60 
BULLETIN 102, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM, 
The policy of laissez-faire is so firmly established and so apparently 
effective in the general run of industrial growth that many hesitate 
to abandon it in specific instances, however urgent the need in point. 
But at least the consequences of allegiance in such instances should 
be visualized. In the case of petroleum, under continued laissez-faire, 
we may expect to be confronted, some 15 or 20 years hence, with the 
discomforting realization that our domestic resource has been im- 
poverished, a dependence upon a foreign country has developed, and 
the opportunity for betterment has passed — wasted. This is a simple 
matter of arithmetic, not an adventure in prophecy. 1 
THE ADVISORY POLICY. 
In an earlier part of this paper, the recent developments in petro- 
leum technology have been reviewed in a broad way, and it appeared 
that considerably more technological knowledge has been accumulat- 
ing than has found a way into action. Much of this technical ad- 
vance has been affected by researches and investigations in petroleum 
technology on the part of governmental bureaus, notably the Bureau 
of Mines 2 and the Geological Survey, 3 and in this way the Govern- 
ment has assumed an advisory capacity in respect to the development 
of the petroleum resource. Creditable progress in increasing resource 
efficiency has thus been attained — a heavy return, indeed, upon the 
small investment made in this direction. 
Such work, advisory to industry, is of great imjjortance and should 
be encouraged by adequate support. 4 But with petroleum, at least, 
technological advice and information alone are impotent to get at the 
1 Writes M. L. Requa, in speaking of the wasteful use of coal and oil : 
“ Our very prosperity makes us careless of the future ; we feast and revel while the 
handwriting blazes on the wall in letters of fire, and we do not pay it even the cold 
compliment of a passing glance. As a Nation, we are wasteful, apathetic, and forgetful. 
We waste our natural resources with shameful prodigality ; we are apathetic of the 
future, and we forget that our reserves of natural wealth are by no means inexhaustible. 
* * * We vaguely realize, if we condescend to think about, it at all, that when such 
a time shall have arrived, in some distant generation, that centers of manufacturing 
must change and things generally undergo a radical realignment. And then we remember 
that the problem is, after all, one for distant posterity, and that posterity should shift 
for itself and we drowsily mutter ‘ laissez-faire ’ and forget the future in our supreme 
self-satisfaction in the present. * * * Those of us who believe that posterity must 
settle these problems of heat, light, and power are living in a fool’s paradise, and must 
inevitably awaken within the next few years to face, subdued and chastened, the real 
truth.” (Exhaustion of the petroleum resources of the United States, Senate Document 
No. 363, 64th Congress, 1st session, 1916.) The speed with which this prediction has 
come true has perhaps amazed even its sponsor. 
2 The United States Bureau of Mines was not established until 1910, but since that 
time its Petroleum Division has notably advanced the field of petroleum technology, as 
may be readily gathered from a survey of the publications of this bureau. 
8 The United States Geological Survey has for several decades been engaged in the 
geological study of the oil fields of the country and publishes an annual statistical record 
of the domestic output of petroleum. The mapping of the underground structures, as 
embodied in numerous bulletins, has furnished a wealth of information of immediate 
practical value in connection with the development of new territory and the location of 
successful wells ; while the inventory of the petroleum reserve made l>y the Survey repre- 
sents an invaluable contribution to resource knowledge. 
4 The United States only devotes some three or four million dollars a year to investi 
gational work bearing on the mineral industries in their entirety — a strikingly low 
figure, considering the magnitude of the field. 
