SPRINGS UP ALMOST IN A DAY.
Cliff Patrick Writes of Wonderful Oil
Town of Ranger, Texas.
Knowing that your readers have
been keenly interested in the experiences
of Bamberg boys who have
been engaged in various phases of
the work of the recent great war, it
occurred to me that they might also
find something of interest in the experience
of one in pursuit of peaceful
endeavors, which is, by tne way, my
excuse for this tale of impressions
and observations gained in a really
remarkable town in the admittedly
great State of Texas.
In course of the past several
months, while looking after the interests
of my company, it has been
my duty to visit many of the larger
cities of the United States and my
privilege to see many things which
were to me intensely interesting and
instructive, but it remained for the
town of Ranger, the real oil well
boom town of the Southwest, to
sweep me completely off my feet and
make me resolve to jot down for
you the before-mentioned impressions
and observations.
Being in Dallas, which, by the way,
1 - is one of the South's cleanest, most
progressive, wealthiest, and generally
remarkable cities, I was only about
126. miles from Ranger and received
orders from my company to proceed
there to investigate certain transportation
problems, in which we were
vitally interested, and report.
This wonder town of Ranger is, as
you have noted from the distance
mentioned, just a few hours ride west
from Dallas, and is on the Texas and
Pacific railroad, but owing to conditions,
about which I will speak later,
the T. and P. operates a sleeping car
between Dallas and this point for the
convenience of the traveling public,
and if you rise early enough and hasten
to the ticket office you may?
please note that I say may?secure a
berth for the trip, which brings you
to Ranger, when the train is on time,
about 2 o'clock in the morning. By
a very thoughtful provision of the
railroad company, however, the sleeping
car is detached from the train and
one can remain undisturbed until 7
U C1UUJS. IU ILIW UJUIUlUg.
/ This I did, leaving Dallas on a
train which started more than three
hours late, and arrived several hours
before time to rise.
I've always found the smoking
room in the average sleeping car
about the best place yet to secure
real information on almost any topic,
place or thing in which one might be
interested and some of the stories of
Ranger and the entire oil producing
district of Texas,-which I heard on
this trip, fully bore this out.
When i stepped from the sleeping
car on the morning rrt~ my arrival,
armed with a hand bag and the
largest size kodak I could secure, I
found the uncounted thousands of the
city, which, a trifle more than a year
ago when oil was first struck, was
notmng Deuer tnan a very, very
small and unimportant farming community,
or as the wife of a soda dispenser
told me in answer to my
query, "only a starvation town," already
astir, each in his eager pur.
suit of the various tasks and schemes
for securing a dollar and at the same
time raising a cloud of dust which
was stifling. ?
Thinking that I had but a few
hours in which to accomplish the
task I had come to do I set imme*
diately about it, the first thing being
to secure food which would sustain
me through the task, and finally succeeded
in squeezing my way into a
rough and hastily constructed lunch
counter where I enjoyed a very
creditable breakfast of ham and real
fresh eggs with a cup of good cofTee
between two dust-coated toilers of
the oil field and nearly fell off my
stool with surprise when mv check
was handed me and found the cost
to be considerably less than this food
could have been bought for in Chicago,
St. Louis, Pittsburg, Buffalo,
Memphis, Shreveport, or even in Dallas
or Fort Worth. This, as I soon
learned, was the first of the numerous
surprises which I had during the
day.
Having fortified myself in this way
I fared forth to secure the information
for which I had come. My first
thought was that by some strange
twist of nature I had been set down
in one of the California gold mining
town" of the gold rush of '49, about
which I had read in my boj'hood and
of which there still remains a picture
in my memory. Remove the automobile
and other modern machinery and
there would be no essential difference.
