thought profitable. The drill had gone on merrily through 1873, 1874, and 1875, regardless of consumption or prices. By the end of 1874 there were over three and a half million barrels of oil in stock, more than twice what there had ever been before. Production was well to a million barrels a month and prices that year averaged but $1.15 a barrel. For men who considered three dollars a starvation price this was indeed hard luck. Things looked better by the end of 1875, for production was falling off. By March, 1876, stocks had been so reduced that there was strong confidence that the price of crude oil must advance. By June the Oil City Derrick began to prophesy "three-dollar oil" and to advise oil men to hold crude for that price. In August three dollars was reached in the Oil City exchange. It had been nearly four years since that price had been paid for oil, and the day the point was reached (August 25) the brokers fairly went mad. They jumped on their chairs, threw up their hats, beat one another on the back, while the spectators in the crowded galleries, most of them speculators, yelled in sympathy. Before six o'clock that day oil reached $3.11¼. Nobody thought of stopping because it was supper time. The exchange was open until nearly midnight, prices booming on to $3.17½. It seemed like old times in the Oil Region—the good old flush times when people made a fortune one day and threw it away the next!
Of course refined oil went up steadily with crude. Refined reached 21⅜ cents in New York the day of this boom at Oil City. The day following the rise was one of the most exciting the oil exchange had ever seen. "Never before," declared the Derrick in its report, "was so much business done. From early in the morning until ten o'clock at night the exchange was crowded by frantic speculators. Their awful excitement was clear from their blanched faces and wild voices. Fully 800,000 barrels of oil exchanged hands that day, the advance
[ 210 ]
