King of the Wildcatters

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 311 pipeline proration tried in the Yates field in 1927, for example, was not unitization, nor is royalty the same as profit. There are problems of textual consistency; R. R. Penn’s career gets so garbled that after Malavis implies he died in 1927, Penn comes back to life to speak for regulation in 1931. Better at law than petroleum engineering, Malavis has trouble handling geotechnical questions, like how oil and gas move to the wellhead, that underlie controversy over the law of capture. By assuming reservoir engineering was more advanced in the early thirties than it really was, Malavis misses one of the most important ways in which questions of technology and culture inter­ sected in the East Texas debate. Engineering in 1931 had not come far enough to offer conclusive evidence of lost reservoir pressure, and hence waste of oil left underground, because instruments to measure bottom-hole pressure accurately were still under develop­ ment. That meant that the scientists involved in the MacMillan case failed to change Judge Hutcheson’s mind about regulation. Hutcheson’s perspective on regulation, moreover, was influenced as much by antitrust ideology as by laissez-faire. He and the other players in the East Texas controversywere only two decades removed from the dissolution of Standard Oil. From the perspective of anti­ trust, attempts to limit oil production were simply attempts to fix prices at consumer expense. Hutcheson and other opponents ofreg­ ulation said so repeatedly, and we cannot assume they did sojust to be arrogant and obstructive. Thus, in looking at ideologies in con­ flict, particularly in the legal arena, antitrust ideology deserves much more emphasis than Malavis gives it. In fact, one might say there was as much conflict between two Progressive currents—antitrust and conservation—as between laissez-faire and Progressivism. Diana Davids Olien Dr. Oi.ien teaches at the University ofTexas of the Permian Basin and, with Roger M. Olien as coauthor, has written five books on the American petroleum industry. She and Roger Olien are currently writing a history of the petroleum industry in Texas. “King of the Wildcatters”: The Life and Times of Tom Slick, 1883-1930. By Ray Miles. College Station, Tex.: Texas A&M University Press, 1996. Pp. xiii+166; illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $29.95 (cloth). Tom Slick’s life weaves through the history of the United States petroleum industry from the late nineteenth through the early twen­ tieth century. Slick grew up near the once-prolific Pennsylvania oil fields and later traveled to Oklahoma, where he began a quest to make millions in that region’s emerging petroleum boom. His per­ sistence and attention to detail eventually brought success in the 312 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE business of exploration and production. After finding oil and devel­ oping the fields, Slick typically found himself in a state of emotional and physical exhaustion. As was his pattern, he would then sell much of his current holdings and take a vacation (once to China)—or explore a new business opportunity (including railroad construc­ tion)—before inevitably returning to wildcatting. He also partici­ pated in the early oil conservation movement and supported unitiza­ tion and well spacing programs. Health problems caused his early demise; Slick passed away before his forty-seventh birthday. The life and times of a wildcatter make a good subject for a bio­ graphical study. The term “wildcatter” refers to the oil operators who drilled for oil in unproven territory. Many experienced the boom of oil gushers and many others suffered the bust of repeated dry holes. While large oil companies (either the “majors” or larger independents) could weather the financial losses ofone or more dry holes, wildcatters were truly entrepreneurial on the human scale. A single failure might mean permanent bankruptcy. Slick literally learned the business from the ground up. As a leas­ ing agent for other operators, he studied the geographical nuances of the territory, drilling techniques, and the value of constant involvement. It is this business life, rather than his personal life, that provides the subject matter for the book. Even in this task, Ray Miles’s research efforts faced one basic problem: a relative lack of documents

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