Life — May 4, 1905 — page 28: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

= OAL-OIL JOHNNY, a recently de- ceased Pennsylvar the Moses of modern finance; ised land but he never entered in, he struck the rock oil in his a state and rtedthe flow of juicy fountains of greasy wealth, he laid broad and deep the foundations of trouble; he gave a permanent job to the Land of placed celebrity, was he lowing with oil and When he materialized the pipe pe line; he made the American citizen a by-product of petro- leum ; he greased the whee portation and the hand of le; by making the republic a render establishment rendered it possible for the proud and parlous patriot to i The sun never set the American kerosene can."" Coal-oil Johnny isdead, and gone toa better state than Pennsylvania, whether he is where pe- troleum isa superfluity a non-essential - mantle has fallen upon another Johnny, whose distributive ability is acute, whose pace is more sedate, whose thrift is more marked, whose tastes s, whose habits are less cir- y, and whose thirst for labels is less pronounced ; but the dead Johnny had more hair, heart, heat and hilarity than i Johnny on the financial spot. The evil that men do and the oil they find live after them; but the evil of Coal-Oil Johnny looks like thirty cents beside the evils of Coal-Oil Johnny’s coal oil. When the history of the past fifty years of American achievement is written, it will be found to consist chiefly of a series of or ae ll less economic troubles surrounding a grease spot ; and it will disprove some threadbare theories and discredit a good many ethical chestnuts. It will be found that throwing oil on the troubled waters of politics and finance is not productive of peace; it will be proved that oil and water may be mixed with profit; and it will show that the pine and the itching palm may grow on the same soil if the proper lubricants and fertilizers are used on the piner. For a decade we have believed the passions and emotions of the republic have been stirred by the standards of gold and silver ; now we know that its destinies were being dished and its misfortunes being managed by the Standard Oil. Too late we have learned that the refining of the crude manners of our civilization of less importance than the refining of the crude petroleum of Pennsylvani nd we are just beginning to understand that the rake-off of the grafters of the greasy garnered from the wreck of less foxy financie ics of petroleum are the palladium of political it is time we understood that the discovery ranks next tothe discovery of America and its possibilities for plunder. Bleeding sas is bleeding anew inthe cause of kero- Texas demands that its wells of petroleum shall n crude, undefiled by the touch of monopoly; Colo- rado calls for protection for the oil barrel of the people from the barrel of the oil people ; and the Strenuous One is sicking Garfield and his gendarmerie onto the pestilent plunderers of the people's petroleum, Yet with an agitated republic palpitating at the word oil, Coal-Oil Johnny sleeps obscure and unadorned. We call upon the living Coal-Oil Johnny to do justice to his lamented precursor, Let him exhume his bones and present them as sacred relics to the grand old Kerosene University of Chicago, so that the fame of rock oil and Rockefeller may go down the ages together. Joseph Smith, Why Togo Didn’t Fight. T was recently reported that Admirals Togo and Rojest’sky had fought in the China Se: Nothing but headlines came of the rumor, and various efforts to run down the report failed of definite result. We are glad to be able to disclose what really happened. ‘The fleets did get together and were about to pound one another to little bits. But Admiral Togo, who was longest out of port, suddenly wirelessed to the heroof Dogger Bank,"*Can you tell me if the Equitable row is over yet?" The courteous Rojest's still on and growing dail structive force,"” “In that case,” returned Togo, ‘I beg to > postpone the engagement until we can have — = ZE> the center of the stage. Our affair will get little attention if we have it now.” of petroleu y replied, “It is in scope and de- comicbooks.com