THE CITY'S WEALTH AND POWER - 625 $3,000 a share. Stock dividends later increased one original share to 600 shares. Reports had not been made to stockholders. Now enormous resources were revealed. As the 983,383 shares were divided into strange fractions and "splinter" dividends, every stockholder getting his equity in 34 companies in literal obedience to the court order, Standard of New Jersey jumped to $4,000 a share on the market and Standard of Indiana to $7,000. Standard securities had gained $200,000,000 in value within three months of dissolution. The financial effect of this incomparable melon-cutting was wholesome in the long run. The great buying demand it created spread the ownership of Standard Oil from 600 stockholders in 1911 to more than 300,000 in 1929. Control, too, was spread somewhat, though it has often been said that the "Trust" was not really dissolved. As John K. Winkler observes in his "Portrait in Oils," "some units moved across the country and some across the hall. Complete dissolution would have been suicide." The organization was still intact. But it had learned some lessons, legal and practical. One of them was the wisdom of contenting itself with control of half, or less than half, of the industry, as the "Steel Trust" also learned to do. Rockefeller himself now retired altogether from business, transferring most of his holdings to his son, John D. Junior. And this remarkable old man, along with his incessant quest of health, devoted himself to another career—philanthropyno less effectively than he had done in industry. It is the Rockefeller of this period that present Clevelanders remember best. Whether from a shrewd desire to placate the long hostile public, or from the release of old inhibitions as business responsibilites fell away, for the first time in his life he began to appear and talk rather freely. For years he taught a famous Sunday school class of men at the Euclid Avenue Baptist Church, expounding his commonplace religious and moral views and welcoming all comers, even newspaper reporters, with friendly familiarity. He was a regular attendant at prayer meetings. In his church and social life 626 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS there was little suggestion of the first-class mind that functioned in business life. Many a Clevelander remembers him as he used to appear on his golf course, thin and seemingly feeble, heavily clothed even on a warm summer day, his parchment face and pale blue eyes half-hidden by winter cap and ear tabs, and an attendant at hand with an old bicycle to help him mount and push him across a roadway. Yet he played a good game of golf. Often he would play with his friend and physician, Dr. Biggar, who was credited with preserving his life by a simple, sane routine of abstinence, rest and exercise. But he lost his shyness, or grew democratic, and would play gladly with almost any visitor. Many a Clevelander, too, recalls quiet converse with him on the veranda of that old Forest Hill sanitarium, which looked like a combination of Chinese pagoda and early lake steamer architecture. Many a guest recalls with a smile the family portraits in that old home, standing around the gallery on the floor, leaning against the walls, because Mr. Rockefeller preferred to look at them in that position. Many a guest treasures one of the paper vests affected by Rockefeller as a protection against the wind on automobile rides, and always presented to those who accompanied him, somewhat as he later presented dimes to all the world. The sanitarium-pagoda home is gone. Its destruction by fire terminated Rockefeller's residence in the Forest City and fixed the fate of Forest Hill. The estate has become a real estate allotment. The old town house at Euclid Avenue and East Fortieth Street still stands, a dingy monument. Rockefeller, with his magnificent Pocantico Hills near Tarrytown, New York, and his other homes in New York City, New Jersey and Florida, always ready for their master, has no lack of shelter. In this latter period of his life Mr. Rockefeller seems almost to have entered upon a second incarnation. Hitherto he had devoted his life to making money. He now devoted his life to giving money away, always thriftily, but on a vast scale. He built up a system of modern philanthropy as if philanthropy itself were an industry. For what critics called his "predatory trust" he substituted a benevolent trust. THE CITY'S WEALTH AND POWER - 627 The idea for this form of enterprise is often credited to Frederick Taylor Gates, a former Baptist minister, who began serving Rockefeller in various ways in the early 'nineties. Between them they evolved a plan of "fundamental, scientific giving." Rockefeller has said, with a twinkle in his eye, that he "persuaded the Reverend Mr. Gates to become a man of business," to which Gates readily agreed, provided Rockefeller "would help him accomplish something for the good of mankind." They did many big things. "His splendid cooperation," Rockefeller has said, with that same new twinkle which characterized his transformation, "gave me more time to plant trees and play golf. Together we worked out schemes of philanthropy. We tried to get at the causes of things, to cure evil at the source." The first important beneficiary of this famous partnership was the University of Chicago, whose endowment of oil funds grew to $50,000,000. There followed the Institute for Medical Research; the General Education Board, to help colleges and increase their endowments; the Rockefeller Foundation, "to promote the well-being of mankind throughout the world ;" the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial, in honor of Mrs. Rockefeller, for women and children; and minor philanthropies almost beyond numeration. John D. Rockefeller Junior had begun taking up his father's business responsibilities when the latter first started laying them down, shortly after the turn of the century. He proved himself a capable business man, with somewhat more democratic business tendencies than his father, as befitted a more liberal age. Eventually the son himself virtually retired from gainful business. For many years he has devoted himself almost exclusively to continuing and extending the Rockefeller philanthropies. There is no sentimentality about these benefactions, as there often was about Andrew Carnegie's. They are scrutinized as keenly and operated as dispassionately as if they were meant for profit in money rather than in human weal. The total amount given away by the two Rockefellers by 1932 is estimated at somewhat more than $750,000,000. 