The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1926-01-25
If You Love Lizzie

anything. Gasoline was necessary nuisance,
by-product hard to get rid Of The rest vas
so much junk.
Today gas fuel-oil and the other things
have become the very life-blood of the Nation.
We could scarcely exist without them. What
would we do if suddenly they gave outf
One person in every six owns an automo-
bile. The other five ride in automobiles some
Of the time, some Of them most of the time.
Per capita, farmers own more cars than
anybody else. They haul their crops to market
in them. Their children go to school in them
They run the farm machinery with them The
movies, in towns twenty miles away, are just
around the corner from the farmer with car.
He plows his fields with gas-driven tractors,
pumps water and lights his home with gas
driven machinery. Today, country life is alb
solutely dependent gas.
In the city, the average worker drives a
car to his job. His chief recreation is week
end joy ride into the country, a picnic with
his family. Gas opens up a new world for him
and his. When vacation time comes the little
old bus invites them to the far places But
what good would the 2,941, 294 miles of good
roads be to them without the'stuff to make the
old bus go?
In 1926 automobile manufacturers pro-
duced 3,817,638 passenger cars and 496,988
motor trucks a total of 4,314,626 vehicles. Gas
is this industry's breath of life.
3 Hundreds of profitable businesses are built
up around the automobile trade. Without gas
they would die
Scores of big industries now depend upon
oil for important manufacturing processes. A
shortage would wipe them out
More than $6,O00,O0O,OOO was spent on
building in this country last year, mostly
homes. Real estate men know hundreds of
thousands of people are influenced to buy lots
in the suburbs because automobiles make it
easy to come in to their jobs in the city.
Defending our shores against foreign in
vasion, rides our Navy, second to- none It
would be powerless without oil.
Our Army has been motorized. Without
gas it could not move wheel
Developing aircrafts indicate that our
national defense must be. supplemented, if not
dominated, by aviation, says President Cool
idge. Not plane couldleave the ground with
out gas.
ut is even probable, the President has
warned, 'that the supremacy Of nations may
be determined by the possession Of available
petroleum and its products"
Quite so. We, the mightiest Nation on
earth, deprived of these things could easily be
licked by any second-rate power possessing
them.
Important9 That's not the word They re
vital
A shortage would mean billions Of dollars
lost to business, millions of our citizens thrown
out Of work, millions more isolated on farms
or cut off from their jobs in the cities. Every
man, woman and child in the country would
be hit hard
XVII ELL, we better begin seriously to think
lMJ about these things. Experts tell us our
supply, as now produced and consumed, will
not last longer than seven or eight years.
II disaster overtakes us we are all to
blame. First, the oil concerns are engaged in
mad scramble to see which can produce most
and sell it. even dumping it on the market in
competition with cheap coal
Second, the Government, instead of exer-
ciSing some sort of control over this absolutely
vital commodity, has actually contributed
largely to its waste by throwing open it's own
oil lands to private exploitation at time when
more than enough was already gushing from
other fields.
And lastly, the publc-You, Us & Co
together with the automobile makers, are doing
our full share. We demand-and the factories
humor us cars that eat up twice the gas Euro
pean cars consume for the same distance and
speed. This extravaganza will boomerang.
The Government, finally, is showing signs
Of waking up. Having by sins Of omission as