File:The world's opportunities and how to use them (1887) (14590943949).jpg

Identifier: worldsopportunit00guer (find matches)
Title: The world's opportunities and how to use them
Year: 1887 (1880s)
Authors: Guernsey, Alfred H. (Alfred Hudson), 1824-1902
Subjects: Industries
Publisher: New York, Harper & brothers
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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1000 years old. Early in the present century small quan-tities of the oil were collected and sold as a valuable medicine,under the name of Seneca oil. Meanwhile it was discoveredin Great Britain that oils (paraffine oils) of a similar charactercould be distilled from certain species of coal and lignite, andabout 1850 the manufacture of these oils was introduced intothe United States. In 1854 a company was formed for collect-ing the natural petroleum floating on pools and ditches in North-western Pennsylvania. In 1858 Mr. Drake, the manager of thiscompany, conceived the idea that, by sinking a deep well, oilwould be struck. On August 28, 1859, a well had been boreddown to a depth of 71 feet, when oil gushed to the surface atthe rate of 400 gallons a day. From the sinking of this well dates the beginning of petro.leum mining, which has come to be a very prominent industryin the United States. Wells were immediately sunk in therough region of North-western Pennsylvania, and the most un-
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PETROLEUM AND ITS PRODUCTS. 215 productive farm lands came to be held of the highest value; fora well, which could be sunk for a few hundred dollars, mightyield, with scarcely any additional mining labor, hundreds of dol-lars a day. Petroleum has this characteristic, that there is no apparentlimit to the quantity that may be obtained by a comparativelytrifling amount of labor. Practically, the value of it is regulatedwholly by the amount wanted, and not by the quantity produced.The history of petroleum mining, therefore, furnishes an in-structive lesson upon the relation between the value of a pro-duction, its supply in the market, and the demand for it. The quantity produced in 1859 was 3,000 barrels, which soldat the wells for $13.00 per barrel. In i860 there were 600,000barrels, and the price fell to $6.72 per barrel; in 1861 the yieldwas 2,000,000 barrels, at $2.73. In 1862 the yield was 3,000,000barrels, sold at pi.68; so that, although the quantity was 50 percent, greater, the v

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