rice that
would make its continued use too expensive.

Just four years ago, when the fuel oil industry was first projected,
it was cried down because, as its enemies claimed, there was not
enough oil fuel to be obtained in America to supply the New York City
factories alone, to say nothing of other territory, and because of the
high prices for oil that were sure to follow its substitution for coal
fuel. Since then the industry has experienced a magnificent success,
the sales exceeding 20,000,000 barrels a year, while the price is
lower than ever.

A curious impression seems to have gained ground to the effect that
the Standard Oil Company does not want to sell oil for fuel. It may be
stated authoritatively that the company is not only able but willing
to sell and deliver oil for fuel purposes in any quantity that may be
desired. It is now delivering oil for fuel purposes in fourteen States
of the Union. For its sales in Chicago and the West and Northwest, the
delivery is by tank cars from the terminus of the pipe line at South
Chicago, to which point it is pumped from Lima, O. The Chicago price
is 1-2/3c. per gallon, or 70c. per barrel of 42 gallons, f.o.b. cars
at Chicago.

A great many of the brick manufacturers here and throughout the
Northwest are beginning to use crude petroleum as a substitute for
soft coal. It is smokeless, for the fine spray of oil which comes from
the injector consists of such minute drops of the liquid and is so
thoroughly mixed with oxygen that when it burns the combustion is
complete, and only steam and carbonic acid gas go out of the top of
the kiln. Not a speck of soot comes from the kiln or the smokestack or
soils the whitewashed purity of the boiler room. Oil fuel is
absolutely clean. It is labor saving, too. No fireman has to keep
shoveling coal, there are no ashes to be dragged out from under the
furnace grates, and there are no clinkers to clog up the bars. One
man, by turning a valve, may regulate the heat of a kiln containing
one million brick.

Not only is it cleaner than coal and calls for less labor, but it is
actually cheaper as a fuel. A barrel and a half of crude oil is equal
for furnace fuel to a ton of the best Illinois bituminous coal, and at
70c. a barrel any one can easily calculate the advantages petroleum
has over its smoky rival. Theoretically, two barrels of oil equal in
heating power one ton of best Pittsburg coal.

An examination into the relative cost of the