FIRST ANXIETIES.
this period America basked in a false security. What reason had she for anxiety ? Did not statistics show that she contributed 70 per cent. of the world's oil produc tion ? Had she not, during the War, supplied 8o per cent. of the Allies' needs ? Her production was constantly increasing, and the public, convinced that her resources were inexhaustible, seemed to imagine that oil grows in the earth like cherries on a cherry tree.
However, a few months after the Armistice the experts noticed that the stocks in the reservoirs of the trust were falling rapidly. The multiplication of Ford cars involved a huge consumption. In the orgy of extravagance which followed the War in the United States as elsewhere, every skilled workman wanted to go to the factory in his own car, and the farmers, who had grown rich on the high price of corn, did the same. Agriculture, depleted of its labour, required tractors, which were turned out in thousands by converted munition works. Manufacturers' order books showed that, in the United States by the end of 1920, there would be 8,000,000 automobiles consuming petrol at a prodigal rate. It was estimated that in the future motor cars, lorries, and tractors would absorb 85 per cent. of the national production, leaving only 15 per cent. for industry, shipping, and export. This is hopelessly inade quate. And certainly it is intolerable that the ships of the country which is the largest producer of oil in the world should be at the mercy of foreign trusts.
Accordingly, at the word of command from the Standard Oil Company, American prospectors began to scour the world in search of new fields. But immediately, almost everywhere, they ran up against an unforeseen obstacle.
In October, 1919, one of these agents, having read per haps in his Bible that there were deposits of asphalt by the shores of the Dead Sea, arrived in Jerusalem. The British general who was Governor of the town had him arrested. President Wilson at once protested to London : in the name of the Fourteen Points, he urged the view that there should be " equality of treatment," at the very least, in countries which, like Palestine, are under the control of the League of Nations. But the Foreign Office replied that it had prohibited prospecting for oil even by British agents in this region. There was therefore no " discrimina tion " to the disadvantage of Americans ; it was merely the substitution of the " closed door " for the " open door." The same reply was given to the President's protests upon the subject of the oil of Mesopotamia.
In Central America, it was discovered that British banks had obtained a controlling interest in certain companies which had been thought American, and closed their con cessions to American prospectors. in less than six months the agents of the Standard Oil Company stumbled upon deals of this kind in every continent. The idea then began to dawn upon them of a concerted plan to exclude the United States from hitherto unexploited fields.
On loth March, 1920, Senator Gore of Oklahoma (an oil-producing State) called attention to these facts, and the Senate voted a resolution calling upon the Federal Government for an immediate report " upon the measures taken by foreign Governments to exclude Americans from oil fields."