Perhaps more prevalent and fraught with infinitely greater possibilities in loss and disappointment is the delusion that oil is a speculator’s game; that the very words “oil” or “petroleum” in a promoter’s advertisement are a guarantee of large dividends and soaring values. This delusion has no doubt been nourished by the fact that some large private fortunes in the United States have been accumulated almost entirely in the oil business. Countless people of a speculative tendency have loosely associated oil with great riches, and cherished the theory that whoever became associated with the production or refining of petroleum was necessarily, as if by magic, assured of large and easily acquired profits. The oil fortunes loom large in the public mind because they have been concentrated in comparatively few hands; and the fact is overlooked that these fortunes have been based not merely on the raw product, but on progressive methods of distribution and the elimination of waste. It is obvious that when the vast scope of the industry is considered and the fortunes arising from it are set off against the volume of sales, the financial returns are not spectacular. For every man who has made a fortune in oil, there are dozens who have earned but a bare subsistence from it, and others who have failed even in that, for they have sacrificed all in efforts to locate new wells. In previous chapters the arduous and costly labours which precede the process of distribution that begins with the conveyance of oil into the pipe-lines have been described. It should be borne in mind that more often than not these labours are unproductive. Oil does not bubble forth from springs; it conceals itself in the bowels of the earth and it is rarely that it even betrays its presence unmistakably by surface indications. When the subsequent outlay in handling the product of even a gusher is considered, the vast capital outlay involved can be visualized. The investment required by initial measures for locating and producing crude petroleum is so great that competent authorities can name more than one locality in which the money put into leases, construction, drilling and plant exceeds the gross value of the oil that has been obtained or can ever be forthcoming from these fields.