Salt Lake Telegram | 1916-03-05 | Page 15 | Gasoline Business is Everybody's Business

f r r Gasoline oline Business s Is' Is Everybody's dys dy's i Business iness In times of great prosperity were we're ve re much to too apt to to let busi buss business 1 ns ness s alone even alone even Leven bad business t t i i Gasoline however has a way way all its own of interfering with a ago agod go good god d many kinds of r profits profit big and little i lf Ut And nobody who uses gasoline nobody who who pays to have a u I bag 10 w of flour or 01 a new Easter bonnet sent home by auto nobody who 11 fi watched his own gasoline bills double in ill the last ten months is isto IS jw ling to let lct the b business alone alcHie now now that the government h has lias started to investigate it I J v The rhe trust magn magnates tes fix the prices c of gasoline e. e The fhe local dealers deal deal- r ei cis ers ate arc at their mercy A regular profit is figured between the ther price at which the local dealer buys and sells to the consumer He mal makes e just as as much with gasoline at 15 cents as he does with it selling at 20 cents The big fellows have many stories to tell in explaining the rise ii iu the price of their product They say that the increased use of oft t tos motor boats motor trucks farm tractors is responsible for foran foran foran an enormous increase in the consumption of gasoline i And And then theres there's the war Avar the usual l handy excuse for an advance ad ad- jvance v vance n e in iii the price of anything The United States exported in 19 1914 4 Q r barrels of gasoline and in 1915 over or r pearly nearly arl five Live and six times time's as m much Gh as was exported five years ago Those who O. O A believe in Sn letting business alone will probably p pay their bills without complaining but the persistent will find out that the market value ot of the stocks of the thirty-eight thirty oil corpora corpora- corpora oriS' oriS has increased remarkably in the last six months while profits profits' l slid and 1 dividends have in some instances increased as mu much h as per pcr cent They will also learn that 15 per cent of th the total pr production of I cru crude oil in 1914 about barrels went into storage and th that there are now barrels of crude crudo oil in storage Abo About t 21 r per cent of this is gasoline Obviously the relation of supply to demand has not been such as to boost the price of gasoline What has What who has raised the price f The more interest th the consumers s show ow in n this thiS q question u e stion the quicker th the tag government will find an answer forit for it 1