Two days of warm sunshine had
changed the mud produced by weeks
of rain to hard pan, over which lay
a coat of dust of some depth which
would rise in great clouds as four
and eight-horse wagon teams, automobile
and motor trucks, with trailers
attached, ground and creaked and
crunched their ways over ground that
must have been a torture even to
the steel machinery as they carried
j
their burdens of lumber and other
construction material, pipe for putting
down new wells and for conduct- ]
ing the oil of old ones, or hurrrying
and scurrying from one job to another,
inspecting this, directing that, until
one could get a fair impression of 1
what an army going into hasty action i
must be like. i
Surrounded almost completely by ]
a low range of hills. Ranger, with its
cosmopolitan population, estimated i
last January to be in excess of 30,000
souls, occupies practically the entire
saucer or basin thus formed. In any ;
direction one may turn the eye is
met with the sight of tall derricks,
either singly or in groups of three to
five, each of which marks the spot
where some adventurous investor is
either sinking into the bowels of the
earth an immense shaft of black iron
pipe in search of that dark, elusive
liquid which is more to be desired
tko rt rv??aaianc c?f r\v~\ ac a y* hoc onr? L' o n rl
lliau pi cw-iUuo oiv/uco, kjx uao ouun. ciuvi
found the fountain of wealth which
pours a stream of dollars into his
bank account, or even yet the investor
whose ship has gone on the
rocks in wreck and ruin when no oil
is reached or at best he gets a flow
of gas which is practically worthless
because of his inability to market it
or utilize it to advantage.
I recall the stories told me of how
those investors from the outside who
have guessed right have been made
immensely wealthy in a period of
only a few weeks. There was told me
the story of a man from Nevada who
telegraphed a request for $5,000.00
worth of a certain company's stock
long before they even had hopes of
finding oil and immediately transferred
the money by wire when told
it could be secured. In less than
three weeks he closed out his holdings
at more than $l'65,000 since the
company's well which first started off
as a "gasser" "came in," as they say,
with a production of 1,500 barrels
per day. Others tell of investors who
have sold their holdings after their
well, begins to produce oil and each
hundred dollars invested has brought
back $3,350. Naturally, there comes
out of a place of this kind a great
deal of fiction, but many of the
stories heard are founded on fact
auu Kiiu?iug ui results sucii as ?vcic
secured by those investors of whom
I have just written it prepares one
for what he might hear of the man
who owned stock in a well that
"came in'' with a production of 4,800
barrels per day.
To' the uninitiated there seems to
be nothing but utter confusion everywhere
one turns in Ranger and yet
he is conscious of the fact that there
is an absolute absence of intoxication
and rowdyism which is very remarkable
when one thinks that its population
includes practically every nationality
on earth. The negro is conspicuous
by his absence, the only
dusky brother with whom I came into
contact was the porter of the sleeping
car qjnd he was merely a transient
visitor. The consuming passion
of each man, woman and child seems
to be to get first to the fountainhead
of wealth.
A greater variety of living conditions
could hardly be found anywhere
on earth. There are tents and
shacks, converted railway cars, bunk
houses, improvised hotels, fairly respectable
lodging houses, and even
some really modern homes, every one
of which is filled to capacity and be- ;
yond and aside from the main street
of the town there seems to be very
little attempt to lay out in regular
order either streets or building
blocks. This, however, begins to take
hold now and I saw a very efficient
ditching machine, capable of digging
several hundred feet of ditch, two
feet wide and fnore than six feet
deep, per day, in operation as it prepared
for laying of sewer systems
that will much improve insanitary
conditions that now exist. The presence
of flies makes one think of how
well the commander of one of our army
cantonments would fit into the
scheme of things here.
Paving is also being started and it
requires no great imaginative power
to see in the future a modern city of
great proportions rise from the present
conglomerate mass which is Ranger.
It takes the imagination to conceive
a town of probably nearly 40,v-00
people springing up in a year's
tl'mo T pott ttflot?lr A C\ AAA o p 14- 4 n n
J. oaj iicau> as lo ncv*esssarv
to make allowances for the
throngs which pour into Ranger on
each of its five trains every day, a
big percentage of which become permanent
residents. And there seems
to be no great jealousies existing as
was evidenced by the fact that the
town turned out at about 4 o'clock
one morning recently to celebrate the
"coming in" of a 1,500 barrrel well
that netted stockholders as much as
$15,000 for each $100 invested. The
celebration is said to have been
equaled only by that held when the
armistice was signed by Germany.
