, Claude P.: 150
Patterson, Margaret (Mrs. J. E.) : 160
Pawhuska, Okla.: 15
Payne, John: 39, 47
Perry, J. W.: 65
PetroHa, Pa.: 3
Pettigrew and Meyer: 124
Petty, Scott: 149
Pew, Edgar: 102
Phillips, Frank: 82
Phillips, Henry L.: 131, 142, 159
Phillips, Herman: 9
Phillips, L. E.: 82
Phillips Petroleum Company: 82, 139,
143
Pierce, Daniel T.: 125, 131
Pierce Oil Corporation: 80
Pithole, Pa.: 11-12
Pollock, W. W.: 90
174
INDEX
Ponca City, Okla.: 30
Pope Pius XI: 126
Pope Pius XII: 148
Porter, Sen. Sam, of Montgomery
County, Kans.: 22
Prairie Oil and Gas Company: 18,
21, 47, 49, 56, 60; merger with
Sinclair, 130 ff.
Prairie Pipe Line Company: merger
with Sinclair, 130
Price, Mr. and Mrs. Hal C.: 149
Producers and Refiners Corporation:
133
Pyburn lease, Nowata County, Okla.:
39, 47
Quinn, J. K: 10, 16
Ragland, R. W. (Reg): 131, 134
Red River: 30
Reekie, Sinclair: 90
Reeser, Edwin B.: 146
Repollo Oil Company: 90
Rhees, Herb: 149
Rhodes, Nelson: 76
Richardson, Clarence: 90
Richfield Oil Corporation: 111, 134-
35, 137
Richmond Oil Company: 105
Rister, Carl Coke: 144
Rocheford, Mrs. J. E.: see Margaret
Dougherty
Rocky Mountain Oil and Gas As-
sociation: 90
Rogers, Joe: 40
Roosevelt, Archie: 92
Roosevelt, Pres. Theodore: 22
Roosevelt, Theodore, Jr.: 65
Ross well, I.T.: 8
Rowland, Mr.: 49
Rubber, synthetic: 137
Russell, Hugh: 142, 143, 160
Ste Therese, the little flower: 122
Salt Dome Oil Company: 124
Sapulpa, Okla.: 26; Indian agency at,
33
Sarra Guedes, Capt. R. M. de: 115
Scioto Oil Company: 57
Second Wall Creek sand: 88
Shamrock Drilling Company: 87
Shannon, R. S.: 87
Sharp, Henry W.: 73, 76
Shaw, Kendall and Company: 27
Shell Oil Company: 100
Sherry, Mr. and Mrs. William J.:
148, 149
Siefert, Herr: 126
Sims, E. M.: 71
Sinclair, Earl W. (brother of Harry
Ford Sinclair) : 25, 55, 58, 65, 66,
122, 131, 133; death of, 156
Sinclair, Harry Ford: 32, 39, 43, 47,
49, 50, 55, 58, 65, 66, 80, 91, 92, 121,
125, 131, 142; meeting with Con-
nelly, 24; conceives idea of inte-
grated company, 57; organizes in-
tegrated company, 60 ff.; in Mexico,
7 Iff.; visits Mussolini, 126; de-
scription of, 154 ff.; retires from
board of company, 155
Sinclair, Mrs. Harry Ford: 122, 125
Sinclair, Orville: 69
Sinclair Consolidated Oil Corpora-
tion: 102, 110; purchases properties
of Producers and Refiners Com-
pany, 134
Sinclair Crude Oil Purchasing Com-
pany: 68
Sinclair-Cudahy Pipe Line Company:
66
Sinclair Oil Corporation: 20
Sinclair Company: 56
Sinclair Oil and Gas Company: 60,
65, 132; production in 1952, 132;
purchases property, 139
Sinclair Oil and Refining Company:
organization of, 60 ff.; pipe line to
175
THE OIL BUSINESS AS I SAW IT
Chicago, 65 ff.; pipe lines in Mex-
ico, 73; expansion of by 1918, 79;
mergers and consolidations, 1930,
130 fit.; present production, 138
Sinclair Pipe Line Company: 132
Sinclair Prairie Marketing Oil Com-
pany: 132
Sinclair Prairie Oil Company: 49, 131
Sinclair Prairie Pipe Line Company:
26, 131, 132
Sinclair Refining Company: 65, 72
Sinclair Wyoming Oil Company: 90
Sinclair and White: 54
Skelly, W. G. (Bill) : 80, 147
Skelly Oil Company: 80
Slick Oil Company: 66
Small, Mr.: 113, 114
Small, Mrs.: 117
Smith, Carl H,: 76
Smith, H. B.: 131, 133
Smith, Ray: 127
Smith, T. K.: 69
Spencer, Percy Craig: 86, 134, 156
Spindletop field, Beaumont, Texas: 15
Spooner, Cotton and Franklin, attor-
neys: 61
Standard Oil Company of Indiana:
130; buys half -interest in Sinclair
Pipe Line Corporation and Crude
Oil Purchasing Company, 124
Standard Oil Company of New Jer-
sey: 108
Standard Oil Company of Kansas: 27
Stanford, Grattan: 19, 25, 50, 92, 128
Stanford, John: 19, 25, 72
Stanford, Leland: 19, 25, 125, 128
Stanford, Mr. and Mrs. T. H.: 19
Stauffer, R. D.: 70
Steiniger, Ed: 142
Stich, A. C.: 24
Stickle, Billy: 13
Stickle, Frank: 13
Stickle and Byers: 13
"Stinker": 14
Strauss, Albert: 65
Strauss, Adm. Joseph: 89
Stuart, Com. Harry A.: 89
