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BULLETIN 102, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 
step, too, by providing exact figures of cost would give needed in- 
formation upon which plans for an industrial development could 
be built. With the petroleum situation under scientific guidance 
throughout, and the shale-oil process worked out, the successor to 
petroleum could come into action on the sound basis of engineering 
exactness, unencumbered by the speculative element of uncertainty. 
In the third place, as most of the richest oil-shale areas are em- 
braced in the public lands, the Government has the responsibility 
of either itself developing the resource or of delegating this duty to 
private industry. Since governmental operation of matters in the 
field of legitimate industry is outside the favor of public opinion, it 
is evidently necessary that the resource be made available to private 
development under terms favorable both to the industrial activities 
concerned and to the public at large. To this effect, it will be the 
function of an adequate administration of the matter to hold such 
lands open to legitimate development leading to production, but 
guarding them against entry for purposes of speculation or non- 
producing investment. This, in fine, will hold the resource receptive 
to the real need, when it comes, keeping the field free of hampering 
encumbrances. It is feasible to frame legislation at once that will 
advertise the fact that the oil-shale lands are definitely open for pro- 
ductive operations, but are not available under conditions of de- 
ferred or non-production. As to the size of operations, it should be 
borne in mind for the purposes of such legislation, that while well- 
rounded integration is not essential to oil shale in the same degree 
that it is in respect to petroleum , 1 effective operations will require 
a considerable outlay and hence should not be shaped arbitrarily 
to a meager scale. 
Encouragement of benzol and alcohol development . — While there 
is no apparent need at the present moment for gasoline to be re- 
lieved of part of its duties by the production of substitutes such 
as benzol and alcohol, these products are now running to waste 
because of the lack of that need. Each year we are wasting — de- 
stroying — vast resources capable of producing motor fuel, because 
they are a little less convenient to utilize than the petroleum resource, 
although the latter is strictly limited in size. Only an inadequate 
policy would permit such sacrifice of ultimate value to the expediency 
of the moment, although such a procedure is of such common ex- 
perience as to be looked upon as an economic necessity and hence 
justifiable. An analogy is afforded in the case of water power, which 
is still largely unused on the assumption that coal is plentiful and 
1 Wilh oil shale the elements of wildcatting and competitive extraction are lacking; 
hence there is no necessity for haste of production, with its consequent waste. Also the 
conditions of shale-oil production can not support sustained overproduction, as wilh 
petroleum. There is no need, therefore, to adjust size of holdings to geological units. 
