Posted on 01/24/2011 4:46:28 PM PST by Kaslin
When I mention that my family used kerosene lamps when I was a small child in the South during the 1930s, that is usually taken as a sign of our poverty, though I never thought of us as poor at the time.
What is ironic is that kerosene lamps were a luxury of the rich in the 19th century, before John D. Rockefeller came along.
At the high price of kerosene at that time, an ordinary working man could not afford to stay up at night, burning this expensive fuel for hours at a time.
Rockefeller did not begin his life as rich, by any means. He made a fortune by revolutionizing the petroleum industry. Although we still measure petroleum in barrels, it is actually shipped in railroad tank cars, in oceangoing tankers and in tanker trucks.
That is a legacy of John D. Rockefeller, who saw that shipping oil in barrels was not as economical as shipping whole railroad tank cars full of oil, eliminating all the labor that had to go into shipping the same amount of oil in numerous individual barrels.
That was just one of his cost-cutting innovations. If there was a better way to extract, process and ship petroleum products or more products that could be made from petroleum Rockefeller was on top of it.
Before he came along, gasoline was considered a useless byproduct that petroleum refineries often simply dumped into the nearest river.
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Ping
Thanks for the ping, Kaslin! :-)
“The Great” is right! TS is an American treasure.
In the fantasy America in my mind, Thomas Sowell is President and Obama is slinging ice cream at Baskin Robbins.
You’re very welcome, jazusamo :-)
He is indeed
In my fantasy, Tom Sowell is on the other end of the phone from all of our presidents. He should be their go-to guru.
The left has demonized guys like Rockefeller that had a major part in developing America into a superpower. Yes, they had child labor, unsafe working conditions, and other stuff like that. But in time those things went away.
What I can’t figure out is why liberals keep insisting that we on the right want to bring back CL and unsafe working conditions in the name of smaller government. I have not heard anyone say that. Nor has a single Republican ever proposed restoring institutionalized racism. These claims they make have no basis in reality at all.
Can I join you in your Fantasy America? Sounds like a wonderful place.
Secretly, that’s what the Left wants to do: bring back CL, depopulate the planet, and set themselves up as little gods who rule all.
Another good one. Thanks for the ping jaz.
wrong thread ???
with all the efforts to 'green' the country, 400 tons of horse-poop/day...the commies really do know their sh!t afterall...
OTOH generations of Democrat Senators and Congressmen fought tooth and nail for a century or more to keep blacks segregated in schools, restaurants, lodging, housing, armed forces, etc.
And how did the black community reward Republican legislators who finally prevailed over pro-segregation Democrats when (thanks to Republicans) they were finally able to exercise their right to vote? Here's how, in every national election in recent decades more than 9 out of 10 black voters voted for Democrat candidates. Go figure.
I’ve said before that the Republicans will need to free the slaves yet again. Freedom from crushing statism and lives of dependence.
My true hope is that they become producers enriching their lives and the lives of all that they touch.
Don't know if it's achievable on this planet anymore, but I console myself thinking that my granddaughter will be the first President of the Free Republic of Mars.
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