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NEW
ENERGIES
NEW
ENERGIES
A HISTORY OF
ENERGY TRANSITIONS
IN EUROPE
AND NORTH AMERICA
Edited by STEPHEN G. GROSS & ANDREW NEEDHAM
UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH PRESS
Published by the University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, Pa., 15260
Copyright © 2023, University of Pittsburgh Press
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
Printed on acid-­
free paper
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Cataloging-in-Publication data is available from the Library of Congress
ISBN 13: 978-0-8229-4776-9
ISBN 10: 0-8229-4776-5
Cover photo: People watch the demolition of four 113-meter-high (370 feet) cooling
towers of a lignite-fired power station after a controlled detonation in the eastern
German town of Boxberg, April 13, 2006. Photo © Reuters via Alamy Photo.
Cover design: Joel W. Coggins
TO LUCY, DUNCAN, JACK, RAYMOND, AND CHILDREN EVERYWHERE-
­may their bright futures have less carbon than our present.
Contents
		Acknowledgments ix
		Introduction: Toward a New Energy History
			 Stephen G. Gross and Andrew Needham 3
		Part I. The Rise of Oil and the Transformation of Coal:
					Creation, Destruction, and Reinvention
1. 		 The Oil from Our Soil: French Alcohol Fuel versus Foreign Oil,
			1918–1957
		Joseph Bohling 33
2. 		 The Politics of Creative Destruction: West German Hard Coal
			 and the Postwar Oil Transition
		 Stephen G. Gross 48
3. 		 Accounting the Dead: The Moral Economy of the Coal-­
Fired
			Social Contract
		Trish Kahle 62
4. 		 Hard Hat Cowboys: Energy Workers and Coalfield Capitalism
			in the Anthropocene
		 Ryan Driskell Tate 76
		Part II. Oil Transition in Crisis: The 1970s
5. 		 American Politics and Energy Transitions in the 1970s
		Victor McFarland 95
6. 		 The Decade of the “Energy Transition”: A Critical Review of
			 the Global Energy Debates of the 1970s
		Duccio Basosi 107
viii NEW ENERGIES
7. 		 Reversing the Transition from Coal to Oil?: The International
			 Energy Agency and the Western Industrialized Countries’
			 Restructuring of Energy Supply in the 1970s
		Henning Türk 119
8. 		 From State to Market: A Transition in the Economics of Energy
			Resource Conservation
		Thomas Turnbull 131
		 Part III. A Stalled Transition? Nuclear Energy’s Dilemmas
					and Possibilities
9. 		 Nuclear Energy and the Dream of Independence: The Case of
			Eastern Europe
		 Sonja D. Schmid 157
10. 		 Contamination without Representation: Fetal Citizenship and
			 Atomic Power in the Postwar United States
		Natasha Zaretsky 168
11. 		 The Rise of Counterexpertise and the Anti–Nuclear Power
			 Movement in West Germany
		 Dolores L. Augustine 182
		Part IV. The Transition off Fossil Fuels:
					Challenges and Possibilities
12. 		 A Future Foreseen and Transition Delayed: Big Oil and
			Global Warming, 1959–1986
		Benjamin Franta 203
13. 		 Renewable Energies in the United Kingdom and the Federal
			 Republic of Germany, 1970s–1990s: Discourses, Contexts,
			and Policies
		Eva Oberloskamp 220
		Notes 235
		Contributors 317
		Index 321
Acknowledgments
This volume was made possible by a grant from the Carnegie Foun-
dation of New York, which sponsored an international conference, “The New
Energy History: Energy Transitions in the 20th and 21st Centuries,” held at
New York University on November 1 and 2, 2018. The essays and ideas of this
volume grew from that conference. In addition to the authors in Toward a
New Energy History, we are grateful to the other conference participants who
authored papers or chaired sessions. These include Zachary Cuyler, Giuliano
Garavini, Carol Hager, Frank Laird, Matthew Shutzer, and Troy Vettese. We
would also like to thank Alexander Maro, Margaret Miller, Samantha Dawn
Paul, Tim O’Donnell, Guerline Semexant, and Christopher Van Demark for
their outstanding assistance organizing the event or helping put this volume
together. Anastasia Skyobedo and Mikhala Stein Kotlyar at the Center for Eu-
ropean and Mediterranean Studies at New York University provided generous
support throughout this entire project, from conference to volume. Lastly, we
would like to thank Sandra Crooms and Josh Shanholtzer at the University of
Pittsburgh Press, Varsha Venkatasubramanian for her work preparing the in-
dex, and the two anonymous reviewers for their help in improving our collec-
tion of essays. We hope these writing here provide some inspiration for think-
ing creatively about the history of energy transitions, and integrating energy
into the bigger questions of European, North American, and global history.
NEW
ENERGIES
Introduction
TOWARD A NEW ENERGY HISTORY
Stephen G. Gross and Andrew Needham
In 1973 the Italian nuclear physicist Cesare Marchetti began for-
mulating a “simple and predictive model describing energy markets for the
last century.” Four years later he produced one of the most iconic pictures in
energy history: a schematic graph depicting energy systems rising and falling
like clockwork over time. The age of wood replaced by the age of coal, then oil,
then natural gas, and then, so he predicted, nuclear energy and solar power.
“It is as though the system,” Marchetti reflected, “had a schedule, a will, and a
clock.” All it took was time, and the right price. His imagery of regular transi-
tions, unfolding smoothly without interruption, free from outside forces like
politics or values, gripped experts around the world as they strove to change
their nation’s energy systems following the oil shock of 1973. Marchetti was
working for the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA)
in Austria, a think tank founded to bridge the Cold War divide with cutting-­
edge models for global problems. IIASA’s ideas spread through Western Eu-
rope, North America, and the Eastern Bloc, and graphs strikingly similar in
their assumptions informed policy across the Global North during the 1970s.1
A generation later, as global temperatures rise, sparking our glaciers to
melt and our forests to burn, humanity stands before what could be the great-
est collective challenge in history. In many respects, experts and politicians
4 NEW ENERGIES
Figure I.1: Cesare Marchetti’s model “Historical Evolution of the Primary Energy
Mix for the World.” 1850–2100. f = market fraction of an energy. Source: Cleaned
image of Marchetti’s diagram from Vaclav Smil, Energy Transitions: Global and
National Perspectives (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2017), 84.
Figure I.2: Historical fuel shifts according to President Jimmy Carter’s 1977 Na-
tional Energy Plan. 1860–1980. Source: Frank Laird, Solar Energy, Technology Policy
and Institutional Values (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 114.
Toward a New Energy History 5
are approaching global warming with historical assumptions about energy
that have changed little since the 1970s. One hopes for a transition toward re-
newable sources of power like the sun and the wind. But the models informing
public debate today—­
whether historical, digital, or cognitive—­
bear an eerie
Figure I.3: First scenario forecast for West Germany’s primary energy consump-
tion, in the Social Democratic Party’s Energy Forum of 1977. 1950–2100. Million
tons of hard coal equivalent. Kernenergie = nuclear power; Sonne, Wasser und
Sonstiges = sun, water, and miscellaneous; Erdöl = oil; Erdgas = natural gas; Braun-
kohle = lignite coal; Steinkohle = hard coal. Source: SPD, Energie: Leitfaden zur
Diskussion (Bonn: SPD, 1977), 52.
6 NEW ENERGIES
resemblance to earlier ones. In his famous appeal to repower the United States
in 2008, former vice president Al Gore claimed the United States could adopt
a carbon-­
free electricity network within decades. A year later Mark Jacobson
and Mark Delucchi, engineers writing in Scientific American, suggested the
world could achieve 100 percent renewable energy in twenty years. Ten years
on they remained firm in their timeline, illustrating it with smooth curves of
rising renewables and falling fossil fuels.2
Many advocates of solar and wind
claim this transition not only “mirrors” previous ones, but that the move from
“fossil fuels to renewables has become inevitable” as costs fall. As Bruce Usher
puts it, “Basic economic principles, primarily cost, are the main drivers of
energy transitions. Cost is key.”3
This narrative of grand sweeping curves, where transitions are defined by
efficiency and price, is comforting: if only we can lower the cost of solar or
wind, we can solve global warming. Or at least be on our way. But energy shifts
are far more complex, far more human, and in fact far more interesting than
lines on a graph, efficiency ratios, or prices. Historians have unearthed this
complexity; they have a long tradition of studying the human side of energy
in its many facets, even if histories of energy have often been fragmented into
different wings of the discipline, from environmental history to the history of
technology or diplomacy.4
Despite this fragmentation, three points stand out
in more nuanced histories of energy: (1) commercializing a new energy in-
frastructure involves protracted processes of political and economic change,
(2) new energies almost never wholly replace old ones, and (3) the causes and
effects of transitions reach far and wide, changing people’s lives in unexpected
and profound ways.
Since roughly 2010, diverse strands of historical study have been coalescing
into a new field of energy history, a coalescence that motivated this volume.
The chapters here explore the causes, courses, effects, and aftershocks of en-
ergy transitions in North America and Europe during the twentieth century.
They not only historicize popular and economic notions of energy but also
show how energy has reshaped everything from social life and economic or-
ganization to political governance. The volume draws on a range of historical
approaches—­
including intellectual and cultural history, labor history, and
political economy—­
to understand why some energy systems flourish while
others do not, and to capture the cultural, intellectual, and political implica-
tions of new energy systems as they struggle to take shape. Over the past 250
years, energy transitions have occurred at a seemingly relentless pace—­
the
rise of coal in the nineteenth century, the explosion of oil in the twentieth
century, the nuclear utopianism of the 1950s and 1960s, and today the expan-
sion of renewable power. These transitions have been as revolutionary as any
Figure
I.4:
“Projected
Power
Supply
&
Demand,
139
Countries.”
From
Mark
Z.
Jacobson
et
al.’s
“100
Percent
Renewable
Energy
Roadmap
for
the
World,
2017.”
2012–2050.
Source:
Mark
Z.
Jacobson
et
al.,
“100%
Clean
and
Renewable
Wind,
Water,
and
Sunlight
All-­
S
ector
Energy
Road-
maps
for
139
Countries
of
the
World,”
Joule
1
(September
2017):
118.
8 NEW ENERGIES
political or economic upheaval, but they have rarely featured in the grand nar-
ratives of twentieth-­
century Europe and North America.5
Given the urgency
of global warming, historians have a twofold task, which we hope to advance
with this volume. We must do more to integrate a history of energy transi-
tions into broader narratives of political, economic, or cultural change. And
we must do more to bring our knowledge of the complexity and humanity of
energy to the current debate—­
shaped in large part by economists, engineers,
and scientists—­
over what could be the most monumental energy transition
ever: the shift away from fossil fuels. In doing so, we aim to steer the public
away from, on the one hand, doom-­
saying narratives of the impossibility of
meaningful transition and, on the other, stories of revolutionary technologi-
cal fixes driven by heroic individual entrepreneurs. Only by attending to the
socially complex and technologically messy histories of energy transitions as
they occurred can we provide a past usable for the present moment.
Why Energy Now?
Since the turn of the twenty-­
first century, global warming has emerged as the
world’s most pressing challenge. This wicked problem has led scholars to craft
not only a new geological label but also a new category of analysis, the “An-
thropocene,” a concept coined in 2000 by Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer
to describe how humans are becoming a force of nature in their ability to alter
the environment. While there was a delay between the uptake of this term
by the natural sciences and the humanities, with the publication of Dipesh
Chakrabarty’s “The Climate of History” in 2010, the Anthropocene as a his-
torical concept arrived. Chakrabarty’s work sparked a debate about the ori-
gins of the Anthropocene, with starting points ranging from humanity’s very
nature as an extinctive species, to the Agricultural Revolution or Industrial
Revolution, to the advent of the atomic age.6
Embedded within this debate are fundamental questions about how to
understand human-­
driven environmental transformations. Historians have
a rich tradition of studying the environment. Until recently, however, energy
existed at the relative margins of environmental history, often surpassed in
importance by themes such as wilderness management, agriculture, urban-
ization, water use, and forestry.7
The urgency of the Anthropocene, however,
has foregrounded the study of energy. For if the Anthropocene elevated global
warming as the challenge of our century, it also illustrated the importance
of studying fossil fuel energy systems, because these have accounted for 70
percent of all of the carbon humanity has emitted since 1870. At the heart of
environmental degradation and climate change is the extraction, distribution,
and consumption of energy.8
Toward a New Energy History 9
The need to understand how energy-­
intensive, fossil fuel–centered,
growth-­oriented societies came to dominate the world is thus more important
now than ever before. As Stephen Gardiner presciently underscored, global
warming is “seriously backloaded,” making it different from other histori-
cal events that diminish in importance the further they recede into the past.
Carbon from human sources, by contrast, has flowed into the atmosphere in
ever greater quantities since the Industrial Revolution, gaining transformative
power as it intensifies in the atmosphere.9
Historians, in other words, can offer
a unique perspective to help understand how and why global warming began,
how it accelerated, and why it is proving so difficult to halt. A wave of recent
studies, what one might call a “New Energy History,” have recognized this,
placing energy extraction, production, transportation, distribution, owner-
ship, and consumption at the center of their narratives.10
Energy has also gained new attention from historians for reasons entirely
unrelated to climate change, like the renewed interest in capitalism and in-
equality. Even before the financial crisis of 2007–2008, historians returned to
the economy to understand the formation of the great disparities of wealth
that were becoming more apparent in the twenty-­
first century. They strove to
integrate a study of ideas, values, and identities with material life and interest
groups.11
The financial crisis, the worst global economic downturn since the
Great Depression, lent urgency to this task of historicizing the economy, a sen-
timent captured by Thomas Piketty’s groundbreaking study on capital and in-
equality. Historians working in similar veins have sought to understand how
markets were constructed over time intellectually as well as institutionally or
politically, and thus to learn why they have gone horribly awry as often as they
have yielded positive benefits: disempowering labor and minorities, forcing
millions into unemployment through periodic crises, or polluting nature as
much as they have lifted people out of poverty or stimulated technological
advances.12
Karl Polanyi and Karl Marx superseded Adam Smith as the chan-
nel through which historians approached capitalism, inspiring critical studies
about the changing form of economic governance throughout the twentieth
century—­
from classic liberal capitalism to Keynesian or social democratic
capitalism to neoliberal capitalism.13
All varieties of twentieth-­
century capitalism, however, required vast
amounts of energy. One does not have to be an energeticist like Frederick Sod-
dy or Lewis Mumford—­
early twentieth-­
century thinkers who saw energy as
the root of all value—­
to appreciate that capitalism has historically excelled at
organizing different technologies, institutions, resources, and laborers to con-
vert energy into economic work. The consumption of energy is, in fact, deeply
correlated with wealth, and one of the most powerful markers of global in-
10 NEW ENERGIES
equality. Great Britain’s pioneering transition to sustained economic growth
in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries hinged on the exploitation of coal
on a new, mass scale. The United States’ hegemonic position in the global cap-
italist order after World War II involved its astounding lead in energy con-
sumption per capita: more than twice as much as its nearest rivals. In 2019 the
average US resident consumed nearly eighty thousand kilowatt hours a year;
those in Germany and France roughly forty thousand; those in Chad, Niger,
Mali, or South Sudan less than one thousand. The reasons for such incredible
disparities in energy consumption, of course, have a history.14
The perceived decline of the nation-­
state, meanwhile, encouraged histori-
ans to turn their attention to the new captains of globalization: corporations.15
In American historiography, financial corporations often took center stage in
this new history of capitalism.16
Yet in many ways energy corporations, not
banks, have been the largest, most influential, and most globalized companies
of the twentieth century. Take ExxonMobil, itself a descendant of Standard
Oil, one of the world’s most powerful corporations before it was broken apart
in 1911. Today, ExxonMobil has a market capitalization of over $300 billion,
conducts business in dozens of countries, and builds infrastructure in dozens
more.17
It, and other energy multinationals, have constructed business mod-
els designed to shield operations from social control on the local level while
obscuring profits from state control through interlocking “offshore” subsid-
iaries.18
In the words of the oil industry’s leading chronicler, firms like these
belong to the “world’s biggest and most pervasive business.” In 2018 six of
the world’s ten largest corporations were energy firms, while two more were
automobile manufacturers whose business models are unthinkable without
gasoline. The production of energy stands as much at the heart of capitalism
as does the flow of money: indeed, coal and oil have been called, with only a
little hyperbole, the “mainspring of modern material civilization” or the “life-
blood” of modern economies. As historians have returned to capitalism as a
subject, studies about energy production, distribution, and consumption, and
the firms that control these channels have multiplied, yielding new insights
about growth, inequality, class identity, and the geography of markets.19
From still a different angle, the history of commodities and the supply
chains that bring them into shopping centers and homes has changed the way
we think about global connections. Histories of salt, cod, pepper, coffee, pa-
per, sugar, cotton, or even the T-­
shirt have lifted the hood of the engine of glo-
balization to reveal intricate networks of production, distribution, and mar-
keting. These studies have illustrated how the labor forms and the institutions
used to produce and distribute a given commodity vary immensely depending
on their position in a global supply chain, promoting democracy and wealth
Toward a New Energy History 11
and protecting nature in one region while undermining polities, impoverish-
ing people, and damaging the environment in another.20
This approach of fol-
lowing the flow of a commodity from start to finish reveals the points at which
different actors can insert themselves in order to reap economic gain, achieve
leverage over people or resources, and even shape the evolution of states and
societies.21
Many of the commodities studied in these histories are raw materi-
als, taken from the earth and used in products and processes that we take for
granted. In many ways, energy is the raw material par excellence because it is
so essential to modern life, both industrial and postindustrial. It lends itself
to spatial analysis as a variety of recent histories have illustrated, which trace
the supply chains that render particular forms of energy useable, and which
connect points in space or historical processes that have traditionally been
considered in isolation.22
Toward a New History of Energy Transitions
Together, global warming and the Anthropocene, the new history of capital-
ism, and the study of commodities have turned energy into a dynamic histor-
ical field. Fortunately, historians today have much to build upon, for there is a
long precedent in showing how energy shaped human affairs. Already in the
1930s John Nef authored a two-­volume study unsurpassed in its detail of show-
ing how coal influenced everything from capitalism and political power to the
ecology of forests in early modern Great Britain.23
In 1983 Thomas Hughes
traced the rise of massive new technological systems that brought electricity
into the households and urban centers of North America and Europe. Under-
standing these energy networks, he hoped, would do nothing less than help
scholars tackle the big questions of history, about “the ordering, integrating,
coordinating, and systematizing nature of modern human societies.”24
And
since the 1990s and 2000s, our understanding of the Industrial Revolution,
or what many scholars now call the Great Divergence, has hinged not only on
questions of imperialism, slavery, institutions, and trade, but also on coal.25
Yet “energy” as such was often not the object of these earlier, discerning
studies. Instead, they focused on discrete forms of energy, like anthracite or
wood, or on particular technologies or organizations that delivered energy,
like multinational oil companies or electrical utilities. These earlier authors,
in other words, were less interested in energy as a historical category or how
contemporaries conceptualized energy than in exploring individual energy
forms and using them to answer questions about other topics such as indus-
trial development, the interconnectivity of “socio-­technical arrangements,” or
economic institutions.26
Toward the end of the twentieth century, energy became its own catego-
12 NEW ENERGIES
ry of analysis, but with a few important exceptions it fell under the purview
of economists.27
After the oil crisis of 1973, economists revived frameworks
for understanding the nature of exhaustible resources, and economics as a
profession began including energy in their models alongside labor, capital,
and land.28
Quantitative economic historians followed this trend and began
looking to the past for empirical evidence of how energy related to econom-
ic growth, the totem of post–1945 economic theory.29
They put moments of
transition between fuel sources at the center of their analysis about energy’s
causal role in historical changee. For the Industrial Revolution, arguably the
seminal event of energy history in European and American historiography,
the work of E. A. Wrigley, Robert Allen, Peter J. G. Pearson, and Roger Fou-
quet from the mid-­
1990s on defined a paradigm that placed price, scarcity,
and technology at the heart of the story. Through the painstaking reconstruc-
tion of long-­
run data sets on population, gross domestic product (GDP), and
the prices of wood, charcoal, and coal, they mapped the contours of British
economic history in minute detail. In their hands, the Industrial Revolution
was redefined as an energy transition, one of the most momentous in history,
from an organic society fueled by wood, grain, and the muscles of animals to
an inorganic economy driven by coal. And the mechanisms of change were
straightforward. As population and the economy grew, wood and land—­
the
dominant sources of energy before the eighteenth century—­
became scarce.
Their prices rose, encouraging the substitution of new energies through new
technologies. In Britain, so this argument went, rising wood and land pric-
es induced producers and consumers to turn to coal on a grand scale.30
The
crucial breakthrough came when engineers, driven by price incentives, im-
proved the steam engine so they could use coal not only for heat but also for
mechanical power to run factories and power railroads. In the words of Rob-
ert Allen, “High wages and cheap energy were the distinctive features of the
British economy during the Industrial Revolution . . . creating a demand for
technology that substituted capital and energy for labour.”31
Expanding scope
beyond Britain only seemed to confirm economic historians in their para-
digm. In a lead editorial for the journal Energy Policy, for instance, Fouquet
and Pearson could write that “a review of 14 past transitions indicated that, for
a new energy source to become dominant, the energy services . . . it provided
had been cheaper than the incumbent energy source.”32
Price and efficiency, in
their hands, were the kings of transitions, and technology the queen.
Yet in the process of unearthing amazing statistical series that yielded new
insights, these historians of transitions veered too far into the macro and the
structural. The drama was gone. The human agency or conflict fell out of view
in the face of impersonal forces. When these economic historians spoke of
Toward a New Energy History 13
lock-­
in—­
how energy systems once in place built their own momentum—­
they
rarely discussed the producers, consumer groups, or businesses that lost out
or reinvented themselves because they backed the “wrong” system.33
When
they traced the rise of new fuel sources, they rarely had a place for geopoli-
tics, labor struggles, cultural shifts, or even states, which do “not seem to have
played a highly proactive role in previous transitions.”34
At the most extreme, a picture emerged of an almost steady progression
through virtuous feedback loops toward ever more efficient fuels driving
ever more energy-­
hungry societies: a stagism devoid of contingency. In 2012
a special issue on energy transitions in the leading journal for energy policy
could even posit a historical pattern: “New technological combinations en-
abled entirely new, or vastly improved traditional services, at greater energy
efficiency and ever falling costs in a virtual, self-­
reinforcing positive feedback
loop.”35
The spirit of Cesare Marchetti, it seemed, was alive. So it should not
be surprising that advocates of renewable power today who follow this par-
adigm place their hope in sending the right “price signal,” that they speak
of climate change as “fundamentally a technological challenge,” or that they
argue moving to wind, solar, and biomass will benefit everyone and generate
little resistance.36
“Increased deployment of clean energy technologies . . .” so
the International Renewable Energy Council argues, “translates to increased
economic opportunities. And everyone can find a way to support that.”37
Even
ExxonMobil?
These accounts, however much they have expanded our understanding of
past transitions, paint a narrow historical picture. This is, after all, the nature
of models that aspire to aid policy for the future: they strive for simplification.
But where is the conflict in energy transitions? Where are the politics? Where
is the human agency—­
for or against transition? Where is the knowledge of
energy—­
as a social category, a scientific object, or an instrument of power?
These are all burning questions that historians have posed with ever more ur-
gency since 2010, against the backdrop of global warming and financial crisis.
Indeed, a range of new monographs written by historians in history depart-
ments, or by unorthodox social scientists, have challenged the narrative that
emerged in the 1990s and 2000s, pointing the way toward a new approach
to energy history that foregrounds struggle, ideology, class, knowledge, geo-
politics, culture, and geography. New monographs that combine a history of
capitalism with the environment around the theme of energy have forced us
to rethink everything from Britain and the United States’ industrialization,
to the Cold War experience with nuclear power, to the very foundation of de-
mocracy itself.38
New studies about struggles over labor, over language, or over
political economy have helped turn “energy” into a category of analysis that
14 NEW ENERGIES
can bring together historians of various ilk to reopen some of the most basic
questions about change in society, about the nation-­
state, globalization, pol-
itics, capitalism, and identity.39
As even Pearson, a pioneer of the data-­
driven
studies of the 1990s and 2000s, himself now writes, social scientists have come
to appreciate the “multifaceted nature” of energy transitions. Past transitions
cannot be explained by price alone; they have “co-­
evolved or been entangled
with other broader socio-­economic, demographic, technological and environ-
mental changes and processes.”40
What Is an Energy Transition?
But what do we even mean by an “energy transition”? The concept itself evokes
images of a linear shift from one stage to another. In fact, this was how it was
first used and politicized in the 1970s. As a concept that initially related to the
pure chemical transformation of one energy into another, energy transition
was popularized by the technocratic response to the oil shock of 1973. Experts
hoped to defend North America and Western Europe from the “oil weapon”
deployed by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) by
facilitating an energy transition. President Jimmy Carter, the Trilateral Com-
mission, and the European Economic Community (EEC) all used the lan-
guage of transition to develop more hydrocarbons outside of OPEC territory.41
But this is hardly the type of transition one hopes for in the age of global
warming, and the term itself harbors the danger of obscuring the messiness of
new energy systems by suggesting transitions can be rationally managed, or
that they proceed in a linear or straightforward manner. In fact, some doubt
the concept can fully capture the complexity of changing infrastructural,
technopolitical, or knowledge systems around energy. Christophe Bonneuil
and Jean-­
Baptiste Fressoz, for instance, argue that “if history teaches us one
thing, it is that there never has been an energy transition . . . rather a successive
addition of new sources of primary energy.” Using transition as a concept, in
their view, obscures the extent to which the old remains and the new merely
brings forth ever more consumption of energy.42
Nevertheless, many historians use transition with care, and remain keenly
aware that older systems never wither, and instead often adapt and expand.43
Transition, moreover, is not merely a cover for some form of crisis—­
in an ex-
tant energy system or in society more broadly—­
as Bonneuil and Fressoz sug-
gest, since in many cases societies incorporate new forms of energy and build
new infrastructure during periods of stability. Natural gas is the most telling
example, which much of Western Europe first began using before the shocks
of the 1970s, and which the continent only fully integrated well after the effects
of those shocks had passed, during the 1980s and 1990s.