628 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS Meanwhile the oil industry marched on, with the Rockefellers or without them. It had grown too great and too essential to modern civilization to depend on any man or group. The dissolution in 1912 of the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, which had served as a holding company for the varied constituents of the old Standard Oil Trust, left the field at last reasonably free for independent enterprise, and independent brains and capital made the most of it. There was business enough for all. And that business was vastly augmented by new demands on petroleum originating in the Motor Age. First the world had wanted better light, then it wanted better transportation. The second proved to be more important to the oil industry than the first. The automobile, appearing at the close of the last century, developed into a locomotive epidemic by the time the refining business was opened to general competition. A volatile and potent explosive was needed for the insatiable maw of the internal combustion engine. Gasoline served the purpose. This remarkable fuel had been originally a waste product of petroleum distillation. Rising first in the process of boiling the crude oil, and frequently causing explosions and fires, it was thrown away as a nuisance. The refining was directed to produce a maximum of kerosene. Thus in 1899 a 42-gallon barrel of crude oil was yielding 24.2 gallons of kerosene to 5.4 gallons of gasoline. By 1929 the new requirements, and improvements in distillation, had changed the ratio to 16.5 gallons of gasoline and 2.4 gallons of kerosene. In the meantime electric light had largely supplanted kerosene and illuminating gas, but the main reason was the automobile. The same demand which called forth chemical miracles in metamorphosing the hydrocarbons of crude oil also stimulatlated crude production enormously. The impact of a primitive bit, operating by gravity at the end of a "string of tools," gave way to rotary drilling by means of a drill boring through the rocks like an auger. Wells grew deeper and derricks grew higher. Prospectors sought new fields. As the Pennsylvania Oil Region began to play out, with its fringe of pro- THE CITY'S WEALTH AND POWER - 629 duction in eastern Ohio, a genuine "Ohio Field" was discovered. A well drilled at Lima in 1885 made 200 barrels in the first six days. Derricks immediately sprouted over a large area near the city and spread westward into Indiana. At its peak in 1896 the district produced 69,000 barrels a day and had storage for 23,000,000 barrels, with its own pipe lines and refineries and its crop of oil millionaires. As the Ohio Field declined, there were discovered the great Mid-Continent and California fields, and crude production shifted westward, leaving Ohio to its original function of refining. The fringe of Pennsylvania oil wells had widened into northern New York and West Virginia as well as northern Ohio and Indiana, with moderately successful fields also in Kentucky and Illinois, and there had been some chance drilling in the 1880s in Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas and California. But there was no important production west of the Mississippi until the beginning of the present century. Of the five oil districts into which the country is roughly divided, the original eastern district, stretching from the Appalachian Mountains to the Mississippi Valley, was producing 56 per cent of all the oil in the United States in 1900. Kentucky's production came later. Southwestern Indiana and Illinois did not begin to produce until 1905. Tennessee and Michigan followed with their slight output in 1916 and 1925 respectively. The flow of the eastern district has now ebbed until it makes only about 5 per cent of the country's production. The mid-continent district, opening with the discovery of the great Bartlesville and Glenn pools in Oklahoma in 1905, comprises Oklahoma, Kansas, Arkansas, and Texas and Louisiana above the Gulf coast area. It is an extremely rich and active region, producing about 60 per cent of the national output. The next largest supply comes from California, which started production in 1887 and became a really important source in 1912. Until 1923 the most active area was in Kern and Fresno counties. Then the Los Angeles basin was tapped, proving to be one of the most prolific sources of wealth ever found. 