Chapter XIII: The Flash-Point Scandal

It is now time to devote a little attention to one of the Standard’s great triumphs in this country--the staving off until this present day of the legislative raising of the flash-point of petroleum. I desire to make this explanation short and simple. The flash-point is the temperature at which an oil will give off vapour, which, mixed with air, is explosive. In other words, it is the point at which a flame brought close to its surface will cause it to explode--the explosion being, of course, small in a 2-in. deep test-cup, but serious when a lamp or a barrel is in question. The test depends on the presence of vapour. It is obvious, therefore, that any test-cup which allows the vapour to escape before the flame can be applied is useless. The advocates of safe oil have always demanded a test-cup which would retain the vapour, and the petroleum traders in Europe and America have always pushed some kind of cup which would allow as much as possible of the vapour to escape.

The story of the juggle with the flash-point begins in 1868, before the Standard Oil Trust was born, and for its initial stage it is only fair to admit that it can have no responsibility. The Fire Protection Committee of 1867 recommended that the flash-point should be 110 deg. Fahr. The Petroleum Association--which was then an independent body of importers of American oil--asked for a flash-point of 100 deg., and the Home Secretary called in the “three chemists”--Dr. Lethaby, Professor Attfield, and Professor (afterwards Sir Frederick) Abel--to advise as to the flash-point and the method of determining it.

The three chemists recommended that 100 deg. should be conceded provided it was ascertained by a test-cup which they recommended. That tester, called “the three chemists’ cup,” gave results which it is now admitted were identical, within 3 deg. of those shown by the present Abel tester. What followed is succinctly narrated by Mr. Ure, K.C., M.P. (now the Lord Advocate), in his draft report presented to the Petroleum Committee (1898 Report, p. xxxvi):--

The Report [of the three chemists] was accepted by the Home Office
and the standard and test were embodied in the Notices of Motion and
Orders of the Day for the 8th of June, 1868. A week later it will
be found from the Notices of Motion and Orders of the Day that the
test prescribed by the three chemists, and accepted by the Government
on the 8th of June, had undergone a very material change. In the
interval the Petroleum Association approached the Government and
requested that the three chemists’ test be modified. The Government
remitted to Sir Frederick Abel to consider the question thus raised.
He was comparatively new to the subject of flash-point investigation.
Dr. Lethaby and Dr. Attfield had for years devoted special
attention to it. Both were in London at the time, and available for
consultation. Neither was consulted or even apprised of the proposed
change.

Sir Frederick Abel was enjoined by the Government not to give way on
any point affecting the efficiency of the test. He did give way; and
in the result a test was prescribed which he himself subsequently
described as “untrustworthy,” “open to manipulation,” and “not of
such a nature as uniformly to ensure reliable and satisfactory
results.” _Why Dr. Lethaby and Dr. Attfield were not consulted has
not been explained to your Committee._ It is certain that if they had
been consulted, the change could never have been made. Whenever it
came to his knowledge Dr. Attfield at once informed the Government
that the test was far less stringent than that prescribed by the
three chemists, that it would be a fertile source of disputes, and
that the public would not be protected.

That 100 deg. flash-point, with the inaccurate tester of the Petroleum Association, went into the Act of 1868, and the mischief was done. But the most extraordinary and audacious chapter in this strange story took place ten years later when the disputes and blunders which Dr. Attfield had foretold had occurred. Sir Frederick Abel then devised the Abel (close) tester, which is an efficient one; but he showed that an oil flashed in that tester at a point 27 deg. lower than that at which it flashed in the Petroleum Association cup legalised in 1867.

In 1879 the new Act legalised Sir Frederick Abel’s tester and then fixed the flash-point at what was called the “equivalent” of the old 100 deg.--in other words, it reduced the flash-point by 27 deg., the amount of the inaccuracy of the old tester. The effect, of course, was to perpetuate the blunder of the 1867 Act in another way. It is as though a man, finding that his watch lost 27 minutes in a day, bought a new and accurate timekeeper and then purposely put it back 27 minutes.