Toward a New Energy History 15
More generally, the concept of energy transition adds value if one under-
stands transition less as a discrete, punctuated shift from one stage or system
or fuel to another, but rather—­to draw from the new histories of capitalism—­a
layering and an “ongoing transformation” that leads to new and “hybrid”
forms of energy provision, energy services, and energy consumption, a trans-
formation that can reshape society in the process.44
Much as transitions to
capitalism or the nation-­
state have all been deconstructed, to show how el-
ements of older systems persist, adapt, and become crucial to newer ones, so
too should historians work to expose the less visible transformations that arise
out of transitions, whether they be new economic geographies, new political
values or morals, new knowledge systems or discourses, or even new temporal
or mental frameworks.45
All of this complexity is obscured if one abstracts
energy transition into a line on a chart or a price for a fuel.
Using this broader approach, our volume emphasizes five pivotal themes of
energy transitions, some of which have often been overlooked by earlier liter-
ature. Most fundamentally, energy on the scale required by modern societies
has historically come through systems of vast complexity, a fact that informs
most chapters in this volume. Energy production and consumption can be
understood as a socio-­technical system that includes humans, materials, tech-
nologies, and ideas, as well as the particular energy itself. The infrastructure
needed to extract, refine, and transform energy into something usable—­
the
networks of ships, roads, trucks, and pipelines that move energy from the
point of extraction to the point of consumption—­
forms an interconnected
system worth trillions of dollars of investments built up over decades. But
beyond its physical presence, energy systems also shape how people “work,
play, eat, and socialize, . . . how industries cluster, how cities and economies
grow, and how nations conduct their foreign affairs.”46
The components of en-
ergy systems are so interlinked, moreover, that change in one often ripples
through and affects other elements and participants, and crucially, other ener-
gy systems. As Clark Miller and others have underscored, the key decisions to
study are often political, social, or cultural as much as they are technological
or economic.47
Second, this volume shows how prices and technological efficiency, or pro-
ducer and consumer desires alone, cannot fully explain why one energy rises,
another falls, and another reinvents itself, as chapters by Joseph Bohling, Ste-
phen Gross, Victor McFarland, Eva Oberloskamp, Sonja Schmid, and Benja-
min Franta demonstrate. Energy systems are embedded in a broader political
economy of interest groups that have their own networks and agendas, wheth-
er seeking profit, preserving the environment, or attaining geopolitical secu-
rity. Energy transitions, put differently, are profoundly shaped by competition
16 NEW ENERGIES
between various groups to mobilize the levers of power at their disposal to
advance one energy or restrict another, or to change the extant system. Price
and profit are important to the success of any new energy, to be sure, since
modern transitions have unfolded through a global capitalism in which ener-
gy providers must earn a return on their investments. Yet price and profit are
never everything, for states, consumers, workers, experts, and environmental
groups all use politics to reshape the economic playing field, and to pursue
agendas that make little sense in the logic of the market. States in particu-
lar have interests that range from geopolitics to social security and prestige.
These interests often overlap with the quest for inexpensive energy, but not
always. Governments have historically favored geopolitically secure energy
sources, sources that generate domestic employment and social stability, or
sources that are considered part of the national culture, even when their costs
are high. In any case, what is cheap and what is expensive is rarely determined
by supply and demand alone, as markets are political constructs that require
state-­
made rules to function, that are shaped by incentives created by states,
and that are embedded in larger global markets. Who has access to the levers
of government, or who has arguments that resonate with the voting public,
thus matter immensely. Energy transitions cannot be understood apart from
the constant ebb and flow among interest groups and political parties to shape
energy policy.
Third, these chapters illustrate the staying power of older energy systems,
showing how these have historically been reinvented in any number of ways
to remain a vital part of modern societies, as chapters by Ryan Driskoll Tate,
Trish Kahle, and Henning Türk show. This is so above all for coal. Merely
looking at a different sort of graph than those used by Marchetti—­
graphs
that display the total volume of energy consumed rather than their relative
shares—­
one sees how voluminous the consumption of coal has been through-
out the twentieth century. Even after oil became the dominant energy, coal
retained a place at the heart of the industrial societies of Europe and North
America, rising in absolute levels in the final quarter of the century. More coal
was consumed on these continents in 2000 than in the 1960s.48
Coal survived
because firms, workers, governments, consumers, labor leaders, and interna-
tional organizations reinvented it as an energy: shifting its geographical locus,
revolutionizing the technologies used to produce it, changing people’s atti-
tudes toward it, reimagining its place in an evolving geopolitical landscape,
and even altering the very nature of coal consumption. Coal’s importance as
a fuel for transportation or chemistry diminished in the face of oil’s rise, but
nevertheless it remained an essential part of the foundation of the high energy
consumer society that emerged after World War II. Huge new coal-­
fired pow-
Toward a New Energy History 17
er plants located far from city centers facilitated mass electrification while at
the same time making the production of energy, and much of the ecological
degradation that came with it, seem invisible to many urban consumers. Nov-
el machinery permitted the rise of new coal regions and eroded the power that
labor organizations derived from coal, altering the very nature of coal’s poli-
tics. Indeed, twentieth-­century coal is an outstanding example of why we need
a more capacious understanding of energy transitions, one that captures how
old and new energy systems often exist side by side, and how their interaction
can lead to mutual intensification and transformation.49
Fourth, energy transitions change the way we think, not just about energy
itself but also about larger issues such as political representation, knowledge,
and even time, as chapters by Trish Kahle, Natasha Zaretsky, Duccio Basosi,
Thomas Turnbull, and Dolores Augustine demonstrate. Because energy tran-
sitions are contested processes, with winners and losers, the tensions they gen-
erate lead people to reevaluate long-­
standing assumptions that govern society.
Entirely new costs associated with emergent forms of energy became apparent
during transitions, costs that go beyond economic measures to include hu-
man life itself, or the lives of future generations, or the lives of people living
in other political spaces in other parts of the world. How should representa-
tive democracies handle these spatial and temporal questions, given that only
citizens who are currently alive have the right to vote? How should politics
handle an energy like nuclear power, which has the potential to threaten not
only individual lives but humanity as a species—­
a threat that first appeared
with the atomic bomb in 1945? How should the concerns that emerged about
Figure I.5: World Commercial Energy Production. 1800–2000. Source: Bruce
Podobnik, Global Energy Shifts: Fostering Sustainability in a Turbulent Age (Phila-
delphia: Temple University Press, 2006), 6.
18 NEW ENERGIES
the danger nuclear power posed to the future shape our understandings of the
future of global warming? Who, moreover, can be entrusted to provide the
knowledge to guide such social decisions, given that established science has
itself been one of the forces pushing fossil energy and nuclear power in the
first place? These questions have defied easy answer, and the process of trying
to answer them has historically transformed the nature of representation and
expertise in Europe and North America.
Finally, energy transitions can transform the very political and econom-
ic geography of a nation or even the world, as chapters by Tate and Schmid
demonstrate. Fossil fuels come from the earth, and thus the discovery of new
sources can shift the center of production and transform the flow of these com-
modities as new networks arise to bring supplies to the consumer. Changes in
energy geography, however, can affect more than just prices—­
they can lead to
new political alliances, new ways of conceptualizing politics, new relations of
dependency or influence, and new secondary effects that outlive the primary
reason an energy source was tapped in the first place. The geographical reloca-
tion and technological transformation of mining in the United States during
the 1960s and 1970s, for instance, transformed the politics of coal as the min-
ing workforce migrated from the political Left to the Right. Nuclear energy
promised to liberate states from previous forms of foreign influence, but in
fact, it just as often created new channels of dependency after crucial parts of
this complex technology were monopolized by powerful actors like the United
States or the Soviet Union.
The concept of energy transition, in other words, if broadened to mean
more than just the rise of a new fuel source, can capture the evolving way
humans use energy to achieve their many goals. How this evolution funda-
mentally changes the nature of society, from the distribution of wealth, power,
and inequality, to the way politics, time, and geography are imagined, lies at
the heart of this book.
Transitions in North America and Europe
Geographically, this volume focuses on North America and Europe. We chose
these regions partly because they reflect the expertise of the two editors—­
one
an Europeanist, the other an Americanist—­
and because we hoped to empha-
size depth over breadth of coverage. Energy transitions in the twentieth cen-
tury is an enormous topic, and by limiting the geographical scope we hoped to
find energy stories that spoke to and built on one another. This constraint al-
lows the volume to focus on questions of political economy, culture, and ideol-
ogy in the high energy, consumer societies of the Global North, and on issues
of labor mobilization related to the procurement and distribution of domestic
Toward a New Energy History 19
energy sources such as coal. Unfortunately, our geographical focus does rule
out other important lines of inquiry that research into energy transitions can
open up, above all about transnational entanglements and the flow of energy
across space. There is a developing literature on the movement of hydrocar-
bons from the Middle East or Russia to Europe in the second half of the twen-
tieth century, for instance, which traces how the transition to a high energy
society in one region shaped extraction, labor relations, or the environment
in another. More recently, understanding carbon outsourcing from North
America and Europe to the most important energy region in the twenty-­
first
century, China, has become increasingly urgent. Both sorts of flows—­
oil to
Europe, energy-­
intensive manufacturing out of China—­
represent outstand-
ing topics for future research that this volume set aside in its focus on political
economy, culture, and ideas in Europe and North America.50
North America and Europe, though, share certain commonalities as the
first regions to transform into energy-­intensive consumer societies—­what Da-
vid Nye has called “high energy societies.” There is a certain logic, in other
words, for uniting histories of these two regions into a single volume on ener-
gy transitions. These two regions were the first to experience the energy tran-
sitions studied in this volume. Many of the new technologies driving these
shifts, from thermal cracking of oil to controlled nuclear fission, were devel-
oped in either Europe or North America. More generally, these two continents
have been at the forefront of energy consumption. At the turn of the twenti-
eth century, North Americans and Europeans already used far more energy
per capita than consumers in Asia, Africa, or South America. This gap only
widened over the first two-­
thirds of the century as the economies of North
America and Europe and their wealth per capita expanded dramatically, as
they began burning oil in huge volumes, and as their consumer lifestyles and
industrial systems came to depend on ever more energy. By the 1970s, these
continents together accounted for over half of global GDP, and their GDP
per capita was eight to ten times higher than much of Africa or Asia. These
differences between the Global North and Global South appear even starker
when examined through the lens of energy. As North America and Europe
passed through an unprecedented phase of growth between 1950 and 1973—­
the so-­
called Great Acceleration that saw dramatic increase in many mea-
sures, from welfare to life expectancy to fertilizer usage to pollution—­
they
widened the gap with other continents. By the 1970s, North Americans and
Europeans consumed three-­quarters of all energy produced in the world, even
though they numbered less than a quarter of global population. And energy
consumption corresponded closely with carbon emissions. Precisely because
North America and Europe became the world’s first high-­
energy, oil-­
soaked
20 NEW ENERGIES
societies, they also sparked the onset of global warming. By 1990, when scien-
tists began to reach a consensus that fossil fuel use was warming the planet,
North America and Europe together were responsible for three-­
quarters of
the cumulative human-­
generated carbon in the atmosphere.51
These continents developed such massive carbon footprints because they
followed a trajectory of growth that had been energy-­
intensive for two hun-
dred years. In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, new technologies
of mining and the steam engine permitted the states of Europe and North
America to tap energy on a grand scale that had had previously been con-
verted by geological forces from organic matter into anthracite, bitumen, and
lignite.52
In the twentieth century, North America and Europe deepened this
path of energy-­
intensive growth as they led some of the most important ener-
gy transitions: the rise of oil at mid-­
century and the concomitant transforma-
tion of coal, the technological revolution and state development that led to nu-
clear power, and after the 1980s the dispersion of new forms of decentralized,
renewable power that potentially challenged fossil fuels.
These three twentieth-­
century transitions, plus the shock to the global oil
network in the 1970s, are the organizing pillars of New Energies. These two
continents, however, channeled energy transitions through different social,
political, and cultural institutions, and herein lies part of the novelty of this
volume—­
comparing the path and effects of energy shifts across space as well
as time
Part I, “The Rise of Oil and the Transformation of Coal: Creation, De-
struction, and Reinvention,” explores the interaction between energy systems
that were based on coal and oil, through an arc of time that stretches from
the 1920s to the 1970s. Oil had been used as a fuel throughout history, but
during the twentieth century it penetrated into vast new areas of consumer
society. With the growth of the lamp oil industry in Burma in the 1800s, and
the gusher of crude that exploded near Titusville, Pennsylvania, in 1859, en-
trepreneurs had started to commercialize oil on a grand scale. At first oil filled
tertiary needs created by the coal-­
fired industrial order of the late nineteenth
century—­
lubricating mining machinery, for instance, or providing lighting
for cities heated by coal. But by the twentieth century oil began moving out
of secondary markets that complemented coal to become a rival to many of
coal’s core markets—­
in industry, heating, and chemistry, but above all in
transportation with the emergence of inexpensive, gasoline-­
powered automo-
biles.53
By the middle of the twentieth century, the oil industry would grow to
encompass the entire world with massive multinational petroleum corpora-
tions, what contemporaries dubbed the “oil majors,” spreading their networks
Toward a New Energy History 21
across the Middle East, South America, sub-­
Saharan Africa, and Central and
Southeast Asia.54
By mid-­
century, if not earlier, North America and Europe consumed oil
on a larger scale than anywhere else, apart from particular oil-­
producing
countries like Mexico or Saudi Arabia, and economies with entire ecosystems
of industry, transportation, and consumer products that revolved around oil
first took root. In the process, this new hydrocarbon network reshaped coal
systems by putting them under stress. Chapters 1–4 dive into key problematics
stemming from this energy transition and interaction between oil and coal,
exploring the political economy of interest groups that navigated the rise of oil
in France, Germany, and the United States, and tracing how coal producers
and workers reacted to the onslaught of this cheap new energy. At first, crude
oil had to contend with other rivals to fuel the internal combustion engine,
above all biofuels, as Joseph Bohling illustrates in chapter 1. As oil use spread,
in some instances coal as an energy system actually declined, as Stephen G.
Gross describes in the case of hard coal mining in Germany’s Ruhr in chapter
2. In many other instances, however, coal evolved in response to the new en-
ergy landscape, changing in terms of its geography, its uses, and even in how
it was extracted and imagined, as Trish Kahle and Ryan Driskell Tate recount
in chapters 3 and 4, respectively. And in important respects, coal thrived: as
oil brought more growth and accelerated the rise of a high energy society, coal
powered the expanding grid that supported new consumer lifestyles. High
energy society, in fact, revolved around two icons—­one rooted in oil; the other
in coal—­
the car and electricity.
Part II, “Oil Transition in Crisis: The 1970s,” follows how the high energy
societies of North America and Europe navigated an unprecedented peace-
time shock to their energy systems. By the early 1970s, both continents had
come to depend on oil for roughly half their total primary energy needs. This
fuel facilitated the incredible growth experienced by both sides of the Atlantic
after World War II. And by the 1970s, much of this oil came from the Middle
East and North Africa: production there influenced prices around the world
and provided most of the petroleum consumed in Western Europe. But in the
fall of 1973, the foundation of this system was put into question when coun-
tries in the Middle East and elsewhere used their newfound market power
vis-­
à-­
vis international corporations to raise the price at which they sold crude
on the global market fourfold, advancing a bid to wrest back sovereign con-
trol over this resource found in their own territory. Chapters 5–8 explore how
North Americans and Europeans responded to this “oil shock,” the shadow of
which lasted into the 1980s.55
For the crisis posed not only economic and geo-
22 NEW ENERGIES
political challenges to the states of these continents, as Victor McFarland and
Henning Türk illustrate in chapters 5 and 7, respectively. It also opened a win-
dow of opportunity for these societies to imagine and conceptualize a transi-
tion away from fossil fuel–centered, energy-­
intensive growth, as recounted by
Duccio Basosi and Thomas Turnbull in chapters 6 and 8, respectively. While
this window closed before such a shift could occur, developments in the 1970s
nevertheless laid the foundation for later efforts to build a post-­
petroleum
world.
Part III, “A Stalled Transition? Nuclear Energy’s Dilemmas and Possi-
bilities,” explores a twentieth-­
century energy transition that was never fully
realized: the turn toward nuclear power. As with the spread of oil and the
transformation of coal, North America and Europe commenced a nuclear
energy transition before other regions, by crafting the scientific networks,
political institutions, and infrastructure to commercialize this new source of
electricity. American and European scientists first theorized about splitting
the atom before World War II; they weaponized these ideas with the atom-
ic bomb during the war; and after 1945 they, along with the Japanese, first
linked nuclear reactors to the grid. As a result, these societies were some of
the first to grapple with the unprecedented nature of atomic power, which
posed an existential threat to humankind while at the same time offering hope
of radically improving life, satisfying the world’s energy needs at all times,
and opening pathways for resource-­
poor states to achieve geopolitical auton-
omy from the fossil fuel networks that had emerged over the preceding cen-
tury. The contributions by Sonja D. Schmid, Natasha Zaretsky, and Dolores
L. Augustine in chapters 9, 10, and 11, respectively, explore the contradictions
generated by this new energy, following the rise of nuclear utopianism in the
1950s, the vast plans for nuclear expansion in the wake of the oil shock, and
the erosion of that momentum as a result of cost problems, safety issues, and
grassroots movements. These chapters provide a counterview to convention-
al narratives by illustrating how atomic power generated new anxieties that
revolved around human reproduction, and focusing on issues often left unex-
plored in traditional energy histories, such as political representation, gender,
the nature of expertise, and the path dependencies generated by technological
transfers.
Part IV, “The Transition off Fossil Fuels: Challenges and Possibilities,”
completes the volume by discussing the origins and challenges of what could
be the next great energy transition, the shift off fossil fuels toward renewables.
Even though solar and wind power have histories that began well before the
twentieth century, environmental historians often portray the 1970s as the de-
cade of origin for modern renewable energy.56
The dramatic spike in oil prices,
Toward a New Energy History 23
the fears of resource exhaustion, and the surging environmental movement
led certain groups to seek salvation in new sources of energy that could be re-
plenished. But as chapters 12 and 13 illustrate, this process was far more com-
plex and less linear than most narratives suggest, and here again, questions of
price and efficiency are only part of the story. In fact, the 1980s and the 1990s
emerge as crucial decades in the history of renewables and their relationship
with fossil fuels. For the initial desire to cultivate wind and solar in the 1970s
came more from fears that the world would run out of hydrocarbons, not that
burning hydrocarbons would generate catastrophic climate change from too
much fossil fuels. When a wave of new oil discoveries shattered the market
power of OPEC in the early 1980s, causing oil prices to plummet, this initial
raison d’être for renewables disintegrated. But, as Benjamin Franta recounts
in chapter 12, well before this moment the oil industry realized global warm-
ing was a likely outcome of their business model, and they began generating
knowledge to counteract the moment when climate change would become po-
liticized. That moment came in the 1980s with the consolidation of scientific
knowledge that showed fossil fuel–induced global warming was real. Only in
the 1990s, however, with the emergence of social movements, political institu-
tions, and interest groups to support renewables, as these Eva Oberloskamp il-
lustrates in chapter 13, did the transition toward solar and wind gain momen-
tum. This story is still being written, with its most pivotal chapter yet to come,
since fossil fuel consumption in much of North America and Europe, and
the world for that matter, remains undiminished by solar and wind. Indeed,
what distinguishes the hoped-­for transition to renewables from most previous
transitions is that to actually address global warming, the new system must
not just transform, but radically dismantle the old energy system. This has few
precedents in history.
Overall, the aim of New Energies is to move beyond a narrow and linear
conception of energy transitions. We hope to show how energy transitions are
a rich, multifaceted line of inquiry that can bring different types of history to-
gether, and how those studying contemporary energy affairs can benefit from
a more detailed understanding the complex, nonlinear, and highly contested
nature of energy transitions from the past. This volume illustrates how tran-
sitions are long affairs that take decades to unfold, rarely have finite starting
and ending points, and are characterized by advances as well as backtracking
and changes in entirely unpredictable directions. It underscores the persist-
ing influence of older energy forms, like coal, whose supporters have histor-
ically found ways to overcome challenges and adapt to new circumstances.
It shows how important interest groups, coalitions, counter-­
experts, states,
and grassroots actors have been to the success of new energy systems—­
that
24 NEW ENERGIES
all does not hinge on technology and price. It shows how particular moments
or constellations of circumstances have emerged to create the opportunity for
change, and how quickly those moments can vanish. Lastly, it highlights just
how profoundly our experience with energy shapes almost every facet of life,
from democratic governance to the environment that surrounds us to even
how we think about human reproduction.
25
Part I
THE RISE OF OIL AND
THE TRANSFORMATION OF COAL
Creation, Destruction, and Reinvention
The first energy transition in twentieth-­century Europe and the
United States was also the most profound. Globally, oil use experienced a me-
teoric expansion that rivaled in its astounding pace the rise of coal during
the preceding century. Oil’s share of total global energy first crested 5 per-
cent in 1915, and within just sixty years it hit 40 percent.1
After engineers and
corporations wedded the internal combustion engine to gasoline, a process
that was far from inevitable, oil producers found a ravenous new market for
their product in the form of the car industry. New uses for petroleum soon
followed, including fuel oil to heat homes and run machinery, synthetic fertil-
izers for large-­
scale agriculture, and raw materials for the chemical industry.
Automobiles threatened public transportation that ran on coal, while other
applications for petroleum encroached on a variety of markets once fueled
by hard coal and lignite. On both sides of the Atlantic, coal and oil found
themselves locked in an intense contest that not only led to wrenching social
transformations, but that would change the politics, the moral economy, and
the economic geography of these two continents.
This contest played out at very different tempos and resulted in very dif-
ferent outcomes in North America and Western Europe, illustrating how this
energy transition was far from inevitable and hinged on much more than just
26 NEW ENERGIES
prices. Though some scholars point to price as the key factor leading to pe-
troleum’s rise, the question of when the price of oil fell below that of coal is
still unsettled and differs by region. In British thermal units (BTU), the price
of coal actually remained lower than crude through much of the 1950s. Most
price comparisons, however, do little to explore the cost of distribution and
transportation, which began to favor oil with the construction of pipeline net-
works at midcentury. In Europe, by 1958 at the latest, when the first major coal
crisis erupted, the price of using fuel oil had fallen below that of coal. In the
United States, that tipping point came sooner.2
Energy prices in North America and Europe during the middle of the
twentieth century, however, were hardly determined by market forces alone.
Coal’s challenges, in other words, had little to do with scarcity: in the twen-
tieth century, more coal was mined than ever before. In the United States,
informal and formal quotas on foreign oil combined with domestic regulation
to keep oil prices higher than they otherwise would have been. Europe, mean-
while, had different oil regimes in nearly every nation, ranging from state-­
controlled pricing in France to relatively free prices in postwar West Ger-
many. But even here, in what contemporaries called the most liberal energy
market in the world, prices were free relative to France, but not compared to
any model of a competitive market economy, as Stephen G. Gross points out in
chapter 2. In any case, the international oil companies that delivered crude to
Europe determined their prices through negotiation with the producer coun-
tries and through offtake agreements with each other. From 1930 until 1973,
the international price of crude followed a remarkably straight line, indicating
how little market forces held sway. As a pioneering study on American energy
history concluded, using language that could equally apply to Europe, “Rarely
since 1945 have producers, consumers, or their political representatives been
willing to rely on price for the restoration of equilibrium.”3
Throughout this period, in fact, the price of energy was determined as
much by politics or interest groups as by supply and demand. Nation-­
states
had very good reason to advance oil, beginning with war. World War I illus-
trated the geopolitical benefits of mobility that could be gained from support-
ing militaries by trucks and gasoline instead of rail and coal, and securing oil
became a major strategic aim of the conflict. Meanwhile, between 1916 and
1922, the coal industry experienced some of the most strained labor relations
in its history, as miners across Europe and the United States clamored for bet-
ter conditions like the eight-­
hour workday and higher pay. War underscored
just how different the production structures of coal and oil were, and how
the latter could more easily be controlled by capital and the state. Where coal
production required mass labor that could leverage key choke points in the
The Rise of Oil and the Transformation of Coal 27
extraction process, oil production at this moment was capital-­
intensive, and
at least in North America and Europe, its workers were relatively well-­
paid.4
After 1918, geopolitics and the quest for economic and social stability led
to a scramble for what would become the world’s largest source of crude, the
Middle East. While British, French, and Dutch companies initially held the
upper hand, American companies gained access to this new center of global
oil with the Red Line Agreement in 1928. But they succeeded only with exten-
sive support from their government, including diplomatic pressure applied by
the Department of State on America’s allies, and a depletion allowance that
allowed firms to deduct the entire market value of oil properties from their
tax bill. State support for oil accelerated during and after the World War II,
above all in the United States, which boasted five of the world’s seven largest
oil companies. In 1943 the US government cooperated with private companies
in building the world’s longest oil pipeline, linking Texas to the Northeast. In
1947 the United States waived its antitrust laws to allow its largest oil firms to
merge into ARAMCO to exploit the huge fields of Saudi Arabia. That same
year President Harry S. Truman established a security umbrella in Turkey and
Greece that cordoned the Middle East off from Soviet encroachment. Oil’s
rise, in other words, was an affair of the state as much as it was one of private
enterprise.5
Even before 1945, the fortunes of oil in the United States and Europe
diverged. In the former, the transition to oil took off in the 1920s with the
gasoline-­
powered internal combustion engine. Despite its high energy den-
sity, gasoline was never preordained to fuel the automobile, as Joseph Boh-
ling illustrates in chapter 1. Electric engines were cleaner and quieter; steam-­
powered ones more reliable. Gasoline-­
powered cars, meanwhile, suffered
from a range of technical problems and had to compete with biofuels. Despite
the European origins of early automobile innovations, it was the American
Henry Ford, an organizational genius and anti-­
Semite, who unleashed the
automobile revolution when he fit the internal combustion engine into a car
that middle-­
class consumers could afford. In his new assembly line plants,
powered by electricity, he began producing more automobiles than all other
carmakers combined. Between 1914 and 1920, the number of registered cars in
the United States exploded from 1.8 million to 9.2 million. In Ford’s licensed
dealerships, consumers encountered industrial abundance along with the
Dearborn Independent, the Ford-­
owned newspaper warning of global Jewish
conspiracy that dealers were required to distribute.
