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



step, too, by providing exact figures of cost would give needed in- 

 formation upon which plans for an industrial development could 

 be built. With the petroleum situation under scientific guidance 

 throughout, and the shale-oil process worked out, the successor to 

 petroleum could come into action on the sound basis of engineering 

 exactness, unencumbered by the speculative element of uncertainty. 



In the third place, as most of the richest oil-shale areas are em- 

 braced in the public lands, the Government has the responsibility 

 of either itself developing the resource or of delegating this duty to 

 private industry. Since governmental operation of matters in the 

 field of legitimate industry is outside the favor of public opinion, it 

 is evidently necessary that the resource be made available to private 

 development under terms favorable both to the industrial activities 

 concerned and to the public at large. To this effect, it will be the 

 function of an adequate administration of the matter to hold such 

 lands open to legitimate development leading to production, but 

 guarding them against entr}?^ for purposes of speculation or non- 

 producing investment. This, in fine, will hold the resource receptive 

 to the real need, when it comes, keeping the field free of hampering 

 encumbrances. It is feasible to frame legislation at once that will 

 advertise the fact that the oil-shale lands are definitely open for pro- 

 ductive operations, but are not available under conditions of de- 

 ferred or non-production. As to the size of operations, it should be 

 borne in mind for the purposes of such legislation, that while well- 

 rounded integration is not essential to oil shale in the same degree 

 that it is in respect to petroleum,^ effective operations will require 

 a considerable outlay and hence should not be shaped arbitrarily 

 to a meager scale. 



Encouragement of hemol and alcohol development. — While there 

 is no apparent need at the present moment for gasoline to be re- 

 lieved of part of its duties by the production of substitutes such 

 as benzol and alcohol, these products are now running to waste 

 because of the lack of that need. Each year we are wasting — de- 

 stroying — vast resources capable of producing motor fuel, because 

 they are a little less convenient to utilize than the petroleum resource, 

 although the latter is strictly limited in size. Only an inadequate 

 policy would permit such sacrifice of ultimate value to the expediency 

 of the moment, although such a procedure is of such common ex- 

 perience as to be looked upon as an economic necessity and hence 

 justifiable. An analogy is afforded in the case of water power, which 

 is still largely unused on the assumption that coal is plentiful and 



1 With oil shale the elements of wildcatting and competitive extraction are lacking ; 

 hence there is no necessity for haste of production, with its consequent waste. Also the 

 conditions of shale-oil production can not support sustained overproduction, as with 

 petroleum. There is no need, therefore, to adjust size of holdings to geological units. 