630 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS About 8 per cent of American oil in recent years has come from the Gulf coast district, embracing southern Texas and southern Louisiana. Texas oil is characterized by its extremely high volatility in comparison with other fields, and might be regarded as almost pure gasoline, producing over 53 per cent in "straight run" refining, which percentage is increased by supplementary processes. Oil pools are scarce in the Rocky Mountain district, which accounts for only 3 per cent of the country's production. The most important deposits are in Wyoming, the leading field of production being the Salt Creek. The principal producing states today are Texas, with 37 per cent of total production, Oklahoma with 25 per cent, California with 24 per cent, and Kansas, Arkansas, Louisiana and Wyoming together with 11 per cent. Thus 97 per cent of our oil comes from seven states. Texas alone produces as much as all foreign countries together. The development of the western fields, with the dissolution of the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, really restored competition in the oil industry. In the new fields the producers, being mostly interests not affiliated with the eastern producing and refining groups, naturally built their own carrying, refining and distributing systems. The consuming power of multiplying millions of motor cars played into their hands. Immense fortunes were made and invested. Pipe lines, common carriers open for the last quarter-century to all shippers on the same terms, like the railroads, spread their democratic facilities. Refineries sprang up in thirty states, well scattered through the oil fields and consuming centers. The primary work of these refineries, as has been said, is manufacturing gasoline, which fuel, vaporized and mixed with about fifteen times its own volume of air and exploded at the head of a piston, is now our chief source of mechanical power. This juxtaposition of petroleum and piston gave Cleveland, as the local oil business grew less important, a new and profitable industry which will be discussed by itself later on. In no other part of the oil industry has there been so much THE CITY'S WEALTH AND POWER - 631 progress as in refining. The old "batch distillation" meant little more than boiling crude oil and condensing the vapors for two or three useful products. Modern refining, with its "straight run" process, operates continuously somewhat like a smelting furnace, and creates by its fractional distillation a steady flow of gasoline, kerosene, gas oil and fuel oil, lubricating oil, wax, asphalt and, by redistillation and combination under varied conditions, dozens of other valuable products. This wonderful application of industrial science obtains from a filthy mineral substance more useful things than can be made from anything else except possibly coal. Petroleum, it may be recalled, is a marvellous composite of hydrocarbons, alike chemically but varying in weight and taking the form of gases, liquids and solids according to the size of their molecules. When the earth-born mixture is boiled, the smaller molecules rise as vapor. Higher temperatures drive off the heavier molecules, series by series, until the ultimate dregs remain. The various vapors, condensed by cooling, form the gasoline, kerosene, etc., according to their weight and their liquefying and solidifying temperatures. Some of the heavier products are redistilled under intense heat and pressure, to break down their molecules and make them more volatile—a process called "cracking," which produces nearly half our present gasoline supply. The operation as a whole has been compared roughly to the process of putting a pile of mixed coal through a series of screens. Further increase of the volatile contents of the crude oil is obtained by "hydrogenation," adding hydrogen artificially to the residues of distillation, which have an excess of carbon, thus gaining still more gasoline and other light products from heavy oils. Only the chemist and the physicist could follow the complex processes of modern oil refining. It is probably enough for the general reader to mention a few of the principal products and their uses. Rising first in the progressive distillation, we have the highly volatile gas to burn under the boilers and to make "gas black" for inks, paints and rubber tires; also a series of 632 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS alcohols for medical use and for lacquers, soaps and essential oils ; liquefied gases for illumination and metal cutting; ether for priming motors and for laboratory work, and solvents for drug extraction. White distillates come next, including naphthas and kerosene, the former producing gasoline for motor cars and airplanes, solvents for varnishes and paints and benzine for dyers and cleaners. With the kerosene come numerous other illuminating oils. Then furnace oil, followed by intermediate distillates yielding gas oil and absorber oil. The former is used in making water gas and as fuel in metal-working, and when "cracked" yields gasoline and fuel oil for Diesel motors. The latter is useful in recovering gasoline and benzol. From the heavy distillates are derived heavy technical oils, waxes and lubricating oil. From these we obtain special machine oils and substances for packing eggs and fruit, for salves, creams and ointments, for saturating wool and twine, for metal recovery, for wax candles, chewing gum and candy, with wax for laundry irons, sealing wax, etchers' wax and wax for cardboard, matches and paper. The lubricating oils are almost countless in variety and purpose. The residues provide gear grease, cup grease, salves and ointments. Residual fuel is burned in industrial plants, ships and locomotives, and also cracked for gasoline. Other heavy residual products are road oil, asphalts and pitches for roofing, paving, felt-saturating, briquetting, rubber-making and plastic composition. Petroleum coke, a solid, becomes carbon brushes and electrodes for electric motors, and serves as fuel. From refinery sludges come other fuel cokes, more oils and pitches, materials for soap and fertilizer. There might be mentioned, too, contributions to the aniline dye industry similar to those obtainable from coal, described in a previous chapter. All this barely suggests the ever-widening stream of products pouring, so to speak, from Drake's twenty-barrel oil well. Chemists say they have scarcely begun their laboratory mining to extract the values latent in every ounce of this THE CITY'S WEALTH AND POWER - 633 magic fluid. The laboratory has produced, and will produce, more wealth than the drill and pump. If Rockefeller is important as a business pioneer, so is Samuel Andrews, his partner, with his sulphuric process for cleansing kerosene. Just as kerosene