Evening Republican, Volume 59, Number 92, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 May 1917 — The Eccentric Chinece. [ARTICLE]

The Eccentric Chinece.

Petroleum may be a thing for which one’s has to be cultivated. At any rate, the Chinese dislike the smell and touch of it so badly that they are much in the situation of the people who seventy-five years ago had salt works in western Pennsylvania —they abominate the petroleum and abandon a’well when the proportion of oil to brine gets high. Their repugnance for crude petroleum may be measured by the fact that in China it takes from one to three generations to bore a well! For the refined products of petroleum they have no such aversion, or even for the tin cans in which they get it from the United States, making out of the latter a source of almost as many of the necessaries of life as a South Sea islanders finds in his favorite coconut palm.—The Nation’s Business.