And beyond these in point of time lie the vast deposits of oil shale which by a comparatively cheap refining process can be made to yield vastly more oil than has yet been found in pools or sands. The value of this oil shale will depend upon the cheapness of its reduction, and this must be greatly lessened by the value of by-products before it can compete with coal or the oil from wells. There is every reason to believe, however, that some day the production of oil from shale will be a great and a permanent industry. And the country could make no better immediate investment than to give a large appropriation for the development of an economical shale-reducing plant. So conservative an authority as the Geological Survey estimates that the oil shales of the Western States alone contain many times over the quantity of oil that will be recovered from our oil wells. The retorting of oil from oil shale has been a commercial industry for many years in Scotland and France; in fact, oil was obtained from oil shale here in the United States before the first oil well was drilled. The industry is in process of redevelopment to-day and if successful will assure us of a future supply, but at the best it will take years of time and a vast investment of capital to build up the industry to such a point that it can supply any considerable proportion of our needs. It is imperative, however, that the development of this latent resource be furthered and brought to a state of commercial development as soon as possible. SAVE OIL. Yet with all the optimism that can be justified I would urge a policy of saving as to petroleum that should be rigid in the extreme. If we are to long enjoy the benefits of a petroleum age, which we must frankly admit fits into the comfort-loving and the speed-loving side of the American nature, we must save this oil. We must save it before it leaves the well; keep it from being lost; keep it from being flooded out, driven away by water. Through the cementing of wells in the Cushing field, Oklahoma, the daily volume of water lifted from the wells was decreased from 7,520 barrels to 628 barrels, while the daily volume of oil produced was increased from 412 barrels to 4,716. These instances show what can and should be done in our known oil fields. We must save the oil after it leaves the well, save it from draining off and sinking into the soil, save it from leaking away at pipe joinings, save it from the wastes of imperfect storage. Then we come to the refining of the oil. How welcome now would be the knowledge that we could recover what was thrown away when kerosene was petroleum's one great fraction. (The loss in refineries is still startling, some 14,556,000 barrels last year--4-1/2 per cent of the crude run in the refineries.)