PETROLEUM. 47 



brought out when one activity is called upon to expand more rapidly 

 than some other activity with which it is geared.^ 



The refining of petroleum, requiring elaborate plants, is by nature 

 a large-scale enterprise; hence such activities in the main have 

 naturally come under the control of a few large organizations.^ 

 While several hundred individual refineries are in operation, the bulk 

 of the output is due to the efforts of less than 10 companies. The 

 refining of petroleum, therefore, is largely an integrated activity, in 

 close alliance with transportation of crude, on the one hand, and 

 distribution of refined products on the other. It has already been 

 pointed out that the development of pipe-line transportation has 

 permitted the establishment of refineries at points distant from 'oil 

 fields, but convenient to centers of consumption and to seaports. 

 Hence one of the largest refineries in the world is at Bayonne, N. J., 

 consuming oil from the interior of the country. 



With the broad outlines of refinery technique in mind, it will be of 

 interest to observe the shifting focus of development that has char- 

 acterized the production of petroleum products in America. When 

 the famous Drake well struck oil on Oil Creek, Pa., in 1859, an illu- 

 minating oil distilled from coal and called " coal oil " was in general 

 use throughout the country. Petroleum, therefore, found a market 

 already established for its illuminating constituent, which it usurped 

 at once, quickly supplanting the coal-oil industry with a production 

 of kerosene? Although other products were also produced and 

 lubricating oils made from petroleum found quick favor in connec- 

 tion with a growing application of mechanical energy, kerosene be- 

 came the chief petroleum product and for over 40 years its use 

 expanded until this illuminant penetrated literally to the uttermost 

 comers of the globe. It would be difficult, indeed, to estimate the 

 value to the world at largo of this cheap and convenient source of 

 light, which has been aptly termed " one of the greatest of all mod- 

 ern agents of civilization."* During this period there was little de- 



^ The apparent failure to recognize and allow for this fundamental principle has been 

 the source of considerable trouble in connection with recent production aspects of the 

 industrial situation in the United States. 



* Small plants can not focus on refinements of development, hence they mean resource 

 waste. 



3 To this day the term " coal oil " is not uncommonly, though incorrectly, applied to 

 kerosene. Crude oil itself was not adapted to illuminating purposes, but the fact was 

 quickly discovered that a satisfactory oil could be distilled from it ; and with the estab- 

 lishment of that fact a great industry was safely launched. 



* "All the world loves light, which is so necessary for the reading habit and the 

 spread of civilization, and kerosene made from petroleum is, in every continent, the 

 most common illuminant for the family lamp. For ages mankind had been depending 

 upon vegetable and animal oils. Since remote times the lamps of south Europe have 

 been lighted with olive oil. In northern Europe and America whale oil was more 

 popular, but by the middle of the nineteenth century the demand for this oil had become 

 so great that the whales were well nigh exterminated, and the discovery of abundant 

 petroleum and the art of using it came just in time to prevent a return to the gloom 

 of the tallow candle." J. Russell Smith, Industrial and Commercial Geography, 1913, 

 p. 404. 



