“The British battle cruisers with which Admiral Sturdee destroyed the German fleet at the Falkland Islands were oil burners. To-day, modern war vessels are using liquid fuel almost exclusively, the United States having definitely abandoned coal-fired boilers in its construction plans some time ago.” In addition to other advantages it carried, the use of oil fuel in the War was of great practical value, for the following principal reasons: A lesser tonnage of oil replaced the amount of coal required for the same steaming radius, or an equal tonnage of oil gave the men-of-war a greatly increased steaming radius. Boilers fired by oil have a much greater steaming capacity than with coal, so that the actual speed of a ship converted to use oil fuel is materially increased without any change in boilers or engines. In war operations the oil burners can lay down a heavy smoke screen at will by turning more oil into the burners than can be consumed with the air supply admitted. This results in a heavy bank of smoke which destroyers throw out to hide the larger ships from the enemy, or which merchant ships produce to conceal their whereabouts from submarines. Petroleum thus proved an indispensable factor in saving the world from autocratic domination, just as during the previous half century it had become an incalculable influence in the arts of civilization, and had effected a beneficent revolution not only in the industrial but the social life of countless communities. By American methods of business organization it has been made to yield its highest potentialities for the good of humanity, both in peace and war. If this little book brings to any reader a fuller knowledge of the romance and all-penetrating importance of this great birth-right of the American people it will have served its purpose. [Illustration: A tanker being loaded with gasoline and oil at a refinery dock at Port Arthur, Texas, one of the large Gulf oil ports] [Illustration: Kansas wells flowing oil into a temporary sump, or earthen reservoir] CHAPTER XIII AMERICA’S INVESTMENT IN PETROLEUM A perusal of the foregoing chapters should correct any vague impression in the mind of the reader that the oil business is a lucky adventurer’s game like placer-mining, where a man may find a pocket of nuggets, wash them in his pan, and thus become possessed of sudden wealth. This used to be the popular impression in the days when the phrase “Struck Ile” was synonymous with a sudden stroke of luck. Undoubtedly the man who chances to own lands on which oil in paying quantities is discovered is blessed with good fortune, especially under modern conditions whereby fair and generous treatment is assured to him. But he contributes nothing to the expensive processes by which the precious liquid is extracted from mother earth, and risks no capital in the experiment.