o 
48 
OUR MINERAL RESERVES. 
oil,” etc. The working up of the trade for these oils on the basis of 
Russian raw material was largely a matter of pure chance, but not of 
necessity, inasmuch as oils of the same character can be readily pro 
duced from American petroleum, and in fact have been produced 
in small quantities for many years. Thus vaseline oil is a by-product 
in the manufacture of vaseline, and has been used for the same 
medicinal purposes for many years. There is no other product of 
petroleum manufactured abroad which is not also manufactured in 
the United States. Arrangements have been completed whereby 
American alboline will be on the United States market in quantity 
before the end of the present calendar year, whether hostilities 
cease or not. 
One of the products of petroleum that has been exported to a 
value between $9,000,000 and $10,000,000 during the last three years 
is paraffin wax. In spite of these large exports, natural mineral 
wax (ozokerite) is imported, for the reason that its melting point 
is very high, and although the paraffin wax from petroleum can be 
produced with this high melting point, the process is difficult and 
costly. Ozokerite occurs in considerable quantity in Utah in the 
region of Soldiers Summit, and has been produced there, but the cost 
of extracting it from low-grade material, together with the cost of 
transportation to the market, which is chiefly in the Eastern States, 
has made it possible for the foreign material, which comes from 
Galicia, to compete with it successfully. The domestic ozokerite 
should now replace the foreign material. 
Another material related to petroleum which has long furnished 
a large import trade is asphalt from the island of Trinidad. This 
trade has persisted in spite of the very large developments of asphalt 
from the residue of asphaltic oils, and even under the war conditions 
the imports will undoubtedly continue. 
The importation of one product of asphalt, however, has now been 
cut off, and that is Ichthyol, a peculiar asphaltic material found in 
Austria, which finds application after appropriate chemical treat 
ment as a very important medicament. The raw material comes 
from a fossiliferons deposit near Seefeld, in the Austrian Tyrol. It 
is carefully selected and subjected to dry distillation. The distillate 
thus obtained is then sulphonated and subsequently neutralized with 
ammonia. The use of this material has greatly increased in the last 
few years, and it has proved very beneficial. Since the beginning 
of the war its price has doubled, going to over GO cents an ounce. 
Already a firm in St. Louis has a material on the market which has 
been favorably recommended as an efficient substitute closely resem 
bling ichthyol itself.