38 
BULLETIN 102, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 
the total demands for petroleum are increasing at a growing rate, the 
rate of production is slowing and there is scant hope of increasing 
the supply from Mexico. 1 In fine, the resource is not equal to all the 
demands looking to it. 
We may examine in closer detail the trend of the growing demand 
for petroleum. As a result of the general speeding up of industrial 
activities, especially during the past year, there has not merely come 
an increased demand for all the petroleum products, but this demand 
has been preferential, focusing with particular intensity upon fuel oil. 
Especially has this tendency been marked in the eastern part of the 
country, the far West already having long been almost entirely de- 
pendent upon oil fuel. The growing use of fuel oil in the eastern 
part of the country is partly, if not primarily, a reflex from the coal 
shortage. 2 Manjr industries, finding coal difficult or impossible to ob- 
tain, have been turning to fuel oil, which for the time being has been 
“ easier ” than coal, due to the enterprise and superior distribution 
organization of the petroleum industry as compared with the coal 
industry, hampered by more critical limitations in transportation. 
Even to-day there is reason to believe that many enterprises under 
construction are planning on oil fuel in place of coal, while among 
established industries a shift from coal to oil has been going on to an 
extent not generally realized. 
Thus coal is shifting part of its burden to petroleum and there is 
now a shortage of fuel oil, with good prospects of a critical dearth of 
this substance. While such matters are not open to accurate measure, 
it is roughly estimated that this shift has relieved upward of 10,- 
000,000 tons of coal during the past eight months, much of that gen- 
erosity being displayed in the very heart of the coal regions. That 
has happened even in Pittsburgh, the center of the most important 
coal district in the world. It is evident that such relief can only be 
temporary, and a continuation will soon lead, if it has not already, to 
more serious difficulities and eventually to a disastrous breakdown of 
fuel supply. It is absolutely essential to turn the tide back toward 
coal in the instances in question, with the possible exception of New 
England, where the change, due to peculiar transportation conditions, 
is valid. If coal can not meet the issue, then industrial activities must 
be curtailed. There is no other way out. 3 
As the demand for fuel oil has for some time been in advance of 
the demand for gasoline and other petroleum products, there has been 
1 If transportation from Mexico to this country can be facilitated by the construc- 
tion of concrete tankers or otherwise, the situation may be considerably eased for the 
time being. 
2 It has been influenced also by increased naval and military needs. 
3 It is interesting that the most conspicuous maladjustment in the normal utilization 
of petroleum — the use of oil for steam raising — should have become the point of greatest 
weakness under war conditions. But such outcomes are inevitable. 
