PETKOLEUM. 35 



tic arising from the peculiar nature of petroleum. In most other 

 industries, to cite the most striking distinction, transportation over 

 alien lines separates the producing activity from the manufacturing 

 activity, creating a break between continuity of operations; in the 

 case of petroleum, however, the liquidity of the crude product adapts 

 it to specialized transportation through pipe lines, themselves a part 

 of the resource development. In consequence, the petroleum indus- 

 try in its ideal form represents a type of industrial activity more 

 highly coordinated than other industries of the present day, afford- 

 ing, therefore, an important object lesson for constructive considera- 

 tion. 



The petroleum industry, in point of fact, however, is not coordi- 

 nated throughout, but at present breaks into two portions, by no 

 means in complete adjustment — the production of petroleum and the 

 handling of petroleum with its threefold aspect of transportation, re- 

 fining, and distribution. The conditions of producing crude petroleum 

 are wholly different from those involved in its treatment after it is 

 above ground. This is reflected in the circumstance that over 15,000 

 individual companies are engaged in the mining of petroleum, while 

 the organizations concerned with the handling of the product are 

 numbered by a few hundred. A large part of the crude production,^ 

 therefore, appears above ground through the efforts of a great many 

 small operators, while the bulk of the transportation, refining, and 

 distribution is taken care of by a very few large organizations. 



PBODDCTION. 



Petroleum is won in commercial quantities through wells drilled to 

 varying depths into the crust of the earth. The drilling is commonly 

 done by means of a heavy string of tools suspended at the end of a 

 cable and given a churning motion by a walking beam rocked by a 

 steam engine. This method is known as the standard or percussion 

 system of drilling. The steel tools, falling under their own weight, 

 pulverize the solid rock encountered and literally punch their way to 

 the depth desired. To prevent the caving in of the hole, but espe- 

 cially to avoid the inflow of water from water-bearing formations, the 

 well is lined or " cased " wholly or in part with iron piping, which is 

 inserted in screw- joint sections at intervals during the drilling and 

 forced down to positions needful of such protection. The well does 

 not taper, but if deep changes to successively smaller bores at several 

 points, resembling in section a great telescope.^ 



1 Estimated roughly at four-fifths. 



"The drilling of an oil well Is graphically described by George Fitch In the following 

 paragraph : 



"An oil well Is a hole in the ground about a quarter of a mile deep, Into which a man 

 may put a small fortune or out of which he may take a big one. Aad he never knows 



