Page:The History of the Standard Oil Company Vol 1.djvu/52

Rh for shipping to California and Australia. The processes used in the Downer works at this early day were in all essentials the same as are used to-day.

In 1865 William Wright, after a careful study of "Petrolia," as the Oil Regions were then often called, published with Harper and Brothers an interesting volume in which he devotes a chapter to "Oil Refining and Refiners." Mr. Wright describes there not only the Downer works at Corry, but a factory which if much less important in the development of the Oil Regions held a much larger place in its imagination. This was the Humboldt works at Plumer. In 1862 two Germans, brothers, the Messrs. Ludovici, came to the oil country and, choosing a spot distant from oil wells, main roads, or water courses, erected an oil refinery which was reported to have cost a half million dollars. The works were built in a way unheard of then and uncommon now. The foundations were all of cut stone. The boiler and engines were of the most expensive character. A house erected in connection with the refinery was said to have been finished in hard wood with marble mantels, and furnished with rich carpets, mirrors, and elaborate furniture. The lavishness of the Humboldt refinery and the formality with which its business was conducted were long a tradition in the Oil Regions. Of more practical moment are the features of the refinery which Mr. Wright mentions: one is that the works had been so planned as to take advantage of the natural descent of the ground so that the oil would pass from one set of vessels to another without using artificial power, and the other that the supply of crude oil was obtained from the Tarr farm three miles away, being forced by pumps, through pipes, over the hills.

Mr. Wright found some twenty refineries between Titusville and Oil City the year of his visit, 1865. In several factories that he visited they were making naphtha, gasoline, and