One meets no strangers in Ranger,
or very probably it would be better
stated that there being so many
strangers in Ranger that restraint
customary between men who are un
OUTRAGES AT ODESSA.
British Chaplain Describes a Reign of
Terror.
The Chronicle publishes an article
by R. Courtier Foster, a British
chaplain at Odessa and Russian ports
of the Black sea, describing the religious
persecution practiced by the
Bolsheviki upon their former capture
of Odessa. He says:
"Committees were held on board
the ships of the Black sea fleet,
among the dockers in the port, and in
the towns and villages on every hand,
which passed resolutions reading:
'We abolish Gow.' In Odessa cathedral.
when the archbishop of Kherson
was celebrating the Holy Misteries
an uproar occurred with cries of
'Down with the church.' At a fete
in the town gardens one saw a soldier
of the Red army, amid the
guffaws of his fellows, spit on the
Russian holy picture of the face of
Christ, then tear it into fragments
and stamp it into the dust.
1 lie uuisiicviai, ui i cligious
tolerance is considerably
more elastic and far-reaching than
the ideas of any medieval inquisition.
In this matter the Bolsheviki pride
themselves on being far in advance
of our effete western thought. They
have murdered Valodimir, the Metropolitan
of Kiev, 20 bishops, and many
hundreds of priests. Before killing
them they cut off the limbs of their
victims, some of whom they buried
alive in the Kremlin. The cathedrals
in Moscow and those in the towns of
Yaroslav and Simferopol have been
sacked. Many nuns were violated
and the churches defiled.
The ancient and historical sacristies
and famous libraries of Moscow
and Petrograd were pillaged and
countless sanctuaries profaned. In
Cronstadt cathedral the great figure
of the Crucified Christ was torn down
and removed, and a monstrous and
appalling pagan form placed in its
stead, symbolizing 'Freedom ofMind.'
"It is not against any one particular
form of religion that the terrors
of the New Freedom are hurled. Orthodox
Roman Catholics and Lutherans
alike have been tortured, mutilated,
and done to death under the
aegis of the Holy revolution, which
appeals to the proletariat of the
whole world to join its forces.
"The revolutionary government is
subjecting the Christian religion to
persecutions as great and brutal as
anything the world ever saw during
the first three centuries of the Christion
era. Moral disintegration and
ruin spread their tentacles on every
side. Any restraint on sinful impulse
or covetous desire is laughed
to scorn. The Bolsheviki publicity
encourage outrage and looting. The
~ .J* - J
propaganda ior ireeaom 01 me uuiiu
is essentially nihilistic. It is based
on negation and denial of the existence
of God, denial of the authority
of any moral law, denial of all
rights of conscience, denial of all
religious liberty, denial of all freedom
of the press, denial of any liberty
of speech.
"One officer remarked despairingly
to me: 'In Russia now there is no
God, no czar, no law, no property, no
money, no food?only freedom.' And
in that travesty of liberty which the
whole civilized world may well shudder
at, all mercy, pity, and toleration
are alike scorned. And it is this new
and wonderful equality of man which
by means of torture, outrage, and assassinations
proclaims the 'freedom
of mind and body,' to the devastated
Russian nation."
acquainted is thrown aside and a
bond of fellowship is established
without loss of time. No one asks
who you are or what you are, neither
do they care a rap about your illustrious,
or otherwise, forbears, what
they want to know is, "what can you
do?"
America being a country of
"crazes" the discovery of oil has naturally
started an "oil craze" in Texas,
and pipe and lumber manufacturers
are reaping one grand harvest
while it lasts.
Believe me, I would not voluntarily
become a part of this crazy rush even
for the golden reward which some receive
but would prefer to be settled
in some peaceful, fertile little valley
that I know where the air is pure
and the sun shines and the birds sing
while I might watch growing the results
of my work. W. C. P.
