Arizona republican., 1916-01-31
The Price of Gasoline

The Price of Gasoline
 The rise in the price of gasoline has become d serious matter and conditions indicate that the price will go still higher We find in the Wall Steer Jour nal list of forty-four cities in different parts of the country with the price in each, of gasoline for the month of August and the current price. Tue in August had the highest price, r cents, and Kansas City the lowest, 9.S cents. The increase at Tucson has been 55 and Kansas City. 6 cents The lowest price is II Seattle The increases since August range from cents at Seattle to 10 cents at santa Fe, New Mexico and Newark, New Jersey. The increases throughout the country make the price more nearly uniform than it had ever been before.
 This increase has taken place during period in which the output was greatly increased, due first greater production of crude oil suitable for the extraction of gasoline and improved methods of dis tllation by which it is possible to obtain greater quantity of gasoline from given quantity of oil.
 The demand for gasoline, though, greater throughout this period than it had been before though the production of crude oil has fallen off the demand is increasing. The number of motor in in this country is 2,OOO000 and it is estimated that the number this will be 2750o0O Allowing 800 gallons to the car there will be required for automobiles alone 900 gallons.
 Notwithstanding all these conditions which, the face of them be fully explanatory of the high price of gasoline they offer rather, only for raising the price and do not present the real cause for it. The Journal says
 Several inquiries have been made the present high price gasoline Wall Journal hesi- tell the truth for few will believe it. Never theess may be time to that the politicians. tie representatives of the dear peepul, the of the United States and the supreme court are re- sponsiDe for the high price of gasoline. For several years t1e Standard Oil Co, the representative oil company of the United States exporting s100,000,o o10 Of petroleum of the product from the oil wells, considered itself in duty bound to be somewhat of regulator of prices. Hut today when the government has smashed the Standard Oil trust into thirty-two competing parts robody, except the government itself is responsible for the high prices of gasoline There no longer standard OH trust and there IS no longer any reSpon- sibe 26 Broadway, hence gasoline soars-and Eocke- fcllcr laughs Even MT Ford is no longer working for peace; he is working for Rockefeller.
 This is what of indiscriminatc trust busting" intelligent regulation by t3e government such the progressive party in it's platform of four years ago advocated. The trusts formed in the first place under the spur of changing business conditions. The people made by demagogues to believe that they being op- pressed by the trusts when the worst of the trusts knew that such oppression in the end would be fatal to them. The interruptions of the trusts aimed only the destruction of their weaker competitors which under the protection given them by the busters have joined in mulcting the people
 But trust busting has gone merry both under the Taft and the Wilson administrations and the minimizing part of the people have rejoced the scattering of trusts and paying for their joy in the higher cost of living. It may time be realized by the people that properly regulated monopoly can save them more economically than dozen small companies them.
 Persons of middle age can remember, before the opening the California and Mid Continent fields before the Standard oil company had attained it's growth when there of small struggling companies operating in Pennsylvania and other fields, that the price coal oil very high. As the Standard grew and absorbed it's competitors by the price fell and coal oil and gasoline at their lowest figures when the Standard at the height of it's power
 This is defense of the Standard Oil company whose practices were outrageous though they were and it's piratical practices against competitors cannot be too strongly condemned But those evils could have been corrected by the government and they have been corrected, without the destruction what responsibility to the people the Standard Oil company had assumed for it's own good leaving no responsibility anywhere The great corporations such as the Standard Oil company and the Tobacco Trust have not really been hurt: their profits not been nterfered with, but the people have been left the agreements with another enable them prey upon consumers without restraint
 Louis D. Erandes
 The elevation of Louis D. Brandeis to the United