The excitement in the oil regions of this State is at fever heat. The South Improvement Company furnishes topics for columns and columns of the newspapers, and is talked of on the streets, in the counting-houses and by the firesides of everybody, whether nearly or remotely interested in the oil business. We cull from our exchanges a few specimens:

Little Mac’s Faulty Memory

Concerning Gen. McClellan’s dispatch to the Titusville meeting, denying that he had signed a contract with the South Improvement Company, and Gould’s message of opposite purport, the Oil City Derrick says:

“The inconsistency of the two messages puzzled everybody. For ourselves, we believe both Gould and McClellan, as railroad men, could tell a lie without much of a struggle. And from all surface indications, we are inclined to believe that ‘Little Mac’ hasn’t made himself sick in his struggle after veracity this time. February 2, 1872, the Atlantic and Great Western Railway raised the freights on crude oil, to Cleveland, from thirty-five to sixty cents; to Salamanca from twenty-four to forty cents per barrel. Stand that up by the side of McClellan’s telegram, and is not the inference rather creditable to Jay Gould’s Sabbath school training? The conclusion must be that Jay Gould keeps a little hatchet, and George B. Don’t.”

A Raid on the Legislature and Politicians

The Derrick thinks that such bad legislation as the chartering of the Improvement Company is enacted more through ignorance and weak good nature than corruption, and calls for an election of one thousand extra members of the Legislature, “the best and heaviest men in the oil regions,” to go to the Legislature in a body and demand the repeal of these charters.

This to the politicians: “We can tell the Republican majority of that body, and the Republican party throughout the State — aye, and the Washington Government — that if relief is not granted us, if the South Improvement Company is allowed to proceed with its nefarious designs, the vote of the Oil Regions will be thrown against the dominant party next fall. We can control votes enough to throw the Legislature, the State and perhaps the Presidency into the hands of the Democracy. Crawford, Venango, Warren, Forest, Clarion and Armstrong counties can control the State if only a part of her voters are compelled to defend their property at the ballot box. We think that will bring a Cameron, Tom Scott and the other Republican politicians to their milk.”

“Another Turn of the Screw”

The Derrick says: “About the time the freight on oil was raised on the Atlantic and Great Western Railway, Cleveland freight was also put up on the Jamestown and Franklin branch of the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Road to 65 cents per barrel, from 50 cents. It is now announced that fifteen cents more will be put on the ‘Jimtown Road’ March 1. This will make the freight per barrel eighty cents to Cleveland. This is a wholesale robbery. This rate, bear in mind, is only for those who are not in the ring. Cleveland refiners still get their oil through at about old rates. Now we can see and feel how the old thing is going to work.”

Cut Down the Production

A producer at Petersburg suggests the propriety of cutting down the production by stopping drilling and Sunday work. He argues that the increased price of oil in consequence of thus reducing the production one-seventh would bring the well owner more money than he now gets for seven days’ work

A writer in the Oil City Register thinks the stopping of development for sixty days, and allowing the wells to be idle on Sunday, will have the effect to reduce the production and raise the price sufficiently to more than compensate producers.

“Give a Dog a Good Name”

The Register says: “South Improvement Company is not, we think, a fortunate title. One South Improvement Company invaded our State a few years ago. The ring was broken by General Meade, at Gettysburg. It is to be hoped the present one will be met in like spirit.”

“Business on the First Floor”

The Petroleum Centre Record has its say, as follows: “We incline to the belief that the great railroad and refiners’ combination will find that their endeavor to ruin this region will prove futile. The oil men mean ‘business on the first floor,’ and if worst comes to worst, we yet have our natural outlets — Oil Creek and the Allegheny — left, and can go back to the primitive mode of transporting oil by flatboats to the seaboard at New Orleans. Not all the combinations, Goulds, Vanderbilts, Scotts, or any other man can hinder it.