As with oil exploration, infrastructure for the gasoline-­
powered car de-
pended on the state. In the midst of World War I, the United States unveiled
its first federal highway funding act, devoting millions of dollars to connect
28 NEW ENERGIES
rural regions with cities.At nearly the same time, California set off on its path
of becoming the world icon for suburban sprawl by pursuing a road-­
building
project financed by user fees. Thus even before the National Interstate and
Defense Highways Act of 1956, the United States had become home to the
oil-­car nexus.6
In Europe, oil and the car spread much more slowly. In the 1920s, no less
than 80 percent of the world’s automobiles existed in the United States. Gaso-
line use and automobile ownership were held back in Europe by a number of
structural forces, including a lower standard of living, the Great Depression,
and powerful interest groups advocating other automotive fuels, as Bohling
demonstrates in chapter 1. After 1945, Europe began following America’s en-
ergy trajectory. The Marshall Plan, which devoted funds toward oil use and re-
finery construction, stimulated this trajectory. But it was only after the thirty
years of incredible postwar growth had already commenced, in the late 1950s
and 1960s, that Western Europe built the pipeline, refinery, and road network
that transformed oil into a mass consumer fuel, spurred by an activist state in
even the most liberal of economies, as Gross illustrates in chapter 2.7
The oil-­
car nexus, however, brought upheaval alongside welfare and mo-
bility as cars undercut coal-­based rail and public transport. Soon fuel oil, once
a byproduct of the process that made gasoline, became a commodity of its
own that challenged markets hitherto dominated by coal. This energy rivalry
unfolded in the United States earlier than in Europe, but on both continents
it overlapped with dynamics internal to the production of coal to precipitate
a transformation in how this solid fossil fuel was mined and used. The pro-
cess began in World War I, which drove American coal mines to overexpand
and begin to mechanize and electrify production with mechanical cutters and
underground conveyor belts. Over the coming decades the mechanization of
coal mining would dramatically raise the output per worker. Miners fought
the introduction of these new techniques because mechanization threatened
to reduce the workforce but also because of the danger it imposed on the
workplace through noise, harmful dust, and the heightened risk of cave-­
ins.
Nevertheless, during the 1920s and 1930s, the mechanization of subterranean
mines advanced dramatically across the United States and much of Europe:
in the former over 90 percent of mines were mechanized by the eve of World
War II; in the latter roughly half were. After 1918, the return to peacetime pro-
duction, the Great Depression, and the gradual conversion of shipping from
coal to diesel oil—­
the first oceangoing diesel liners appeared in 1912—­
hurt
demand for coal even as mechanization allowed more coal to come from fewer
workers. The result was a dramatic collapse in the mining workforce that hit
the United States first, then later Europe. By 1939, only 530,000 people worked
The Rise of Oil and the Transformation of Coal 29
in America’s mines, down from a postwar peak of 860,000. After 1945, decline
turned into collapse, as strikes increased the political volatility of this energy,
as mechanization of open-­
pit strip mines advanced, and as oil eroded more
of the traditional markets for coal when railways began converting to die-
sel motors. When coal employment finally stabilized shortly after 1960 fewer
than 200,000 Americans worked in the mines, less than a quarter of the peak
workforce thirty-­
five years earlier. Similar trends emerged in Europe, though
largely after 1945.8
Coal, however, reinvented itself during the 1960s and 1970s, illustrating
how energy transitions involve the transformation of old systems as well as the
rise of new ones. The sector passed through a technological, geographical, and
labor transformation that entirely changed coal’s politics, as Trish Kahle and
Ryan Driskell Tate illustrate in chapters 3 and 4, respectively. By the 1960s,
the United States had become a high energy society, as industry expanded
and as a welter of new consumer products became affordable to the middle
class. Many of these new household items ran on electricity, such as refriger-
ators, toasters, washers, driers, and televisions. Industry, too, used ever more
electricity as mechanized production and assembly line techniques spread,
and with them the need for power. Between 1950 and 1970 the United States’
demand for electricity more than quadrupled, and utilities became the largest
industry by capital assets in the United States, generating as much power as
the Soviet Union, Japan, West Germany, and Canada combined. Electricity
consumption provided a huge market for coal even as its traditional ones were
drying up. Coal, in other words, became primarily a source of electrical pow-
er: in the 1960s roughly half of all coal went to fuel power plants; by 2000 that
figure had risen to over nine-­
tenths.9
As electricity became the “lifeblood” of the nation, Kahle shows in chap-
ter 3, miners were able to stake new claims about safety and moral economy,
claims that cemented coal as an indispensable component of the nation’s en-
ergy between 1969 and 1972. Accelerating the reinvention of American coal
were novel, mechanized strip-­
mining techniques that opened up entirely new
areas of exploitation and shifted the geographical heart of coal country from
Appalachia to the Powder River Basin of Wyoming and Montana. With guid-
ance from corporate leaders, as Tate illustrates in chapter 4, this new tech-
nology forged a nonunionized workforce that was imbued with an entirely
different identity and politics than miners in the Appalachian Mountains. In
the United States, coal became more like oil as formerly labor-­
intensive oper-
ations gave way to capital-­
intensive ones that disassociated mining from the
organized, East Coast workforce, and shifted miners politically to the Right.
Where coal reinvented itself in the United States during the 1960s and
30 NEW ENERGIES
1970s, in Europe during these same years the oil transition generated social
effects that were as wrenching as what came with the oil shock of 1973. Cer-
tain types of coal production collapsed entirely, while other types flourished,
as Gross illustrates in chapter 2 through a narrative the collapse of hard coal
mining Germany’s industrial heartland of the Ruhr. Hard coal there and in
Belgium and northern France was becoming increasingly expensive as miners
had to dig shafts ever deeper to tap new seams. Meanwhile, with the develop-
ment of Middle East oil fields just several hundred miles from the shores of
southern Europe, international petroleum companies were awash with cheap
crude and in search of an outlet. The result was an astounding decline in Eu-
ropean hard coal production that shattered what had been a main branch of
employment for nearly a century. Massive government intervention avoid-
ed social catastrophe. But this came with a huge price tag for taxpayers. In
the United States, Wyoming and Montana had accessible hard coal near the
surface. Europe had no such easy access hard coal seams. Instead, as domes-
tic hard coal collapsed parts of Europe embraced the surface mining of soft
lignite, the most sulfurous form of coal. With the application of the largest
machines in the world—­
bucket-­
wheel excavators that scoop out thousands of
tons of topsoil a day—­
lignite mines in Germany and Poland expanded to pro-
vide a stable share of Central Europe’s growing demand for electricity since
the 1970s and 1980s. With this expansion came more carbon emissions as well
as other forms of particulate pollution with significant consequences for local
environments and public health.
Together, the chapters in this section suggest new ways of understanding
our current transition toward renewables. In chapter 1 Bohling illustrates just
how important coalitions, political struggles, and policy linkages are for pro-
pelling or stalling the rise of a new energy. If a diverse alliance of winegrowers,
farmers, engineers, and state officials could hinder the onslaught of gasoline
in interwar France by raising concerns of energy dependency, what coalitions
could be rallied in the name of reducing oil and coal use today, and to what
other political goals can a green transition be linked? Gross illustrates how
states can guide the collapse of an energy system. The sunk capital in West
Germany’s hard coal sector in the 1960s resembles the issue of stranded as-
sets that is arising in the fossil fuel industry today as renewable power makes
sufficient headway. The West German state forged a type of bad bank to take
on these failing assets at great public expense, but this maneuver deflated
resistance from mineowners and gave government officials a say over what
mines to shut down and when. Would a similar framework work today on a
global scale for hydrocarbons? In chapter 3 Kahle, through an examination
of the suffering endured by Appalachian miners, reminds us of the disparity
The Rise of Oil and the Transformation of Coal 31
between the human cost of producing fossil fuels and the social and economic
benefits that have rested on their consumption. Those advocating for a transi-
tion to renewables might find success by highlighting not only the ecological
but also the moral failings of fossil energy, and by seeking a just transition to
an energy system that no longer hinges on the endangerment of human life.
In chapter 4, finally, Tate shows how particular energies can become linked
to identities, and it follows that phasing out an energy will be challenging
precisely because this might put the identity of entire communities at risk. In
Wyoming’s coal fields, mineowners associated coal to white working-­
class,
rural culture, a bond that remains to this day. Any effort to end coal must
consequently grapple with this hard question of losing or changing a commu-
nity’s identity.
one
THE OIL FROM OUR SOIL
French Alcohol Fuel versus Foreign Oil, 1918–1957
Joseph Bohling
At the close of World War I, Henry Bérenger, head of the French
government’s Petroleum Committee, went before an international group of
industrialists, bureaucrats, and politicians to share his prediction that “as oil
had been the blood of war, so it would be the blood of peace . . . At this hour,
at the beginning of the peace, our civilian populations, our businesses, our
commerce, our agriculture demand more oil, always more oil—more gasoline,
always more gasoline.”1
Bérenger had good reason to make such an appeal,
for he was all too aware of France’s lack of oil. The French army had faced
severe oil shortages late in a war whose outcome was largely determined by
the ability of a nation to fuel its fleet of airplanes, ships, trucks, and tanks.
Bérenger knew that victory had depended less on French blood and valor than
on American oil.
This scene reinforces the conventional narrative that World War I ushered
in the “century of oil,” for France as for other industrialized countries, be-
cause it raised awareness about the need to secure oil supplies to fuel modern
armies, economies, and state power.2
This narrative, however, is compelling
only in retrospect. Over the last couple of decades, scholars have restored con-
flict to analyses of the global oil transition, focusing especially on the battle
that was waged between oil and coal.3
Yet arguably less attention has been
devoted to another of oil’s early competitors, biofuels like ethanol and other
34 NEW ENERGIES
alcohol fuels, in propelling the newly invented internal combustion engine.4
Scholars have assumed that the motor vehicle revolution inevitably led to the
oil transition.5
The consequence of this assumption has been to dismiss biofu-
els, either explicitly or implicitly, as impractical, without understanding how
they came to be seen as such. Against the standard narrative, then, this article
contends that gasoline’s journey to becoming the most viable energy source
for fueling engines was neither predetermined nor inevitable.
Among the countries where the gasoline-biofuel debate was especially
intense was France, one of the industrialized world’s smallest oil-producing
countries and the largest alcohol-producing country. Until the mid-1950s,
oil was found in small quantities in places like Pechelbronn in northeastern
France and was still largely undiscovered in the French colonies. France’s in-
ternational oil infrastructure was still in its early stages of development. With-
in the metropole, French refineries employed approximately twelve thousand
persons.6
Alcohol, on the other hand, was found in large quantities throughout
the countryside and the colonies. In a country with a metropolitan population
of forty-two million in the 1930s, an astonishing seven million were reported-
ly either directly or indirectly employed in the alcohol industry.7
Those with a
stake in the alcohol fuel included especially the powerful beet cultivators and
winegrowers. Frequent surplus crises gripped this well-organized communi-
ty. In their search for new outlets for these surpluses, beet and wine producers
proposed the creation of an alcohol fuel that would also limit France’s foreign
oil dependency.
This chapter examines the motor fuel debate at two critical moments in
France’s transition to gasoline-powered vehicles: the interwar years and the
immediate post–World War II years. After each war, a range of groups—en-
gineers; scientists; economists; political scientists; farmers; the oil industry;
the automobile, trucking, and tourism industries; and politicians and bu-
reaucrats—debated the pros and cons of foreign oil dependency. While in the
interwar years, the alcohol fuel was seen as a viable alternative to imported
oil, after World War II, it was marginalized and then nearly entirely removed
from the fuel mix. Why was alcohol adopted as a fuel, then marginalized?
After 1945, scientific reports on energy choices concluded that alcohol fuel
was inefficient and uneconomical. Yet these reports elided the sociopolitical
context in which such choices were embedded. While gasoline would come to
have certain technical and economic advantages over alcohol fuel, these were
not seen as advantages until a particular political constellation made them so.
New ideas, interests, and alliances operating in a new context ultimately ren-
dered alcohol fuel less efficient and less economical than gasoline.
The question of whether to include alcohol in the fuel mix, then, was
The Oil from Our Soil 35
never simply a technical question about its compatibility with engines or an
economic question about its cost, even if decisions about engine design and
calculations about cost would ultimately open up some fuel possibilities and
close down others. The outcome of the motor fuel debate was determined by
political struggles over who had the right to shape energy policy: politicians
who were bound to their constituencies, or technocrats who claimed to speak
more objectively on behalf of the “national interest”? Each group, based on its
own assumptions, interests, and vision of future France, had different ways
of defining fuel “cost.” The fuel debate thus ran deeper still, as it was shaped
by but also helped change France’s economic orientation and political insti-
tutions as the country urbanized, motorized, and sought greater centralized
control over its energy supplies.
The Interwar Motor Fuel Debate
Conventional wisdom says that the battlefields of World War I laid the
groundwork for oil’s global preeminence. At that time, motor vehicles over-
took horses and trains in waging war. This narrative, polished by hindsight,
is not so neat when seen from the perspective of policy debates at the time.
It is true that during the war, French policymakers became aware that both
the army and the economy were growing increasingly reliant on the internal
combustion engine to move machines, men, and material. Consequently, they
grew anxious about how to fuel these engines. How to fuel them, however, was
still very much open to debate throughout the interwar years.
Obstacles stood in the way of a full-scale shift to oil in France. First, neither
metropolitan France nor its colonies were known to contain much oil. Most
attempts at prospecting for oil had failed. In 1918 metropolitan oil amounted
to only 12 percent of France’s fuel needs; in 1938, once the motor vehicle rev-
olution had begun to accelerate, domestic supply covered only 1 percent of
those needs.8
Oil exploration intensified in the colonies during the interwar
period, but the Great Depression and World War II hindered major discov-
eries.9
Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, France depended on oil that came
from the Middle East, Romania, and the United States, and whose supplies
were largely controlled by American, British, and Dutch oil companies, the
so-called majors.10
Second, policymakers expressed concern about French dependency on for-
eign companies like Standard Oil and Royal Dutch/Shell for both security and
economic reasons. Oil shortages and reliance on American supplies during
World War I haunted interwar thinking. After 1918, these multinational com-
panies abandoned their role as mere oil suppliers and moved into the retail
field by buying up French companies, making them subsidiaries, and investing
36 NEW ENERGIES
substantial sums of money in France. They had close contacts in the French
government and influenced public opinion through newspapers.11
France paid
these companies two to three billion francs per year, thus adversely affecting
France’s balance of payments, a problem that became especially acute during
the Great Depression.12
This dependency induced anxieties about economic
stagnation, national defense, and the erosion of state sovereignty, and incit-
ed policymakers to devise a national fuel strategy and look for alternatives
to oil.
To check the influence of the majors and protect state sovereignty, a
young generation emerged that fought to build a national oil industry. These
“new men,” as they have been retrospectively dubbed (as opposed to the “old
men” who opposed oil), included influential economic strategists, men with
such varied political outlooks as Francis Delaisi, Ernest Mercier, and Lou-
is Loucheur. In 1924 the French government encouraged the creation of the
partly state-owned French Oil Company (CFP).13
In 1925 state officials created
the National Office of Combustible Fuels, which was responsible primarily
for supervising the oil industry but also for researching engine technology.
Through legislation, especially a 1928 law, state officials aimed to curtail the
“Anglo-Saxon trusts” by developing the French share of Romanian and Mid-
dle East oil, by prospecting for oil in the colonies, and by building a refining
industry on French soil.14
State control of the oil market extended to authoriz-
ing the opening of new gas stations, which allowed state agents to monitor the
kinds of gasoline on sale.15
These measures indicated that state officials and
businessmen were starting to take an interest in building an oil industry, even
if their commitment to it was hesitant and would pale in comparison to that
of the post-1945 years.
Significantly, oil activists like Delaisi, Mercier, and Loucheur tended to see
the development of a national oil industry as contingent upon a larger restruc-
turing of the country’s economic and political system. Many of these activists
participated in the technocratic movement that emerged in the interwar years,
a movement that was highly critical of parliamentary lawmaking. In their
view, Parliament failed to take decisive action against the economic and social
turmoil of the period. These oil activists and technocrats attacked the overall
“Malthusian” mindset of France’s business and political class that was reluc-
tant to venture further into creating an oil industry that would help liberate
France from foreign oil companies.16
Moreover, the Budget Department of the
Ministry of Finance refused to fund oil exploration.17
For these “new men,” the
sluggish development of a national oil industry was a sign of state weakness.
The third obstacle to the oil transition in France was the inability of engi-
neers and scientists to arrive at a consensus on gasoline’s compatibility with
The Oil from Our Soil 37
motors. Across the industrialized world, they continued to experiment with
different fuels, and gasoline did not always produce the best results. At the
time, gasoline was often low octane and led to engine knock, an unpleasant
noise that occurs when fuel is improperly ignited and that can damage the
engine. Moreover, at a high compression, gasoline could cause engines to ex-
plode. Nevertheless, in the United States, engine design slowly began to solid-
ify around gasoline due to a combination of scientific developments and oil
lobbying.18
While American automobile engineers had tested different engine
prototypes with alcohol, diesel, and steam, these engines were being built with
low compression ratios in order to accommodate low-octane gasoline. The
growing preference for gasoline had little to do with its superiority to alcohol
fuel; rather, it hinged on the fact that in order to work with either fuel, early
vehicles had to be designed to consume the less powerful of the two, which
was gasoline. Over the long term, this ultimately worked against alcohol fuel.
Given that they had been designed for gasoline, lower-compression engines
did not perform as well when run on alcohol.19
Changes in American gasoline manufacture in the 1920s would give fur-
ther advantages to gasoline. Improvements in thermal-cracking technology
were beginning to help refiners produce greater gasoline yields, and the in-
troduction of tetraethyl lead, a relatively cheap way to combat engine knock,
nullified the octane-boosting advantages of alcohol.20
In France, however, en-
gineers were slow to follow American developments because few businesses
or state officials wished to invest in the new technology, because scientists
showed concern about lead’s noxious fumes,21
and because France lacked do-
mestic oil. Engine design in France did not solidify around any one fuel con-
figuration in the interwar years, thus further obstructing the oil transition.
The geopolitical, economic, and technical uncertainties surrounding gaso-
line led engineers and scientists to experiment with alternative fuels like alco-
hol. Already at the turn of the twentieth century, they had conducted the first
tests with alcohol fuel and had concluded in favor of it.22
More experiments
were conducted after World War I. In 1921 the French government created
the Scientific Committee of National Fuels, which comprised France’s scien-
tific elite. The committee ran trials and weighed alcohol fuel’s weaknesses,
such as its relatively low energy density and its tendency to clog fuel lines
and carburetors, against its strengths, such as its anti-knock and high-octane
properties that were missing in gasoline. The committee concluded that “the
alcohol-gasoline blend could be employed without any inconvenience in all
the automobile motors built for being fueled by gasoline alone.”23
Despite the
imperfections of both alcohol fuel and gasoline, most scientists agreed that
a 50 percent alcohol–50 percent gasoline blend, what its proponents called a
38 NEW ENERGIES
“national fuel,” was the optimal blend because it corrected each fuel’s flaws.24
In 1935, as the United States was turning away from ethanol, the liberal econ-
omists at L’économiste français, who were otherwise critical of agricultural
protectionism, called the alcohol-gasoline mixture “perfect.”25
Finally, in 1938,
at a time when military officials were once again growing concerned about
secure energy supplies, another prominent fuel specialist observed that oil
importers, who had previously been opposed to alcohol fuel, now appreciat-
ed its nonexplosive and high-octane properties.26
Technical conclusions were
clouded by political concerns.
Alcohol fuel also seemed to serve long-term security and economic inter-
ests. Numerous geological reports suggested that in twenty years worldwide
oil production would no longer be able to assure the gasoline necessary to
fuel the rapidly increasing fleet of motor vehicles.27
In the United States, the
Federal Oil Conservation Board issued a report in 1932 that expected the de-
pletion of known oil reserves within ten to twelve years and argued that al-
cohol was an essential renewable fuel source.28
A French oil expert declared
that “three generations will suffice to see oil rise and fall.”29
Another French
observer wondered “if gasoline really is exhausted and if the large trusts will
refuse to deliver it, we’ll either have to pay an exorbitant price or replace it
with alcohol.”30
Given the fear that the industrialized world would quickly
exhaust the earth’s oil supplies, officials looked to alternatives like alcohol
fuel.
Given these security concerns, and especially the support that it would
bring to farmers, Parliament incrementally set up an agency (here called the
state alcohol agency) between World War I and 1935 that was based at the
Ministry of Finance and that purchased alcohol surpluses and found outlets
for them. The alcohol-gasoline–based national fuel was among those outlets.
The French government sold the national fuel for thirty francs less per hecto-
liter than gasoline, even though government calculations showed that it cost
thirty-five francs more than gasoline to make.31
Alcohol tended to be expensive
to produce because it required an organized labor force and large amounts of
fertilizer and because the distilleries burned coal imported from neighboring
countries like Great Britain and Germany. The government surtaxed oil and
alcoholic beverages to make up for the losses it incurred on alcohol fuel.32
As
we will see, after World War II, these surtaxes on oil and drinks would mobi-
lize consumer groups against alcohol fuel. Significantly, interwar calculations
of the cost of both alcohol and oil included the long-term security factor and
reflected the important place of farmers in French economic and social life.
Alcohol’s value did not simply reflect an objective understanding of its
The Oil from Our Soil 39
fuel potential; rather, its value was shaped by the structure of political power,
which in the Third Republic (1870–1940) was dominated by Parliament, where
agricultural interests were well entrenched. Alcohol producers were tightly
organized, had support across the political spectrum, and had a dispropor-
tionate amount of influence in Parliament. State officials were aware that
when alcohol producers could not find enough buyers, producers took to the
streets. In 1907, for instance, five hundred thousand strong had descended on
Montpellier, the heartland of wine production. Protests erupted episodically
throughout the 1920s and 1930s, causing regional economic paralysis and thus
political problems in Paris. It should come as no surprise, then, that interwar
research on alcohol fuel was led by Édouard Barthe, a socialist parliamentari-
an from wine country. Immediately after the war, Barthe was named the state’s
fuel commissioner. The fact that state officials nominated Barthe suggests just
how much power the alcohol industry possessed and how much interest the
political elite had in alcohol fuel as a way to curb foreign oil dependency. Even
Bérenger, France’s most prominent oil activist of the 1920s, and someone who
was far removed from agricultural politics, did not see oil and alcohol as an-
tagonistic.33
One commentator believed that the oil industry could help make
alcohol fuel a viable option: French oil industrialists “are as wealthy as anyone
in capital, in factories, and in laboratories to experiment with [fuel] blends
and motors.”34
Barthe and his allies, then, carried much influence over how
alcohol fuel was perceived given the large number of citizens with a stake in
the alcohol industry and their power over Parliament.
To win over policymakers and the wider public to their plight, Barthe and
his followers evoked a potent image: that of the “Anglo-Saxon trusts” threaten-
ing the French peasantry. Fear of the inherent superiority of the Anglo-Saxon
race was a long-standing trope in French political culture.35
In deploying this
rhetoric, alcohol producers mobilized a number of different and sometimes
antagonistic groups. Other raucous and powerful agricultural interest groups
that hoped to obtain similar protection threw their support behind the state
alcohol agency. Since the 1920s, Barthe had claimed that alcohol fuel would
help France “escape the hegemony of the great worldwide trusts” and “in-
crease the financial and economic strength of the nation by the limitless de-
velopment of the richness of its soil.” A deputy from the northern beet-grow-
ing region thanked Barthe for “the fine fight he had waged for twenty years
on behalf of industrial alcohol.” The main farm lobby called alcohol protec-
tion an “enormous advance for all French agriculture.” Finally, the minister
of finance claimed that alcohol fuel boosted “France’s domestic finances and
her foreign-exchange balance.”36
Alcohol fuel thus rallied various agricultural
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was blowing from the village, but even that did not wholly explain
the phenomenon, since the various noises were so markedly distinct.
Finally, Vernon concluded, and no doubt was correct in his
conjecture, that the narrow gorge acted as a kind of telephone,
which, with the aid of the steady wind blowing up its length,
conducted the sounds accurately. The discovery amused the young
man, and he sat where he was for a considerable time trying to
distinguish between the several noises. Later in the day he decided
to get Lucy to sit on the dam and then from the bottom of the gorge
a mile away to call out and see if she could understand what he was
saying. The experiment would be both scientific and interesting.
For quite an hour Vernon waited, but no Hokar put in an
appearance. He then spent another hour in walking slowly round the
reservoir, and finally, without having seen a single person, he
returned to luncheon. At the meal Colonel Towton mentioned that he
had written a note to Miss Hest stating that the visit would be paid
at three o'clock. "And I have given orders for a room to be got ready
for Ida next to yours, Lady Corsoon," said the Colonel.
"I doubt if Ida will come," sighed his guest. "She is singularly
obstinate in having her own way. What she can see in that woman is
a puzzle to me."
"Miss Hest is very clever," remarked Lucy, "but there is something
about her that I do not like."
"For instance?" queried Vernon bending forward.
"I can hardly say," said the girl thoughtfully. "She is clever and
agreeable and quite well-bred. Yet she seems to be--be--
dangerous."
"I think that word applies more to Maunders than to Miss Hest,"
observed Towton, "although I am bound to say that Miss Hest does
not satisfy me in many ways. She is too masterful. Dangerous, no. I
should not describe her as dangerous, Miss Corsoon."
"I should, and I do, Colonel. I may be wrong, but the first time I met
Miss Hest at 'Rangoon' she gave me that impression."
"One should never go against impressions," said Vernon gravely;
"They are the instincts of the soul."
"Nonsense," contradicted Lady Corsoon vigorously. "I'm sure when I
first met my husband I could not bear him, and my mother had
simply to drive me to the altar. Yet I married him, and I'm sure we
are a most attached pair."
The gentlemen were too well-bred to smile at this statement, yet it
secretly amused both. Everyone knew that the undeniable good
feeling which existed between Sir Julius and his wife was mainly due
to their diverse interests in life, which kept them more or less apart.