has been robbed of its kerosene content in the last three decades to make more gasoline, on one side, so has it been robbed on the other side to make more fuel oil. First motor cars became more important than oil lamps. Now oil burners are following the same course. The use of fuel oil for household heating is a development of the last decade. The domestic oil burner is taking its place with the family automobile. The industrial use of fuel oil is growing likewise. Almost every industry is a potential oil consumer. Its use has spread to the merchant marine and the navy. Lubricants, usually regarded as mere by-products of oil production, deserve a far higher estimation. We have gone far in the art of lubrication since Hiram B. Everest, in his little plant in Rochester, New York, began treating the residue of petroleum reduction to supplant animal fats for mechanical lubrication. It was hard for him to persuade engineers that petroleum oil and grease would not hurt their engines. His purpose was merely to serve the needs of existing machinery. But he and his followers were building better than they knew. They opened the way for modern mechanical development. The automobile would have been as impossible without petroleum lubricants as without gasoline. Modern machinery required new means of avoiding friction. Higher speed and greater pressure demanded more resistent lubricants. Every new utilization of power called for special oils or greases and methods of applying them. Mechanical progress did not so much provide the opportunity for petroleum lubricants as the latter provided the opportunity for the former. It might be said that petroleum lubricants have created the machine age. Without these products made from what used to be refinery waste, hardly an important machine of the present industrial era could run. Little has been said of natural gas, which is a form of petroleum, essential to oil production and one of the most 634 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS useful and wonderful products of nature. It is usually found in petroleum, like the carbonic acid gas in a champagne bottle. Its pressure is the main force which moves oil through sands and rocks to the wells and raises the liquid when a pool is tapped. Where it provides the energy for artesian flow, exhaustion of the oil results rather from exhaustion of gas than of the oil itself. Gas promotes the flow not merely by its pressure but by making the oil less viscous. It is often forced into wells artificially to increase the pressure. It is the gas which "blows in" wells, and which sometimes wrecks them. Gas fields having no connection with oil have probably migrated from oil fields. In the early years this gas was regarded by oil drillers as a nuisance. Countless billions of cubic feet were run off into the air. Probably half the gas has been thus wasted since the beginning of the oil era. For years, then, there were fears of general gas exhaustion. But latterly more efforts are made to conserve and utilize it. New pipe lines have been laid for unprecedented distances, and the cleanly, convenient, ashless and smokeless fuel is available to more people than ever before. There was natural gas around Cleveland, occasionally combined with a little oil, being found at two levels after drilling through the surface shale. Shallow wells in the "Lakewood field" provided private light, heat and cooking fuel for many a home in the western and southwestern part of Cuyahoga County until lately, and the deeper wells often furnished gas in commercial quantities. There are farm wells yet producing, on a modest scale, on the fringes of this local field. Around North Olmsted, where paying wells produced in recent years have turned their output into the gas mains, there are considerable areas still under gas company leases. But there has never been a gas boom hereabouts. Natural gas was discovered within the limits of Pittsburgh and at Fredonia, New York, in the early 1820s. Boys played with it on the shore of Lake Erie at Westfield, New York, in 1824. Two years later a crude well drilled near by supplied gas to the United States government for a light- THE CITY'S WEALTH AND POWER - 635 house, through a wooden pipe half a mile long. The first natural gas corporation in America was the Fredonia Gas Light and Water Works organized in 1865, beginning the domestic use of gas. In 1867 gas from adjacent oil wells was piped to homes in Oil City, Pennsylvania. The first long-distance pipe line, built in 1872, ran five miles from Newton Well to Titusville, Pennsylvania. Gas was introduced in East Liverpool, Ohio, in the same year for potteries, beginning its industrial use. It soon came into general use in Ohio, though Cleveland was long in gaining an ample supply. This fuel was so plentiful and cheap in the Pennsylvania oil region that towns using it for public illumination commonly let it burn all day to save the expense of turning it on and off. Pittsburgh residents in 1887 paid flat rates of one dollar a month for cooking stoves, seventy-five cents for heating stoves and fifteen cents for lighting. Consumers complained of the price; it was only half as much in other cities. The Indiana field, opened in 1886, was especially thriftless with its gas. Leaky wells were allowed to blow all their gas into the air. The whole region was ablaze at night from open gas pipes. Manufacturers had their gas free. The field was almost burned out in ten years. Businesslike control of natural gas, with compression and meters, began at Murraysville, Pennsylvania, in 1890. It was not until the present century that Cleveland obtained a commercial supply for light and heat. Late as this was in the history of natural gas, it involved a pioneer enterprise in long-distance transmission under high pressure. The East Ohio Gas Company, a Standard Oil subsidiary, incorporated in 1898, laid a trunk line to bring gas from the new fields of Wetzel County, West