$1 a Gallon for Gasoline Feared, March 5, 1923

Dollar a Gallon” Gasoline Is Feared. . . Investigating Committee Says If Combine Is Not Broken Up, Price Will Reach $1

Washington, March 5—“A dollar a gallon, for gasoline” is the prospect held up for the consumer in the report of the LaFollette oil investigating committee to the Senate unless means are taken to break what the report declares to be a complete domination and control of the oil industry by the standard companies. If a few great oil companies are permitted to “manipulate prices” during the next few years as they have been doing since 1921 the report said, the people of the country must be prepared “before long” to pay “at least” that price.

The result of a three months’ inquiry into conditions in the industry, the report declared, the standard companies, in violation of the 1911 dissolution decree exercise their alleged control in such a manner as to fix “the price which the producer of crude oil receives at the well, the price which the refiner receives for his gasoline and kerosene, as well as the retail price to the consumer.”

From the front page of The Concord Times, Monday, March 5, 1923