THE ORIGIN OF ORGANIC MATTER 55 



possible amount of alcohol that could be prepared from all the starch 

 and sugar containing foodstuffs produced in the United States, and that 

 such a large acreage is required for its production, the possibility of a 

 sufficiently large increase in production of such materials to be diverted 

 to the manufacture of motor fuel seems very unlikely. At any rate if 

 large quantities of motor fuels are to be prepared from vegetation another 

 material, if not instead of foodstuffs, at least in addition to foodstuffs, 

 must be relied upon as a source." 



A similar analysis has been made by Lane and Bauer " v^ho discuss 

 the various means of developing motor fuels. In considering alcohol as a 

 possible motor fuel, they conclude: "For example, the corn that can be 

 grown on an average acre of Oklahoma soil in a year will yield about 

 3 barrels of alcohol. Many of the oil fields of Oklahoma have an ultimate 

 production of about 3,500 barrels of crude petroleum per acre, of which 

 about 1000 barrels can be considered as gasoline. One would have to 

 grow corn on an acre of Oklahoma soil land for about three hundred years 

 to obtain a volume of alcohol equal in fuel value to a supply of gasoline 

 produced in from five to ten years. ... Of course, the area of oil fields 

 in the country is but a small part of the total area of the United States, 

 but this simply emphasizes the fact that while we can grow corn over an 

 area many times as large as the area of the producing oil lands, it will 

 then have to be harvested and brought to the distilleries, a laborious and 

 expensive task. Furthermore, edible grain of any kind is usually too 

 valuable to be used in the manufacture of alcohol. And even if we had 

 a surplus it would be a mere drop in the bucket. A surplus of a 

 1,000,000,000 bushels of corn would sound tremendous to the farmers 

 of this country, but it would yield only 250,000,000 gallons of motor fuel, 

 enough to run our cars and trucks about three weeks." 



There is no doubt that the growing of plants for the purpose of obtain- 

 ing fuel would require such enormous areas of land that it would ma- 

 terially affect the production of foodstuffs under present systems of agri- 

 culture. It has happened that corn has been used directly as fuel. When 

 prices for corn were exceedingly low (32 cents a bushel) it was an economy 

 for the farmer to burn his corn rather than buy coal at 16 dollars a ton. 

 Under such conditions it has happened that even large public utilities have 

 been run with grain as fuel. But this represents extremely abnormal 

 economic conditions and must be considered in the light of an emergency 

 measure rather than as a contribution to the fuel problem. De Baufre *'- 

 has determined the heat value of corn and concludes that with coal at 

 $10.00 a ton, com on the cob must be less than 20 cents a bushel of 70 

 pounds to make the use of corn as fuel economical. 



At the same time in the production of food by means of agriculture 

 there are tremendous quantities of wajte materials. These have high 

 energ}^ content and many of them could be converted into fuel by alcoholic 



Lane, F. W., and Bauer, A. D., Ind. and Eng. Chen.. 15, 479 (1923). 

 De Baufre, Power, 36, 212 (1922). 