Virginia. In a year the line reached under the Ohio River and north to Akron. The supply was brought to that city despite the report of experts that Akron had no future and would never repay the investment. Branch lines ran to many other Ohio communities. A second trunk line was laid from the Ohio River to Cleveland, and a third in 1907. There are now five such lines serving the city, with branches to Youngstown and other cities throughout northeastern Ohio. 636 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS The present East Ohio Gas Company, successor to one of the same name formed in 1899, was incorporated in 1910, absorbing two artificial gas companies, and natural gas wholly supplanted artificial gas. In 1899 the East Ohio Gas Company had 3,874 consumers in the state using 190,135,000 cubic feet. In 1927 it had 450,000 consumers using 42,000,000,000 cubic feet. Ohio is the biggest user of natural gas in the United States. Gas piped in Ohio in 1926 averaged 330,000,000 cubic feet a day, spread among 395 cities and towns, without counting private wells and pipes. Pennsylvania comes next. Oklahoma rose to first place in production in 1924, with 214,- 452,000,000 cubic feet. California next, followed by Louisiana and Texas. The Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia fields are by no means exhausted yet. More and more gas is piped from Oklahoma and Texas. With the new demand for this fuel, the new conservation methods and the new fields available, the country may soon be covered with trunk lines supplying all our important centers of population. Commercial production in 1924 amounted to 1,141,521,000,000 cubic feet. By 1932 it was nearly 2,000,000,000,000 feet, contributing vastly to American industry and easing housework in nearly 20,000,000 homes. The oil industry, as has been observed, is no longer a monopoly. It grows more and more competitive. This is the result of changing business methods and larger public control, with new fields and new capital. The Standard Oil units now have about half the business instead of nine-tenths of it. A new era of centralization is under way, resulting in fewer and larger companies, but those so completely integrated and independent that they can manufacture complete lines of products and compete with others in all fields. The most self-sufficient of these modern oil corporations is the same Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, Rockefeller's holding company, which was stripped of its holdings by the United States Supreme Court in 1912. It has subsidiaries and affiliates which furnish pipe line and tank steamer transportation, bringing crude oil to its factories and distrib- THE CITY'S WEALTH AND POWER - 639 uting its products throughout the world. It is aggressive in the domestic market, particularly the eastern states. Its own crude production supplies nearly half its manufacturing requirements of half a million barrels a day. Excepting the Royal Dutch Shell Group, it surpasses all other oil enterprises. It produces and refines in many countries. This company, still the world's largest oil unit, had in 1929 net assets over $1,000,000,000 and 46 subsidiary companies spread over the earth. Its manufacturing capacity had been multiplied by five in twenty years. The capital of the Standard group in that year was about $2,500,000,000. The various Standard Oil companies are said now to compete actively in the production field, but not much otherwise among themselves. Competition with them is rather internal, among employees. The independents make up in number and energy for whatever they may lack in size. In 1929 there were sixty-three American companies engaged in producing, refining, transporting and distributing petroleum and its products, with about two-thirds of the refined output controlled by a dozen companies, among them several independents. Cleveland, instead of the half-hundred refineries it had fifty years ago, operated by almost as many companies, now has only two plants. But these are greater in scope than all the city's crude pioneer refineries combined. They constitute one Standard Oil refinery and one independent, operated respectively by the Standard Oil Company of Ohio, standing on the site of the first Standard plant, and the Canfield Oil Company. The National Refining Company, whose plant is at Findlay, Ohio, has its headquarters here. The dissolution of the Standard Oil combination twenty years ago dealt a severe blow to the Cleveland branch, because Standard Oil of Ohio had not been built to stand alone as a competitive unit. It had no crude production, being merely a refining and marketing concern. Ohio, moreover, became a battleground for violent competition. So there were lean years. Lately has come a renaissance, with Standard Oil of Ohio, under new Cleveland management, improv- 640 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS ing its refining processes and equipment, making a complete line of its own products, and marketing them so aggresively that the city is regarded as once more "on the petroleum map." Gasoline production in the United States in 1928, a typical pre-depression year, was 434,241,000 barrels. The daily crude runs to the stills averaged 2,706,000 barrels. Refining capacity doubled from 1920 to 1930. With total crude production passing a billion barrels, there was an average yield of 44 per cent gasoline, against only 12 per cent thirty years before, and with an expectation of 55 to 60 per cent before long from additional cracking and hydrogenation. The United States still led the world's crude production, having more than two-thirds of the total. Venezuela came next with less than one-seventh as much, and Russia, Mexico, Persia, Roumania and the Dutch East Indies a long way after, Texas and Oklahoma each producing more than the three leading foreign countries. Half a billion dollars a year were being spent in further drilling for oil and gas, despite