254 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1926 
the water below and move upward to the highest point which the 
conformation of the cap permits. The well penetrates this cap 
and brings in the initial gusher. The burden of the industry is, 
nevertheless, carried by the modest, dependable 25 or 50 barrel well, 
which stays on the job all the time. 
The compelling demands of our complex civilization have led the 
oil industry to assume economic obligations so tremendous as scarcely 
to permit of their appraisal. Its lubricants have become a vital neces- 
sity wherever a wheel is turned. Billions of gallons of its kerosene 
bring light to isolated homes and are now beginning to drive tractors 
on the farm. Even the empty Standard Oil tins serve many score 
of useful purposes in the domestic economy of China and throughout 
the Kast. The tank wagon distributing fuel oil has become, in many 
American cities, more familiar than the coal cart, and we cook our 
food with water gas enriched with oil gas. 
In the Diesel engine the heavier petroleum products develop power 
of extraordinary cheapness, which is widely utilized in industry. 
Diesel engines now drive submarines and freighters, and the Diesel 
locomotive is demonstrating its economy on branch railroad lines. 
It is indeed in its relation to transportation that the dependence 
of modern civilization upon petroleum is most strikingly apparent. 
Oil has replaced coal in the latest ocean liners and generally through- 
out the navies of the world, while gasoline supplies the energy for a 
circumfluent system of transportation which clogs our city streets 
and crowds our highways. It has even enabled transportation to 
assume a three-dimensional phase, which has carried man into the 
air and endowed him with vast new potentialities for good and evil. 
In 1898 there were only four automobiles in the country, and one 
of these was in a circus. Another was used for exhibition purposes, 
and the two remaining were objects of curious interest as mechanical 
freaks. To-day there are 20,000,000 automotive vehicles on our roads. 
Taking cars and trucks together, they are estimated to consume an 
average of 10 barrels each of gasoline a year. 
Our fathers might well have asked, “By what conceivable indus- 
trial and financial structures can such vast responsibilities be met?” 
That they are met in a truly remarkable way is due to the fact that 
the petroleum industry has boldly directed its own course in produc- 
tion, transportation, and distribution, undeterred by precedent or 
established usages. It is, throughout, and most distinctively, an 
American industry which has developed its own methods; its par- 
ticular and often vivid types, as the wildcatter and the driller; its 
own forceful and creative personalities. 
The United States petroleum industry has produced more than 
8,500,000,000 barrels of oil. It is still contributing 70 per cent of the 
world’s production, and there remain an estimated 9,000,000,000 bar- 
