New-York tribune., 1918-05-05
By Robert H. Rohde


~ AN it be possible, after all, that
the queer business which has
been going forward out there
on the Long Island Main Line" these
last couple of years is neither dream
nor hoax?
Is there considerable likelihood
OF even the slimmest chance-that the
world will awake some day soon to
find itself filing its petrol tanks from
its water faucets?
Will ever there como time when
gasolenc, now one of the most essen
tial of petroleum products, shall be
classed as the most futile?
When millions upon millions, tied
up in perpetuity in pipe lines, shall
cease to earn dividends?
When the big oil fortunes shall
shrink and little ones fade away?
The questions are merely assembled
here. Every one Of them, in substance,
is in the Wall Street air-in rumor, in
whisper ard in report. The "Man Who
Saw the Papers" has been abroad. His
friends have talked; his friends friends
have multiplied.
1t is the fact, then, that old Louis
Enricht, the sooty alchemist whose op-
erations for time won for Farming
dale, Long Island, a measure Of the
merry fame that belongs to Winsted,
Conn, Is being taken seriously at last
Anybody whom Wall Street has words
and thoughts for Is being taken Sc
riously. You can bank on that. It is
a test.
Some will remember Enricht and
some will not.
He is that same mandarin -mustached
old sorcerer who proposed, back in
1916, to introduce his neighbor to
"cent-a-gallon gas; who, intending to
startle the country, succeeded only in
tickling its ribs. He is the same old
irrepressible who popped back into the
public eye, many months after New
York had enjoyed it's laugh and had
forgotten, as a new intimate Of Henry
Ford; who went into oblivion there
after, and swung back on the pendulum
Of publicity as defendant in suit
brought by B. F. Yoakum and the Ma
tional Motor Power Company-the lat
ter q corporation organized to market
the Enricht fuel.
New Capital
Now Enlisted?
Now the story is that new capital has
lined behind the Farmingdale wizard
plenty of capital. A certain number
of millions are said to have been paid
over to Enricht already.
What there may be to the rumor has
not yet developed. Enricht denies he
has entered into any such deal. He
insists the report originated with some
one who wishes to iniure him with the
public and with the court before which
Yoakum's suit against him is pending.
He brands the whispering as whisper
ing of enemies. He is conspicuously
indignant.
my hands are tied by the court" he
says. "Even my tongue is tied by the
court. l am restrained from having
dealings with any one but Mr.. Yoakum
or the National Motor Power Company,
which is the same thing I can't even
talk to any one else about my fuel.
Gall l want is my day in court. I
want to win back my fuel for my own.
Then we shall see. Then l shall go
ahead. Then l will be ready to find
my market"
And so one thing after another has
cropped up to keep Louis Enricht's Sc
cret-and secret of some sort he has,
to be sure-from broadcast publication.
Always there has been an abso-
lutely reasonable explanation why he
shouldn't take another into his con-
hdence and prove what really makes
the wheels go round.
For the wheels do 60 round under
the impulse provided by Enricht's fuel.
There no longer is doubt of that.
There have been many months of tests
"a good many of them under the eyes
OF British experts and their chemists.
Almost the whole formula--the whole
of 1t, indeed, save for one element of
the Enricht compound-has been made
known. In its incomplete state the
compound, when mixed with water, will
often get ''put-put" out of an inter-
nal combustion engine. So there is
something to it, at least.
No Outward Signs
OF Enhanced Prosperity
The rumor is offered at it's face
value. There is nothing at all to sub
stantiate it. So far as externals go,
Enricht has been visited by no wind
fall. Els wife has new motor-but
that is explained by "trade." The
negro boy who used to serve the family
as chauffeur has been replaced by a
dapper white man, whose dress and
bearing suggests a fair income-but
there arc other Enricht inventions be-
sides the enjoined fuel. Enricht him
neif still wears the shabby sort Of
clothing he seems to prefer, clothing
which flaps loosely about his great
ssune frame. The movies down nm
Main Street. Farmingdale, are still his
chief extravaganza. He still occupies
tho same cleaning white house, with
the pearly concrete wall surrounding It
Rut opa purpouo <hn -xnA =,