The history of this bureaucratic juggle was effectively summarised by Mr. Ure in the House of Commons, March 15, 1899:--

In 1862 there was a correct flash-point (100 deg.) fixed, and no
tester for ascertaining it.

In 1868 there was a correct flash-point (100 deg.) and an incorrect
tester for ascertaining it.

In 1879 there was a correct means (the Abel tester) of finding out an
incorrect flash-point (73 deg.).

Now we demand a correct flash-point (100 deg.) and a correct means of
finding it out.

To this day all petroleum which flashes at 73 deg. Fahr. in the Abel tester is subject to no restrictions of any kind, and lamp accidents and oil fires have carried off hundreds of lives since 1879. Lord Kelvin, surely a high authority, said to the Select Committee in 1906:--

It seems to me that the logical outcome of Sir Frederick Abel’s work
ought to have been to declare that the 100 deg. test in force in the
1871 Act must be fulfilled by a proper close test. I cannot think how
Sir Frederick Abel dropped from 100 deg. to 73 deg.

Professor Silvanus P. Thompson, in his “Life of Lord Kelvin” (vol. ii. p. 962), tells us:--

Lord Kelvin felt strongly on this question. In 1868 an open test-cup
was legalised which in practice proved to be erroneous to an average
extent of 27 degrees. In other words, oil which was actually giving
off explosive vapour at 73 Fahr. did not flash in this open cup
until it reached 100 deg. The number of fires due to paraffin lamps
increased owing to the introduction of cheap low-flash oils. In spite
of this, in 1879, when a new and more efficient test was adopted, the
flash-point was by a scandalous manœuvre reduced to 73 deg.

It is interesting to recall that in the experiments which Sir Frederick Abel made during the period when the Abel tester and the difference between its results and those of the 1868 tester were under investigation, he was assisted by Mr. Boverton Redwood, the chemist of the Petroleum Association. But the delicate operation of substituting a lower flash-point when the tester was made more accurate seems to have been carried out mainly by the assistance of the then Chief Inspector of Explosives, the late Colonel V. Majendie, a soldier and a gentleman, who was no match for the adroit and suave agents of the petroleum trade. It was perhaps not unfitting that the administration of the laws relating to Mr. Rockefeller’s low-flash petroleum should have been placed under the Explosives Department of the Home Office, but it had this disadvantage, that Colonel Majendie, well acquainted with military explosives, knew nothing about petroleum. He once declared at the Imperial Institute in my hearing that he had learned all he knew about petroleum from Mr. Redwood. How completely he was guided by his mentor in this matter appears from a memorandum of July 18, 1878, in which he gives his reasons for supporting the reduction of the flash-point from 100 deg. to 73 deg. In it he wrote:--

The figure is one to which the Petroleum Association, _the body
really interested_, are prepared to assent, and although the Scottish
Mineral Oil Association desire a higher flashing-point, it is really
a matter in which they have very little concern, except in so far as
the adoption of a higher flashing-point will tend to injure their
trade rivals (the Petroleum Association). I think, therefore, that
as the matter cannot be usefully carried further, the Abel test of 73
deg. Fahr. flashing-point should be accepted.

Mr. Redwood was at this period the paid secretary of the Petroleum Association, and had returned only six months before from his American trip. Sir Vivian Majendie seems never to have been able to consider the public; in his view it was all a trade squabble between the rival oil traders. I ought to explain here, by the way, that the Scottish refiners have always kept their oil up to a flash-point of 100 (Abel), their reason being that they desired to maintain a perfectly safe standard. They have always complained of the invasion of this 73 deg. American petroleum, not on ordinary commercial grounds, but because they held that its dangerous and explosive character was prejudicing the public mind against all classes of burning oils, and neutralising their own efforts to give the public confidence in them.

THE ROCKEFELLERS AND THE HOME OFFICE

“You have been in politics long enough to know that no man in public
office owes the public anything.”

SENATOR MARK HANNA _to the Ohio Attorney-General_.