Wealth seemed to be spurting out of the very earth. On farms in
Indiana and Ohio giant gas wells blew the drilling machinery out of the
ground, and the fuel so essential to modern industrial development rushed
into the open. A wit, standing in the presence of one of the roaring gas
wells exclaimed, "Papa, Earth has indigestion; he has gas on his stomach.
His face will be covered with pimples."
Having, before the factories came, no market for the gas, the wells were
lighted and at night great torches of flame lit the skies. Pipes were laid
on the surface of the ground and by a day's work a laborer earned enough to
heat his house at tropical heat through an entire winter. Farmers owning
oil-producing land went to bed in the evening poor and owing money at the
bank, and awoke in the morning rich. They moved into the towns and invested
their money in the factories that sprang up everywhere. In one county in
southern Michigan, over five hundred patents for woven wire farm fencing
were taken out in one year, and almost every patent was a magnet about
which a company for the manufacture of fence formed itself. A vast energy
seemed to come out of the breast of earth and infect the people. Thousands
of the most energetic men of the middle States wore themselves out in
forming companies, and when the companies failed, immediately formed
others. In the fast-growing towns, men who were engaged in organizing
companies representing a capital of millions lived in houses thrown
hurriedly together by carpenters who, before the time of the great
awakening, were engaged in building barns.
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