Oil! by Upton Sinclair

Scattered here and there over the hill were derricks, and the drilling crews were racing to be the first to tap the precious treasure. By day you saw white puffs from the steam-engines, and by night you saw lights gleaming on the derricks, and day and night you heard the sound of heavy machinery turning, turning -- "ump-um -- ump-um -- ump-um -- ump-um. " The newspapers reported the results, and a hundred thousand speculators and would-be speculators read the reports, and got into their cars and rode out to the field where the syndicates had their tents, or thronged the boardrooms in town, where prices were chalked up on blackboards, and "units" were sold to people who would not know an oil-derrick from a "chute the chutes."

Who do you think stood first in the newspaper reports? You would need to make but one guess -- Ross-Bankside No. 1. Dad was right there, day and night, knowing the men who were working for him, watching them, encouraging them, scolding them if need be -- and so Dad had not had a single accident, he had not lost a day or night. The well was down to thirty-two hundred feet, and in the first stratum of oil-sand.