only on the innocent and the weak. Serious as all these problems were, there was no discouragement or shrinking from them. The oil men had rid themselves of bunco men and burst the “oil bubbles.” They had harnessed the brokers in exchanges and made strict rules to govern them. They had learned not to fear the foreigners, and to take with equal _sang froid_ the “dry-hole” which made them poor, or the “gusher” which made them rich. For every evil they had a remedy. They were not afraid even of the railroads, and loudly declared that if the discriminations were not stopped they would build a railroad of their own. Indeed, the evils in the oil business in 1871, far from being a discouragement, rather added to the interest. They had never known anything but struggle—with conquest—and twelve years of it was far from cooling their ardour for a fair fight. More had been done in the Oil Regions in the first dozen years than the development of a new industry. From the first there had gone with the oil men’s ambition to make oil to light the whole earth a desire to bring civilisation to the wilderness from which they were drawing wealth, to create an orderly society from the mass of humanity which poured pell-mell into the region. A hatred of indecency first drew together the better element of each of the rough communities which sprang up. Whiskey-sellers and women flocked to the region at the breaking out of the excitement. Their first shelters were shanties built on flatboats which were towed from place to place: They came to Rouseville—a collection of pine shanties and oil derricks, built on a muddy flat—as forlorn and disreputable a town in appearance as the earth ever saw. They tied up for trade, and the next morning woke up from their brawl to find themselves twenty miles away, floating down the Allegheny River. Rouseville meant to be decent. She had cut them loose, and by such summary vigilance she kept herself decent. Other towns adopted the same policy. By common consent vice was corralled largely in one town. Here a whole street was given up to dance-houses and saloons, and those who must have a “spree” were expected to go to Petroleum Centre to take it. [Illustration: FAC-SIMILE OF A LABEL USED BY S. M. KIER IN ADVERTISING ROCK-OIL OBTAINED IN DRILLING SALT WELLS NEAR TARENTUM, PENNSYLVANIA ] [Illustration: FAGUNDUS—A TYPICAL OIL TOWN ]