Washington, September 24, 1919

My dear Mr. Manning,—­I have been intending for several days to write you a letter regarding the Petroleum Institute, but the opportunity has been denied me.  Perhaps you will be good enough to say to the gentlemen, whom I understand you are to meet tomorrow, that I regard their work, if taken hold of whole-heartedly, as of the greatest national importance.  It is quite manifest now that private enterprise must stand in the forefront in the development of this industry, and that what the government can do will be supplemental and suggestive.  It is not an exaggeration to say that millions of dollars must be spent in experiment before we know the many services to which a barrel of oil can be put.  There is almost an indefinite opportunity for research work along this line.

Petroleum is a challenge to the chemists of the world.  And now the world is dependent upon it, as it is upon nothing else excepting coal and iron, and the foodstuffs and textiles.  It has jumped to this place of eminence within twenty years, and the world is concerned in knowing how large a supply there is and how every drop of it can best be used.  Practically, I think you should urge that there be cooperative effort to protect against waste.  The oil men themselves should see the value of this and spend their money freely to keep their wells from being flooded, to keep their pipe lines from leaking, and to save their gas.

We are behind the rest of the world in the use of our oil for fuel purposes.  We are spendthrifts in this as in other of our national resources.  We can get three times as much energy as we do out of our oil through the use of the Diesel engine, yet we are doing little to promote development of a satisfactory type of stationary Diesel, or marine design.  Instead of seeing how many hundred millions of barrels of oil we can produce and use, our effort should be to see how few millions of barrels will satisfy our needs.  I say this although I am not a pessimist as to the available supply, which I believe has been underestimated rather than overestimated.  I am satisfied that the man who has a barrel of oil has something which, if he can save, is better than a government bond.  Throughout the Nation we must make a drive to increase production—­that is the slogan of this time—­but that does not mean that we should make a drive to exhaust resources which God alone can duplicate.

Then too, I think that Congress can be largely helped by the sane presentation of wise policies touching this industry.  I have the belief that whatever the body of oil men would agree upon would be something that would make for the best use of petroleum, and for the protection over a long period of this fundamental resource in our industry.  Congress has difficulty often in getting the large view of practical men who speak without personal interest, and such an Institute could speak not for the individual but for the industry and show how it may best be developed in the interest of the country.