FUEL FOR GAS TRACTORS 125 



only a certain amount of milk to supply a certain town. Some 

 of his cows go dry, Jerseys are scarce, and he has to replace 

 them with Holsteins which give more milk but less cream. 

 At the same time new-fangled breakfast foods have increased 

 the demand for cream. The dairy man at first has his choice 

 of two courses: first, to advance the price of cream and throw 

 away the skim milk entirely; and second, to dilute the cream 

 with as much skim milk as he dares, sell the rest of the milk 

 for what he can get, and make up the profits by advancing the 

 price on the lower grade of cream. In order to meet the de- 

 mand for cream he is finally forced to the latter course. In 

 this comparison the Jersey cows may be likened to the Penn- 

 sylvania oil wells, which produced a higher percentage of gas- 

 oline than any other oil field ever opened. The Holsteins 

 which replace these are the oil wells of Oklahoma, Texas, 

 and California, which yield even more oil, but of lower quality 

 from the vaporizing standpoint. The breakfast foods are the 

 hundreds of thousands of gasoline engines used for every 

 conceivable purpose. It is not a question now of the price 

 of kerosene or gasoline. 



The problem is to supply the demand for the latter and dis- 

 pose of the former on any basis whatever. The scarcity is 

 not of whole milk but of the cream in that milk. In con- 

 sequence of the changes there has been a natural shift in 

 prices. Gasoline has increased threefold in price in fifteen 

 years and is steadily advancing. Engine kerosene, on the other 

 hand, is about one seventh the price received for illuminating 

 oil twenty-five years ago, and in the last two years has declined 

 40 per cent, in price at the refinery. It costs now from one 

 third to two thirds as much as gasoline, according to the amount 

 of freight which is added after it leaves the refinery. The cost 

 of the lighter oils such as gasoline and benzine, is even higher 

 in Europe than in America owing to the scarcity of the lighter 

 constituents in Russian and Roumanian oils. The question 

 naturally arises as to the future of fuel for gas engines, as 



