CHAPTER X PETROLEUM AND OTHER INDUSTRIES Petroleum products not only enter as an essential into great industries; but their manufacture and distribution have given birth to many allied industries directly connected with the oil business. The plant of a modern refinery, for instance, by no means begins and ends with equipment for the distillation and treatment of oil. We have seen that the petroleum industry has given birth to an underground transportation system entirely unique, which accomplishes something impossible to railroads, under any conceivable organization. The architectural breadth and completeness of detail which characterize the petroleum industry as now organized, also extend to many mechanical trades. The modern refinery is a self-contained institution. It goes outside its own organization for little. Besides its still hands and other types of oil workers it has its corps of carpenters, pattern makers, machinists, acetylene welders, boilermakers, sheet iron workers, riveters, blacksmiths and the like. A modern refinery of the large type is a complex industrial unit, astonishing in its diversity of duties and pursuits. Among them this army of workers construct almost everything that is necessary to carry out the work of storage and distribution. Steel, delivered from the rolling mills in immense plates, emerges in the form of tank wagons, stills, condensers, tanks and all the varied equipment of the refining industry. Highly technical and intricate mechanical operations are carried out in connection with the manufacture of these accessories. The lay visitor to such an institution will find himself amazed by the sight of roller shears that cut out half an inch of iron neatly and easily. Punching a four inch washer out of solid half-inch steel is a relatively light operation with the power available. By means of the multiple punch a row of holes is cut in a sheet of steel within fewer seconds than it would have taken the village blacksmith of the olden time hours to execute. The hydraulic press pats the steel plates into the required shape with a stroke of several tons. Cutting steel with an acetylene flame is a familiar sight, and the man who operates this torch could cut a hole in the side of a battleship in short order. Electric cranes toss beams weighing twenty tons or more about as though they were jack-straws. By such processes a tank capable of holding 55,000 barrels of oil comes into being with astonishing expedition. The production of the barrels, boxes and innumerable subsidiary requirements of a great manufacturing industry are all a part of the plant’s activities. Refineries also provide a considerable portion of their own fuel. The gas produced in the refining process is collected to run gas engines which provide power for various mechanical operations.