SOUTHERN HORIZONS 



this pipeline. On the plea of war necessity, A-l priorities 

 were secured for critical materials. On the same excuse, 

 the vigorous protests of Texas Governor Stephenson 

 and Railroad Commissioners Olin Culbertson and Beau- 

 fort Jester were brushed aside in Washington. To add 

 insult to injury, Texans learned that Texas gas is being 

 sold cheaper to small consumers a thousand miles away 

 and in the heart of the coal country than it is in the 

 Lone Star State. 



This wad of ammunition has been used by Texas 

 newspapers to spray the countryside with incendiary 

 bombs well packed with denunciation of leading gov- 

 ernmental figures. The political implications are plain. 

 The conflagration has spread to Louisiana, to Missis- 

 sippi, to Florida, and the people have been getting a 

 lively, understandable course in gas and oil economics 

 and the chemistry of the hydrocarbons. Egged on by 

 all these popular agitations, the legislators of these states 

 have been scratching their heads to devise some legal 

 means of making it impossible, or at least unprofitable, 

 to carry these raw materials away from the South for 

 processing in distant states. 



Meanwhile the technical men who are creating new 

 chemical values out of these Southern raw materials 

 go on working and say little. But, as Dr. Schoch, of the 

 University of Texas, has said: "if five cents per thousand 

 cubic feet can be added to the cost of gas at the well 

 mouth its uneconomic uses as an industrial or house- 



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