CONSERVATION THROUGH ENGINEERING. 15 



we are a fatuous people, for with every fifth man in the country the 

 owner of an automobile and the expenditure of hundreds of millions 

 of dollars for roads fit only for their use, and with ships by the hun- 

 dred specially constructed to burn oil, we have surely given a large 

 fortune in pledge of our faith that our pools of petroleum will not 

 soon be drained dry, or that others elsewhere will come to our help. 



In 1908 the country's production of oil was 178,500,000 barrels, 

 and there was a surplus above consumption of more than 20,000,000 

 barrels available to go into storage. In 1918, 10 years later, the 

 oil wells of the United States yielded 356,000,000 barrels nearly 

 twice the yield of 1908 but to meet the demands of the increased 

 consumption more than 24,000,000 barrels had to be drawn from 

 storage. The annual fuel-oil consumption of the railroads alone 'has 

 increased from 16| to 36 J million barrels; the annual gasoline pro-| 

 duction from 540,000,000 gallons in 1909 to 3,500,000,000 gallons in* 

 1918. This reference to the record of the past may be taken not only 

 as justifying the earlier appeal for Federal action, but as warrant- 

 ing deliberate attention to the oil problem of to-day. 



Fuel oil, gasoline, lubricating oil for these three essentials are 

 there no practical substitutes or other adequate sources ? The obvious 

 answer is in terms of cost ; the real answer is in terms of man power. 

 Whether on land or sea, fuel oil is preferred to coal because it re- 

 quires fewer firemen, and back of that, in the man power required 

 in its mining, preparation, and transportation the advantage on 

 the side of oil is even greater. So, too, the substitute for gasoline in 

 internal-combustion engines, whether alcohol or benzol, means higher 

 cost and larger expenditure of labor in its production. 



There are large bodies of public land now withdrawn, which, under 

 the new leasing bill which seems so near to final passage after seven 

 years of struggle and baffled hope, will in all likelihood make a fur- 

 ther rich contribution to the American supply. 



OIL SHALE. 



And beyond these in point of time lie the vast deposits of oil shale 

 which by a comparatively cheap refining process can be made to 

 yield vastly more oil than has yet been found in pools or sands. The 

 value of this oil shale will depend upon the cheapness of its reduction, 

 and this must be greatly lessened by the value of by-products before 

 it can compete with coal or the oil from wells. There is every reason 

 to believe, however, that some day the production of oil from shale 

 will be a great and a permanent industry. And the country could 

 make no better immediate investment than to give a large appro- 

 priation for the development of an economical shale-reducing plant. 



