256 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



single interest and question can not command the respectful considera- 

 tion that uniform, just, and reasonable legislation would receive from 

 all intelligent persons interested ; hence, it may be fairly stated that 

 in this country legislation relating to the testing of petroleum is in 

 in many respects unsatisfactory. 



It is not, however, to the generally unsafe character of low-test oils 

 that I wish to call attention, but to those characteristics, not yet gen- 

 erally or fully recognized, that render some oils that come within the 

 legal provisions regarding test unhealthy and unsafe for use. 



The petroleum industry, in many of its aspects, is the product of 

 development. This statement is true, not only as respects its vast 

 magnitude, but also as pertaining to many of its details. The process 

 of cracking had been employed in treating the distillates from coal 

 before petroleum became an article of commerce ; yet petroleum, for 

 a number of years following its discovery in large quantities, was uni- 

 formly distilled into naphtha, normal burning-oil, and paraffme-oil. 

 At that time but few uses were known for naphtha, and it was a drug 

 in the market. At the same time the paraffine-oils were contaminated 

 with more or less of the products of destructive distillation that were 

 unavoidable attendants of even rapid distillation. These oils were 

 consequently very poor lubricators, and, moreover, possessed a very 

 unpleasant odor. They never commanded a good price and were slow 

 of sale, for which reason it was obviously the interest of the manu- 

 facturer to put into the burning-oil as large a proportion of the naph- 

 tha as possible, for the purpose of holding in solution a maximum 

 quantity of paraffine-oil. This often produced an oil unsafe from ex- 

 cess of naphtha, but it was an oil consisting mainly of normal oil, and 

 almost entirely of the educts of the petroleum. Sulphur had not then 

 been observed as an impurity in burning-oil, although the same process 

 of treatment was then used, but less carefully than now. As the 

 original district of Oil Creek produced, at the end of ten years, a 

 smaller proportion of the entire production of crude oil, the character 

 of the burning-oil on the market in 1875 was different from what it 

 was in 1865. At the former date the "lower country," so called in 

 Butler and Clarion Counties, yielded an oil in some respects different 

 from that of Oil Creek, and unequaled for the manufacture of burning- 

 oil, inasmuch as the percentage of normal oils suitable for burning was 

 found to be considerably greater. In five years the diminished pro- 

 duction in the Butler-Clarion field, and the increased production of the 

 Bradford district, together with the mixing of the entire production 

 in huge tanks and pipe-lines without regard to quality, had entirely 

 changed the relation of the amount of normal to that of cracked and 

 mixed oils. The vast production and low price of crude oil had 

 thrown the manufacture of petroleum into the hands of corporations 

 controlling immense capital, and establishments in which the oil is 

 handled in quantities proportionate to the enormous demand. Mean- 



