Doodleburg?

Last week at Jackson Mills (Ocean Co.), N. J., one George W. Perry, geologist of Los Angeles, Calif., reluctantly demonstrated to incredulous newspaper reporters the "Perry Mineral Indicator," a tripod apparatus fitted with compass, dials and a brass cylinder like the weight from a grandfather clock, suspended by a silken, tubular thread. Perry claimed that the cylinder contained secret ingredients which caused it to oscillate, gyrate, agitate when in the vicinity of subterraneau oil, even thousands of feet in the earth. He, Perry, was the only living soul that could operate the marvelous machine, which he did by bringing a small container filled with crude oil into contact with the silken thread. The principle that would cause the indication of the presence of oil in the ground, he explained, was the natural one that "like attracts like." Furthermore, the machine would indicate other buried minerals--copper, gold, coal, iron--if properly "primed."

In Western oil fields, there is a type of itinerant genius who roams about with an ivory ball on a silk thread, by means of which he assures the gullible that he can divine buried fortunes in oil. He is known as a "doodlebug" and laughed at. Inventor Perry's reluctance to have his Indicator given publicity arose from fear lest he be thought one of these.

Five years ago Perry had taken his instrument East, dreaming of finding oil close on the edge of a vast industrial section. He had convinced two Rhode Island worsted merchants of the instrument's efficacy, had induced them to spend (up to last week) some $400,000, leasing 12,000 acres and sinking a test drill. All this in secret. Said one of the promoters: "This is just our little baby. We don't want people to laugh."

Last week the drilling had descended 3,500 ft., passing through strata of granite gneiss, a substance never known to have yielded oil in commercial quantities. A pipe-line had been constructed from the orifice to a neighboring cranberry bog to store the precious fluid when and if it gushed. But not a smitch of oil appeared.

Said N. J. State Geologist Henry B. Kummel: "It's all bunk. . . . There's no such thing as a successful machine to locate oil. If there were, it could be 'sold to Sinclair or Standard Oil for a million dollars in five minutes."

Said Inventor Perry, absorbed in his instrument: "Yes, we're not far from oil now. A matter of feet perhaps, I'm sure. . . . Oil is where you find it." He added that drilling would continue to the depth of the deepest wells in the U.S. (6,000-6,500 ft.).

The deeper the drill went, the higher rose excitement among New Jersey farmers, realtors from as far west as Ohio, invalids and trippers from nearby Lakewood, piney health resort. Gogetters prepared for a boom, securing options, mapping a town. Sceptics believed it merely the renaissance of a New Jersey joke of five years' standing: "Oil in Ocean County."*

*Besides Perry's fruitless efforts, other "oil booms" have periodically arisen, and collapsed, in New Jersey. The last occurred two months ago when citizens of Cape May thrilled to the pronouncement of their carpenter-plasterer-mayor upon an oily deposit unearthed in a lawn. Cried the mayor: "High grade crude oil, flowing five gallons the minute." Stated state geologists: "A kerosene barrel has been leaking."