32 
BULLETIN 102, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 
world- wide aspect, the tractor assumes the utmost present impor- • 
tance, while the future demands an extension in its use such as may be 
expected to largely relegate to the past the old-fashioned methods of 
hand-power and horse-power tillage. Indeed, upon the growing use 
of mechanical power upon the farm by means of the tractor, the 
motor truck, the stationary engine, and the automobile — all depend- 
ent upon a cheap and adequate supply of motor fuel — the food supply 
of the future turns. Farm work must be made more agreeable and 
more efficient if a growing population is to be fed. 1 
The present importance and future significance of the stationary 
internal-combustion engine, the motor boat, and the airplane need 
scarcely be touched upon here. As to the last, its use in the present war 
has led to such a development in flying technique as to justify the 
expectancy that this speedy and mobile agent will soon come into a 
growing measure of service and use in the affairs of civil life. 2 
Back of the widespread utilization of the internal-combustion 
engine stands a great industry engaged in the manufacture of auto- 
mobiles, motor trucks, and tractors. Starting scarcely two decades 
ago, this activity has grown until it now represents the third indus- 
tvy, in point of financial value and importance, in the country. In 
1917 motor vehicles of all kinds to the number of 1,814,988 are re- 
ported to have been manufactured in the United States, having a 
wholesale value of nearly $1,100, 000, 000. 3 As may well be appreci- 
ated, the automotive industry, by virtue of the kind and amount of 
labor to which it gives employment, of its ramifying sales agencies 
and extensive advertising, and in turn through its use of steel, alu- 
minum, nickel, rubber, leather, wood, and other raw materials, ex- 
tends its roots throughout much of the industrial fabric of the coun- 
try. This industry is wholly dependent upon the adequacy of petro- 
leum products for continued growth. 
It would appear, then, that curtailment in supply of motor fuel 
would affect a remarkably wide range of interests. The automobile* 
1 This whole matter is of the utmost importance, with many complexities that can not 
be gone into here. The agricultural industry should be the greatest of all industries, 
but instead it is merely a loose assemblage of disjointed, individual activities, with a 
tendency in many sections to disintegrate further rather than to unify and undergo 
organization. With some notable exceptions, therefore, it has made little progress 
toward effectiveness in a broad way — the toil of the farmer is still notorious — and the 
Government as yet has taken few broad, constructive steps looking toward cooperative 
developments in farming, confining its efforts thus far largely to polishing off details 
in the present inadequate system. Fertilizers and tractors, under organized cooperative 
effort, spell the solution to the food problem — a problem which otherwise will become 
still more critical within a very few years, whether the war persists or not. It is a 
curious and pathetic anomaly that the two most basic industries in the United States, 
the food-production “ industry ” and the coal industry, are the most inefficiently or- 
ganized ! 
2 A modern military airplane consumes about 20 gallons of gasoline an hour. The 
quantity of gasoline for the American fleet in course of construction will amount to 
several million barrels a year. 
3 The Annalist, Jan. 7, 1918, p. 10. 
