Governmental Research and the Corporate State: The Rittman Refining Process

Abstract

Governmental Research and the Corporate State: The Rittman Refining Process KENNETH S. MERNITZ In 1913 major sections of the United States suffered the first modern energy crisis. Gasoline prices in the Midwest rose from 6.5 to 12.5 cents per gallon as consumption increased and the production of motor fuel could not keep pace. Automobile owners quickly formu­ lated theories of conspiracy by the old Standard Oil Trust, since the Standard Oil Company had split into fifty-five entities only two years before. The area hardest hit by the gasoline shortage was the Midwest, and many independent refiners there screamed about unfair competition. While popular science magazines explored the feasibility of alternatives to gasoline, many oilmen, along with a newly created U.S. Bureau of Mines, believed science and technology could solve the gasoline shortfall.1 Leaders of the Bureau of Mines sought to capitalize on this temporary crisis. They promoted an innovative refining process devised by Walter F. Rittman, a recent Ph.D. in chemical engineering, and sold a scientific creed that they wrapped in Progressive ideals. Dr. Mernitz is assistant professor at the State University College of New York at Buffalo and is currently writing a book-length manuscript on businessmen’s strategies in the American and German liquid-fuel industries, 1910—1933. This article is a revision of “The Petroleum Refining Industry: Energy Technology and Public Policy, 1913-31,” a paper presented at the 1985 annual meeting of the Organization of American Historians. The author thanks Carl B. Backman, William H. Becker, Vern L. Bullough, Susan Curtis, Patricia Devis-Sanchez, August Giebelhaus, Thomas J. Misa, T. Lane Moore, Philip V. Scarpino, Anthony Stranges, and Richard H. K. Vietor for their contributions and helpful comments. 'For'consumer dissatisfaction see, e.g., “High Cost of Fuel Arouses Consumers,” The Automobile 28 (January 23, 1913): 273. For alternatives to gasoline, see H. A. Morris, “Will the Automobile Be Driven by Kerosene?” Scientific American 108 (January 11, 1913): 38, and “Alcohol vs. Gasoline Engines,” Power hl (January 7, 1913): 18—19. Gasoline prices quoted were f.o.b. refinery in the Mid-Continent field from early 1912 to 1913: state­ ment of H. G. James in U.S. Congress, House, Committee on Mines and Mining, Subcommittee, Hearings: Petroleum and Gasoline, 64th Cong., 1st sess., beginning April 3, 1916, p. 127. Also see August W. Giebelhaus, “Farming for Fuel: The Alcohol Motor Fuel Movement of the 1930s,” Agricultural History 54 (January 1980): 174.© 1990 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040-165X/90/3101-0003$01.00 83 84 Kenneth S. Mernitz They hoped to apply new scientific values to current problems and at the same time build a constituency among businessmen and acquire the respect of congressmen and a gasoline-hungry public. To oil entrepreneurs they offered a research-and-development weapon to fight major oil companies. To Congress and American consumers the bureau promoted efficiency, more competition, and lower prices. But, despite these appeals and the promise of Rittman’s technology, the bureau soon fell into conflict with its intended business partners and with basic tenets of the U.S. political economy. The Rittman process presents an opportunity to analyze the role of governmental agencies in the crucial transition from a 19th-century economy dominated by small firms relying on Yankee ingenuity to a 20th-century corporate world of huge systems engaged in continuous research and development. The establishment and growth of state bureaucracies in the United States at the turn of the century coincided with this shift, yet few of the many studies of the technopolitical economy in the early 20th century have focused on the role of governmental scientists in this process of change, and fewer still have analyzed the motives of the actors or the consequences of their ideas and deeds.2 'Two important review articles analyze the wealth of studies in the technopolitical economy at the turn of the century: Daniel Rodgers, “In Search of Progressivism,” Reviews in American History 10 (March 1982): 113-32, and Louis Galambos, “Technol­ ogy, Political Economy, and Professionalization: Central Themes of the Organizational Synthesis," Business History Review 57 (Winter 1983): 471—93. After tracing...