a type of man with a type of mind quite as characteristic as the type
of machinery employed in the drilling of wells. The latter, for
instance, appears at first glance to be crude and awkward, but as a
matter of fact it is amazingly ingenious and extremely efficient, and
your oil-field operator is pretty much the same. Nor is there any
business in which practical experience is more valuable. As a result,
most of the big oil men, especially those engaged in production, are
graduates of the school of hard knocks; they are big-fisted,
harsh-handed fellows who are as thoroughly at home on the "thribble
board" of a derrick as at a desk or a directors' table, and they are
quite as colorful as the oil fields themselves. Their lives are full
and vigorous.

Of all the oil excitements, that which occurred in North Texas was
perhaps the most remarkable; at any rate, the world has never
witnessed such scenes as were enacted there. The California gold
rush, the great Alaskan stampede, the diamond frenzies of South
Africa and of Australia, all were epic in their way, but none bred
a wilder insanity than did the discovery of oil in the Red River
district.

For one thing, the time was ripe and conditions were propitious
for the staging of an unprecedented drama. The enormous wastage of
a world's war, resulting in a cry for more production, a new level
of high prices for crude, rumors of an alarming shortage of
supply, the success of independent producers, large and small--all
these, and other reasons, too, caused many people hitherto
uninterested to turn their serious attention to petroleum. The
country was prosperous, banks were bulging with money, pockets
were stuffed with profits; poor men had the means with which to