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84 Company, will soon have a like sum in shipping. Building plans at present under way will round out a fleet of twenty-two ships with two hundred thousand total tonnage, costing about seventeen million dollars, and the whole could be sold to-day, lock, stock, and barrel, completed and uncompleted, for a good deal more than thirty million dollars. There are, besides, five chartered ships abroad promised for the close of the war, bringing the fleet up to twenty-seven ships.

The Mexican Petroleum Company does not own its ocean-going oil carriers, but has put more than three million dollars into refining and storage plants in the United States.

Such is the demand for ships in oil transportation that the Union Oil Company of California is relieving the situation by filling its South American contracts at Tampico instead of Southern California, as the Panama Canal so shortens the shipping distance.

The demands upon the Mexican Petroleum Company for expansion, for increased shipping facilities, for storage, and for refining are so tremendous that in my judgment the stockholders