Lady Corsoon was always fluttering about as a society butterfly,
while Sir Julius remained constantly in the City, earning money for
her to spend. It was little credit to either that they were civil to one
another on the rare occasions when they met. Cain and Abel
themselves would not have quarrelled when only meeting--as the
saying goes--once in a blue moon But Lady Corsoon felt quite certain
that she was a model wife and a typical British matron (new style),
and prattled on about her domestic happiness until it was time to
start for Gerby Hall.
"Vernon will escort you two ladies," said Towton, who was in riding
kit, and exhibited a more youthful air than usual. "I can follow."
"You won't ride to Gatehead until you have called at the Hall," urged
Lady Corsoon; "for I may need you to insist upon Ida coming to The
Grange."
"I shall assuredly be at Gerby Hall in half an hour, more or less,"
replied the Colonel quietly. "But I should not think of insisting upon
Ida becoming my guest unless she honours me of her own free will
with a visit."
"Oh, nonsense," said Lady Corsoon pettishly. "When you know how
infatuated she is with this woman Hest." And all the way down the
winding road she lamented that Ida was so impossible, and the
owner of Gerby Hall so second-rate. "For she is second-rate,"
finished Lady Corsoon triumphantly. "I always said so, and would say
so with my dying breath."
In due time the trio arrived at the gloomy Hall, and were shown by
the fat maid into the dingy drawing-room. It was less chill and
dismal on this occasion, as the windows were wide open and the
warm breath of the day stole in to ameliorate the damp atmosphere,
as did the sunshine to lighten the darkness. In the glare of day the
furniture looked quite faded, and the hangings extremely shabby;
but there was something dignified about the ancient room which
impressed even Lady Corsoon.
"A very quaint old place," she said surveying it through her
lorgnette; "but damp. They ought to have a fire in the grate."
"They couldn't very well have it anywhere else, mamma," giggled
Lucy.
"My dear, pray do not afflict me with your cheap wit. You perfectly
well understand my meaning. I shall take this chair, as the light tries
my eyes."
So saying she selected a seat with its back to the windows, but less
to preserve her eyesight than to prevent Miss Hest from seeing too
plain evidence of her age. She throned herself in the spacious chair
with the air of a queen, and assumed a dignified mein as the door
opened to admit Ida and her hostess. Lady Corsoon's first remark
was scarcely polite.
"You _do_ look ill, Ida," she said submitting her cheek to a kiss, "and
more than twice your age. Miss Hest, what have you been doing
with her?"
"Trying to comfort her," replied Frances drily. "But you can scarcely
expect an affectionate girl like Ida to lose her father and not show
some signs of grief."
"Signs of fiddlestick, if you will excuse the expression. It's want of
food and cheerful company, to say nothing of living in this vault."
"Thank you, Lady Corsoon. I find the house of my ancestors very
comfortable."
"I think not," replied the visitor rudely. "Quaint, as I have already
observed, old-world and interesting to an antiquarian, but I don't
think anyone could call this comfortable. However, this state of
things, so far as Ida is concerned, can be easily remedied. Ida, child,
I have come to take you to the Grange, which stands in a much
more healthy position."
Ida, who had saluted her cousin and Vernon, turned even paler than
she already was and looked sideways at Frances. "I think that I
prefer to remain in this house," she said timidly.
"Oh, you must not burden Miss Hest any longer," said her aunt
coolly. "Ida's company is no burden to me," snapped Miss Hest, who
seemed to be trying to keep her temper, "but if she chooses to leave
me, she can."
"I should think so; as she is free to come and go as she wishes.
Ida?"
"I would rather stop with Frances," said Ida faintly, and again sought
the eye of her friend, as if seeking direction. "We are very happy
here."
"Miss Hest, I appeal to you," cried Lady Corsoon, looking important.
"You can see for yourself that the dear child is like a plant, she
wants air and sunlight and every attention."
"Ida is free to go and come as she chooses," repeated Frances with
a stealthy glance at the girl. "And perhaps it is just as well she
should go. I am returning to London in a week or so."
"Frances!" Ida started to her feet, and a faint hue tinged her cheek.
"You never told me of this."
"I never arrived at any decision until last night," replied Frances
coldly, removing the arm which the girl had thrown fondly round her
neck. "But a search amongst my brother's papers has shown me
that my position financially speaking is not so secure as I thought it
was. As it is necessary for me to earn my living I must go back to
Professor Gail's at Isleworth, and probably I shall agree to his
proposal that I should appear on the stage."
"But, Frances, I have plenty of money. Share with me."
"Ida," said Lady Corsoon sharply, "you must let older and wiser
heads guide you as regards the disposition of your fortune. Besides,
it may not be so secure as you think."
"What?" Ida turned to face her aunt. "Then you already know that I
am not Mr. Dimsdale's daughter."
"I know something about it," said Lady Corsoon, concealing her
exact knowledge and determined to appear surprised at nothing. "I
received a letter stating that on certain conditions I could get the
money of my brother. Whether you are my niece or not I can't say,
but assuredly if the money is mine I must enter into possession of it.
Of course, you may rely on my doing my best to help you."
"I want nothing," said Ida, proudly lifting her head. "If the money is
yours you shall certainly have it. Am I not right, Frances?"
"Perfectly right. But Lady Corsoon's fortune--to use her own words
with regard to you--may not be so secure as she thinks."
"If Ida is not Martin's daughter, and there is no will, I should
certainly inherit," cried Lady Corsoon quite fiercely. "And I confess
that I am surprised to hear that my brother is not the father of the
girl I have always supposed to be my niece. I should like an
explanation."
"You will have one to-morrow," said Miss Hest coolly.
"I want one to-day," said the elder woman rapping her knuckles with
her lorgnette. "What have you to do with this matter, may I ask?"
"More than you suppose. But, after I have seen Colonel Towton, you
shall be enlightened as to my exact position."
"Frances, do you mean to say that the money is really mine?"
demanded Ida with a look of breathless interest.
"If it was, what would you do?" asked Miss Hest doubtfully.
"I should give you all the money you required."
Frances hesitated, then came forward and kissed the girl quietly.
"You are a good child, Ida. I thought that I had lost your
confidence."
Miss Dimsdale did not contradict this statement. "I shall always
remember how kind you have been to me," she said, shrinking a
trifle from her friend's caress. "Nothing can make me forget the
past."
"Come, come," said Lady Corsoon, rising in a fussy manner. "This
sort of thing will not do at all. I must understand plainly what this
means. In the meantime, I request my niece to follow me to The
Grange."
"I am not your niece, if all I have learned is true, and I decline to be
dictated to," said Ida quickly. "To-morrow I shall come to The
Grange."
"Will you leave me, Ida?" asked Frances quickly and with a look of
pain.
"For a time only," muttered the girl averting her head. "But I wish to
go to Colonel Towton's to-morrow."
"Many things seem about to happen to-morrow," observed Lady
Corsoon walking towards the door in her most stately manner. "And
as Ida refuses to obey me, I wash my hands of her. Come, Lucy.
Come, Mr. Vernon. We must depart."
"But the Colonel will be here shortly," protested Vernon, and Lucy
took Ida's hand kindly between her own.
"The Colonel may do what he pleases," said Lady Corsoon loftily. "I
am not bound by his actions. Ida, I learn, is not my niece, and
therefore I shall instruct my lawyer--since there is no will--to
demand a surrender of Martin's property. Now that Miss Dimsdale--
no, not that--what is your name, may I ask?" And she hoisted the
lorgnette again.
Ida shrank back before that severe look, and broken down in health
as she was with all she had gone through, burst into tears. Frances
stepped between her and Lady Corsoon. "You are a cruel woman,"
she said indignantly, "and you shall leave my house at once."
"Only too willingly, only too willingly," cried Lady Corsoon swelling
with pompous indignation. "But I call everyone to witness that I shall
have these matters examined into, and intend to claim my rights.
Ida, you are no niece of mine by your own showing, so I have
finished with you. Lucy! Mr. Vernon!" and she sailed out of the room
and out of the house in a high state of indignation. The fact is, the
good lady was greatly perplexed over the unexpected information
that she had received. She had believed that her brother had made
a will in her favour which Ida had destroyed; but she had never
expected to hear that the girl was not Dimsdale's daughter. In her
hurry she left Vernon and Lucy behind, while she simply rushed
down the short avenue and came face to face with Colonel Towton,
who was riding in at the gate.
"What is the matter?" asked the Colonel surprised at seeing his
guest alone.
"Matter!" Lady Corsoon halted, breathing hard with anger. "I really
don't know, save that the Hest woman has insulted me. Also I have
heard that Ida is not my niece, and therefore I am sure the property
belongs to me. I decline to stay longer in that house, and so I am
returning home. Perhaps, Colonel, you will demand an explanation.
If I don't receive a satisfactory one to-night, I write to my lawyer. So
there!"
Towton tried to stem the torrent of this speech, but without any
result. Still talking of the way in which she had been treated, Lady
Corsoon babbled her way out of the gate and disappeared. The
Colonel rode up to the door, and, alighting from his horse, bound the
bridle to a ring in the wall. As he stepped inside, Vernon appeared in
attendance on Lucy. They had stayed behind to comfort Ida, who
was weeping over the harsh treatment she had received from her
presumed aunt.
"What on earth is the matter?" asked Towton, putting the same
question to the couple as he had put to Lady Corsoon. "Miss Lucy, I
have met your mother rushing home in a high state of anger."
"Miss Hest and mother have fallen out," said Lucy, hesitating how
much to say, for she knew how Towton loved Ida.
"And Lady Corsoon has learned that Ida is not her niece," put in
Vernon. "Go in and comfort her, Colonel. I shall go after Lady
Corsoon with Lucy."
"That is the best thing to be done," cried Frances, overbearing, and
putting her head out of the window. "Colonel Towton, I desire a
private conversation."
"Do you wish me to remain?" Vernon asked his friend in a low voice.
"No, no. I must see Miss Hest alone. I understand what she wants.
Go with Miss Lucy. She has already reached the gate."
"But if you want me----"
"I don't. When I return you shall know everything."
"What do you mean?" demanded Vernon anxiously.
"Colonel, Colonel," called out Miss Hest again.
"I must go. Follow Miss Corsoon and pacify the old lady," said
Towton hurriedly, and hastened into the house, leaving Vernon much
astonished by his behaviour. Had the young man known of Miss
Hest's visit on the previous evening, he might not have been so
perplexed. As it was, he hastened after Lucy, who by this time was
rapidly gaining on her indignant mother, with a feeling that Towton
knew more than he did concerning the present state of affairs.
Which as he afterwards learned, was precisely the case.
The Colonel entered the gloomy drawing-room to find Ida weeping
on the sofa and Frances comforting her. Before he could say a word,
the latter turned on him indignantly. "Why did you send that
insulting woman here?"
"She came of her own accord," explained Towton frowning at the
speech, "and surely Lady Corsoon has not insulted Ida."
"And me. She has insulted us both," cried Miss Hest angrily. "I
should have had her turned out of the house had she not gone."
"It was my fault by telling her that I was not her niece," said Ida in
an agitated tone. "As if I could help that. But I won't trouble her in
any way; she has never been kind to me. I shall not set eyes on her
again."
"But, Ida," said Towton, taking her hand and striving to speak
cheerfully, "I want you to come to the Grange."
"Not while Lady Corsoon is there, Richard."
Frances drew a long breath of relief, which annoyed the Colonel.
"Are you detaining Miss Dimsdale here?" he asked snappishly, for
late events had tried his temper greatly.
"Oh, no," cried Ida before her friend could speak. "As if Frances
would do such a thing! But Lady Corsoon has been so rude."
"You speak of her as Lady Corsoon?"
"Naturally, since I am not her niece," said Ida simply. "When she
leaves The Grange I shall be delighted to come."
Colonel Towton flushed through his tan. "I am a bachelor, Ida," he
said in stiff tones. "You can't come to my house without a lady is
staying there. That is unless you will marry me at once."
Ida placed her two hands on his shoulders and looked at him kindly
through her tears. "If you will take a girl without a sixpence, I shall
marry you as soon as you please, Richard."
"Don't put his chivalry to the test, Ida," remarked Frances in
somewhat acrid tones. "Colonel Towton knows that you have ten
thousand a year."
"But if this story is true----"
"It's quite true, only there is a will."
"A will?" Ida stared and flushed with pleasure. "Then poor Mr.
Dimsdale did not entirely forget me."
"He did not forget you at all. I found this will--well it doesn't matter
where, since I explained everything to our friend here last night. But
you inherit the Dimsdale property as Ida Menteith, so Lady Corsoon
will not be able to strip you of your worldly goods."
"Oh!"--Ida grew even more scarlet--"then, Richard----"
He caught her hands and pressed them to his breast.
"My dear, I would take you without a single penny."
"And that is the way in which you will have to take her," said Frances
drily, "unless you consent to my demands."
"I leave that to Ida," said Towton, once more stiff and military.
"Leave what to me?" asked Ida, looking from one to the other.
Frances turned to her in a business-like way. "The property my
brother has made over to me is mortgaged and I am penniless. If
you marry the Colonel I lose your society and also the chance of
being your companion at a certain wage. To make amends I ask for
ten thousand pounds."
"You shall have it, of course,' said Ida promptly.
"Will you sign this document giving it to me?" asked Miss Hest
pulling a sheet of paper out of her pocket.
"At once, if you will give me pen and ink."
The two women went towards a table upon which stood what was
required. Apparently Frances had made all necessary preparations to
get the money. "You can give me a cheque also. Here is the book,"
she said eagerly.
"Ida, Ida! Are you wise in doing this?" warned the Colonel, following.
"Yes," said the girl rapidly signing her name and without even
reading the document. "I want to marry you and be rid of Frances."
Miss Hest sneered, while Towton started back, utterly astonished by
the change of tone. "I thought--I fancied--I believed," he stuttered,
"that you were deeply attached to Miss Hest."
"I was, but--there are circumstances----"
"Oh, let us have the truth," interposed Frances sharply. "You liked
me well enough and I liked you until you found that I was too clever
for you, so----"
Ida caught at her lover's hand and made an effort to pull herself
together in the face of Miss Hest's contemptuous eyes. "You treated
me shamefully, Frances," she said in tones of reproach. "I loved you
dearly until you began to bully me and to make my life a burden.
You got me down here in order to gain possession of my money, and
have been trying to influence me into giving up not only my property
but Richard also. I saw what you were ever since we came to this
house, but, to deceive you, I played my part, and led you to believe
that I still loved----"
"Oh, rubbish," said Miss Hest, whose eyes were as hard as jade.
"You played your part very badly. I saw through your weak tricks.
You were afraid of me, you know you were."
"Yes, I was," said Ida, clinging to the amazed Colonel. "Because I
believe if you could have got me to sign away my property that you
would have killed me. I am willing to give you ten thousand pounds,
as I once had some affection for you; but now that you have got
your pound of flesh I shall leave this house with Richard."
"To go to Lady Corsoon?"
"Richard will protect me. And, heaven help me!" said Ida, putting
her hand to her head piteously. "I feel so dazed that I scarcely know
what I am saying."
"You are not too dazed to sign a cheque."
Ida without a word stepped to the table and began to write in the
cheque-book. Towton protested. "You shall not do this," he declared.
"While I fancied you loved Miss Hest, I was willing you should make
her a present of this large sum. But since she has treated you badly-
---"
"If Ida does not sign the cheque she does not get the will," said
Frances imperiously. "You can save your breath, Colonel."
"You may hand over a false will?"
"If I did that I should not get the ten thousand pounds," retorted
Frances. "Don't be a fool. I am acting straightforwardly enough."
"Here is the money," said Ida tearing out the signed cheque and
passing it to her quondam friend.
"And here is the will," replied Miss Hest, offering a paper, which Ida
took and gave to the Colonel.
Towton glanced rapidly at the document. It certainly seemed to be a
genuine will signed by Martin Dimsdale and also by Venery and
Smith. He felt sure that there was no trickery about the paper, since
Miss Hest--now that Lady Corsoon knew the truth--would not be
able to get the money unless the testament of Martin Dimsdale was
above reproach. "It's all right," he remarked, slipping the precious
paper into the breast pocket of his coat. "But you, Miss Hest, are
little else than a blackmailer. You are the worthy sister of your
confounded brother."
The woman laughed after a critical glance at the cheque and signed
document to make sure that both were in order. "I am able to bear
all your hard names since I have secured the money. But that Ida
refused to obey me and kicked over the traces you would never have
had the will."
"I thought that the money did not belong to me," protested Ida,
sheltering herself under the wing of her lover, "and wanted to return
it to Lady Corsoon."
Frances nodded with a sneer. "Oh, I know how tender your
conscience is. You have whimpered enough about it. Only because
of your silly attitude did I make this arrangement, which is the best I
can do for myself. But I must say one thing, Ida, and you can take it
as a compliment. Clever as I am, you with your soft over-scrupulous
nature have been too many for me. Few people can say that. And
now that all is over between us, you can leave my house, as I hate
the sight of your insipid face."
Ida shrank back into the Colonel's arms, and he addressed Miss Hest
in a voice rendered hoarse with indignation. "You are a thoroughly
bad woman. I never did approve of you, and now that I see you, as
Ida does, in your true colours, I tell you----"
"My true colours," scoffed the other contemptuously. "No one knows
what they are. You least of all, you narrow-minded idiot."
"What do you mean?" demanded Towton, taken aback by the
malignant look on her hard white face.
"Don't ask her," implored Ida, striving to pull her lover to the door,
"she will only lie. Let us leave this wicked house, as I am certain that
there is something terrible concealed here."
"Something terrible," echoed Towton looking startled.
"Don't talk rubbish," muttered Frances, with a dangerous expression
in her eyes. "Colonel, you had better take away that fool, or it will be
the worse for her. I warn you."
"I have heard strange noises," went on Ida feverishly. "People have
been coming and going in the dead of night. Then that Hindoo----"
"Hokar!" cried the Colonel. "Miss Hest, how do you explain Hokar?"
"I explain nothing," snapped Frances, marching to the door in an
imperious way and throwing it open. "Out you go, both of you," She
recoiled. "Ah! you dare to!"--with a gasp she tried to close the door
again, but Towton dashed forward and caught her arm.
"I have seen; it is too late," he almost shouted. "Maunders. Come
in!"
It was indeed Maunders who stood on the threshold. He looked the
ghost of his former handsome, insolent, prosperous self. Thin and
haggard and worn, with his clothes hanging loosely on his figure, he
presented a woeful spectacle. "What have you been doing to
yourself? How did you come here?" asked Towton, stepping back
much startled, with Ida on his arm.
"Ask that woman how I came here; ask her how she has treated me.
But I escaped from the room she locked me in by climbing out of the
window. Now I shall show her the mercy she has shown me. She is--
--"
Frances darted forward and clapped her hand on his mouth. "I'll kill
you if you say the word. You cursed fool. Be silent or I give you up."
Maunders, with a strength which his frail looks scarcely suggested,
threw her off and staggered against the door. "I give _you_ up," he
shrieked, wild with anger, "you thief, you blackmailer, you
murderess!"
"What?" cried Towton eagerly, and grasping vaguely at the terrible
truth.
"Yes." Maunders pointed an accusing finger at Frances Hest. "There
is The Spider. A woman; a devil! Arrest her; imprison her; hang her
on the gallows," and he sank down on the floor, his back to the door,
with hatred written on his white and ghastly face.
CHAPTER XXI.
JUSTICE.
There was a long pause, a sinister lull in the tempest of passion
which was raging in that quiet, prosaic room. Gasping with impotent
passion, Maunders lay, resting his head against the door, an obstacle
which prevented the guilty woman from escaping. Not that she
attempted to escape. With a deadly white face, with steady, cold,
malignant eyes, like those of a snake, and with a contemptuous
smile on her thin lips. The Spider, visible at last in all her brazen
wickedness, stood defiantly at bay. Towton, with Ida clinging to his
arm almost terrified out of her senses, stared aghast at the evil
being who had been such a curse to many. The ominous silence was
like the year-long moment before the bursting of a bomb.
Ida, with chattering teeth and trembling limbs, was the first to
recover the use of her tongue; but she could scarcely form the
words. "Oh, God! oh, God!" she whimpered, hiding her face on her
lover's breast; "it's too awful. I never thought--I never thought--oh--
oh--oh!" She broke down with a strange, hysterical, choking cry, and
would have fallen to the ground but that the Colonel placed her
gently in a near chair.
Then he turned with military precision to face Miss Hest. "You are
The Spider?" he asked in dry, precise tones, and now entirely master
of himself.
"Yes," she replied coolly, and her mouth closed with a triumphant
snap.
"You infernal fiend----"
"Gently! Gently! Hard names break no bones, Colonel. You should be
more of a man than to throw words at a woman."
"Are you a woman?"
"Yes," gasped Maunders, raising himself on his elbow and wiping the
froth from his pale lips; "she is Frances Hest right enough. Her
brother is a myth invented by herself to mask her devilries. But
Frances or Francis--she is The Spider!"
"I did not mean that exactly," said Towton in his hard voice; "but I
asked if one capable of the enormities credited to The Spider can
possibly be a woman."
"I am The Spider," said Miss Hest with a shrug. "There is your
answer."
"You are a demon."
"More names! Really, Colonel Towton, you are very childish. You sink
to the level of that fool," and she pointed scornfully to Ida, who was
weeping in the chair as though her heart would break.
"To think that I should have been her friend," moaned Ida with a
fresh burst of tears and hiding her face.
"You little fool," said Frances in a gentle, dangerous voice. "I have
been a better friend to you than you think. But that I pitied you as
being a poor, weak, silly worm, I would have murdered you long
ago."
"You murdered my father," shivered Ida, not daring to meet the cold
eyes which rested on her prostrate form.
"Martin Dimsdale was not your father."
"You--you--you murdered him."
"Yes, I did."
"What!" Towton could scarcely believe his ears. "You admit the
crime?"
Frances yawned ostentatiously. "If I admit that I am The Spider it
follows that I must have murdered Dimsdale."
"Well, no," replied Towton, truthfully and justly. "You may have
employed Hokar to strangle him."
"That is very good of you," said Frances satirically, "but I don't place
my own sins on the shoulders of others. Hokar taught me how to
strangle in the Thug fashion certainly, but he did not kill Dimsdale. I
did."
"Still, I don't believe that the murder was premeditated," insisted
Towton.
"Upon my word," said Miss Hest good-humouredly and as coolly as
though she were gossiping over a cup of tea, "one would think you
were counsel for the defence. No, you are right. I did not intend to
murder Dimsdale. Having got you out of the way----"
"You mean that you got Vernon out of the way?"
"Of course," assented Frances, sitting down and crossing her legs in
a gentlemanly fashion; "but you must excuse my bad memory, as I
have so much to think of. I got Vernon out of the way, as I
overheard, and Maunders there overheard, the arrangement for a
trap. We were both on the verandah."
"And I was with you," wailed Ida, shivering again. "So you were,"
said Miss Hest raising her eyebrows, "but you heard nothing.
Maunders caught a word or two through the open window of the
library and warned me. While you, my dear Ida, were talking to him
I stole round the corner and listened. Knowing all about the trap, I
had Vernon decoyed to the Kensington house, and at the appointed
time I went into the library, masked and cloaked, as were the other
guests at the ball. Dimsdale was waiting for me. I stole up behind
him and slipped a handkerchief round his neck."
"Oh!" The Colonel was revolted. "And you say that the crime was not
premeditated?"
"I say truly. I simply prepared to strangle him slightly should he have
made an outcry. Remember, I was in a dangerous position and could
not stand on ceremony. Had Dimsdale given me the money and
permitted me to leave by the window I would have spared his life.
As it was, he saw me in the mirror, which was directly in front of
him."
"But you were masked: he could not recognise you?"
"I am coming to that. He waited for a moment, until I made my
demand for the money, then suddenly threw back his hand, and
before I guessed his intention he tore the mask from my face. When
he recognised me I was obliged, for my own safety, to strangle him.
As the handkerchief was in position I simply tightened it, and he was
soon dead. Then I searched for the money, but, not being able to
find it, I resumed my mask and returned to the ballroom. Maunders,
of course, was with me all the time, and awaited my return."
"I did not know that you had committed a murder," said Maunders
gloomily.
"No, I did not tell you at the time: it would have spoilt your pleasure.
But when Ida learned the truth by entering the library you guessed
what had taken place. I kept you with me for your own sake, to
provide an _alibi_ should you be suspected, as I feared Vernon
might be clever enough to guess that you had something to do with
it. As a matter of fact, he did hint at it when he called many days
later, but I was enabled to say that you were with me all the time,
and so he was put off the scent."
"I remember," murmured the Colonel to himself, but not so low as
not to be overheard by Miss Hest's marvellously sharp ears. "Vernon
was quite satisfied when you provided the _alibi_ for Maunders. He
never suspected _you_."
"No one ever suspected me," said Frances coolly. "There is no need
for me to speak of my own cleverness. Anyone who can baffle the
police as I have done has no need to boast."
"But why, in heaven's name, with your abilities, did you embark on
such an evil course?" asked Towton amazed at her _sang-froid_.
"Fate, Fortune, Destiny: what name you will," said Miss Hest
carelessly. "But you have tried to exonerate me, Colonel, and
because of that you shall hear the whole story," and, leaning
forward, she pulled the bell-rope.
"Remember, I shall repeat all you say to the police," warned Towton.
"I am not afraid of the police," retorted Frances with a shrug; "all my
plans are made--to escape. As that fool," she pointed to Maunders
lying sullenly on the floor, "has betrayed me twice I give him to you
as a sacrifice. But I shall never stand in the dock, you may be sure."
"Will you kill yourself?" cried Ida, terrified at this strength of mind.
"No, my dear. I am too much in love with life. You shall know my
plan presently. Meantime, you shall hear how I came to be a
blackmailer, as you have already heard why I murdered Dimsdale, to
my misfortune."
"To your misfortune, indeed! sharply.
