days. As the temperature of the still rises, the lighter oils (the naphthas) are vaporized first. They are condensed again to liquid by passing through long coils of pipe surrounded by cold water. Next come the illuminating oils, heavier and requiring greater heat to vaporize. The residue, left in the still, is called tar; by a further distillation in other stills it is resolved into many grades of lubricating oil, fuel oils, wax, roofing pitch, and a final solid product called In former days the lamp test was the only one used. Now it is used merely as an additional bottom. The process of refining is known coke, useful for making carbon points for electric lights and for burning. The impure products of the first distillation are cleansed by washing in great cylindrical "agitators" with sulphuric acid, caustic soda, litharge, and other chemicals. They are then redistilled for further refinement, to give them the white "color" which in many sections is an almost indispensable quality, and to make them test high enough to meet the requirements of the laws of the different States and countries where they are to be sold. If the actual processes of refining are invisible, a large refinery carries on many activities that have much of picturesque The making of the five-gallon can is a marvel of mechanical ingenuity. Up and down the length of a long room passes on endless belts the can in the making; after the first three or four machines, which stamp from the tin plate top, bottom, and sides and crimp them together, have been fed by hand, the can is not touched again till it is filled with oil and ready to be lifted into its case. In the process ten seams are soldered; three men serve to tend the soldering machines that turn out sixty thousand cans a day. When the can is filled, and, with a fellow, in its wooden case, the cover is nailed on by a machine, and the case sent off by another endless belt to the shipping-room. As the tug bore us swiftly down New York Harbor to the refinery at Bayonne, a line of great tank steamers, stretched at anchor along the Staten Island shore, suggested a measure of the growth of the Standard business. Twenty years aga the foremost exporter of his day was exceedingly proud of the achievement of his works when they loaded a ship a day, six ships week Those six ships carried perhaps this thousand barrels of refined oil the Bayonne works still load hip day, but that one steamer carnes twice the week's output of the olden days At the dock we found two more tank ships, one half loaded with refined oil in bulk for Germany, the other having her tanks washed out for her cargo of oil for Calcutta. The jute factories up the Hooghly River in India use large quantities of this "batching" oil in their manufacturing processes. At the next pier a great square-ended barge, all tanks from bow to stern, was cleaning up after a trip from Baltimore. Soon she would take aboard refined oil for the New England market. Next her the crew of a broad, unwieldy lighter was handily tautening down the tarpaulin covering on a load of hundreds of barrels of wax, destined for one of the tramp freighters in the harbor or for the hold of a transAtlantic liner. At the last pier lay a reminder that the days of the sailing vessel are not quite past. A fullrigged ship was taking on the last of of one hundred and five barges, twenty tugs, nine towing steamers, and six launches, and an equipment of nine thousand two hundred tank cars for domestic trade. The distributing station of the Standard, close by a railway station, with its characteristic tank and neat stable, is a familiar sight. In the domestic service 3,326 of these stations are supplied with oil by tank cars and barges. From the stations nearly five thousand tank wagons go out carrying the oil over regular routes to the country stores. The wagons sell not only oil, but lamps and oil heaters, both of simple but exceedingly efficient indicated by the fact that sixty per cent. of the refined oil which it produces is exported. The name of the Standard Oil Company has come to mean a number of things, good and bad, to different people, with how much justice in each case would be hard to determine. But one very definite thing it does stand for: a standard of quality, an inflexible requirement of the highest excellence in its products. The question was recently propounded, "What has been the greatest contribution to the progress of civilization in |