KAISER FLOUTS HIS PARLIAMENT.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XLVIII, Issue 81917, 28 January 1907, Page 4

KAISER FLOUTS HIS PARLIAMENT.

IMPULSIVE TELEGRAM CAUSES TROUBLE. UNPRECEDENTED ACT. .Bcriin,, December 12. An unbounded sensation has beta caused by the Kaiser, who has addressed a telegram to Count Balles trem, the President of the Reichstag, expressing indignation at the Budget Committee rejecting the vote of £1,460,000 required to carry on the war against the rebe'Js iii German South-West Africa. This action of his Majesty has fallen like a bombshell, as it amounts to a declaration of hostility against Parliament. It means a conflict of opinion between the monarch and the elected representatives of the nation. It is an act unprecedented in the historv xif constitutional countries, but quite characteristic of the impulsive ljiler who controls the dcstinv of Germany.

How petrloleum was discovered It was not till the year 183!) that petroleum began to play a large part among the commodities which conduce most to the comfort of mankind. in that year Colonel E. h. Drake, former ly a conductor on the New York and Newhaven, railroad, was engaged by David Fletcher and Peter Wilson, two residents of Titusville, Pennsylvania, to sink an oil well in the Oil Creek Valley. He was much hampered by quicksands,, which filled the bore as fast as it was drilled, and so he conceived an idea of driving down an iron pipe to keep out intruding substances until rock should be reached. People regarded him as a madman for trying to"draw oil from the earth through a tube, "like a boy sucks cider from a barrel through a straw." lie persevered, neverthedless. and at a depth of thirty-three feet struck hard rock. Operations were cont'mit ed until £2OOO had been spent, and then, as no oil had yet appeared, he was told to pay off debt* and gne up the attempt. On the day before the uceipt of this order—viz., on August i'J, 185'.). the drill, at a depth of sixtynine feet, suddenly fell six inches into a crevice of the rock, and the bo!c. hole filled with oil almost to the sun face. A pump was rigged, and liiOU gallons a day were raised and sold for a dollar a gallon. Thou-ands of people Hocked to the spot, eager as gold-seekers to profit by the discovery. Farms all round were leased ao enormous prices. The countryside soon echoed with tiie sound of many drilling outfits, and oil flowed in torrents, a large part of the yield running to waste for lack of barrels in which to transport it. Thus began an industry which has added £400,00:),000 to the wealth of the United States. Yet Colonel Drake' himself missed wealth. In the first place he omitted to patent his well-sinking process, and so threw away a fortune. In the second place an accident set the wel alight and destroyed the pump. Willi the re-iilt that, before another could be rigged, rival bores had already tapped tiie oil bearing strata and seriously reduced prices. This bad luck seems all the worst because it so happened that Drake's oil well was the shallowest ever sunk in Pennsylvania'. If a thousand wells had been sunk at other spots in Oil Creek to a depth of only sixty-nine feet, every one of them would probably have been as "dry as a powder horn." Still, it is impos: flible to calculate what civilisation has gained by that happy freak of chance, A single foot more, and Drake would have raised his drill for the last time, and the priceless rock oil deposits of the United States perhaps of tiie world —might have remained untapped for decades. Petroleum now ranks second to coal as a producer of heat, light and power. Over 5,000,000,000 gallons of this useful liquid are raised annually in different parts of the world.