CHAPTER IX
OIL EXPANSION
The submarine, the aeroplane, the modern warship, the pleasure automobile, the motor truck and the oncoming farm tractor are all possibilities from petroleum development.
War is a tremendous consumer of oil and gasolene and is drawing down the stocks of oil above ground throughout the world. War's demand has doubled the retail price of gasolene this side of the water and multiplied it three-and fourfold on the other side, where it is permitted to be used in peaceful pursuits only to a limited extent and under government regulation.
In England no oil is permitted to lay the dust on the highways. If you have official business, you are permitted a limited amount of gasolene at seventy-five cents per gallon. It should thus be measurably clear that industrial development from oil is held back by the war. The world has use, outside the war area, for all the oil that can be produced and transported for a long time after the arrival of peace.
Nevertheless, it may be useful to note a few
