prices, yet claiming no connection with Standard Oil.
I noted that in California gasolene had fluctuated from twenty-two to twelve and back to twenty, and in southern California I declared, "Here I shall find the truth," as gasolene is sold on street corners by more than a dozen independent producing and refining companies competing with more than one hundred Standard Oil stations.
Yet when I inquired as to prices and conditions of competition, I found that prices were uniform and that competition was geographical a man bought his gasolene at the nearest gas corner. Gasolene users do not, as in the East, maintain underground gasolene tanks in or out of the garage to any considerable extent. They buy at the gas corner and it does not pay to run a car very far to buy its fuel.
Throughout California, and most notably in Los Angeles, the most conspicuous store is the gasolene supply store. It is almost always on a corner vacant lot, often set in a small attractive garden, into which the car moves for its supply, the curbstones being cut down on both sides of the corner. These houses are one-story buildings of glass and wood, similar to the headhouse or