"You may well say so, Colonel. I never intended to soil my hands
with blood, least of all with that of a man whom I liked and who was
kind to me. Don't sigh, Ida; after all, I did not shed his blood, as I
merely strangled him. But that death brought you and Vernon in
chase of me, Colonel, and so I am hunted down. Still, had Maunders
been true, I should have been safe. You knew Francis Hest as the
criminal, thanks to Maunders. I merged the brother in the sister and
made everything safe. Now," she shrugged her shoulders, "I must
flit."
"You shall go to prison with me," panted Maunders furiously.
"I think not," rejoined Miss Hest contemptuously. "Don't you know
me well enough yet to be aware that I provide against all
contingencies. Come in!" she added, raising her voice, and, when
the door opened, looked at Towton. "I shall ask my old nurse, Miss
Jewin, to relate the beginning of my career; at a later time I can
take up the tale, and then our tumbled-down friend yonder can
finish the story. Sarah, enter and close the door."
Miss Sarah Jewin was peaked-faced and white, with thin lips, scanty
grey hair and cold grey eyes. She was thin and bony and very tall,
so that in her plain black dress she looked like a line--length without
breadth. As she entered Maunders with a groan hoisted himself into
a chair. Miss Jewin had already pushed him aside when she entered
the room and, in place of replying to her mistress, stood looking at
his scowling, haggard face with a look of consternation. Maunders
replied to the look with petty triumph.
"Yes, I got out," he said, rubbing the ragged beard which disfigured
his well-moulded chin. "I wrenched a bar out of the window and
climbed down by the ivy. Now the murder's out, and you and your
hellish mistress are about to be brought to book."
"Don't mind him, Sarah," said Frances lazily and leaning back in her
chair to light a cigarette; "you are safe and so am I. Let the fool talk.
In the meantime, tell Colonel Towton here how I came to England
and how you knew that Ida was merely Dimsdale's adopted
daughter."
"I thought you wanted these things kept secret," said Miss Jewin in
dismay and turning pale with dread at the situation in which she
found herself.
"The time for secrets is past, Sarah. Shortly, thanks to your having
allowed Maunders to escape and to Colonel Towton's sense of
justice, the hue and cry will be out against the whole of us. Is Hokar
at his post?"
"Yes. He went away when you gave orders."
"That's all right. I'll escape, sure enough, and so will you. We'll leave
Maunders behind to face justice: he can declare himself to be The
Spider instead of me if he chooses."
"Oh!" Miss Jewin started back looking terrified. "Do they know----"
"Maunders has told them, you dear old idiot. But there's no time to
be lost, Sarah; tell your story."
"And be frank," broke in the Colonel, who was truly amazed at Miss
Hest's cool composure. "If you turn King's evidence you may receive
a short sentence for your complicity."
Sarah Jewin folded her arms primly. "Begging your pardon, sir, but I
won't receive any sentence at all. I am quite sure that Miss Frances
will save me from going to prison."
"I fail to see how she can save herself, let alone you," said Towton
coldly. "My horse is at the door. After placing Miss Dimsdale in safety
I shall ride to Gatehead and send for the police. You needn't
chuckle, Miss Hest, and think you will escape meantime. I shall raise
the village and you will be carefully watched."
"You can act as you please," said Frances coolly. "I am not The
Spider for nothing, and I shall baffle you as I have baffled others.
Meantime since you were so just to me, I shall satisfy your curiosity,
which I am sure is very great. Sarah, tell your story."
"One moment," said Towton, turning to the prim woman, "you lured
Vernon into the kitchen of that empty Kensington house?"
She dropped an ironical curtsey. "Yes, sir. Miss Frances was pleased
that I managed so cleverly."
Ida stared wide-eyed at the shameless looks and speech of the
housekeeper, and Towton frowned. That these creatures should so
audaciously confess their crimes when they knew he would shortly
summon the police puzzled him greatly. Also, remembering the
wonderful craft of The Spider, he felt uneasy as to what might
happen, but he could not conjecture in what way she could extricate
herself and her accomplice from the trap in which they were safely
caught. However, he made no comment on Miss Jewin's insolence,
but merely ordered her to proceed.
"About thirty-five years ago," said Miss Jewin, plunging into her story
without any preliminary explanation, "I was in India and nurse to
Mrs. Hest, who was the wife of Captain Theodore Hest, stationed at
Bombay. The Captain's father, who lived here, was angry when his
son went into the Army, and cut him off with a shilling, but my
master believed that if a son were born to inherit the estates his
father would relent. When my mistress's baby proved to be a girl he
was much disappointed. However, as his father was old and might
die before he found out the trick, he sent home news that the baby
was a boy, and had her baptised Francis."
"So you see," broke in Miss Hest who was smoking quietly, "that my
real name is Francis, and by law I am a man. As a woman I am
Frances, so there is merely the difference of one letter. Go on,
Sarah."
"She," said Miss Jewin, pointing to her mistress, "was dressed as a
boy and brought up as a boy, so that the estates might come to her.
My master's father relented when he heard that he had, as he
supposed, a grandson, and made a will in the boy's favour."
"The boy, you understand, Colonel, being a girl--myself," said
Frances for the sake of clearness.
"I quite understand," said the Colonel frowning. "Go on."
"Then my master and mistress were carried off within a month of
one another by fever," continued Miss Jewin. "They died in Burmah,
where the Captain had gone with his regiment. I then took charge of
Miss Hest, who was always called Master Francis, and came to Gerby
Hall. Old Mr. Hest, the grandfather, just lived six months longer, but
he died under the impression that his grand-daughter was a
grandson. Miss Frances thus became possessed of the property."
"Didn't the lawyer know that she was a girl?" asked Towton
surprised.
"No. As she had always been brought up as a boy the deception was
complete, sir," said Miss Jewin, using the word with shameless
deliberation. "The lawyer came here and saw Miss Frances in her
boy's clothes."
"And in this way," explained Miss Hest, "it became current gossip in
the village that I had a twin brother."
"A twin sister, you mean?" said the Colonel doubtfully.
"Well, you might put it that way. At all events, everyone in
Bowderstyke believes to this day that there is a boy and a girl, or,
rather, a man and a woman Hest. I alternately wore male and
female clothes."
"Why was there any need for you to wear female clothes at all?"
"That was my fault," said Miss Jewin quickly. "When the succession
to the estates was settled I could not bear that Miss Frances should
masquerade any longer as a boy. I therefore dressed her in girl's
clothes, to which she was entitled, and invented the twin story.
Sometimes she was a boy, so that the lawyers should not learn the
truth, and sometimes a girl to please me. There's the whole story."
"Now it's my turn," said Frances, throwing away her cigarette.
"When I grew up and learned how Sarah had muddled my sex in the
eyes of the world I decided to make use of it in order to earn
money."
"Why did you need money when you had the estates?" asked
Towton briefly. "Oh, those were mortgaged up to the hilt, my dear
sir. I wanted to be rich and to restore the Hest family to their old
position For this reason I posed as a philanthropist and spent the
money I did. What with the sums I have given in charity and the
buildings I have constructed, and the dam, which is my work, I
think, Colonel, that the Hests can hold their own with the Towtons. I
hated to think that my family was down while yours was up."
"Oh," said the Colonel with contempt, "so it's a case of jealousy
merely. All your philanthropy was a fraud?"
For the first time Frances coloured and rose out of her chair to reply
with more emphasis. "No; you must not say that. I really have a
mixed nature, and like to help people. My good qualities are the
outcome of my evil ones. I wanted to aggrandize the Hests,
certainly, since they were lords of Bowderstyke Valley, until your
family robbed them of their property. But also I really wished to do
good and help people. I think I succeeded."
"At the cost of murder," said Ida resentfully.
"That was a mistake," replied Frances glibly, "as I never intended to
murder Dimsdale. When I went to London in my woman's dress,
with very little money in my pocket, I simply intended to earn my
fortune on the stage, and by reciting to make Francis Hest--my other
self, who was supposed to live here--wealthy and popular. I found
that the reciting did not pay and cast about for some better means
of making money. Alternately I lived in London as Frances, and in
Bowderstyke as Francis. But I could not gain my ends by honest
means, and so was obliged to take to dishonest ways. If you wish to
know the devil who tempted me to eat of the Tree of Knowledge, he
is before you," and she pointed deliberately to Constantine.
"It's a lie," cried Maunders, starting to his feet with a fine
appearance of indignation. "I met you three or four years ago in
London and you discovered that I earned my living by telling
fortunes as Diabella. That was all, except," he added, scowling, "that
you blackmailed me."
"Quite so," said Miss Hest quietly. "I tried my 'prentice hand on you,
and the means of making money in this way was so easy that I took
it up as a trade and adopted you as a partner. Go on, Maunders, you
tell the rest of the story so that everything may be made clear."
"There's nothing to tell," said Maunders doggedly, and casting down
his eyes as he met Ida's sorrowful look, for he was not so entirely
lost to all sense of shame as were the other two law-breakers. "You
made me find out all manner of secrets from my clients by hinting at
things and asking questions and by----"
"I know," interrupted Towton waving his hand. "I am aware of how
fortune-tellers hint at a possibility and so find out the actual truth
from their too credulous clients. No wonder The Spider learned
much that people would fain have kept to themselves. Who told you
about Dimsdale?"
"You know," said Maunders sullenly, "that woman there."
"Yes," said Miss Jewin, still prim and shameless. "When in Burmah
with my master I heard about Mr. Dimsdale's love for Mrs. Menteith
and how, when her husband died, he adopted the child. But I never
said that Mr. Dimsdale delayed any expedition so as to get Mr.
Menteith killed."
"No. I invented that and made Maunders tell it to you, Ida, and to
you, Colonel, with the additions," put in Miss Hest, with great
coolness. "Also, on finding out that Ida was not Dimsdale's daughter,
I became alarmed as to the disposition of the property, therefore I
made myself a friend of the family and secured the free run of the
house."
"You intended to get my money?" asked Ida reproachfully.
"Certainly, my dear," replied Frances, raising her eyebrows. "Ten
thousand a year was far too much for a chit like you to handle. I
intended to get command of the whole lot. First I hunted in the dead
of night for the will, and found it in the library desk. Then I made
Maunders tell you that you were not Dimsdale's daughter, after the
murder, so that you might be dependent on me, since I knew a
secret which could rob you of the money. I had the secret told also
to the Colonel so that he might learn he would only have a penniless
wife should he marry you, my dear Ida."
"Did you think so meanly of me as that?" demanded Towton,
colouring indignantly.
Miss Hest raised her eyebrows. "My dear sir, my experience of
human nature has shown me that there is no mean trick which the
majority of men will not commit for money. You, however, were in
the minority, and so was Ida, as you both were honest. This upset
my calculations, as I could not provide against the unseen in human
nature. You, Colonel, still insisted upon marrying Ida, and she
wished to hand over the money to Lady Corsoon. For this reason I
was forced to play my last card and produce the will."
"But you did not intend to be found out as The Spider?"
"No, I did not," confessed Frances calmly. "When Maunders betrayed
me at Isleworth you thought that The Spider was a man, which was
exactly what I wanted and what I counted upon should such an
event as unexpected betrayal happen. In the fog I dragged
Maunders away, and we went to the house of a friend of mine
whose name I don't intend you to know. I wired in cypher to Miss
Jewin here to send a telegram to Francis Hest at Professor Gail's."
"We got that," said the Colonel quickly, "and it threw us off the
scent."
"I thought it would," said Miss Hest coolly. "So while you were
hunting for The Spider as a man in London I went down with
Maunders--he was disguised as an old gentleman and I resumed my
womanly dress. Then I wrote you on the plea of talking about Ida
and asked after my pretended brother to still further puzzle you."
"You certainly succeeded," retorted Towton, trying to conceal his
wonder at all this clever trickery; "but Ida was here and must have
known that you were absent from the house as Francis."
"Oh, no. I appeared before her twice in this room, which is, as you
see, not very well lighted, in my male disguise and with the painted
scar on my face. She was entirely taken in."
"The very simplicity of your disguise took me in," said Ida angrily
and wincing at having been so blinded. "Had you worn a beard or a
wig I should have recognised you."
"I think not," said Miss Hest quietly and with an amused smile. "As
the man I wore my hair somewhat long----"
"I noted that," said the Colonel quickly.
"How clever of you. Well, then, as a woman I merely knitted in false
hair. I couldn't wear false hair as a man since Ida would then have
been sharp enough to have recognised me. But plenty of women
wear false plaits, so I was safe on that score: she never suspected
me. My sole disguise was the cicatrice, skilfully painted, and the
success of the whole business lay--as Ida has submitted--in its
boldness and in the belief that I had a twin brother. I have always
found," added Miss Hest musingly, "that the bolder one is the safer it
is: audacity always scores. At all events, I so closely resembled my
own true self that no one thought I was anyone else but what I
represented myself to be. As Francis I told Ida that I was taking my
sister away for a week, and so slipped up to London to meet Vernon
at Lady Corsoon's and to be nearly trapped at Isleworth."
"What about Hokar and Bahadur?" asked the Colonel abruptly.
"Hokar," said Miss Jewin, making the explanation instead of Frances,
"was an old servant of Captain Hest's and came to England with me
and the child. Later he sent for his nephew, who was Bahadur."
"Yes. And I gave them both to Maunders when I set him up in those
splendid Egyptian rooms in Bond Street," observed her mistress.
"They were not engaged to strangle people, as you may think,
Colonel, but I merely wished them to add to the fantastical look of
the place when fortunes were being told. That you were so nearly
strangled, and Vernon also, was your own fault and his own. You
should mind your own business, my friend."
"I am going to mind it now," said Towton with a frown; "but first tell
me, since you are so frank, what about Lady Corsoon's jewels?"
"They are in this house. I gave them into Miss Jewin's possession."
"And Lady Corsoon can have them for one hundred pounds," said
Miss Jewin.
"A very modest demand, Sarah," said Miss Hest approvingly, "but as
the game is up I don't think you will get more. I shall leave you to
arrange about getting the money and handing back the jewels. Lady
Corsoon will be safe, and at a small loss. But I am glad to think that
she will not get your money, Ida, dear."
"Don't speak to me," cried Ida starting to her feet. "The more you
say the more I see how shamefully you have treated me."
"I have spared you," said Miss Hest coolly. "I could have stripped
you entirely bare had I so chosen."
"No. By your own showing I was too clever for you."
"Why, that is true, and simply because you were honest. I always
wished to keep on the right side of the law, or I could have got you
to make a will in my favour, and then you would have been
poisoned."
"How dare you?" shouted Towton, while Ida gave a faint cry.
"You have learned how much I dare," said Frances with an
unpleasant look. "So, now the story is told, perhaps you will leave
my house."
Colonel Towton walked towards the door with Ida on his arm and
roughly pushed Miss Jewin aside. "I shall place Miss Dimsdale----"
"Miss Menteith," sneered Frances.
"In safety," continued Towton without noticing the interruption, "and
then I shall ride for the police."
"I shall come, too," cried Maunders starting to his feet. "She will lock
me up again and perhaps may kill me."
"Stay where you are," commanded Frances sharply. "I intend to----"
Maunders did not wait to hear the end of the sentence. Seeing that
Towton and Ida blocked the door he made a rush at the nearest
window and sprang out of it with a dexterity begotten of sheer fear.
Whether Frances intended to take him with her when she fled, or
whether she intended to murder him he could not say, but he
preferred to trust in the mercy of the law rather than in that of the
woman who had been his evil genius. Crazy with terror, he tumbled
to the ground, and Towton, along with Ida, ran to the front door, to
see him speeding across the grass. A moment later and Frances,
with a revolver in her hand, leaped from the window in pursuit. From
the expression on her face she evidently intended nothing less than
murder.
Towton hastily unbuckled the bridle from the ring and flung himself
on his horse. "Place your foot on my toe, Ida," he commanded; "up
you get. There," he added, gathering up the reins as she sat on his
saddle-bow and placed her arms round his neck; "now let us alarm
the village. That poor devil will be shot if this fiendish woman is not
arrested." And he rode forward at a moderately fast pace.
"She'll catch him," chuckled Sarah Jewin, who had come to the door
and was looking out from under the palm of her hand. "Shoot, Miss
Frances. Shoot!"
Maunders, finding that he was being chased, could not make directly
for the gate and dodged behind some shrubs. Frances sighted him
and fired a shot. It winged him, for he gave a yell of fear and ran
directly towards her in the open. She fired another shot, which
struck him in the breast, and he pitched forward at her feet. Just as
she fired a third shot into his prostrate body there came a noise like
thunder and a terrible cry from Miss Jewin.
"The signal! The signal! The dam's burst!" and she bolted into the
house.
In a flash Towton comprehended and set spurs to his horse. Frances
strove to fly, but Maunders with a last effort caught at her foot and
she fell heavily, fighting for freedom like a wild cat. The next
moment he had her by the throat. And in the distance a mighty
roaring struck the ears of all as the flood came down gigantically.
CHAPTER XXII.
THE END OF IT ALL.
Towton could not quite understand the situation, as there was no
time to consider matters. All he knew was that the Bolly Dam had
burst, and even had Miss Jewin not spoken, the appalling noise
would have informed him of the catastrophe. With Ida in his arms he
spurred his horse frantically out of the gate and across the village
bridge. He found the crooked street filled with people, called out by
the unexpected thunder.
"The dam's burst: get on the high ground," shouted Towton, and
with a yell of fear men, women, and children began to run wildly in
the direction of the gorge and to disappear amongst the houses in
the hope of gaining some level beyond the height of the down-
coming flood. But there was scanty time for safety. The hollow
booming sound of the waters plunging through the narrows sounded
ever nearer and nearer with terrible distinctness: it seemed as
though the waters were bellowing for their prey. In a moment the
Colonel comprehended that it was too late to skirt the village and
gain the winding road, where they would be safe. Ida gave a cry of
alarm as he wrenched round the now startled horse and clattered
through the village street on his way down the valley. It seemed the
only chance.
"I'll save you yet, my darling," muttered Towton, setting his teeth.
"We must make for Gatehead," and he drove his spurs into the
animal, which now was becoming unmanageable with the roaring of
the flood. Ida, almost insensible with terror, clung to her lover's
neck, and the horse, making no more of the double burden than if it
had been a feather, tore at top speed along the road between the
torrent and the precipice. There was no safety on either side, as the
precipice could not be climbed, and the dry bed of the stream
merely offered a deeper grave. Fortunately, the road sloped
gradually to the mouth of the valley, some two miles away, therefore
the downward trend offered extra means to escape the pursuing
greedy waters. A backward glance showed Towton that a
tremendous flood was shooting out of the bottle-mouth of the upper
gorge with terrific rapidity. The whole of the huge lake, artificial as
well as natural, was emptying itself in one vast outpour, and owing
to the narrowness of the valley the concentrated force was gigantic.
If the flood caught them they would either be dashed to pieces
against the rocks or would be borne onward--horse and maid and
man--to be expelled at Gatehead, as if fired from the mouth of a
cannon.
"Oh, God, save us! Oh, God, save us!" was all that Ida could moan.
"He will; He will," cried Towton, riding under spur and whip with a
mad joy in the adventure, perilous as it was. "He will save the
innocent and punish the guilty. Never fear, never fear, my darling."
On roared the enormous body of water, curling like a mighty wave
crested with foam and glistening like a colossal jewel in the serene
sunshine. It passed with a hoarse triumphant screaming over the
fated village, and in a single moment Bowderstyke was not. Bearing
_débris_ and bodies of cattle and men, women and children on its
breast, the water rolled majestically on its destroying way. Like a
wall of steel it stood up, stretching from wall to wall of the valley,
and before it tore the terrified horse, warned by its instinct of rapidly
approaching danger.
"We are lost! we are lost!" screamed Ida, hiding her face on
Towton's shoulder. "We can never escape. It's a mile further."
"There's a crack--a path--a break in the precipice," panted the man,
almost despairing of saving what he loved best in the world. "If we
can gain that we can scramble up, and--and---- Great God! How it
travels!"
From the sides of the valley trees were being wrenched up by their
roots, and even the stones lying in the bed of the torrent were being
lifted and swept onward like pieces of straw. Owing to the increasing
breadth of the valley the shouting and the level of the flood had
somewhat lessened, but the hoarse, steady murmur with which it
smoothly advanced seemed to be even more terrible than its
triumphant screaming. Nearer and nearer it rolled, towering, as it
seems to the desperate fugitives, right up to the high heavens. The
horse raced onward furiously, but there seemed to be no chance of
escaping that rapidly approaching death-wave, which swept along
with relentless speed. The man and woman were both silent, and
both prayed inwardly, as they faced the eleventh hour of death.
And it was the eleventh hour, for there was still hope. Rounding a
corner swiftly Towton rose in his stirrups and sent forth a cry almost
as hoarse as that of the flood. A short distance ahead he saw a
streak of green grass marking the ruddy stone face of the precipice,
and knew that here was the crack to which he had referred. It was a
mere chink in the wall, of no great width, caused, no doubt, by the
volcanic action which had formed the valley in far distant ages. Many
a time as a lad had Towton climbed up that narrow natural staircase
to the moors above, but never had he expected to find it a means of
preserving his own life and the life he valued dearer than his own.
Setting his teeth, he glanced backward and then urged the horse to
renewed efforts. The wall of water was almost upon them,
advancing with terrible and steady persistence. The last moment
seemed to be at hand.
Suddenly the Colonel wrenched at the horse's bit and pulled the
animal up with a jerk. As it fell back on its haunches he slipped off
with the almost insensible girl in his arms and ran desperately
towards the sloping green bank, which showed itself like a port of
safety between the bare, bleak stones. As he gained it the horse,
having recovered itself, rushed past with a loose bridle and with the
stirrups lashing its sides. But Towton paid no heed. Almost in a
dream he scrambled up the bank, bearing Ida as though she were a
feather-weight. With straining eyes and bursting temples, and with
his heart beating furiously, he clambered desperately, dragging the
girl rather than carrying her, as he needed at least one hand free to
grip the tough grasses. Fortunately the slope was gradual, and had it
not been there would have been no hope of escape. As it was, when
they were a considerable way up the mighty wave surged
majestically past, and its waters shot up the crevice with gigantic
force. This was rather a help than a hindrance, as it assisted the
almost broken man to mount higher. But to the end of his days
Colonel Towton never knew how he saved his wife. All he could
remember was straining upward, dragging the now insensible
woman with aching limbs and a blood-red mist before his eyes.
When his brain was somewhat clearer he found himself bending over
Ida in a turfy nook, while barely three feet below him the grey water
gurgled and sang and bubbled as if in a witch's cauldron.
"Safe! Safe!" muttered Towton, and dropped insensible across the
inanimate body of the woman he had so miraculously saved from a
terrible death.
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  • 6.
  • 8.
    NEW ENERGIES A HISTORY OF ENERGYTRANSITIONS IN EUROPE AND NORTH AMERICA Edited by STEPHEN G. GROSS & ANDREW NEEDHAM UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH PRESS
  • 9.
    Published by theUniversity of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, Pa., 15260 Copyright © 2023, University of Pittsburgh Press All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America Printed on acid-­ free paper 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Cataloging-in-Publication data is available from the Library of Congress ISBN 13: 978-0-8229-4776-9 ISBN 10: 0-8229-4776-5 Cover photo: People watch the demolition of four 113-meter-high (370 feet) cooling towers of a lignite-fired power station after a controlled detonation in the eastern German town of Boxberg, April 13, 2006. Photo © Reuters via Alamy Photo. Cover design: Joel W. Coggins
  • 10.
    TO LUCY, DUNCAN,JACK, RAYMOND, AND CHILDREN EVERYWHERE- ­may their bright futures have less carbon than our present.
  • 12.
    Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction: Towarda New Energy History Stephen G. Gross and Andrew Needham 3 Part I. The Rise of Oil and the Transformation of Coal: Creation, Destruction, and Reinvention 1. The Oil from Our Soil: French Alcohol Fuel versus Foreign Oil, 1918–1957 Joseph Bohling 33 2. The Politics of Creative Destruction: West German Hard Coal and the Postwar Oil Transition Stephen G. Gross 48 3. Accounting the Dead: The Moral Economy of the Coal-­ Fired Social Contract Trish Kahle 62 4. Hard Hat Cowboys: Energy Workers and Coalfield Capitalism in the Anthropocene Ryan Driskell Tate 76 Part II. Oil Transition in Crisis: The 1970s 5. American Politics and Energy Transitions in the 1970s Victor McFarland 95 6. The Decade of the “Energy Transition”: A Critical Review of the Global Energy Debates of the 1970s Duccio Basosi 107
  • 13.
    viii NEW ENERGIES 7. Reversing the Transition from Coal to Oil?: The International Energy Agency and the Western Industrialized Countries’ Restructuring of Energy Supply in the 1970s Henning Türk 119 8. From State to Market: A Transition in the Economics of Energy Resource Conservation Thomas Turnbull 131 Part III. A Stalled Transition? Nuclear Energy’s Dilemmas and Possibilities 9. Nuclear Energy and the Dream of Independence: The Case of Eastern Europe Sonja D. Schmid 157 10. Contamination without Representation: Fetal Citizenship and Atomic Power in the Postwar United States Natasha Zaretsky 168 11. The Rise of Counterexpertise and the Anti–Nuclear Power Movement in West Germany Dolores L. Augustine 182 Part IV. The Transition off Fossil Fuels: Challenges and Possibilities 12. A Future Foreseen and Transition Delayed: Big Oil and Global Warming, 1959–1986 Benjamin Franta 203 13. Renewable Energies in the United Kingdom and the Federal Republic of Germany, 1970s–1990s: Discourses, Contexts, and Policies Eva Oberloskamp 220 Notes 235 Contributors 317 Index 321
  • 14.
    Acknowledgments This volume wasmade possible by a grant from the Carnegie Foun- dation of New York, which sponsored an international conference, “The New Energy History: Energy Transitions in the 20th and 21st Centuries,” held at New York University on November 1 and 2, 2018. The essays and ideas of this volume grew from that conference. In addition to the authors in Toward a New Energy History, we are grateful to the other conference participants who authored papers or chaired sessions. These include Zachary Cuyler, Giuliano Garavini, Carol Hager, Frank Laird, Matthew Shutzer, and Troy Vettese. We would also like to thank Alexander Maro, Margaret Miller, Samantha Dawn Paul, Tim O’Donnell, Guerline Semexant, and Christopher Van Demark for their outstanding assistance organizing the event or helping put this volume together. Anastasia Skyobedo and Mikhala Stein Kotlyar at the Center for Eu- ropean and Mediterranean Studies at New York University provided generous support throughout this entire project, from conference to volume. Lastly, we would like to thank Sandra Crooms and Josh Shanholtzer at the University of Pittsburgh Press, Varsha Venkatasubramanian for her work preparing the in- dex, and the two anonymous reviewers for their help in improving our collec- tion of essays. We hope these writing here provide some inspiration for think- ing creatively about the history of energy transitions, and integrating energy into the bigger questions of European, North American, and global history.