SHERIFF'S SALE.
In accordance with the executions
to me directed by G. A. Jennings,
treasurer of Bamberg county, I have
levied upon and will sell for cash, on
Monday, July 7, 1919, during the legal
hours of sale the following described
lots in the town of Denmark,
County of Bamberg, and State of
South Carolina, said lots to be sold
for taxes due and owing the said
county and State: Lots Xos. 7, 8, 9,
-?/v 11 3ff> *f~) 1 1. A C\ .
11/, 11 ailU JL^r, i LI D1UUK i\U. ? , aiOU
lots Nos. 17 and 18 in Block No. 53;
said lots belonging to John H. Martin,
trustee. Lot No. 9, in Block 23;
said lot belonging to John Tyler. Lot
No. 1 in Block 63 with a frontage of
50 feet facin& Maple avenue, belonging
to M. R. Smith. S. G. RAY,
Sheriff Bamberg County.
June 10, 1919.
Purses, Bill Folds,
All sizes, styles and prices al
This cozy home may
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^ ^l\i\laz^\' ^uy ^ ^roTa *^e ni*11, manu^'
^re. Pr?-Ce^' m the**
|, 0^!^ kitchen Vft/x liMt./a bath
/ \ //&/ /cV^2^r-^^/X iv 1 ^e h?use's we" lighted, s]
/ wr/if / ./'-ft ^ /\ 1/ * largely of North Carolina pi
\ Vv // A^/hy /gX \j .// flooring and ceiling. Walls b
\ J\Y /S3% sure warmth. Durable, fire-:
\ ^?a CsREw \ ?4>3/ red finish. Artistic panele*
- M/Y\ \y/ \ ^ v00&v nails and hardware furnishi
\ wC/.% 7~Z \\ yvfer\ W/ X number of standard colors 1
^ \\^rU^ciV ^ and inside finish painted w
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PRESERVING
In a co
Whether you're putting up pears or pe
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The kitchen's always cool and clean
fire is always dependable?no coal, w
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The Puritan burner permits the steac
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low, medium or high. At full heat, the ai
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iffM! STANDARD OIL
I 'I ?3 Washington, D. C. (New Jersey)
I JfSsa! Norfolk, Va. Baltimore, Md
|jj Richmond, Va.
' ? user \??a
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JBpOlL COOK
Card Cases
t Herald Book Store
> be*
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.ctive, snug, convenient, roomy
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While small in appearance, its rooms are
y of ample size for every comfort.
jquickb\?T j
BUNGALOW NO. <44
while beautiful, convenient, roomy and thoroughly substantial,
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\JffT Every piece of material has its own place. Everything
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e entire process of erection systematized and instructions comld
the great building "bugaboo"?preliminary preparations?
i the erection of a QUICKBILT Bungalow is reduced to a minlof
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for cash. Net price yOOU
irice includes all necessary material, except the brick Wdrk
t, 21-ft. 5-in. x 30-ft. bV2*m. There are two large bedrooms,
r 12-ft. x 12-ft., one spacious living room 12-ft. x 18-ft., &
room 9-ft. x 6-ft., and an attractive front porch 12-ft. x 6-fL
pacious, well ventilated and convenient. The construction Is '
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uilt in panels of siding, lined with heavy builders' paper to inresisting,
standard asphalt strip shingles with slate green or
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ith one heavy coat of priming paint.
\ IT E T V-U A Y
on and a copy of our attractive, illustrated book, "QUICKBILT /
107. It will explain ail about No. 44 and many other attractive >
iws. It is FREE for the asking. Merely fill out the coupon *.
Better still, if Bungalow No. 44 fills your needs, tell us the
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COUPON-CUP HERE AND MAIL TO-DAY
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send me your book "QUICKBILTBungalows" No. A*IQ7? |
ecially interested in a room bouse. J
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aches, tomatoes or string
i Puritan Cookstove.
and comfortable?your
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Charlotte, N. C? 1 pr>j? Ppof I
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Charleston, S. C. 3 Results |
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