PETROLEUM. 19 
brought out when one activity is called upon to expand more rapidly 
than some other activity with which it is geared. 1 
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. 2 
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 u 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 . 3 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 
corners of the globe. It would be difficult, indeed, to estimate the 
value to the world at large of this cheap and convenient source of 
light, which has been aptly termed “ one of the greatest of all mod- 
ern agents of civilization.” 4 During this period there w T as little de- 
1 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. 
2 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. 
4 “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. 
