88 BULLETIN 102, VOL. 1, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 



The policy of laissez-faire is so firmly established and so apparently 

 effective in the general run of industrial growth that many hesitate 

 to abandon it in specific instances, however urgent the need in point. 

 But at least the consequences of allegiance in such instances should 

 be visualized. In the case of petroleum, under continued laissez-faire, 

 we may expect to be confronted, some 15 or 20 years hence, with the 

 discomforting realization that our domestic resource has been im- 

 poverished, a dependence upon a foreign country has developed, and 

 the opportunity for betterment has passed — wasted. This is a simple 

 matter of arithmetic, not an adventure in projjhecy.^ 



THE ADVISORY POLICY. 



In an earlier part of this paj)er, the recent developments in petro- 

 leum technology have been reviewed in a broad way, and it appeared 

 that considerably more technological knowledge has been accumulat- 

 ing than has found a way into action. Much of this technical ad- 

 vance has been affected by researches and investigations in petroleum 

 technology on the part of governmental bureaus, notably the Bureau 

 of Mines ^ and the Geological Survey,^ and in this way the Govern- 

 ment has assumed an advisory capacity in respect to the development 

 of the petroleum resource. Creditable progress in increasing resource 

 efficiency has thus been attained — a heavy return, indeed, upon the 

 small investment made in this direction. 



Such work, advisory to industry, is of great importance and should 

 be encouraged by adequate support.* But with petroleum, at least, 

 technological advice and information alone are impotent to get at the 



1 Writes M. L. Requa, in speaking of the wasteful use of coal and oil : 



" Our very prosperity makes us careless of the future ; we feast and revel while the 

 handwriting blazes on the wall in letters of fire, and we do not pay it even the cold 

 compliment of a passing glance. As a Nation, we are wasteful, apathetic, and forgetful. 

 We waste our natural resources with shameful prodigality ; we are apathetic of the 

 future, and we forget that our reserves of natural wealth are by no means inexhaustible. 

 • * * We vaguely realize, if we condescend to think about it at all, that when such 

 a time shall have arrived, in some distant generation, that centers of manufacturing 

 must change and things generally undergo a radical realignment. And then we remember 

 that the problem is, after all, one for distant posterity, and that posterit.y should shift 

 for itself and we drowsily mutter ' laissez-faire ' and forget the future in our supreme 

 self-satisfaction in the present. * * ♦ Those of us who believe that posterity must 

 settle these problems of heat, light, and power are living in a fool's paradise, and must 

 inevitably awaken within the next few years to face, subdued and chastened, the real 

 truth." (Exhaustion of the petroleum resources of the United States, Senate Document 

 No. 363, 64th Congress, 1st session, 1916.) The speed with which this prediction has 

 come true has perhaps amazed even its sponsor. 



2 The United States Bureau of Mines was not established until 1910, but since that 

 'time its Petroleum Division has notably advanced the field of petroleum technology, as 



may be readily gathered from a survey of the publications of this bureau. 



3 The United States Geological Survey has for several decades been engaged in the 

 geological study of the oil fields of the country and publishes an annual statistical record 

 of the domestic output of petroleum. The mapping of the underground structures, as 

 embodied in numerous bulletins, has furnished a wealth of information of immediate 

 practical value in connection with the development of new territory and the location of 

 successful wells ; whUe the inventory of the petroleum reserve made by the Survey repre- 

 sents an invaluable contribution to resource knowledge. 



* The United States only devotes some three or four million dollars a year to investi- 

 eational work hearing on the mineral industries in their entirely — a strikingly low- 

 figure, considering the magnitude of the field. 



