Slick Sells

This Monday, while oil-drilling "wildcatters" were digesting the significance of President Hoover's oil conservation policy (see p. 16), Thomas B. Slick, the king of all "wildcatters," credited with being the largest individual oil operator in the world, completed the sale of all his producing lands to the Prairie Oil & Gas Co. These properties-cream of the Seminole, Kay, Kansas, and North Texas fields-yield 34,000 barrels a day, and will bring Prairie's gross daily production up to about 105,000 barrels. They put into Producer Slick's pocket between $50,000 and $60,000 per day. Reports from Tulsa put the sale price at $40,000,000; but Prairie Chairman-of-the-Board W. S. Fitzpatrick said it was less, while refusing to give actual figures.

As a youth Tom Slick went West to seek his fortune. Starting in the oil fields of Southern Illinois, he followed the derricks as roustabout, mule-skinner, tool-dresser, driller. With dollars accumulated from purchase and sale of oil leases during boom years around 1906, he "wildcatted." No oil. More dollars; another dry hole. Again he drilled. Oil. Fortune. He sold his first holdings for $2,500,000, and took a flier in rails, in utilities. But oil paid better. He returned to the fields, making more money to buy rail holdings. Fortune turned to vast fortune. He built a railroad; he became a power in transit. Oil gushed for him steadily through the years.

Today, at about 46, he is "a mass of nerves and a bundle of nerve." He wants a good rest. But acres of undeveloped land, undrilled, remain his. They may beckon.