The East's oil shortage suddenly grew desperate. Weather and war were the prime causes. Midwestern floods (see p. 20) washed out rails, covered highways, broke the Big Inch pipeline near Little Rock, Ark., cutting off a flow of some 200,000 bbl. per day. Meantime black-market sales were draining away thousands of barrels a day for illegal use. Passenger motoring was on the rise. Farmers were rushing to finish weather-delayed spring planting; tractors began to run dry from Maine to Virginia.
But civilian consumption, sharply reduced by the end of the heating season,...
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