the current overproduction, wells costing an average of $22,500 and running as high as $100,000 to $200,000 apiece. There were 100,000 miles of pipe lines, four-fifths of them trunk lines, worth $1,000,000,- 000, transporting oil as common carriers. The investment in the petroleum industry, estimated at $800,000,000 in 1906, had become nearly $13,000,000,000. The total production of crude oil in this country, including 1929, was 12,250,000,000 barrels in a world total of 18,635,000,000 barrels. American crude production recently in normal years has reached 1,000,000,000 barrels a year, with the tendency rapidly upward at home and abroad, despite gains in refining efficiency. How much more oil is there in the ground? How long will the stored supply last? Nobody knows. The oil possibilities of the world are regarded by geologists as follows : North America is the richest in oil of all the continents, and the United States is the richest country. Mexico is considered as nearing exhaustion. No great quantity is expected THE CITY'S WEALTH AND POWER - 641 from Canada because of its unfavorable geological condi-tions. Europe's rocks are generally unfavorable, allowing only small and scattered oil fields, though Russia shows con-siderable promise. There are encouraging formations in the Caucasus. There may be vast wealth hidden in the sedi-mentary beds of Asia. Africa on the whole is unpromising, but South America has great and unexplored possibilities. Petroleum may run short in a decade or two, or may last for a century. Oil men, while striving to limit overproduction by prora-tion, with development of entire pools as units, and to get the most out of the oil in refining, are not visibly worrying about the general supply. Money still pours into the indus-try and oil magnates still look far ahead. When this magic earth liquor does give out, what then? How shall our gas engines run and our furnaces burn and our machines work and all the industries based on petroleum continue? The answer is that there will be vast quantities of raw material obtainable from shale, and that oil can be manufactured from coal, of which there is an immensely greater supply. It is estimated that the oil recoverable from saturated shales already known is not less than 92,000,000,000 barrels, more than four times the quantity of pool petroleum produced so far. These shales, nearly all in Colorado, Utah, Indiana and Kentucky, will be utilized when it becomes profitable. Others will be found. As for coal, bituminous and sub-bitu-minous, available for the extraction of an oil similar to pe-troleum, figures of the United States Bureau of Mines indi-cate reserves enough to yield 525,000,000,000 barrels of heavy liquid fuel and perhaps 100,000,000,000 barrels of motor fuel. From lignite could be obtained 70,000,000,000 barrels more of liquid fuels. These sources have some ad-vantages over shale, and are found in many parts of the country. They will be more expensive to reduce than nat-ural petroleum, but will doubtless be utilized increasingly for explosive fuel and its related products. Thus we are probably safe in assuming an adequate reserve of oil, in vari- 642 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS ous forms, to last for at least a century or two. Our great-grandchildren can still drive, though they may pay more for their gas. There is far more involved in this question than the fate of the industry itself. We may agree with the American Petroleum Institute when it says : "With the exception of the art of printing, it may well be doubted if any single industry has brought so many sweeping changes into the world as the modern production and use of petroleum. None, perhaps, has wrought its revolution in manners, customs, modes of life, relations of the individual to the social establishment, in so short a time as has the industry of petroleum, along with those others that are collateral to and dependent upon it." * * * * * A frail, shrunken old man of gentle speech and quiet manner, with mild blue eyes peering out from a parchment-like face, has spanned this industrial epoch and has been a prime mover in it. Special to the New York Times from Tarrytown, New York, July 8, 1932.— "John D. Rockefeller passed his ninety-third birthday today without any special birthday program, because the excitement would consume some of the energy which he wishes to use in reaching the age of a hundred. "In accordance with his growing conviction that even the slightest disturbance is a waste of his bodily resources, construction work is being pushed on sites which he owns outside the barbed wire walls of his Pocantico Hills estate, so that all the chauffeurs, gardeners, workmen and most of the house servants will withdraw outside the gates at sundown and leave Mr. Rockefeller in the guaranteed isolation of 3,000 acres with only his immediate family and almost a hundred armed Negro guards, shod with rubber soles an inch thick, so that their tread on gravel paths and porches may be noiseless. "In order that the landscape which he contemplates in the daytime from his hilltop may be as free from human in- THE CITY'S WEALTH AND POWER - 643 trusion as his nights, his holdings are being extended to include houses of neighbors that are visible, so that he may paint them green until they can be vacated and torn down. "Weekly, his twelve-foot wire fences topped with barbed wire are set farther out. He has crossed a public highway, but he plans to move that as he recently moved the railroad, by offering to build an alternate route on the outer marches of his estate. "There is a children's home of red brick in a near-by hollow, from which noisy voices at play can be heard at the Rockefeller house when the wind is right, and Mr. Rockefeller's agents hope to remove that also; or at least paint it green so that he will not see it. "By contrast in visibility, the house in which Mr. Rockefeller sleeps is surrounded by flood lights which