I have been occupied in the petroleum region of Pennsylvania since 1860,
have seen all the wonderful development of the oil wells, and was very
much interested in contrasting the Austrian ozokerite and petroleum
industry with the American. It is a good illustration of the difference
between the lower class of Poles and Jews and the Yankee. Borislau,
after twenty years' work, was unimproved, dirty, squalid, and brutal. It
contained one school house, but no church nor printing office. None of
its streets were paved, and, in the main road through the town, the mud
came up to the hubs of the wagon wheels for over a mile of its length.
In places, plank had to be set up on edge to keep the mud out of the
houses, which were lower than the road. It contained numerous shops,
where potato whisky was sold to men, women, and children. It depends on
a dirty, muddy creek for its supply of water. Its houses were generally
one-story, built of logs and mud.

On the other hand, Oil City, a town of the same age and size, contained
eight school houses (one a high school building), twelve churches, and
two printing offices. It has paved streets, which, in 1863, were as deep
with mud as those in Borislau in 1879. It has no whisky shops where
women and children can drink. Many of its houses are of brick, two,
three, four, and five stories high. Its water works cost one hundred and
fifty thousand dollars. All this has been done since 1860, when it did
not contain forty houses.

I saw in the market place of Borislau women standing ankle deep in the
mud, selling vegetables. One woman really had to build a platform of
straw, on which to place a bushel of potatoes; if the straw foundation
had not been there, the potatoes would have sunk out of sight. Borislau
is three miles from Drohobich, a city of thirty thousand inhabitants;
between the two places, in wet weather, the road was impassable. For a