ORIGIN OF PETROLEUM 183 



enormous amount of potential oils that are locked up in our coals and 

 bituminous shales, to be released at the bidding of our chemical engi- 

 neers, there would appear to be no cause for immediate alarm over any 

 possible shortage of oils or motor spirits in the near future. 



Origin of Petroleum 



With reference to the origin of petroleum and natural gas, geologists 

 appear to be generally agreed that their source must be found in organic 

 life, either directly or indirectly. The fact that no commercial accumu- 

 •lations of either are found outside of marine beds, except where these 

 accumulations have clearly come up from marine beds below, would 

 point to the sea as the ultimate source of the organisms or raw material 

 from which these hydrocarbons were derived. Whether the petroleum 

 and natural gas as we find them stored in porous sedimentary strata 

 originated directly from the decomposition of marine plants and animals, 

 or whether they originated from the subsequent slow distillation of the 

 kerogen produced in the shales from the imbedded organisms, is a ques- 

 tion not yet fully determined and possibly never may be settled beyond 

 cavil, although the preponderance of present evidence would point to the 

 kerogen distillation at a low temperature as the immediate source. 



Master Mind of the Standard Oil Company 



This imperfect sketch of petroleum and natural gas history can not 

 be closed without special reference to the conspicuous part played in 

 this history by one of the great captains of the American petroleum 

 industry. One of the very few men who founded the Standard Oil 

 Company has taken such a leading position in petroleum history, as 

 well as in the general industrial history of the world, that any sketch 

 of oil and gas history without special reference to his part in the greatest 

 business success of the ages would be very incomplete. The master 

 mind of the Standard Oil Trust was John D. Eockefeller, of Cleveland, 

 Ohio. Born in Eichford, Tioga County, New York, July 8, 1839, he 

 came with his parents to Cleveland in 1853, where, after completing 

 a two years' course in high school and a summer's course in a commer- 

 cial school, at the age of 16 he began his remarkable business career as 

 an employee in a commission house at a salary of $4.00 a week. Here 

 his faithful work and native talent soon brought a promotion to cashier 

 and bookkeeper, with increase of salary to $700 a year. At the age of 

 19 he had saved up $1,000 and concluded to go into the commission 



