Page:The History of the Standard Oil Company Vol 1.djvu/158

 a man had big wells, and many of them, he made big profits on "three-dollar oil," but there were comparatively few "big producers." The majority of those in the business had but few wells, and these yielded only small amounts.

If he had been contented to economise and to accept small gains, even the small producer could live on a much lower price than three dollars; but nobody in the Oil Regions in 1872 looked with favour on economy, and everybody despised small things. The oil men as a class had been brought up to enormous profits, and held an entirely false standard of values. As the Derrick told them once in a sensible editorial, "their business was born in a balloon going up, and spent all its early years in the sky." They had seen nothing but the extreme of fortune. One hundred per cent. per annum on an investment was in their judgment only a fair profit. If their oil property had not paid for itself entirely in six months, and begun to yield a good percentage, they were inclined to think it a failure. Now nothing but five-dollar oil would do this, so great were the risks in business; and so it was for five-dollar oil, regardless of the laws of supply and demand, that they struggled. They were notoriously extravagant in the management of their business. Rarely did an oil man write a letter if he could help it. He used the telegraph instead. Whole sets of drilling tools were sometimes sent by express. It was no uncommon thing to see near a derrick broken tools which could easily have been mended, but which the owner had replaced by new ones. It was anything to save bother with him. Frequently wells were abandoned which might have been pumped on a small but sure profit. In those days there were men who looked on a ten-barrel (net) well as hardly worth taking care of. And yet even at fifty cents a barrel such a well would have paid the owner $1,800 a year. The simple fact was that the profits which men in trades all over the country were glad enough to get, the oil producer despised. The one great thing which