Sullivan, E. J.: 86, 90
Sullivan, Pat: 86
Suman, John: 150
Sun Oil Company: 102
Sunray Oil Corporation: 83
Superstitions: 11, 12
Tamesi River: 74
Tanner, Charles and Ida: 39
Tanner, Frank: 36 ff., 49
Tanners, the: 49; allotments, 48
Teapot Dome lease, Wyo.: 86, 87-88;
shut down, 89
Technological changes: 136-38
Templeton, Gene: 103
Texas: oil activity in southern, 30
Texas Company, The: 135
Texas Railroad Commission: 135
Thirtle, Percy W.: 102, 127, 160
Thrasher, Al: 45
Tibbetts, Roy: 132
Tidal: 57
Tour: 14
Toxoway Oil Company: 66
Trees, Van: 76, 77
Tschudin, Walter: 73, 74
Tulsa, Okla.: 53-54
Ufer, B. F.: 56
Ufer and Galbreath Company: 66
Union National Bank, Houston, Tex.:
72
Union OU Company: 80
U. S. Indian Office, Department of
the Interior: 37
United Supply and Manufacturing
Company: 28
Unitization of leases: 82-83
Valencia, Venezuela: 103
Veasey, Jim: 49
176
INDEX
Veasey and Rowland law firm: 48
Veatch, Arthur C.: 113, 114, 125
Venezuela: position in oil industry,
104; benefits from oil, 108; survey,
142; advances in oil production,
142-43
Venezuelan Petroleum Company:
102, 109, 142
Vilhena, Mr.: 115, 117
Walker, Elisha: 92
Walsh, Joseph P.: 131, 159
Wan Wang, Chinese cook: 74
Warren, U.S. Sen. Francis E., of
Wyoming: 156
Warren, W. K.: 81, 147
Warren Petroleum Corporation: 81
Water-flooding: 139, 140-41
Watts, Albert E.: 25, 58, 60, 65, 72,
76, 89, 92, 158-59
Wayside field, Kans.: 20
Weible, Earl: 39
Weiss, Harry: 150
Wertz Dome lease, Wyo.: 135
Whaley, W. C.: 83
White, P. ].: 25, 55, 57
White, Thomas: 25, 56, 57
White, Thomas W.: 92
Whitehill, Ben: 140
Whitehill, Howard J.: 139, 140
"Wildcatter": 12
Wilson, Wallace D.: 146
World War I: effect on oil business,
54-56, 68 ff.; effect of peace on oil
industry, 79-80
World War II: and the oil industry,
137; conversion to peacetime in-
dustry, 138
Wright, Clarence C.: 83
Wright, H. P.: 65
Wrightsman, Charles J.: 42, 46, 66,
67
Young, Arthur, and Company: 127
Young, W. J.: 21
Youngstown Sheet and Tube Com-
pany: 27
Zevely, Bill: 24
Zurita lease, Mexico: 73, 74
177
This book has been printed direct from type and is set in
Linotype Old Style No. 7. It is a type which has outstanding
legibility, a soothing evenness of color on the page, and com-
pact fitting of the individual letters. While it lacks some of the
character of many other book faces in general use, it is sound
and comfortable. It does its job in a straightforward manner,
without any frills or eccentricities, and thus seemed an appro-
priate type choice for this similarly straightforward book.
UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA PRESS ! NORMAN
In Mr. Connelly's years of exploring the
oil regions of the world,, the roads were al-
ways rough. Wherever we follow him in
these pages, we are able to see the world as
it was before oil, the motor car, and modern
highways had transformed its slow-paced
existence to the tempo we now know. The
result is social history without the name, all
the more interesting for the immediacy that
Mr. Connelly's telling gives it.
Since oil biographies are rare, and oil
autobiographies rarer still, we are fortunate
to have this account of a very full life span-
ning more than eighty years, by the dean of
Midcontinent oil executives.
Notes on the photographs
appearing on the front of the jacket:
From top to bottom: W. L. Connelly
and characteristic unlighted cigar ; ac-
tion on the floor of a modern (rotary)
drilling rig; an epic event in oil his-
tory, Colonel E. E. Walters auction-
ing rich Osage oil leases, Pawhuska,
June 14, 1921; an old standard (cable-
tool) rig; an Oklahoma gusher of thir-
ty-five years ago ; a cable- tool drilling
crew at work in the old days ; oil-field
transportation sixty years ago ; "poor-
boy" drilling about 1905, Creek Coun-
ty, Oklahoma. Most photographs,
courtesy Tulsa Public Library.
University of Oklahoma Press
JVorman
132416
CD<
13
