The farmer and mechanic. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 18??-19??, 1910-04-05
THE LIGHT OF ASIA
By Frank G. Carpenter.

I ISL 10 It's y
Irawadi River-In the Oil Ficitis-
'rhe Worlds First Petroleum Trust
Making Wax Candies for I;uddha-
The Ruby Mines-Jeweis More Val
able Than Diamonds - Burmese
,yade and HOW 1t Is Quarried for
tln, Chinese Markets.
ICopyright, 1910, by Frank g. car
penter.)
SYRIAN, Burma, 1910.
Syriam promises to become the real
light of Asia. The Burmans are Bud
dhists and they worship the p
whom Edwin Arnold has called the
light of the continent. In MS aWak-
ening Of Asia in the twentieth cen
fury they want a material rather than
4 spiritual light, and for that they
are looking to SYRIAN. The place lies
on the Irawadi betwee Rangoon and
the sea and it is the site of the re
fneries of the Burma Oil Company.
At present the oil trusts or the
world are fighting for Asia Our
Standard Oil Company has practically
m~onopolized Japan, Korea and a larSe
part of China. 1t has its stations
on every river and its agents in every
large city. The Russian petroleum
companies are furnishing the lliGni-
nation for Siberia and the lands east
and south of the Caspian sea, While
the Dutch East Indies, Siam and a
a = { tol VI >Lb'AiA
the oil fields OF Sumatra and Borneo.
Down here in Burma the people are
using oil from the wells along the
Irawadi river. They have monopo-
LIED Burma, and are pushing their
trade among the millions of India.
The Standard Out.
These people have the
Standard Oil Company out OF their
market. 1t tried to come in and asked
the governments permission TO pu1fd
its own tanks at the mouth OF the
river. This was refused. aEd as a
result our oil must be shipped here
in lin cases. This makes ii too
costly in competition with the native
product. and it cannot ~iraugurate the
machinery Of distribution such as 1t
has in other parts of the far east.
All along the west coast OF the IA
cifc the storage tanks of the stand
ard Oil Company are to be seen. Iney
are among the big features or every
large port. and connected with them
are great factories where tin cans are
made and the petroleum is put up for
shipment over the country. n OIL
IS pumped into tank steamers at I'm
Francisco and pumped out into tanks
v hich hold tens of thousands Of bar
rels at Shanghai. Tientsin and even
at HankoW on the Yangtse l. lang.
the latter port being six miles
in the interior Of China.
Here on the Irawadi there are m
liar tanks, but they belong to the
British and are h property OF the
Burma Oil Company l can see at
least two score or SO from where j
am writing. Each tank will hold a
million gallons OF oil, and altogether
they contain a supply which could
furnish one gallon to every man, Wo-
man and child in the United States
and leave some to spare.
Busma's Oil Fleet.
The Burma Dill Company has its
own fleet of tank steamers. These
have q capacity of 500, 600 gallons
each, and are intended for shipplns
petroleum to other parts of the world.
1t has also oil barges of million gal
Ions each for bringing tae crude Pc
troleum down the Irawadi from the
native oil fields up country Ihese
are situated about go miles IN the
interior, and pipe lines are now being
laid from them to SYRIAN. The pipes
are already as far as Rangoon, ana
within a few months they will be
running into the refineiies here. At
first the pipes were laid on the sur
face Of the ground, but they VIE
affected by the changes of tempera-
ture, and are now being buried.
An East Indian Monopoly.
Burma has the third largest Oh
trust OF the world.The Standard comes
first, then Russia, and after that
Burma. The output of the Burmese
is now about $50, ooo
gallons per annum and it sells Tor
something like $1,000, 600.
This is only o~ne-eightieth OF the
output of the Standard, and the value
equals only one-thirtieth that Of the
United States product. The oil busl-
ness here, however, as far as modern
methods are concerned, is only IN It's
infancy, and the possibilities are enor-
NOUS. 1t is just twenty-three years
since the first oil wells were drilled,
although the people had been using
oil gathered in other ways for a gen
Grafton before. 1t was along back IN
1887 that the American system or
getting OIL was introduced, and now
the fields are spotted with derrlcks-
Americans have been brought IN TO
superintend the sinking of the wells.
and seventy such men are now so