  • 16.
  • 18.
    Introduction TOWARD A NEWENERGY HISTORY Stephen G. Gross and Andrew Needham In 1973 the Italian nuclear physicist Cesare Marchetti began for- mulating a “simple and predictive model describing energy markets for the last century.” Four years later he produced one of the most iconic pictures in energy history: a schematic graph depicting energy systems rising and falling like clockwork over time. The age of wood replaced by the age of coal, then oil, then natural gas, and then, so he predicted, nuclear energy and solar power. “It is as though the system,” Marchetti reflected, “had a schedule, a will, and a clock.” All it took was time, and the right price. His imagery of regular transi- tions, unfolding smoothly without interruption, free from outside forces like politics or values, gripped experts around the world as they strove to change their nation’s energy systems following the oil shock of 1973. Marchetti was working for the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Austria, a think tank founded to bridge the Cold War divide with cutting-­ edge models for global problems. IIASA’s ideas spread through Western Eu- rope, North America, and the Eastern Bloc, and graphs strikingly similar in their assumptions informed policy across the Global North during the 1970s.1 A generation later, as global temperatures rise, sparking our glaciers to melt and our forests to burn, humanity stands before what could be the great- est collective challenge in history. In many respects, experts and politicians
  • 19.
    4 NEW ENERGIES FigureI.1: Cesare Marchetti’s model “Historical Evolution of the Primary Energy Mix for the World.” 1850–2100. f = market fraction of an energy. Source: Cleaned image of Marchetti’s diagram from Vaclav Smil, Energy Transitions: Global and National Perspectives (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2017), 84. Figure I.2: Historical fuel shifts according to President Jimmy Carter’s 1977 Na- tional Energy Plan. 1860–1980. Source: Frank Laird, Solar Energy, Technology Policy and Institutional Values (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 114.
  • 20.
    Toward a NewEnergy History 5 are approaching global warming with historical assumptions about energy that have changed little since the 1970s. One hopes for a transition toward re- newable sources of power like the sun and the wind. But the models informing public debate today—­ whether historical, digital, or cognitive—­ bear an eerie Figure I.3: First scenario forecast for West Germany’s primary energy consump- tion, in the Social Democratic Party’s Energy Forum of 1977. 1950–2100. Million tons of hard coal equivalent. Kernenergie = nuclear power; Sonne, Wasser und Sonstiges = sun, water, and miscellaneous; Erdöl = oil; Erdgas = natural gas; Braun- kohle = lignite coal; Steinkohle = hard coal. Source: SPD, Energie: Leitfaden zur Diskussion (Bonn: SPD, 1977), 52.
  • 21.
    6 NEW ENERGIES resemblanceto earlier ones. In his famous appeal to repower the United States in 2008, former vice president Al Gore claimed the United States could adopt a carbon-­ free electricity network within decades. A year later Mark Jacobson and Mark Delucchi, engineers writing in Scientific American, suggested the world could achieve 100 percent renewable energy in twenty years. Ten years on they remained firm in their timeline, illustrating it with smooth curves of rising renewables and falling fossil fuels.2 Many advocates of solar and wind claim this transition not only “mirrors” previous ones, but that the move from “fossil fuels to renewables has become inevitable” as costs fall. As Bruce Usher puts it, “Basic economic principles, primarily cost, are the main drivers of energy transitions. Cost is key.”3 This narrative of grand sweeping curves, where transitions are defined by efficiency and price, is comforting: if only we can lower the cost of solar or wind, we can solve global warming. Or at least be on our way. But energy shifts are far more complex, far more human, and in fact far more interesting than lines on a graph, efficiency ratios, or prices. Historians have unearthed this complexity; they have a long tradition of studying the human side of energy in its many facets, even if histories of energy have often been fragmented into different wings of the discipline, from environmental history to the history of technology or diplomacy.4 Despite this fragmentation, three points stand out in more nuanced histories of energy: (1) commercializing a new energy in- frastructure involves protracted processes of political and economic change, (2) new energies almost never wholly replace old ones, and (3) the causes and effects of transitions reach far and wide, changing people’s lives in unexpected and profound ways. Since roughly 2010, diverse strands of historical study have been coalescing into a new field of energy history, a coalescence that motivated this volume. The chapters here explore the causes, courses, effects, and aftershocks of en- ergy transitions in North America and Europe during the twentieth century. They not only historicize popular and economic notions of energy but also show how energy has reshaped everything from social life and economic or- ganization to political governance. The volume draws on a range of historical approaches—­ including intellectual and cultural history, labor history, and political economy—­ to understand why some energy systems flourish while others do not, and to capture the cultural, intellectual, and political implica- tions of new energy systems as they struggle to take shape. Over the past 250 years, energy transitions have occurred at a seemingly relentless pace—­ the rise of coal in the nineteenth century, the explosion of oil in the twentieth century, the nuclear utopianism of the 1950s and 1960s, and today the expan- sion of renewable power. These transitions have been as revolutionary as any
  • 22.
  • 23.
    8 NEW ENERGIES politicalor economic upheaval, but they have rarely featured in the grand nar- ratives of twentieth-­ century Europe and North America.5 Given the urgency of global warming, historians have a twofold task, which we hope to advance with this volume. We must do more to integrate a history of energy transi- tions into broader narratives of political, economic, or cultural change. And we must do more to bring our knowledge of the complexity and humanity of energy to the current debate—­ shaped in large part by economists, engineers, and scientists—­ over what could be the most monumental energy transition ever: the shift away from fossil fuels. In doing so, we aim to steer the public away from, on the one hand, doom-­ saying narratives of the impossibility of meaningful transition and, on the other, stories of revolutionary technologi- cal fixes driven by heroic individual entrepreneurs. Only by attending to the socially complex and technologically messy histories of energy transitions as they occurred can we provide a past usable for the present moment. Why Energy Now? Since the turn of the twenty-­ first century, global warming has emerged as the world’s most pressing challenge. This wicked problem has led scholars to craft not only a new geological label but also a new category of analysis, the “An- thropocene,” a concept coined in 2000 by Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer to describe how humans are becoming a force of nature in their ability to alter the environment. While there was a delay between the uptake of this term by the natural sciences and the humanities, with the publication of Dipesh Chakrabarty’s “The Climate of History” in 2010, the Anthropocene as a his- torical concept arrived. Chakrabarty’s work sparked a debate about the ori- gins of the Anthropocene, with starting points ranging from humanity’s very nature as an extinctive species, to the Agricultural Revolution or Industrial Revolution, to the advent of the atomic age.6 Embedded within this debate are fundamental questions about how to understand human-­ driven environmental transformations. Historians have a rich tradition of studying the environment. Until recently, however, energy existed at the relative margins of environmental history, often surpassed in importance by themes such as wilderness management, agriculture, urban- ization, water use, and forestry.7 The urgency of the Anthropocene, however, has foregrounded the study of energy. For if the Anthropocene elevated global warming as the challenge of our century, it also illustrated the importance of studying fossil fuel energy systems, because these have accounted for 70 percent of all of the carbon humanity has emitted since 1870. At the heart of environmental degradation and climate change is the extraction, distribution, and consumption of energy.8
  • 24.
    Toward a NewEnergy History 9 The need to understand how energy-­ intensive, fossil fuel–centered, growth-­oriented societies came to dominate the world is thus more important now than ever before. As Stephen Gardiner presciently underscored, global warming is “seriously backloaded,” making it different from other histori- cal events that diminish in importance the further they recede into the past. Carbon from human sources, by contrast, has flowed into the atmosphere in ever greater quantities since the Industrial Revolution, gaining transformative power as it intensifies in the atmosphere.9 Historians, in other words, can offer a unique perspective to help understand how and why global warming began, how it accelerated, and why it is proving so difficult to halt. A wave of recent studies, what one might call a “New Energy History,” have recognized this, placing energy extraction, production, transportation, distribution, owner- ship, and consumption at the center of their narratives.10 Energy has also gained new attention from historians for reasons entirely unrelated to climate change, like the renewed interest in capitalism and in- equality. Even before the financial crisis of 2007–2008, historians returned to the economy to understand the formation of the great disparities of wealth that were becoming more apparent in the twenty-­ first century. They strove to integrate a study of ideas, values, and identities with material life and interest groups.11 The financial crisis, the worst global economic downturn since the Great Depression, lent urgency to this task of historicizing the economy, a sen- timent captured by Thomas Piketty’s groundbreaking study on capital and in- equality. Historians working in similar veins have sought to understand how markets were constructed over time intellectually as well as institutionally or politically, and thus to learn why they have gone horribly awry as often as they have yielded positive benefits: disempowering labor and minorities, forcing millions into unemployment through periodic crises, or polluting nature as much as they have lifted people out of poverty or stimulated technological advances.12 Karl Polanyi and Karl Marx superseded Adam Smith as the chan- nel through which historians approached capitalism, inspiring critical studies about the changing form of economic governance throughout the twentieth century—­ from classic liberal capitalism to Keynesian or social democratic capitalism to neoliberal capitalism.13 All varieties of twentieth-­ century capitalism, however, required vast amounts of energy. One does not have to be an energeticist like Frederick Sod- dy or Lewis Mumford—­ early twentieth-­ century thinkers who saw energy as the root of all value—­ to appreciate that capitalism has historically excelled at organizing different technologies, institutions, resources, and laborers to con- vert energy into economic work. The consumption of energy is, in fact, deeply correlated with wealth, and one of the most powerful markers of global in-
  • 25.
    10 NEW ENERGIES equality.Great Britain’s pioneering transition to sustained economic growth in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries hinged on the exploitation of coal on a new, mass scale. The United States’ hegemonic position in the global cap- italist order after World War II involved its astounding lead in energy con- sumption per capita: more than twice as much as its nearest rivals. In 2019 the average US resident consumed nearly eighty thousand kilowatt hours a year; those in Germany and France roughly forty thousand; those in Chad, Niger, Mali, or South Sudan less than one thousand. The reasons for such incredible disparities in energy consumption, of course, have a history.14 The perceived decline of the nation-­ state, meanwhile, encouraged histori- ans to turn their attention to the new captains of globalization: corporations.15 In American historiography, financial corporations often took center stage in this new history of capitalism.16 Yet in many ways energy corporations, not banks, have been the largest, most influential, and most globalized companies of the twentieth century. Take ExxonMobil, itself a descendant of Standard Oil, one of the world’s most powerful corporations before it was broken apart in 1911. Today, ExxonMobil has a market capitalization of over $300 billion, conducts business in dozens of countries, and builds infrastructure in dozens more.17 It, and other energy multinationals, have constructed business mod- els designed to shield operations from social control on the local level while obscuring profits from state control through interlocking “offshore” subsid- iaries.18 In the words of the oil industry’s leading chronicler, firms like these belong to the “world’s biggest and most pervasive business.” In 2018 six of the world’s ten largest corporations were energy firms, while two more were automobile manufacturers whose business models are unthinkable without gasoline. The production of energy stands as much at the heart of capitalism as does the flow of money: indeed, coal and oil have been called, with only a little hyperbole, the “mainspring of modern material civilization” or the “life- blood” of modern economies. As historians have returned to capitalism as a subject, studies about energy production, distribution, and consumption, and the firms that control these channels have multiplied, yielding new insights about growth, inequality, class identity, and the geography of markets.19 From still a different angle, the history of commodities and the supply chains that bring them into shopping centers and homes has changed the way we think about global connections. Histories of salt, cod, pepper, coffee, pa- per, sugar, cotton, or even the T-­ shirt have lifted the hood of the engine of glo- balization to reveal intricate networks of production, distribution, and mar- keting. These studies have illustrated how the labor forms and the institutions used to produce and distribute a given commodity vary immensely depending on their position in a global supply chain, promoting democracy and wealth
  • 26.
    Toward a NewEnergy History 11 and protecting nature in one region while undermining polities, impoverish- ing people, and damaging the environment in another.20 This approach of fol- lowing the flow of a commodity from start to finish reveals the points at which different actors can insert themselves in order to reap economic gain, achieve leverage over people or resources, and even shape the evolution of states and societies.21 Many of the commodities studied in these histories are raw materi- als, taken from the earth and used in products and processes that we take for granted. In many ways, energy is the raw material par excellence because it is so essential to modern life, both industrial and postindustrial. It lends itself to spatial analysis as a variety of recent histories have illustrated, which trace the supply chains that render particular forms of energy useable, and which connect points in space or historical processes that have traditionally been considered in isolation.22 Toward a New History of Energy Transitions Together, global warming and the Anthropocene, the new history of capital- ism, and the study of commodities have turned energy into a dynamic histor- ical field. Fortunately, historians today have much to build upon, for there is a long precedent in showing how energy shaped human affairs. Already in the 1930s John Nef authored a two-­volume study unsurpassed in its detail of show- ing how coal influenced everything from capitalism and political power to the ecology of forests in early modern Great Britain.23 In 1983 Thomas Hughes traced the rise of massive new technological systems that brought electricity into the households and urban centers of North America and Europe. Under- standing these energy networks, he hoped, would do nothing less than help scholars tackle the big questions of history, about “the ordering, integrating, coordinating, and systematizing nature of modern human societies.”24 And since the 1990s and 2000s, our understanding of the Industrial Revolution, or what many scholars now call the Great Divergence, has hinged not only on questions of imperialism, slavery, institutions, and trade, but also on coal.25 Yet “energy” as such was often not the object of these earlier, discerning studies. Instead, they focused on discrete forms of energy, like anthracite or wood, or on particular technologies or organizations that delivered energy, like multinational oil companies or electrical utilities. These earlier authors, in other words, were less interested in energy as a historical category or how contemporaries conceptualized energy than in exploring individual energy forms and using them to answer questions about other topics such as indus- trial development, the interconnectivity of “socio-­technical arrangements,” or economic institutions.26 Toward the end of the twentieth century, energy became its own catego-
  • 27.
    12 NEW ENERGIES ryof analysis, but with a few important exceptions it fell under the purview of economists.27 After the oil crisis of 1973, economists revived frameworks for understanding the nature of exhaustible resources, and economics as a profession began including energy in their models alongside labor, capital, and land.28 Quantitative economic historians followed this trend and began looking to the past for empirical evidence of how energy related to econom- ic growth, the totem of post–1945 economic theory.29 They put moments of transition between fuel sources at the center of their analysis about energy’s causal role in historical changee. For the Industrial Revolution, arguably the seminal event of energy history in European and American historiography, the work of E. A. Wrigley, Robert Allen, Peter J. G. Pearson, and Roger Fou- quet from the mid-­ 1990s on defined a paradigm that placed price, scarcity, and technology at the heart of the story. Through the painstaking reconstruc- tion of long-­ run data sets on population, gross domestic product (GDP), and the prices of wood, charcoal, and coal, they mapped the contours of British economic history in minute detail. In their hands, the Industrial Revolution was redefined as an energy transition, one of the most momentous in history, from an organic society fueled by wood, grain, and the muscles of animals to an inorganic economy driven by coal. And the mechanisms of change were straightforward. As population and the economy grew, wood and land—­ the dominant sources of energy before the eighteenth century—­ became scarce. Their prices rose, encouraging the substitution of new energies through new technologies. In Britain, so this argument went, rising wood and land pric- es induced producers and consumers to turn to coal on a grand scale.30 The crucial breakthrough came when engineers, driven by price incentives, im- proved the steam engine so they could use coal not only for heat but also for mechanical power to run factories and power railroads. In the words of Rob- ert Allen, “High wages and cheap energy were the distinctive features of the British economy during the Industrial Revolution . . . creating a demand for technology that substituted capital and energy for labour.”31 Expanding scope beyond Britain only seemed to confirm economic historians in their para- digm. In a lead editorial for the journal Energy Policy, for instance, Fouquet and Pearson could write that “a review of 14 past transitions indicated that, for a new energy source to become dominant, the energy services . . . it provided had been cheaper than the incumbent energy source.”32 Price and efficiency, in their hands, were the kings of transitions, and technology the queen. Yet in the process of unearthing amazing statistical series that yielded new insights, these historians of transitions veered too far into the macro and the structural. The drama was gone. The human agency or conflict fell out of view in the face of impersonal forces. When these economic historians spoke of
  • 28.
    Toward a NewEnergy History 13 lock-­ in—­ how energy systems once in place built their own momentum—­ they rarely discussed the producers, consumer groups, or businesses that lost out or reinvented themselves because they backed the “wrong” system.33 When they traced the rise of new fuel sources, they rarely had a place for geopoli- tics, labor struggles, cultural shifts, or even states, which do “not seem to have played a highly proactive role in previous transitions.”34 At the most extreme, a picture emerged of an almost steady progression through virtuous feedback loops toward ever more efficient fuels driving ever more energy-­ hungry societies: a stagism devoid of contingency. In 2012 a special issue on energy transitions in the leading journal for energy policy could even posit a historical pattern: “New technological combinations en- abled entirely new, or vastly improved traditional services, at greater energy efficiency and ever falling costs in a virtual, self-­ reinforcing positive feedback loop.”35 The spirit of Cesare Marchetti, it seemed, was alive. So it should not be surprising that advocates of renewable power today who follow this par- adigm place their hope in sending the right “price signal,” that they speak of climate change as “fundamentally a technological challenge,” or that they argue moving to wind, solar, and biomass will benefit everyone and generate little resistance.36 “Increased deployment of clean energy technologies . . .” so the International Renewable Energy Council argues, “translates to increased economic opportunities. And everyone can find a way to support that.”37 Even ExxonMobil? These accounts, however much they have expanded our understanding of past transitions, paint a narrow historical picture. This is, after all, the nature of models that aspire to aid policy for the future: they strive for simplification. But where is the conflict in energy transitions? Where are the politics? Where is the human agency—­ for or against transition? Where is the knowledge of energy—­ as a social category, a scientific object, or an instrument of power? These are all burning questions that historians have posed with ever more ur- gency since 2010, against the backdrop of global warming and financial crisis. Indeed, a range of new monographs written by historians in history depart- ments, or by unorthodox social scientists, have challenged the narrative that emerged in the 1990s and 2000s, pointing the way toward a new approach to energy history that foregrounds struggle, ideology, class, knowledge, geo- politics, culture, and geography. New monographs that combine a history of capitalism with the environment around the theme of energy have forced us to rethink everything from Britain and the United States’ industrialization, to the Cold War experience with nuclear power, to the very foundation of de- mocracy itself.38 New studies about struggles over labor, over language, or over political economy have helped turn “energy” into a category of analysis that
  • 29.
    14 NEW ENERGIES canbring together historians of various ilk to reopen some of the most basic questions about change in society, about the nation-­ state, globalization, pol- itics, capitalism, and identity.39 As even Pearson, a pioneer of the data-­ driven studies of the 1990s and 2000s, himself now writes, social scientists have come to appreciate the “multifaceted nature” of energy transitions. Past transitions cannot be explained by price alone; they have “co-­ evolved or been entangled with other broader socio-­economic, demographic, technological and environ- mental changes and processes.”40 What Is an Energy Transition? But what do we even mean by an “energy transition”? The concept itself evokes images of a linear shift from one stage to another. In fact, this was how it was first used and politicized in the 1970s. As a concept that initially related to the pure chemical transformation of one energy into another, energy transition was popularized by the technocratic response to the oil shock of 1973. Experts hoped to defend North America and Western Europe from the “oil weapon” deployed by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) by facilitating an energy transition. President Jimmy Carter, the Trilateral Com- mission, and the European Economic Community (EEC) all used the lan- guage of transition to develop more hydrocarbons outside of OPEC territory.41 But this is hardly the type of transition one hopes for in the age of global warming, and the term itself harbors the danger of obscuring the messiness of new energy systems by suggesting transitions can be rationally managed, or that they proceed in a linear or straightforward manner. In fact, some doubt the concept can fully capture the complexity of changing infrastructural, technopolitical, or knowledge systems around energy. Christophe Bonneuil and Jean-­ Baptiste Fressoz, for instance, argue that “if history teaches us one thing, it is that there never has been an energy transition . . . rather a successive addition of new sources of primary energy.” Using transition as a concept, in their view, obscures the extent to which the old remains and the new merely brings forth ever more consumption of energy.42 Nevertheless, many historians use transition with care, and remain keenly aware that older systems never wither, and instead often adapt and expand.43 Transition, moreover, is not merely a cover for some form of crisis—­ in an ex- tant energy system or in society more broadly—­ as Bonneuil and Fressoz sug- gest, since in many cases societies incorporate new forms of energy and build new infrastructure during periods of stability. Natural gas is the most telling example, which much of Western Europe first began using before the shocks of the 1970s, and which the continent only fully integrated well after the effects of those shocks had passed, during the 1980s and 1990s.
  • 30.
    Toward a NewEnergy History 15 More generally, the concept of energy transition adds value if one under- stands transition less as a discrete, punctuated shift from one stage or system or fuel to another, but rather—­to draw from the new histories of capitalism—­a layering and an “ongoing transformation” that leads to new and “hybrid” forms of energy provision, energy services, and energy consumption, a trans- formation that can reshape society in the process.44 Much as transitions to capitalism or the nation-­ state have all been deconstructed, to show how el- ements of older systems persist, adapt, and become crucial to newer ones, so too should historians work to expose the less visible transformations that arise out of transitions, whether they be new economic geographies, new political values or morals, new knowledge systems or discourses, or even new temporal or mental frameworks.45 All of this complexity is obscured if one abstracts energy transition into a line on a chart or a price for a fuel. Using this broader approach, our volume emphasizes five pivotal themes of energy transitions, some of which have often been overlooked by earlier liter- ature. Most fundamentally, energy on the scale required by modern societies has historically come through systems of vast complexity, a fact that informs most chapters in this volume. Energy production and consumption can be understood as a socio-­technical system that includes humans, materials, tech- nologies, and ideas, as well as the particular energy itself. The infrastructure needed to extract, refine, and transform energy into something usable—­ the networks of ships, roads, trucks, and pipelines that move energy from the point of extraction to the point of consumption—­ forms an interconnected system worth trillions of dollars of investments built up over decades. But beyond its physical presence, energy systems also shape how people “work, play, eat, and socialize, . . . how industries cluster, how cities and economies grow, and how nations conduct their foreign affairs.”46 The components of en- ergy systems are so interlinked, moreover, that change in one often ripples through and affects other elements and participants, and crucially, other ener- gy systems. As Clark Miller and others have underscored, the key decisions to study are often political, social, or cultural as much as they are technological or economic.47 Second, this volume shows how prices and technological efficiency, or pro- ducer and consumer desires alone, cannot fully explain why one energy rises, another falls, and another reinvents itself, as chapters by Joseph Bohling, Ste- phen Gross, Victor McFarland, Eva Oberloskamp, Sonja Schmid, and Benja- min Franta demonstrate. Energy systems are embedded in a broader political economy of interest groups that have their own networks and agendas, wheth- er seeking profit, preserving the environment, or attaining geopolitical secu- rity. Energy transitions, put differently, are profoundly shaped by competition
  • 31.
    16 NEW ENERGIES betweenvarious groups to mobilize the levers of power at their disposal to advance one energy or restrict another, or to change the extant system. Price and profit are important to the success of any new energy, to be sure, since modern transitions have unfolded through a global capitalism in which ener- gy providers must earn a return on their investments. Yet price and profit are never everything, for states, consumers, workers, experts, and environmental groups all use politics to reshape the economic playing field, and to pursue agendas that make little sense in the logic of the market. States in particu- lar have interests that range from geopolitics to social security and prestige. These interests often overlap with the quest for inexpensive energy, but not always. Governments have historically favored geopolitically secure energy sources, sources that generate domestic employment and social stability, or sources that are considered part of the national culture, even when their costs are high. In any case, what is cheap and what is expensive is rarely determined by supply and demand alone, as markets are political constructs that require state-­ made rules to function, that are shaped by incentives created by states, and that are embedded in larger global markets. Who has access to the levers of government, or who has arguments that resonate with the voting public, thus matter immensely. Energy transitions cannot be understood apart from the constant ebb and flow among interest groups and political parties to shape energy policy. Third, these chapters illustrate the staying power of older energy systems, showing how these have historically been reinvented in any number of ways to remain a vital part of modern societies, as chapters by Ryan Driskoll Tate, Trish Kahle, and Henning Türk show. This is so above all for coal. Merely looking at a different sort of graph than those used by Marchetti—­ graphs that display the total volume of energy consumed rather than their relative shares—­ one sees how voluminous the consumption of coal has been through- out the twentieth century. Even after oil became the dominant energy, coal retained a place at the heart of the industrial societies of Europe and North America, rising in absolute levels in the final quarter of the century. More coal was consumed on these continents in 2000 than in the 1960s.48 Coal survived because firms, workers, governments, consumers, labor leaders, and interna- tional organizations reinvented it as an energy: shifting its geographical locus, revolutionizing the technologies used to produce it, changing people’s atti- tudes toward it, reimagining its place in an evolving geopolitical landscape, and even altering the very nature of coal consumption. Coal’s importance as a fuel for transportation or chemistry diminished in the face of oil’s rise, but nevertheless it remained an essential part of the foundation of the high energy consumer society that emerged after World War II. Huge new coal-­ fired pow-
  • 32.
