$1 per Gallon

In Detroit one day last week a file of twelve cars with deliberate-looking drivers swung in beside the gasoline pumps of Orville E. Putnam's filling station. Each driver asked for one gallon of gas, insisted on all free services down to battery-checking, paid with a $20 bill. This malicious formula had not been repeated very often before Proprietor Putnam, hot and sore, called a policeman. Result: the price of gasoline to the tormentors was upped from 16 1/2-c- to $1 per gallon.

No pointless nuisance, the descent on Putnam's filling station was an attempt by the Michigan Gasoline Dealers' Union to bring pressure to bear on Detroit's cut-price dealers. In Michigan as elsewhere prices have weakened this summer, partly because of the enormously increased production of U. S. oil fields (TIME, Aug. 23). Fortnight ago independent Michigan producers angrily charged big pipe-line companies with cutting the price of Michigan crude oil below the mid-continent level. Symbol of the temporary curse of plenty, a natural gas well erupted on Detroit's State Fair Grounds.

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