14 CONSERVATION THROUGH ENGINEERING. 



come into another age that of petroleum. As a lubricant, it has 

 become of such universal use that it has been called the barometer of 

 industry, and no doubt -after it has ceased to be a popular illuminant 

 or a source of power it will live invaluable as the thing which lets 

 the wheels go round. Its greatest popularity now arises out of its 

 use in the internal-combustion engine, and of the making of these 

 there is no end. It draws railroad trains and drives street cars. 

 It pumps water, lifts heavy loads, has taken the place of millions 

 of horses, and in 20 years has become a farming, industrial, business, 

 and social necessity. The naval and the merchant ships of this coun- 

 try and of England are fitted and being fitted to use it either under 

 steam boilers as fuel or directly in the Diesel engine. The airplane 

 has been made possible by it. It propels that modern juggernaut, 

 the tank. In the air it has no rival, while on land and sea it threat- 

 ens the supremacy of its rivals whenever it appears. There has 

 been no such magician since the day of Aladdin as this drop of 

 mineral oil. Medicines and dyes and high explosives are distilled 

 from it. No one knows whence it cometh or whither it goeth. Men 

 search for it with the passion of the early Argonauts, and the prom- 

 ise now is that nations will yet fight to gain the fitful bed in which 

 it lies. 



In Persia and in Palestine, in Java and in China, in southern 

 Russia and in Rumania we know that petroleum is, for it has been 

 found there. How great these fields or others in Europe, Asia, or 

 Africa may be no one would dare to say. As yet, however, the petro- 

 leum of the world has come from this hemisphere. 



The "oil spring" which George Washington found in western 

 Virginia and by his last will called to the especial consideration of 

 his trustees was the promise of a continental well which last year 

 yielded 356,000,000 barrels. Each year has seen the prophecy un- 

 fulfilled that the peak of the possible yield had been reached. 



From the mountains of western Pennsylvania into the very ocean 

 bed of the Pacific and even beyond and into the broken strata of up- 

 turned Alaska, the oil prespector bored with his sharp tooth of steel 

 and found oil. Hardly has one field fallen into a decline when an- 

 other has come rushing into service. Only three years ago and all 

 hoTpes were centered in Oklahoma, and then came Kansas, and then 

 the turn went south again to Texas, and now it looks toward Louisi- 

 ana. Geologists have estimated and estimated, and they do not differ 

 widely, for few give more than thirty years of life to the petroleum 

 sands of this country if the present yield is insisted upon. And yet 

 there is so much of mystery in the hiding of this strange subterranean 

 liquid that honest men will not say but that it will become a perma- 

 nent factor in the world of light, heat, and power. If this is not so 