    Toward a NewEnergy History 17 er plants located far from city centers facilitated mass electrification while at the same time making the production of energy, and much of the ecological degradation that came with it, seem invisible to many urban consumers. Nov- el machinery permitted the rise of new coal regions and eroded the power that labor organizations derived from coal, altering the very nature of coal’s poli- tics. Indeed, twentieth-­century coal is an outstanding example of why we need a more capacious understanding of energy transitions, one that captures how old and new energy systems often exist side by side, and how their interaction can lead to mutual intensification and transformation.49 Fourth, energy transitions change the way we think, not just about energy itself but also about larger issues such as political representation, knowledge, and even time, as chapters by Trish Kahle, Natasha Zaretsky, Duccio Basosi, Thomas Turnbull, and Dolores Augustine demonstrate. Because energy tran- sitions are contested processes, with winners and losers, the tensions they gen- erate lead people to reevaluate long-­ standing assumptions that govern society. Entirely new costs associated with emergent forms of energy became apparent during transitions, costs that go beyond economic measures to include hu- man life itself, or the lives of future generations, or the lives of people living in other political spaces in other parts of the world. How should representa- tive democracies handle these spatial and temporal questions, given that only citizens who are currently alive have the right to vote? How should politics handle an energy like nuclear power, which has the potential to threaten not only individual lives but humanity as a species—­ a threat that first appeared with the atomic bomb in 1945? How should the concerns that emerged about Figure I.5: World Commercial Energy Production. 1800–2000. Source: Bruce Podobnik, Global Energy Shifts: Fostering Sustainability in a Turbulent Age (Phila- delphia: Temple University Press, 2006), 6.
  • 33.
    18 NEW ENERGIES thedanger nuclear power posed to the future shape our understandings of the future of global warming? Who, moreover, can be entrusted to provide the knowledge to guide such social decisions, given that established science has itself been one of the forces pushing fossil energy and nuclear power in the first place? These questions have defied easy answer, and the process of trying to answer them has historically transformed the nature of representation and expertise in Europe and North America. Finally, energy transitions can transform the very political and econom- ic geography of a nation or even the world, as chapters by Tate and Schmid demonstrate. Fossil fuels come from the earth, and thus the discovery of new sources can shift the center of production and transform the flow of these com- modities as new networks arise to bring supplies to the consumer. Changes in energy geography, however, can affect more than just prices—­ they can lead to new political alliances, new ways of conceptualizing politics, new relations of dependency or influence, and new secondary effects that outlive the primary reason an energy source was tapped in the first place. The geographical reloca- tion and technological transformation of mining in the United States during the 1960s and 1970s, for instance, transformed the politics of coal as the min- ing workforce migrated from the political Left to the Right. Nuclear energy promised to liberate states from previous forms of foreign influence, but in fact, it just as often created new channels of dependency after crucial parts of this complex technology were monopolized by powerful actors like the United States or the Soviet Union. The concept of energy transition, in other words, if broadened to mean more than just the rise of a new fuel source, can capture the evolving way humans use energy to achieve their many goals. How this evolution funda- mentally changes the nature of society, from the distribution of wealth, power, and inequality, to the way politics, time, and geography are imagined, lies at the heart of this book. Transitions in North America and Europe Geographically, this volume focuses on North America and Europe. We chose these regions partly because they reflect the expertise of the two editors—­ one an Europeanist, the other an Americanist—­ and because we hoped to empha- size depth over breadth of coverage. Energy transitions in the twentieth cen- tury is an enormous topic, and by limiting the geographical scope we hoped to find energy stories that spoke to and built on one another. This constraint al- lows the volume to focus on questions of political economy, culture, and ideol- ogy in the high energy, consumer societies of the Global North, and on issues of labor mobilization related to the procurement and distribution of domestic
  • 34.
    Toward a NewEnergy History 19 energy sources such as coal. Unfortunately, our geographical focus does rule out other important lines of inquiry that research into energy transitions can open up, above all about transnational entanglements and the flow of energy across space. There is a developing literature on the movement of hydrocar- bons from the Middle East or Russia to Europe in the second half of the twen- tieth century, for instance, which traces how the transition to a high energy society in one region shaped extraction, labor relations, or the environment in another. More recently, understanding carbon outsourcing from North America and Europe to the most important energy region in the twenty-­ first century, China, has become increasingly urgent. Both sorts of flows—­ oil to Europe, energy-­ intensive manufacturing out of China—­ represent outstand- ing topics for future research that this volume set aside in its focus on political economy, culture, and ideas in Europe and North America.50 North America and Europe, though, share certain commonalities as the first regions to transform into energy-­intensive consumer societies—­what Da- vid Nye has called “high energy societies.” There is a certain logic, in other words, for uniting histories of these two regions into a single volume on ener- gy transitions. These two regions were the first to experience the energy tran- sitions studied in this volume. Many of the new technologies driving these shifts, from thermal cracking of oil to controlled nuclear fission, were devel- oped in either Europe or North America. More generally, these two continents have been at the forefront of energy consumption. At the turn of the twenti- eth century, North Americans and Europeans already used far more energy per capita than consumers in Asia, Africa, or South America. This gap only widened over the first two-­ thirds of the century as the economies of North America and Europe and their wealth per capita expanded dramatically, as they began burning oil in huge volumes, and as their consumer lifestyles and industrial systems came to depend on ever more energy. By the 1970s, these continents together accounted for over half of global GDP, and their GDP per capita was eight to ten times higher than much of Africa or Asia. These differences between the Global North and Global South appear even starker when examined through the lens of energy. As North America and Europe passed through an unprecedented phase of growth between 1950 and 1973—­ the so-­ called Great Acceleration that saw dramatic increase in many mea- sures, from welfare to life expectancy to fertilizer usage to pollution—­ they widened the gap with other continents. By the 1970s, North Americans and Europeans consumed three-­quarters of all energy produced in the world, even though they numbered less than a quarter of global population. And energy consumption corresponded closely with carbon emissions. Precisely because North America and Europe became the world’s first high-­ energy, oil-­ soaked
  • 35.
    20 NEW ENERGIES societies,they also sparked the onset of global warming. By 1990, when scien- tists began to reach a consensus that fossil fuel use was warming the planet, North America and Europe together were responsible for three-­ quarters of the cumulative human-­ generated carbon in the atmosphere.51 These continents developed such massive carbon footprints because they followed a trajectory of growth that had been energy-­ intensive for two hun- dred years. In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, new technologies of mining and the steam engine permitted the states of Europe and North America to tap energy on a grand scale that had had previously been con- verted by geological forces from organic matter into anthracite, bitumen, and lignite.52 In the twentieth century, North America and Europe deepened this path of energy-­ intensive growth as they led some of the most important ener- gy transitions: the rise of oil at mid-­ century and the concomitant transforma- tion of coal, the technological revolution and state development that led to nu- clear power, and after the 1980s the dispersion of new forms of decentralized, renewable power that potentially challenged fossil fuels. These three twentieth-­ century transitions, plus the shock to the global oil network in the 1970s, are the organizing pillars of New Energies. These two continents, however, channeled energy transitions through different social, political, and cultural institutions, and herein lies part of the novelty of this volume—­ comparing the path and effects of energy shifts across space as well as time Part I, “The Rise of Oil and the Transformation of Coal: Creation, De- struction, and Reinvention,” explores the interaction between energy systems that were based on coal and oil, through an arc of time that stretches from the 1920s to the 1970s. Oil had been used as a fuel throughout history, but during the twentieth century it penetrated into vast new areas of consumer society. With the growth of the lamp oil industry in Burma in the 1800s, and the gusher of crude that exploded near Titusville, Pennsylvania, in 1859, en- trepreneurs had started to commercialize oil on a grand scale. At first oil filled tertiary needs created by the coal-­ fired industrial order of the late nineteenth century—­ lubricating mining machinery, for instance, or providing lighting for cities heated by coal. But by the twentieth century oil began moving out of secondary markets that complemented coal to become a rival to many of coal’s core markets—­ in industry, heating, and chemistry, but above all in transportation with the emergence of inexpensive, gasoline-­ powered automo- biles.53 By the middle of the twentieth century, the oil industry would grow to encompass the entire world with massive multinational petroleum corpora- tions, what contemporaries dubbed the “oil majors,” spreading their networks
  • 36.
    Toward a NewEnergy History 21 across the Middle East, South America, sub-­ Saharan Africa, and Central and Southeast Asia.54 By mid-­ century, if not earlier, North America and Europe consumed oil on a larger scale than anywhere else, apart from particular oil-­ producing countries like Mexico or Saudi Arabia, and economies with entire ecosystems of industry, transportation, and consumer products that revolved around oil first took root. In the process, this new hydrocarbon network reshaped coal systems by putting them under stress. Chapters 1–4 dive into key problematics stemming from this energy transition and interaction between oil and coal, exploring the political economy of interest groups that navigated the rise of oil in France, Germany, and the United States, and tracing how coal producers and workers reacted to the onslaught of this cheap new energy. At first, crude oil had to contend with other rivals to fuel the internal combustion engine, above all biofuels, as Joseph Bohling illustrates in chapter 1. As oil use spread, in some instances coal as an energy system actually declined, as Stephen G. Gross describes in the case of hard coal mining in Germany’s Ruhr in chapter 2. In many other instances, however, coal evolved in response to the new en- ergy landscape, changing in terms of its geography, its uses, and even in how it was extracted and imagined, as Trish Kahle and Ryan Driskell Tate recount in chapters 3 and 4, respectively. And in important respects, coal thrived: as oil brought more growth and accelerated the rise of a high energy society, coal powered the expanding grid that supported new consumer lifestyles. High energy society, in fact, revolved around two icons—­one rooted in oil; the other in coal—­ the car and electricity. Part II, “Oil Transition in Crisis: The 1970s,” follows how the high energy societies of North America and Europe navigated an unprecedented peace- time shock to their energy systems. By the early 1970s, both continents had come to depend on oil for roughly half their total primary energy needs. This fuel facilitated the incredible growth experienced by both sides of the Atlantic after World War II. And by the 1970s, much of this oil came from the Middle East and North Africa: production there influenced prices around the world and provided most of the petroleum consumed in Western Europe. But in the fall of 1973, the foundation of this system was put into question when coun- tries in the Middle East and elsewhere used their newfound market power vis-­ à-­ vis international corporations to raise the price at which they sold crude on the global market fourfold, advancing a bid to wrest back sovereign con- trol over this resource found in their own territory. Chapters 5–8 explore how North Americans and Europeans responded to this “oil shock,” the shadow of which lasted into the 1980s.55 For the crisis posed not only economic and geo-
  • 37.
    22 NEW ENERGIES politicalchallenges to the states of these continents, as Victor McFarland and Henning Türk illustrate in chapters 5 and 7, respectively. It also opened a win- dow of opportunity for these societies to imagine and conceptualize a transi- tion away from fossil fuel–centered, energy-­ intensive growth, as recounted by Duccio Basosi and Thomas Turnbull in chapters 6 and 8, respectively. While this window closed before such a shift could occur, developments in the 1970s nevertheless laid the foundation for later efforts to build a post-­ petroleum world. Part III, “A Stalled Transition? Nuclear Energy’s Dilemmas and Possi- bilities,” explores a twentieth-­ century energy transition that was never fully realized: the turn toward nuclear power. As with the spread of oil and the transformation of coal, North America and Europe commenced a nuclear energy transition before other regions, by crafting the scientific networks, political institutions, and infrastructure to commercialize this new source of electricity. American and European scientists first theorized about splitting the atom before World War II; they weaponized these ideas with the atom- ic bomb during the war; and after 1945 they, along with the Japanese, first linked nuclear reactors to the grid. As a result, these societies were some of the first to grapple with the unprecedented nature of atomic power, which posed an existential threat to humankind while at the same time offering hope of radically improving life, satisfying the world’s energy needs at all times, and opening pathways for resource-­ poor states to achieve geopolitical auton- omy from the fossil fuel networks that had emerged over the preceding cen- tury. The contributions by Sonja D. Schmid, Natasha Zaretsky, and Dolores L. Augustine in chapters 9, 10, and 11, respectively, explore the contradictions generated by this new energy, following the rise of nuclear utopianism in the 1950s, the vast plans for nuclear expansion in the wake of the oil shock, and the erosion of that momentum as a result of cost problems, safety issues, and grassroots movements. These chapters provide a counterview to convention- al narratives by illustrating how atomic power generated new anxieties that revolved around human reproduction, and focusing on issues often left unex- plored in traditional energy histories, such as political representation, gender, the nature of expertise, and the path dependencies generated by technological transfers. Part IV, “The Transition off Fossil Fuels: Challenges and Possibilities,” completes the volume by discussing the origins and challenges of what could be the next great energy transition, the shift off fossil fuels toward renewables. Even though solar and wind power have histories that began well before the twentieth century, environmental historians often portray the 1970s as the de- cade of origin for modern renewable energy.56 The dramatic spike in oil prices,
  • 38.
    Toward a NewEnergy History 23 the fears of resource exhaustion, and the surging environmental movement led certain groups to seek salvation in new sources of energy that could be re- plenished. But as chapters 12 and 13 illustrate, this process was far more com- plex and less linear than most narratives suggest, and here again, questions of price and efficiency are only part of the story. In fact, the 1980s and the 1990s emerge as crucial decades in the history of renewables and their relationship with fossil fuels. For the initial desire to cultivate wind and solar in the 1970s came more from fears that the world would run out of hydrocarbons, not that burning hydrocarbons would generate catastrophic climate change from too much fossil fuels. When a wave of new oil discoveries shattered the market power of OPEC in the early 1980s, causing oil prices to plummet, this initial raison d’être for renewables disintegrated. But, as Benjamin Franta recounts in chapter 12, well before this moment the oil industry realized global warm- ing was a likely outcome of their business model, and they began generating knowledge to counteract the moment when climate change would become po- liticized. That moment came in the 1980s with the consolidation of scientific knowledge that showed fossil fuel–induced global warming was real. Only in the 1990s, however, with the emergence of social movements, political institu- tions, and interest groups to support renewables, as these Eva Oberloskamp il- lustrates in chapter 13, did the transition toward solar and wind gain momen- tum. This story is still being written, with its most pivotal chapter yet to come, since fossil fuel consumption in much of North America and Europe, and the world for that matter, remains undiminished by solar and wind. Indeed, what distinguishes the hoped-­for transition to renewables from most previous transitions is that to actually address global warming, the new system must not just transform, but radically dismantle the old energy system. This has few precedents in history. Overall, the aim of New Energies is to move beyond a narrow and linear conception of energy transitions. We hope to show how energy transitions are a rich, multifaceted line of inquiry that can bring different types of history to- gether, and how those studying contemporary energy affairs can benefit from a more detailed understanding the complex, nonlinear, and highly contested nature of energy transitions from the past. This volume illustrates how tran- sitions are long affairs that take decades to unfold, rarely have finite starting and ending points, and are characterized by advances as well as backtracking and changes in entirely unpredictable directions. It underscores the persist- ing influence of older energy forms, like coal, whose supporters have histor- ically found ways to overcome challenges and adapt to new circumstances. It shows how important interest groups, coalitions, counter-­ experts, states, and grassroots actors have been to the success of new energy systems—­ that
  • 39.
    24 NEW ENERGIES alldoes not hinge on technology and price. It shows how particular moments or constellations of circumstances have emerged to create the opportunity for change, and how quickly those moments can vanish. Lastly, it highlights just how profoundly our experience with energy shapes almost every facet of life, from democratic governance to the environment that surrounds us to even how we think about human reproduction.
  • 40.
    25 Part I THE RISEOF OIL AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF COAL Creation, Destruction, and Reinvention The first energy transition in twentieth-­century Europe and the United States was also the most profound. Globally, oil use experienced a me- teoric expansion that rivaled in its astounding pace the rise of coal during the preceding century. Oil’s share of total global energy first crested 5 per- cent in 1915, and within just sixty years it hit 40 percent.1 After engineers and corporations wedded the internal combustion engine to gasoline, a process that was far from inevitable, oil producers found a ravenous new market for their product in the form of the car industry. New uses for petroleum soon followed, including fuel oil to heat homes and run machinery, synthetic fertil- izers for large-­ scale agriculture, and raw materials for the chemical industry. Automobiles threatened public transportation that ran on coal, while other applications for petroleum encroached on a variety of markets once fueled by hard coal and lignite. On both sides of the Atlantic, coal and oil found themselves locked in an intense contest that not only led to wrenching social transformations, but that would change the politics, the moral economy, and the economic geography of these two continents. This contest played out at very different tempos and resulted in very dif- ferent outcomes in North America and Western Europe, illustrating how this energy transition was far from inevitable and hinged on much more than just
  • 41.
    26 NEW ENERGIES prices.Though some scholars point to price as the key factor leading to pe- troleum’s rise, the question of when the price of oil fell below that of coal is still unsettled and differs by region. In British thermal units (BTU), the price of coal actually remained lower than crude through much of the 1950s. Most price comparisons, however, do little to explore the cost of distribution and transportation, which began to favor oil with the construction of pipeline net- works at midcentury. In Europe, by 1958 at the latest, when the first major coal crisis erupted, the price of using fuel oil had fallen below that of coal. In the United States, that tipping point came sooner.2 Energy prices in North America and Europe during the middle of the twentieth century, however, were hardly determined by market forces alone. Coal’s challenges, in other words, had little to do with scarcity: in the twen- tieth century, more coal was mined than ever before. In the United States, informal and formal quotas on foreign oil combined with domestic regulation to keep oil prices higher than they otherwise would have been. Europe, mean- while, had different oil regimes in nearly every nation, ranging from state-­ controlled pricing in France to relatively free prices in postwar West Ger- many. But even here, in what contemporaries called the most liberal energy market in the world, prices were free relative to France, but not compared to any model of a competitive market economy, as Stephen G. Gross points out in chapter 2. In any case, the international oil companies that delivered crude to Europe determined their prices through negotiation with the producer coun- tries and through offtake agreements with each other. From 1930 until 1973, the international price of crude followed a remarkably straight line, indicating how little market forces held sway. As a pioneering study on American energy history concluded, using language that could equally apply to Europe, “Rarely since 1945 have producers, consumers, or their political representatives been willing to rely on price for the restoration of equilibrium.”3 Throughout this period, in fact, the price of energy was determined as much by politics or interest groups as by supply and demand. Nation-­ states had very good reason to advance oil, beginning with war. World War I illus- trated the geopolitical benefits of mobility that could be gained from support- ing militaries by trucks and gasoline instead of rail and coal, and securing oil became a major strategic aim of the conflict. Meanwhile, between 1916 and 1922, the coal industry experienced some of the most strained labor relations in its history, as miners across Europe and the United States clamored for bet- ter conditions like the eight-­ hour workday and higher pay. War underscored just how different the production structures of coal and oil were, and how the latter could more easily be controlled by capital and the state. Where coal production required mass labor that could leverage key choke points in the
  • 42.
    The Rise ofOil and the Transformation of Coal 27 extraction process, oil production at this moment was capital-­ intensive, and at least in North America and Europe, its workers were relatively well-­ paid.4 After 1918, geopolitics and the quest for economic and social stability led to a scramble for what would become the world’s largest source of crude, the Middle East. While British, French, and Dutch companies initially held the upper hand, American companies gained access to this new center of global oil with the Red Line Agreement in 1928. But they succeeded only with exten- sive support from their government, including diplomatic pressure applied by the Department of State on America’s allies, and a depletion allowance that allowed firms to deduct the entire market value of oil properties from their tax bill. State support for oil accelerated during and after the World War II, above all in the United States, which boasted five of the world’s seven largest oil companies. In 1943 the US government cooperated with private companies in building the world’s longest oil pipeline, linking Texas to the Northeast. In 1947 the United States waived its antitrust laws to allow its largest oil firms to merge into ARAMCO to exploit the huge fields of Saudi Arabia. That same year President Harry S. Truman established a security umbrella in Turkey and Greece that cordoned the Middle East off from Soviet encroachment. Oil’s rise, in other words, was an affair of the state as much as it was one of private enterprise.5 Even before 1945, the fortunes of oil in the United States and Europe diverged. In the former, the transition to oil took off in the 1920s with the gasoline-­ powered internal combustion engine. Despite its high energy den- sity, gasoline was never preordained to fuel the automobile, as Joseph Boh- ling illustrates in chapter 1. Electric engines were cleaner and quieter; steam-­ powered ones more reliable. Gasoline-­ powered cars, meanwhile, suffered from a range of technical problems and had to compete with biofuels. Despite the European origins of early automobile innovations, it was the American Henry Ford, an organizational genius and anti-­ Semite, who unleashed the automobile revolution when he fit the internal combustion engine into a car that middle-­ class consumers could afford. In his new assembly line plants, powered by electricity, he began producing more automobiles than all other carmakers combined. Between 1914 and 1920, the number of registered cars in the United States exploded from 1.8 million to 9.2 million. In Ford’s licensed dealerships, consumers encountered industrial abundance along with the Dearborn Independent, the Ford-­ owned newspaper warning of global Jewish conspiracy that dealers were required to distribute. As with oil exploration, infrastructure for the gasoline-­ powered car de- pended on the state. In the midst of World War I, the United States unveiled its first federal highway funding act, devoting millions of dollars to connect
  • 43.
    28 NEW ENERGIES ruralregions with cities.At nearly the same time, California set off on its path of becoming the world icon for suburban sprawl by pursuing a road-­ building project financed by user fees. Thus even before the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act of 1956, the United States had become home to the oil-­car nexus.6 In Europe, oil and the car spread much more slowly. In the 1920s, no less than 80 percent of the world’s automobiles existed in the United States. Gaso- line use and automobile ownership were held back in Europe by a number of structural forces, including a lower standard of living, the Great Depression, and powerful interest groups advocating other automotive fuels, as Bohling demonstrates in chapter 1. After 1945, Europe began following America’s en- ergy trajectory. The Marshall Plan, which devoted funds toward oil use and re- finery construction, stimulated this trajectory. But it was only after the thirty years of incredible postwar growth had already commenced, in the late 1950s and 1960s, that Western Europe built the pipeline, refinery, and road network that transformed oil into a mass consumer fuel, spurred by an activist state in even the most liberal of economies, as Gross illustrates in chapter 2.7 The oil-­ car nexus, however, brought upheaval alongside welfare and mo- bility as cars undercut coal-­based rail and public transport. Soon fuel oil, once a byproduct of the process that made gasoline, became a commodity of its own that challenged markets hitherto dominated by coal. This energy rivalry unfolded in the United States earlier than in Europe, but on both continents it overlapped with dynamics internal to the production of coal to precipitate a transformation in how this solid fossil fuel was mined and used. The pro- cess began in World War I, which drove American coal mines to overexpand and begin to mechanize and electrify production with mechanical cutters and underground conveyor belts. Over the coming decades the mechanization of coal mining would dramatically raise the output per worker. Miners fought the introduction of these new techniques because mechanization threatened to reduce the workforce but also because of the danger it imposed on the workplace through noise, harmful dust, and the heightened risk of cave-­ ins. Nevertheless, during the 1920s and 1930s, the mechanization of subterranean mines advanced dramatically across the United States and much of Europe: in the former over 90 percent of mines were mechanized by the eve of World War II; in the latter roughly half were. After 1918, the return to peacetime pro- duction, the Great Depression, and the gradual conversion of shipping from coal to diesel oil—­ the first oceangoing diesel liners appeared in 1912—­ hurt demand for coal even as mechanization allowed more coal to come from fewer workers. The result was a dramatic collapse in the mining workforce that hit the United States first, then later Europe. By 1939, only 530,000 people worked
  • 44.
    The Rise ofOil and the Transformation of Coal 29 in America’s mines, down from a postwar peak of 860,000. After 1945, decline turned into collapse, as strikes increased the political volatility of this energy, as mechanization of open-­ pit strip mines advanced, and as oil eroded more of the traditional markets for coal when railways began converting to die- sel motors. When coal employment finally stabilized shortly after 1960 fewer than 200,000 Americans worked in the mines, less than a quarter of the peak workforce thirty-­ five years earlier. Similar trends emerged in Europe, though largely after 1945.8 Coal, however, reinvented itself during the 1960s and 1970s, illustrating how energy transitions involve the transformation of old systems as well as the rise of new ones. The sector passed through a technological, geographical, and labor transformation that entirely changed coal’s politics, as Trish Kahle and Ryan Driskell Tate illustrate in chapters 3 and 4, respectively. By the 1960s, the United States had become a high energy society, as industry expanded and as a welter of new consumer products became affordable to the middle class. Many of these new household items ran on electricity, such as refriger- ators, toasters, washers, driers, and televisions. Industry, too, used ever more electricity as mechanized production and assembly line techniques spread, and with them the need for power. Between 1950 and 1970 the United States’ demand for electricity more than quadrupled, and utilities became the largest industry by capital assets in the United States, generating as much power as the Soviet Union, Japan, West Germany, and Canada combined. Electricity consumption provided a huge market for coal even as its traditional ones were drying up. Coal, in other words, became primarily a source of electrical pow- er: in the 1960s roughly half of all coal went to fuel power plants; by 2000 that figure had risen to over nine-­ tenths.9 As electricity became the “lifeblood” of the nation, Kahle shows in chap- ter 3, miners were able to stake new claims about safety and moral economy, claims that cemented coal as an indispensable component of the nation’s en- ergy between 1969 and 1972. Accelerating the reinvention of American coal were novel, mechanized strip-­ mining techniques that opened up entirely new areas of exploitation and shifted the geographical heart of coal country from Appalachia to the Powder River Basin of Wyoming and Montana. With guid- ance from corporate leaders, as Tate illustrates in chapter 4, this new tech- nology forged a nonunionized workforce that was imbued with an entirely different identity and politics than miners in the Appalachian Mountains. In the United States, coal became more like oil as formerly labor-­ intensive oper- ations gave way to capital-­ intensive ones that disassociated mining from the organized, East Coast workforce, and shifted miners politically to the Right. Where coal reinvented itself in the United States during the 1960s and
  • 45.
