64 
BULLETIN 102, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 
PROVINCIAL THINKING CAUSE OF MOST NATURAL GAS WASTE. 
The provincial habit of looking at natural gas from the dwarfed 
viewpoint of local use and immediate present is the primary cause 
of our acute natural gas service problems of to-day. The history of 
the industry has been one of unrestrained waste and profligate dis- 
regard for the public’s interest, inevitably increasing demands and 
obvious physical limitations of supply. This wanton waste has been 
emphasized by creating and then emphasizing provincial aspects 
rather than recognizing the true national and interstate nature of the 
business. The selfish motive of trying to keep the natural resources 
of a State within the State boundaries, so as to make consumers locate 
within the State boundaries in order to enable them to use the 
resource, has been the dominating feature. 
The following are three typical economic provincialisms that have 
'been attempted. Although all of these have been unsuccessful, never- 
theless they have stimulated the idea that natural gas was so cheap 
as not to be worth saving, and have therefore been provocative of 
much waste and misuse : 
1. Attempting to prevent exporting gas beyond State limits. 
2. Attempting to restrict the pressure which might be maintained 
in main lines, with the manifest object of preventing sufficient pres- 
sure to accomplish satisfactory interstate transmission. 
3. Special tax upon the production and transmission of natural 
gas, and generally this has sought to discriminate in the tax as 
between gas consumption inside the State as against that transmitted 
for consumption outside the State. 
The urgent present need is a clear appreciation and willing recog- 
nition that in the equitable administration of natural resources, like 
natural gas, there can *be no State lines, and that a capital “ The ” 
belongs in front of United States m our national name. There 
is no more sense or justice in any other State either preventing or di- 
rectly or indirectly burdening the exporting of natural gas, than there 
would be in applying the same provincial idea to the transportation 
of food. If it would be just for any State to say that you can not 
use “ our ” natural gas unless you locate within our State boundaries, 
it would be just as fair for the Minnesota farmer to say you can not 
eat my wheat unless you live within the State boundaries of Minne- 
sota, or for the Louisiana sugar planter to say you can not use my 
sugar unless you come and live within the State boundaries of Louis- 
iana. The last two viewpoints are so ridiculous that they would not 
receive serious consideration; yet they represent precisely what has 
been specifically attempted in the distribution of natural gas. 
