More American Business Methods—Trip to Corpus Christi—Trouble at the Mine—West Texas as a Health Resort—Expenses of the Simple Life.

I mentioned some of the lawless and extraordinary things done in American business. When I was in California an oil company was building a pipe line to carry their product to market. Whenever they could they bought the right of way over private lands that they had to cross, but whenever they could not buy at a price satisfactory to them, they simply surprised the owner by building over his land at night, and let him wake up in the morning to find the line an accomplished fact. Then it was up to him either to fight a long-drawn-out suit (during which the company would be pumping oil over his land) or to give in gracefully and take what he could get. One old farmer, however, hired armed guards to watch his land, and the pipe line company, after first trying to intimidate his men and then to trick them, finally gave it up in disgust and paid him his price, besides what he had expended on his guards.

166The price of refined asphalt taking a big drop, owing to the successful refining of asphalt from crude oil in California, the refinery at Cline was shut down, and the pit and crushers only were worked, to get out material for street paving. All American help was dispensed with, and the only white men left on the place were the pit-foreman, the book-keeper, and myself. The book-keeper I had was the same young English friend who had gone into the mining deal with me in Canada in 1894, when we lost our mine and our money. He had subsequently lost every penny that remained to him in one deal after another, and he wrote me from New York that he was broke. As I was under many obligations to him I sent him the funds, and he came to Cline and took charge of the office work. He seemed just as happy without a cent as he had been before with plenty, and I never heard him utter a single complaint about his lost fortune: he had real grit. Just before his arrival I had obtained three weeks’ leave to go on a fishing trip, and I was to leave the pit-foreman in charge. I took my wife and boys to Corpus Christi, south of San Antonio on the Mexican Gulf, intending to leave them there for a few months’ change of air. I had some misgivings about leaving the pit-foreman in charge, as he was a “periodical” drunkard; and as I had liquor 167in my house I locked it up before leaving, and gave the key to the Mexican store-clerk, with instructions to give it to no one except on a written order from me. I had been at Corpus Christi only three days when I got a wire from the general manager, “Return immediately.” When I met him in San Antonio he told me that he had received a wire from the store-clerk, “Had bad accident, foreman drunk,” and as he was too busy to go out to the mines himself he had wired for me.

The store-clerk met me at the station with a conveyance, and told me the pit-boss was armed and crazy drunk and had every one terrorised, also that there had been an accident in the pit in which a man was nearly killed. I met the pit-boss on the steps of the manager’s house, and he wanted to know what I had come back for. I noticed that he had the company’s 45 Colt buckled on him, the gun that was supposed to lie on my desk in the office. This I proceeded to take from him, and then went over to my house. It turned out that one of the men (disobeying strict orders), while unloading a “missed shot,” started to dig out the dynamite with his iron spoon, instead of loading on top of it and so discharging the shot. When the spoon reached the cap it exploded, the charge tearing off one of his arms at the elbow and the other 168at the wrist. They had sent him into town in the hack, and wired for a doctor to meet him on the road. After attending to this the pit-foreman’s nerve failed him, and he asked the storekeeper for the key of my house, so that he could get a drink, as he felt sick. He had found out about the liquor by the storekeeper running up to my house for a drink for the injured man. Having once started he went at it in good shape, for in four days he consumed a bottle of whisky and three gallons of Californian wine, besides about three dozen pint bottles of beer. The men in the pit got scared and refused to go to work, as there was a rumour that there............