This affiant James Feore being duly sworn says:

I came to the San Fernando oil district in the later half of 1876 about September and have been engaged in the oil business in Los Angeles and Ventura Counties ever since. Have handled and assisted in handling in Los Angeles Country large quantities of the Pico oils and have practical knowledge obtained from actual tests of their loss and deterioration from evaporation and I duly concur with J.B. Morrison in his statements regarding the same in his affidavit given in this case.

Upon one occasion I gauged crude oil tank #1 at the Andrews Station Refinery late in the afternoon and again the following morning about ten o’clock, and from that out of 200 barrels which was first contained in said tank there had been an evaporation of 24 gallons. This tank was carefully covered and is enclosed in a tank house, and the evaporation would be necessarily less than in ordinary tankage, and I feel justified in saying that the evaporation will amount, in Pico oil, to fully ten per cent a month at first. After being tanked a few months, this oil loses most of its volatile quantities and cannot be profitably worked for illuminating oils.

I know R.C. McPherson. He is, and has been for some time, the superintendant of the San Francisco Petroleum Company and is the R.C. McPherson whose affidavit is filed on behalf of plaintiff in this case. In the latter half of 1876 and early in 1877, I have had many conversations with R.C. McPherson (we being very intimate at that time), in relation to C.A. Mentry and his mode of operating and drilling the Pico wells and he has frequently told me that Mentry was an a 1 man, and a better man could not be found to drill or have charge of the wells, and that he has drilled and managed the wells splendidly.

About this time said McPherson requested me to write up to Mr. Scofield to have the California Star Oil Works Co. to permit Mentry to go over to the well he, McPherson was drilling, to get out some tools that had for a long time been fastened in his well and which he said he and his men had after many efforts, been unable to extricate. I wrote in compliance with his request and received an answer, I think from Mr. Scofield, stating the Mentry could go for a short time, and Mentry did go over and directed operations there for a short time, until Mr. Bryant, the President of the California Star Oil Works Company, found that Mentry had gone to assist McPherson and countermanded the permission, stating that the company needed him all the time. McPherson pretended to believe that I had to some extent been responsible for Mentrys having to stop assisting him, and we have not recognized each other since. Shortly after this, Mentry told me that McPherson had offered to him a bonus of $500 and a dollar a day more than our company was paying him if he would leave us and take charge of his well, and I understand this offer was made after Mr. Bryant had revoked the permission as aforesaid.

The Pico wells and the McPherson well are less than one mile apart and during the time Mentry assisted McPherson, he lived at the Pico wells, directing operations there also, and received his salary regularly from our company and , as I understand, received nothing from McPherson. Since the time McPherson and I stopped speaking to each other as above stated, there has been much bad feeling and some litigation between him and the California Star Oil Works Company. I have been a position to know pretty well its origin and believe that McPherson’s enmity to out company sperms in the just first instance from his failure to have Mentry’s assistance continued.

I have had many conversations with Sanford Lyon regarding oil matters and I have always heard him speak of Mentry and the way in which he had drilled and managed the wells in the most complimentary manner. I have been until recently the medium through which the accounts of Sanford Lyon with F.B. Taylor & Co. for oil from his well delivered them has been settled and he has frequently complained to me that injustice was done him by oil gauging his oil twice a month, saying that the evaporation in the meantime was very great and that he lost heavily by the deterioration and shrinkage of quantity and asked me to arrange to have the gauges taken oftener if possible.

I was present on the day before yesterday and heard the conversation between Mentry and Sanford Lyon regarding the statements in the affidavit of said Lyon filed on behalf of plaintiff in this case and the statements of said Mentry relating thereto as given in his affidavit verified on the 12th day of July, 1878, is true and correct.

Although from my position I would have been likely to hear of any adverse criticisms upon, or complaints of Mentry’s management of the Pico wells, I have never heard any intimation that he was not properly managing them and saving the oil, or that he was wasting oil, or doing anything which would in any manner prove detrimental to the wells until after the litigation between R.S. Baker and the Company commenced. During last summer, R.S. Baker and E.F. Beale visited the Pico wells and, after making an examination of the same, they came down to the refinery at Andrews Station and we lunched together there. They expressed themselves as highly pleased with the management and working of the wells and spoke in complimentary term of Mentry and his operating of the same.

James Feore

July 13, 1878