Читать книгу All in the Day's Work: An Autobiography онлайн

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Rumors were exciting and grew in the telling. The nearer he came to Erie County, the bigger the well. He met men on foot and horseback making their way in. Something to look into before he started back to Iowa. He looked into it, not merely at Titusville with its first well, but down the stream on which the first well stood and where other wells were already drilling. Oil Creek, it was called. What if they continued to get oil? my father asked himself. Where would they put it? They would need tanks, tanks in numbers. He believed he could build one that would hold five hundred or more barrels. He said as much to the owner of a well drilling down the creek near the mouth of a tributary called Cherry Run. “Show me a model that won’t leak, and I’ll give you an order.” He lost no time in making his model and got his order.

Here was a chance for a business if oil continued to be found, a business with more money in it than he had ever dreamed of making. Moreover, he knew all the elements of that business, had had experience in handling them. Tank building called for his trade, that of the joiner. Iowa could wait.