keep it in the center of a bright circle of light all night. "Mr. Rockefeller, who retired from the control of seven-eighths of the oil industry of this country twenty-one years ago and turned over capital holdings of $1,000,000,000 to his son to be used for the good of mankind, can have anything he wants, but all he wants now is an existence in which his only feelings are tranquillity and sleepiness. "Guided by this principle, he has not only abandoned special birthday programs, but also begun to administer his daily routine with flexibility. If he does not feel like playing eight holes of golf, he will play less. If he does not want to walk in his garden, he will ride in his car. There must be no strain. "In particular, his mind is much on the avoidance of colds, since he caught the cold which delayed him in Florida in April. That day was more of a catastrophe in Mr. Rockefeller's scheme of existence than the entire economic depression. To prevent any such loss of energy again he has discarded the automobile in which he has ridden for many years, and now has a new open car, specially built in a hurry, which may be converted at a moment's notice into a closed sedan in which the heat can be turned on. He rode in it today through Northern Westchester, bundled in a greatcoat, with amber glasses to protect his eyes from the sun. 644 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS "His day began later than usual. He rose at eight o'clock, ate a light breakfast of fruit juice and cereal, and spent more than an hour listening to the reading of messages of birthday congratulation. "He expressed his pleasure with the way the newspapers represented the birthday message issued for him yesterday, calling to the public mind that Mr. Rockefeller had lived through many depressions during his ninety-three years, and that 'prosperity has always returned and will again.'" CHAPTER II ELECTRICITY The age of steel merges into the age of electricity. Cleveland's eminence in the electric industry is based on two things. It inaugurated electric illumination by producing a practical arc light; and through its electric appliance industry it has become the most important electric center in the world. The story of Charles F. Brush follows naturally the story of his fellow townsman, John D. Rockefeller. The business genius lighted the world with oil and gas. The scientific genius proceeded to light it with something better. He moved not silently and subtly, in the Rockefeller manner, but with a blare of publicity. The new era began with a blaze of lights on Cleveland's Public Square. LIGHT Charles F. Brush was born on a farm in Euclid, Cleveland's geometric suburb, in 1849, when Rockefeller was ten years old. As a boy he was interested in all kinds of scentific matters and was always tinkering with telescopes, miscoscopes, photographic apparatus, et cetera, but especially with elctro-magnets, induction coils and small motors. He attended Central high school in Cleveland, and his graduation speech, in 1867, was on the arc light. When he finally got together enough batteries to light a carbon arc, his joy was boundless. He took an engineering course in the University of Michigan, and was soon employed as an analytical chemist for the Cleveland Telegraph Supply and Manufacturing Company. He was obsessed with the idea of creating an electric light operated by a dynamo, because the chemical batteries used experimentally for lighting were too expensive for practical - 645 - 646 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS use. Many men were working along the same line, but there was as yet neither a practical generator nor a satisfactory carbon arc lamp. By the year 1876 Brush had built a small dynamo which became the foundation of the lighting system known by his name. There was no model. The inventor is said to have built it "out of his head." He took it in a buggy to his father's farm and tested it with a horsepower machine used in farm work. It functioned to his satisfaction. He hauled it back to town, set it up in a corner of the Telegraph Supply works on Superior Street, alongside of the old Cleveland Leader building, and put it in circuit with a clock-work carbon lamp of his own design. From the first the dynamo was successful. It was in constant operation for many years without any important change.. It supplied one lamp of 300 candle power. With that outfit Brush believed he could light streets better than did the artificial gas which in Cleveland had supplanted coal oil for that purpose in 1859. He promptly showed his invention at the Philadelphia Centennial and applied for a patent, which was granted the following year. That was the foundation of the world's great lighting systems. The Brush Electric Company, managed by George W. Stockly, succeeded the Telegraph Supply Company and, obtaining power at first from the Leader printing plant, proceeded to manufacture the new power-light equipment. The first unit, with a lamp of 4,000 candle power, was shipped to Cincinnati in 1878 and was exhibited from a street balcony to a big crowd. Others were installed in a Philadelphia department store and a Boston clothing store in the same year. Cleveland seems at first to have lacked enthusiasm for the innovation. Brush has given this entertaining account of his first public exhibit: "I had worked for many months on my invention and, knowing there was to be a big parade on a certain night, I decided to try my light by throwing its rays from a window of my laboratory upon the marchers. My workroom was on THE CITY'S WEALTH AND POWER - 647 the second floor of a little building on the southwest corner of the Public Square. (Evidently just about on the spot where the Terminal Tower now throws its four-way beams for fifty miles). "I fastened my machine securely to the window sill, set the carbons, and had all in readiness as the division of cavalry heading the procession came around the Forest City