    30 NEW ENERGIES 1970s,in Europe during these same years the oil transition generated social effects that were as wrenching as what came with the oil shock of 1973. Cer- tain types of coal production collapsed entirely, while other types flourished, as Gross illustrates in chapter 2 through a narrative the collapse of hard coal mining Germany’s industrial heartland of the Ruhr. Hard coal there and in Belgium and northern France was becoming increasingly expensive as miners had to dig shafts ever deeper to tap new seams. Meanwhile, with the develop- ment of Middle East oil fields just several hundred miles from the shores of southern Europe, international petroleum companies were awash with cheap crude and in search of an outlet. The result was an astounding decline in Eu- ropean hard coal production that shattered what had been a main branch of employment for nearly a century. Massive government intervention avoid- ed social catastrophe. But this came with a huge price tag for taxpayers. In the United States, Wyoming and Montana had accessible hard coal near the surface. Europe had no such easy access hard coal seams. Instead, as domes- tic hard coal collapsed parts of Europe embraced the surface mining of soft lignite, the most sulfurous form of coal. With the application of the largest machines in the world—­ bucket-­ wheel excavators that scoop out thousands of tons of topsoil a day—­ lignite mines in Germany and Poland expanded to pro- vide a stable share of Central Europe’s growing demand for electricity since the 1970s and 1980s. With this expansion came more carbon emissions as well as other forms of particulate pollution with significant consequences for local environments and public health. Together, the chapters in this section suggest new ways of understanding our current transition toward renewables. In chapter 1 Bohling illustrates just how important coalitions, political struggles, and policy linkages are for pro- pelling or stalling the rise of a new energy. If a diverse alliance of winegrowers, farmers, engineers, and state officials could hinder the onslaught of gasoline in interwar France by raising concerns of energy dependency, what coalitions could be rallied in the name of reducing oil and coal use today, and to what other political goals can a green transition be linked? Gross illustrates how states can guide the collapse of an energy system. The sunk capital in West Germany’s hard coal sector in the 1960s resembles the issue of stranded as- sets that is arising in the fossil fuel industry today as renewable power makes sufficient headway. The West German state forged a type of bad bank to take on these failing assets at great public expense, but this maneuver deflated resistance from mineowners and gave government officials a say over what mines to shut down and when. Would a similar framework work today on a global scale for hydrocarbons? In chapter 3 Kahle, through an examination of the suffering endured by Appalachian miners, reminds us of the disparity
  • 46.
    The Rise ofOil and the Transformation of Coal 31 between the human cost of producing fossil fuels and the social and economic benefits that have rested on their consumption. Those advocating for a transi- tion to renewables might find success by highlighting not only the ecological but also the moral failings of fossil energy, and by seeking a just transition to an energy system that no longer hinges on the endangerment of human life. In chapter 4, finally, Tate shows how particular energies can become linked to identities, and it follows that phasing out an energy will be challenging precisely because this might put the identity of entire communities at risk. In Wyoming’s coal fields, mineowners associated coal to white working-­ class, rural culture, a bond that remains to this day. Any effort to end coal must consequently grapple with this hard question of losing or changing a commu- nity’s identity.
  • 48.
    one THE OIL FROMOUR SOIL French Alcohol Fuel versus Foreign Oil, 1918–1957 Joseph Bohling At the close of World War I, Henry Bérenger, head of the French government’s Petroleum Committee, went before an international group of industrialists, bureaucrats, and politicians to share his prediction that “as oil had been the blood of war, so it would be the blood of peace . . . At this hour, at the beginning of the peace, our civilian populations, our businesses, our commerce, our agriculture demand more oil, always more oil—more gasoline, always more gasoline.”1 Bérenger had good reason to make such an appeal, for he was all too aware of France’s lack of oil. The French army had faced severe oil shortages late in a war whose outcome was largely determined by the ability of a nation to fuel its fleet of airplanes, ships, trucks, and tanks. Bérenger knew that victory had depended less on French blood and valor than on American oil. This scene reinforces the conventional narrative that World War I ushered in the “century of oil,” for France as for other industrialized countries, be- cause it raised awareness about the need to secure oil supplies to fuel modern armies, economies, and state power.2 This narrative, however, is compelling only in retrospect. Over the last couple of decades, scholars have restored con- flict to analyses of the global oil transition, focusing especially on the battle that was waged between oil and coal.3 Yet arguably less attention has been devoted to another of oil’s early competitors, biofuels like ethanol and other
  • 49.
    34 NEW ENERGIES alcoholfuels, in propelling the newly invented internal combustion engine.4 Scholars have assumed that the motor vehicle revolution inevitably led to the oil transition.5 The consequence of this assumption has been to dismiss biofu- els, either explicitly or implicitly, as impractical, without understanding how they came to be seen as such. Against the standard narrative, then, this article contends that gasoline’s journey to becoming the most viable energy source for fueling engines was neither predetermined nor inevitable. Among the countries where the gasoline-biofuel debate was especially intense was France, one of the industrialized world’s smallest oil-producing countries and the largest alcohol-producing country. Until the mid-1950s, oil was found in small quantities in places like Pechelbronn in northeastern France and was still largely undiscovered in the French colonies. France’s in- ternational oil infrastructure was still in its early stages of development. With- in the metropole, French refineries employed approximately twelve thousand persons.6 Alcohol, on the other hand, was found in large quantities throughout the countryside and the colonies. In a country with a metropolitan population of forty-two million in the 1930s, an astonishing seven million were reported- ly either directly or indirectly employed in the alcohol industry.7 Those with a stake in the alcohol fuel included especially the powerful beet cultivators and winegrowers. Frequent surplus crises gripped this well-organized communi- ty. In their search for new outlets for these surpluses, beet and wine producers proposed the creation of an alcohol fuel that would also limit France’s foreign oil dependency. This chapter examines the motor fuel debate at two critical moments in France’s transition to gasoline-powered vehicles: the interwar years and the immediate post–World War II years. After each war, a range of groups—en- gineers; scientists; economists; political scientists; farmers; the oil industry; the automobile, trucking, and tourism industries; and politicians and bu- reaucrats—debated the pros and cons of foreign oil dependency. While in the interwar years, the alcohol fuel was seen as a viable alternative to imported oil, after World War II, it was marginalized and then nearly entirely removed from the fuel mix. Why was alcohol adopted as a fuel, then marginalized? After 1945, scientific reports on energy choices concluded that alcohol fuel was inefficient and uneconomical. Yet these reports elided the sociopolitical context in which such choices were embedded. While gasoline would come to have certain technical and economic advantages over alcohol fuel, these were not seen as advantages until a particular political constellation made them so. New ideas, interests, and alliances operating in a new context ultimately ren- dered alcohol fuel less efficient and less economical than gasoline. The question of whether to include alcohol in the fuel mix, then, was
  • 50.
    The Oil fromOur Soil 35 never simply a technical question about its compatibility with engines or an economic question about its cost, even if decisions about engine design and calculations about cost would ultimately open up some fuel possibilities and close down others. The outcome of the motor fuel debate was determined by political struggles over who had the right to shape energy policy: politicians who were bound to their constituencies, or technocrats who claimed to speak more objectively on behalf of the “national interest”? Each group, based on its own assumptions, interests, and vision of future France, had different ways of defining fuel “cost.” The fuel debate thus ran deeper still, as it was shaped by but also helped change France’s economic orientation and political insti- tutions as the country urbanized, motorized, and sought greater centralized control over its energy supplies. The Interwar Motor Fuel Debate Conventional wisdom says that the battlefields of World War I laid the groundwork for oil’s global preeminence. At that time, motor vehicles over- took horses and trains in waging war. This narrative, polished by hindsight, is not so neat when seen from the perspective of policy debates at the time. It is true that during the war, French policymakers became aware that both the army and the economy were growing increasingly reliant on the internal combustion engine to move machines, men, and material. Consequently, they grew anxious about how to fuel these engines. How to fuel them, however, was still very much open to debate throughout the interwar years. Obstacles stood in the way of a full-scale shift to oil in France. First, neither metropolitan France nor its colonies were known to contain much oil. Most attempts at prospecting for oil had failed. In 1918 metropolitan oil amounted to only 12 percent of France’s fuel needs; in 1938, once the motor vehicle rev- olution had begun to accelerate, domestic supply covered only 1 percent of those needs.8 Oil exploration intensified in the colonies during the interwar period, but the Great Depression and World War II hindered major discov- eries.9 Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, France depended on oil that came from the Middle East, Romania, and the United States, and whose supplies were largely controlled by American, British, and Dutch oil companies, the so-called majors.10 Second, policymakers expressed concern about French dependency on for- eign companies like Standard Oil and Royal Dutch/Shell for both security and economic reasons. Oil shortages and reliance on American supplies during World War I haunted interwar thinking. After 1918, these multinational com- panies abandoned their role as mere oil suppliers and moved into the retail field by buying up French companies, making them subsidiaries, and investing
  • 51.
    36 NEW ENERGIES substantialsums of money in France. They had close contacts in the French government and influenced public opinion through newspapers.11 France paid these companies two to three billion francs per year, thus adversely affecting France’s balance of payments, a problem that became especially acute during the Great Depression.12 This dependency induced anxieties about economic stagnation, national defense, and the erosion of state sovereignty, and incit- ed policymakers to devise a national fuel strategy and look for alternatives to oil. To check the influence of the majors and protect state sovereignty, a young generation emerged that fought to build a national oil industry. These “new men,” as they have been retrospectively dubbed (as opposed to the “old men” who opposed oil), included influential economic strategists, men with such varied political outlooks as Francis Delaisi, Ernest Mercier, and Lou- is Loucheur. In 1924 the French government encouraged the creation of the partly state-owned French Oil Company (CFP).13 In 1925 state officials created the National Office of Combustible Fuels, which was responsible primarily for supervising the oil industry but also for researching engine technology. Through legislation, especially a 1928 law, state officials aimed to curtail the “Anglo-Saxon trusts” by developing the French share of Romanian and Mid- dle East oil, by prospecting for oil in the colonies, and by building a refining industry on French soil.14 State control of the oil market extended to authoriz- ing the opening of new gas stations, which allowed state agents to monitor the kinds of gasoline on sale.15 These measures indicated that state officials and businessmen were starting to take an interest in building an oil industry, even if their commitment to it was hesitant and would pale in comparison to that of the post-1945 years. Significantly, oil activists like Delaisi, Mercier, and Loucheur tended to see the development of a national oil industry as contingent upon a larger restruc- turing of the country’s economic and political system. Many of these activists participated in the technocratic movement that emerged in the interwar years, a movement that was highly critical of parliamentary lawmaking. In their view, Parliament failed to take decisive action against the economic and social turmoil of the period. These oil activists and technocrats attacked the overall “Malthusian” mindset of France’s business and political class that was reluc- tant to venture further into creating an oil industry that would help liberate France from foreign oil companies.16 Moreover, the Budget Department of the Ministry of Finance refused to fund oil exploration.17 For these “new men,” the sluggish development of a national oil industry was a sign of state weakness. The third obstacle to the oil transition in France was the inability of engi- neers and scientists to arrive at a consensus on gasoline’s compatibility with
  • 52.
    The Oil fromOur Soil 37 motors. Across the industrialized world, they continued to experiment with different fuels, and gasoline did not always produce the best results. At the time, gasoline was often low octane and led to engine knock, an unpleasant noise that occurs when fuel is improperly ignited and that can damage the engine. Moreover, at a high compression, gasoline could cause engines to ex- plode. Nevertheless, in the United States, engine design slowly began to solid- ify around gasoline due to a combination of scientific developments and oil lobbying.18 While American automobile engineers had tested different engine prototypes with alcohol, diesel, and steam, these engines were being built with low compression ratios in order to accommodate low-octane gasoline. The growing preference for gasoline had little to do with its superiority to alcohol fuel; rather, it hinged on the fact that in order to work with either fuel, early vehicles had to be designed to consume the less powerful of the two, which was gasoline. Over the long term, this ultimately worked against alcohol fuel. Given that they had been designed for gasoline, lower-compression engines did not perform as well when run on alcohol.19 Changes in American gasoline manufacture in the 1920s would give fur- ther advantages to gasoline. Improvements in thermal-cracking technology were beginning to help refiners produce greater gasoline yields, and the in- troduction of tetraethyl lead, a relatively cheap way to combat engine knock, nullified the octane-boosting advantages of alcohol.20 In France, however, en- gineers were slow to follow American developments because few businesses or state officials wished to invest in the new technology, because scientists showed concern about lead’s noxious fumes,21 and because France lacked do- mestic oil. Engine design in France did not solidify around any one fuel con- figuration in the interwar years, thus further obstructing the oil transition. The geopolitical, economic, and technical uncertainties surrounding gaso- line led engineers and scientists to experiment with alternative fuels like alco- hol. Already at the turn of the twentieth century, they had conducted the first tests with alcohol fuel and had concluded in favor of it.22 More experiments were conducted after World War I. In 1921 the French government created the Scientific Committee of National Fuels, which comprised France’s scien- tific elite. The committee ran trials and weighed alcohol fuel’s weaknesses, such as its relatively low energy density and its tendency to clog fuel lines and carburetors, against its strengths, such as its anti-knock and high-octane properties that were missing in gasoline. The committee concluded that “the alcohol-gasoline blend could be employed without any inconvenience in all the automobile motors built for being fueled by gasoline alone.”23 Despite the imperfections of both alcohol fuel and gasoline, most scientists agreed that a 50 percent alcohol–50 percent gasoline blend, what its proponents called a
  • 53.
    38 NEW ENERGIES “nationalfuel,” was the optimal blend because it corrected each fuel’s flaws.24 In 1935, as the United States was turning away from ethanol, the liberal econ- omists at L’économiste français, who were otherwise critical of agricultural protectionism, called the alcohol-gasoline mixture “perfect.”25 Finally, in 1938, at a time when military officials were once again growing concerned about secure energy supplies, another prominent fuel specialist observed that oil importers, who had previously been opposed to alcohol fuel, now appreciat- ed its nonexplosive and high-octane properties.26 Technical conclusions were clouded by political concerns. Alcohol fuel also seemed to serve long-term security and economic inter- ests. Numerous geological reports suggested that in twenty years worldwide oil production would no longer be able to assure the gasoline necessary to fuel the rapidly increasing fleet of motor vehicles.27 In the United States, the Federal Oil Conservation Board issued a report in 1932 that expected the de- pletion of known oil reserves within ten to twelve years and argued that al- cohol was an essential renewable fuel source.28 A French oil expert declared that “three generations will suffice to see oil rise and fall.”29 Another French observer wondered “if gasoline really is exhausted and if the large trusts will refuse to deliver it, we’ll either have to pay an exorbitant price or replace it with alcohol.”30 Given the fear that the industrialized world would quickly exhaust the earth’s oil supplies, officials looked to alternatives like alcohol fuel. Given these security concerns, and especially the support that it would bring to farmers, Parliament incrementally set up an agency (here called the state alcohol agency) between World War I and 1935 that was based at the Ministry of Finance and that purchased alcohol surpluses and found outlets for them. The alcohol-gasoline–based national fuel was among those outlets. The French government sold the national fuel for thirty francs less per hecto- liter than gasoline, even though government calculations showed that it cost thirty-five francs more than gasoline to make.31 Alcohol tended to be expensive to produce because it required an organized labor force and large amounts of fertilizer and because the distilleries burned coal imported from neighboring countries like Great Britain and Germany. The government surtaxed oil and alcoholic beverages to make up for the losses it incurred on alcohol fuel.32 As we will see, after World War II, these surtaxes on oil and drinks would mobi- lize consumer groups against alcohol fuel. Significantly, interwar calculations of the cost of both alcohol and oil included the long-term security factor and reflected the important place of farmers in French economic and social life. Alcohol’s value did not simply reflect an objective understanding of its
  • 54.
    The Oil fromOur Soil 39 fuel potential; rather, its value was shaped by the structure of political power, which in the Third Republic (1870–1940) was dominated by Parliament, where agricultural interests were well entrenched. Alcohol producers were tightly organized, had support across the political spectrum, and had a dispropor- tionate amount of influence in Parliament. State officials were aware that when alcohol producers could not find enough buyers, producers took to the streets. In 1907, for instance, five hundred thousand strong had descended on Montpellier, the heartland of wine production. Protests erupted episodically throughout the 1920s and 1930s, causing regional economic paralysis and thus political problems in Paris. It should come as no surprise, then, that interwar research on alcohol fuel was led by Édouard Barthe, a socialist parliamentari- an from wine country. Immediately after the war, Barthe was named the state’s fuel commissioner. The fact that state officials nominated Barthe suggests just how much power the alcohol industry possessed and how much interest the political elite had in alcohol fuel as a way to curb foreign oil dependency. Even Bérenger, France’s most prominent oil activist of the 1920s, and someone who was far removed from agricultural politics, did not see oil and alcohol as an- tagonistic.33 One commentator believed that the oil industry could help make alcohol fuel a viable option: French oil industrialists “are as wealthy as anyone in capital, in factories, and in laboratories to experiment with [fuel] blends and motors.”34 Barthe and his allies, then, carried much influence over how alcohol fuel was perceived given the large number of citizens with a stake in the alcohol industry and their power over Parliament. To win over policymakers and the wider public to their plight, Barthe and his followers evoked a potent image: that of the “Anglo-Saxon trusts” threaten- ing the French peasantry. Fear of the inherent superiority of the Anglo-Saxon race was a long-standing trope in French political culture.35 In deploying this rhetoric, alcohol producers mobilized a number of different and sometimes antagonistic groups. Other raucous and powerful agricultural interest groups that hoped to obtain similar protection threw their support behind the state alcohol agency. Since the 1920s, Barthe had claimed that alcohol fuel would help France “escape the hegemony of the great worldwide trusts” and “in- crease the financial and economic strength of the nation by the limitless de- velopment of the richness of its soil.” A deputy from the northern beet-grow- ing region thanked Barthe for “the fine fight he had waged for twenty years on behalf of industrial alcohol.” The main farm lobby called alcohol protec- tion an “enormous advance for all French agriculture.” Finally, the minister of finance claimed that alcohol fuel boosted “France’s domestic finances and her foreign-exchange balance.”36 Alcohol fuel thus rallied various agricultural
  • 55.
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  • 56.
    was blowing fromthe village, but even that did not wholly explain the phenomenon, since the various noises were so markedly distinct. Finally, Vernon concluded, and no doubt was correct in his conjecture, that the narrow gorge acted as a kind of telephone, which, with the aid of the steady wind blowing up its length, conducted the sounds accurately. The discovery amused the young man, and he sat where he was for a considerable time trying to distinguish between the several noises. Later in the day he decided to get Lucy to sit on the dam and then from the bottom of the gorge a mile away to call out and see if she could understand what he was saying. The experiment would be both scientific and interesting. For quite an hour Vernon waited, but no Hokar put in an appearance. He then spent another hour in walking slowly round the reservoir, and finally, without having seen a single person, he returned to luncheon. At the meal Colonel Towton mentioned that he had written a note to Miss Hest stating that the visit would be paid at three o'clock. "And I have given orders for a room to be got ready for Ida next to yours, Lady Corsoon," said the Colonel. "I doubt if Ida will come," sighed his guest. "She is singularly obstinate in having her own way. What she can see in that woman is a puzzle to me." "Miss Hest is very clever," remarked Lucy, "but there is something about her that I do not like." "For instance?" queried Vernon bending forward. "I can hardly say," said the girl thoughtfully. "She is clever and agreeable and quite well-bred. Yet she seems to be--be-- dangerous." "I think that word applies more to Maunders than to Miss Hest," observed Towton, "although I am bound to say that Miss Hest does not satisfy me in many ways. She is too masterful. Dangerous, no. I should not describe her as dangerous, Miss Corsoon."
  • 57.
    "I should, andI do, Colonel. I may be wrong, but the first time I met Miss Hest at 'Rangoon' she gave me that impression." "One should never go against impressions," said Vernon gravely; "They are the instincts of the soul." "Nonsense," contradicted Lady Corsoon vigorously. "I'm sure when I first met my husband I could not bear him, and my mother had simply to drive me to the altar. Yet I married him, and I'm sure we are a most attached pair." The gentlemen were too well-bred to smile at this statement, yet it secretly amused both. Everyone knew that the undeniable good feeling which existed between Sir Julius and his wife was mainly due to their diverse interests in life, which kept them more or less apart. Lady Corsoon was always fluttering about as a society butterfly, while Sir Julius remained constantly in the City, earning money for her to spend. It was little credit to either that they were civil to one another on the rare occasions when they met. Cain and Abel themselves would not have quarrelled when only meeting--as the saying goes--once in a blue moon But Lady Corsoon felt quite certain that she was a model wife and a typical British matron (new style), and prattled on about her domestic happiness until it was time to start for Gerby Hall. "Vernon will escort you two ladies," said Towton, who was in riding kit, and exhibited a more youthful air than usual. "I can follow." "You won't ride to Gatehead until you have called at the Hall," urged Lady Corsoon; "for I may need you to insist upon Ida coming to The Grange." "I shall assuredly be at Gerby Hall in half an hour, more or less," replied the Colonel quietly. "But I should not think of insisting upon Ida becoming my guest unless she honours me of her own free will with a visit."
  • 58.
    "Oh, nonsense," saidLady Corsoon pettishly. "When you know how infatuated she is with this woman Hest." And all the way down the winding road she lamented that Ida was so impossible, and the owner of Gerby Hall so second-rate. "For she is second-rate," finished Lady Corsoon triumphantly. "I always said so, and would say so with my dying breath." In due time the trio arrived at the gloomy Hall, and were shown by the fat maid into the dingy drawing-room. It was less chill and dismal on this occasion, as the windows were wide open and the warm breath of the day stole in to ameliorate the damp atmosphere, as did the sunshine to lighten the darkness. In the glare of day the furniture looked quite faded, and the hangings extremely shabby; but there was something dignified about the ancient room which impressed even Lady Corsoon. "A very quaint old place," she said surveying it through her lorgnette; "but damp. They ought to have a fire in the grate." "They couldn't very well have it anywhere else, mamma," giggled Lucy. "My dear, pray do not afflict me with your cheap wit. You perfectly well understand my meaning. I shall take this chair, as the light tries my eyes." So saying she selected a seat with its back to the windows, but less to preserve her eyesight than to prevent Miss Hest from seeing too plain evidence of her age. She throned herself in the spacious chair with the air of a queen, and assumed a dignified mein as the door opened to admit Ida and her hostess. Lady Corsoon's first remark was scarcely polite. "You _do_ look ill, Ida," she said submitting her cheek to a kiss, "and more than twice your age. Miss Hest, what have you been doing with her?"
  • 59.
    "Trying to comforther," replied Frances drily. "But you can scarcely expect an affectionate girl like Ida to lose her father and not show some signs of grief." "Signs of fiddlestick, if you will excuse the expression. It's want of food and cheerful company, to say nothing of living in this vault." "Thank you, Lady Corsoon. I find the house of my ancestors very comfortable." "I think not," replied the visitor rudely. "Quaint, as I have already observed, old-world and interesting to an antiquarian, but I don't think anyone could call this comfortable. However, this state of things, so far as Ida is concerned, can be easily remedied. Ida, child, I have come to take you to the Grange, which stands in a much more healthy position." Ida, who had saluted her cousin and Vernon, turned even paler than she already was and looked sideways at Frances. "I think that I prefer to remain in this house," she said timidly. "Oh, you must not burden Miss Hest any longer," said her aunt coolly. "Ida's company is no burden to me," snapped Miss Hest, who seemed to be trying to keep her temper, "but if she chooses to leave me, she can." "I should think so; as she is free to come and go as she wishes. Ida?" "I would rather stop with Frances," said Ida faintly, and again sought the eye of her friend, as if seeking direction. "We are very happy here." "Miss Hest, I appeal to you," cried Lady Corsoon, looking important. "You can see for yourself that the dear child is like a plant, she wants air and sunlight and every attention."
  • 60.
    "Ida is freeto go and come as she chooses," repeated Frances with a stealthy glance at the girl. "And perhaps it is just as well she should go. I am returning to London in a week or so." "Frances!" Ida started to her feet, and a faint hue tinged her cheek. "You never told me of this." "I never arrived at any decision until last night," replied Frances coldly, removing the arm which the girl had thrown fondly round her neck. "But a search amongst my brother's papers has shown me that my position financially speaking is not so secure as I thought it was. As it is necessary for me to earn my living I must go back to Professor Gail's at Isleworth, and probably I shall agree to his proposal that I should appear on the stage." "But, Frances, I have plenty of money. Share with me." "Ida," said Lady Corsoon sharply, "you must let older and wiser heads guide you as regards the disposition of your fortune. Besides, it may not be so secure as you think." "What?" Ida turned to face her aunt. "Then you already know that I am not Mr. Dimsdale's daughter." "I know something about it," said Lady Corsoon, concealing her exact knowledge and determined to appear surprised at nothing. "I received a letter stating that on certain conditions I could get the money of my brother. Whether you are my niece or not I can't say, but assuredly if the money is mine I must enter into possession of it. Of course, you may rely on my doing my best to help you." "I want nothing," said Ida, proudly lifting her head. "If the money is yours you shall certainly have it. Am I not right, Frances?" "Perfectly right. But Lady Corsoon's fortune--to use her own words with regard to you--may not be so secure as she thinks."
  • 61.
    "If Ida isnot Martin's daughter, and there is no will, I should certainly inherit," cried Lady Corsoon quite fiercely. "And I confess that I am surprised to hear that my brother is not the father of the girl I have always supposed to be my niece. I should like an explanation." "You will have one to-morrow," said Miss Hest coolly. "I want one to-day," said the elder woman rapping her knuckles with her lorgnette. "What have you to do with this matter, may I ask?" "More than you suppose. But, after I have seen Colonel Towton, you shall be enlightened as to my exact position." "Frances, do you mean to say that the money is really mine?" demanded Ida with a look of breathless interest. "If it was, what would you do?" asked Miss Hest doubtfully. "I should give you all the money you required." Frances hesitated, then came forward and kissed the girl quietly. "You are a good child, Ida. I thought that I had lost your confidence." Miss Dimsdale did not contradict this statement. "I shall always remember how kind you have been to me," she said, shrinking a trifle from her friend's caress. "Nothing can make me forget the past." "Come, come," said Lady Corsoon, rising in a fussy manner. "This sort of thing will not do at all. I must understand plainly what this means. In the meantime, I request my niece to follow me to The Grange." "I am not your niece, if all I have learned is true, and I decline to be dictated to," said Ida quickly. "To-morrow I shall come to The
  • 62.
    Grange." "Will you leaveme, Ida?" asked Frances quickly and with a look of pain. "For a time only," muttered the girl averting her head. "But I wish to go to Colonel Towton's to-morrow." "Many things seem about to happen to-morrow," observed Lady Corsoon walking towards the door in her most stately manner. "And as Ida refuses to obey me, I wash my hands of her. Come, Lucy. Come, