y responded
spontaneously to Drake's success. For anything approaching the sudden
rush to the oil-fields we shall have to go to the discovery of gold in
California ten years before. Men flocked into western Pennsylvania by
the thousands; fortunes were made and lost almost instantaneously. Oil
flowed so plentifully in this region that it frequently ran upon the
ground, and the "gusher," which threw a stream of the precious liquid
sometimes a hundred feet and more into the air, became an almost
every-day occurrence. The discovery took the whole section by surprise;
there were no towns, no railways, and no wagon roads except a few
almost impassable lumber trails. Yet, almost in a twinkling, the whole
situation changed; towns sprang up overnight, roads were built, over
which teamsters could carry the oil to the nearest shipping points, and
the great trunk lines began to extend branches into the regions. The
one thing, next to Drake's well, that made the oil available, was the
discovery, which was made by Samuel Van Syckel, that a two-inch pipe,
starting at the well, could convey the oil for several miles to the
nearest railway station. In a few years the whole oil region of Venango
County was an inextricable tangle of these primitive pipelines. Thus,
before the Civil war had ended, the western Pennsylvania wilderness had
been transformed into the busy headquarters of a new industry. Companies
had been formed, many of them the wildest stock-jobbing operations,
refineries had been started, in a few years the whalers of New England
had almost lost their occupation, but millions of American homes, that
had hitherto had to spend the long winter evenings almost in darkness,
suddenly found themselves flooded with light. In Cleveland, in
Pittsburgh, in Philadelphia, in New York, and in the oil regions,
the business of refining and selling petroleum had reached extensive
proportions. Europe, although it had great undeveloped oil-fields of
its own, drew upon this new American enterprise to such an extent that,
eleven years after Drake's "discovery," petroleum had taken fourth place
among our exported articles.

The very year that Bissell had organized his petroleum company a boy of
sixteen had obtained his first job in a produce commission office on
a dock in Cleveland. As the curtain rises on the career of John D.
Rockefeller, we see him perched upon a high stool, adding up figures and
casting accounts, faithfully doing every odd of