House headed toward my window. I threw the switch. The crude lamp burned, and I recall to this day how it shone in the eyes of the prancing horses, which resented the glare. "I was in ecstasy. I felt that my name would be heralded in newspapers the next day as a great inventor. I began counting my fortune. Suddenly the door of the little room opened and, turning, I saw a huge policeman filling the doorway. He was shaking his club at me, and in no uncertain terms he exclaimed : " Put out that blamed light!' " The city, however, soon rose to the occasion. The first practical electric street lighting in history occurred in April, 1879, when twenty lamps were set up around the Public Square and the public was invited to see the new marvel. Citizens responded by thousands. Many came with smoked glasses to protect their eyes from the unaccustomed glare. According to a newspaper account, "a dazzling glory filled the park, crowds being present to witness the practical demonstration of a scientific victory." The city council accepted the lighting system for the Square and the streets bounding it, providing it would not cost more than $1,348.95 a year. In 1881 the city, now thoroughly converted to bright lights, built four steel masts 200 feet high to light the whole down-town section. One of them was at the center of the Public Square, one at the corner of West Sixth Street and Lake Avenue, one at the corner of West Ninth and Superior, and one at St. Clair and East Ninth. Each tower carried eight lamps of 4,000 candle power apiece. A little later the arrangement was changed to sixteen lamps of 2,000 candle power. Eventually it was found that such elevation wasted light, and the lamps were brought nearer to the ground. 648 - THIS CLEVELAND OF OURS The Brush lights were soon taken up in San Francisco and other cities all over the country and were adopted extensively in Europe. Sales in 1882 reached $2,000,000. Brush and Stockly prospered. Charles F. Brush must be regarded as one of Cleveland's greatest sons. There was such distinction in his build and bearing that when he was presented to the president of France, the latter said : "I know not which to admire the more, the physique of the man or the genius of the inventor." He was more than inventor and business man. He received many college degrees as tributes to his scientific achievements. He was one of the incorporators of Case School and was identified with Western Reserve University, University school, the Cleveland School of Art and other educational and cultural institutions. He served as president of the Chamber of Commerce. He was made chevalier of the French Legion of Honor in 1881, and received the Rumford medal from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1899 and the Edison medal in 1913. From him sprang Cleveland's electric industry, especially its lamp and carbon branches. Numerous monuments of him remain in the city, the most picturesque of them being the famous windmill which once furnished the power to light his Euclid Avenue home. BEFORE BRUSH It must not be supposed that Brush had produced an entirely new thing. There is seldom such a thing as a really new invention. Epochal advances in civilization are made usually by one seeker out of many being just a little ahead of the rest. Behind Brush's experiments was a quest of thousands of years, beginning when men first sought to learn the nature and gain the mastery of the mysterious force which governed the magnetic needle and made amber attract other bodies when rubbed. Little progress was made, however, until modern times. The magnetic compass was known to Christian Europe in the Middle Ages, but was suppressed as magic, and therefore of the Devil. In Provence in the twelfth century a writer testified : "No master mariner dares to use THE CITY'S WEALTH AND POWER - 649 it, lest he should be suspected of being a magician ; nor would the sailors venture to go to sea under the command of a man using an instrument which so much appeared to be under the influences of the powers below." Science came with the renaissance. The foundations of magnetic and electrical science were laid in England, most scientific of modern nations, at the end of the sixteenth century, by Dr. William Gilbert. In his famous book, "De Magnete," he showed the earth itself to be a great magnet, controlling the compass. Taking up the experiments of the old Greek scientist, Thales, he found that many bodies besides amber could be excited by rubbing, including glass, sulphur and resin, and suggested "electric effluvia" as the cause of the phenomenon. He observed that magnetism passed from one end of an iron rod to another. In 1660 Otto von Guericke in Saxony made the first frictional electric machine, consisting of a globe of sulphur cast in a glass sphere and mounted on a rotating axis. With it he saw the first light produced by artificially excited electricity and discovered that the force could be carried by a thread. Soon Sir Isaac Newton and Francis Hauksbee in England made machines of glass which, if the air in them was exhausted and they were whirled rapidly, produced a strong light inside when the hand was placed on the outside. Newton suggested that lightning and electricity were one. Dr. William Well, an English clergyman, in 1708 produced crackling noises and light flashes by rubbing amber with woolen cloths. Stephen Gray, discovering that electric leakage could be prevented by insulation, transmitted electricity several hundred feet with a hempen line suspended by silken thread. Other Englishmen extended the distance and, using wire, had transmitted a current more than four miles by the year 1747. So electric energy could be produced and delivered instantaneously at a distance. Could it also be caught and stored? In 1745 the secret was discovered in Holland with the invention of the "Leyden jar." This was a glass bottle covered inside and outside with tin foil. As Dr. William Watson ex-