Automobiling in 1906 – Peak oil is coming!

Looking through the NYT online archives, which now allow viewing of articles back to 1851 with a Times Select account, I came across a Jan 18, 1906 feature on an auto-show at Madison Square Garden, in which I found three fascinating nuggest. Each one gets its own post.


Ethanol is so 1906.

***

GASOLINE GETTING SCARCE

Motorists May Have to Use Alcohol Before Long–Dust Nuisance

Winthrop E. Scarritt, ex-President of the Automobile Club of America, was the chief speaker yesterday at the Sixty-ninth Regiment Armory at the general meeting of the American Automobile Association. He sounded a note of warning upon the decreasing supply of gasoline and predicted that alcohol might have to be utilized in the future for motor service.

“There are in use in America,” he said, “approximately 70,000 motor cars. These do not consume as much as the 800,000 gasoline stoves which are in use all over the Middle West, where fuel is always high, and it is due to the use of gasoline for such purposes that has been the chief cause during the past five years in doubling the price of gasoline. The California and Texas oils are practically barren of gasoline distsillates, and while the supply of gasoline is not growing, its consumption is rapidly increasing. What is our remedy for this threatening situation? It lies in the direction of vegetable alcohol. At present the United States Government taxes all alcohol at $2 per gallon. There is no reason why this tax should not be removed on denatured alcohol, that is, alcohol rendered unfit for beverage. Experiments with this fuel made in France, also in America, by Prof. Elihu Thompson, show that it may be utilized as a motor fuel successfully. Germany last year used over 70,000,000 gallons of denatured vegetable alcohol.”

Mr. Scarritt stated that a bill was about to be introduced in Congress providing for the removal of the tax on vegetable alcohol, and he advised all automobilists to unite in supporting the measure.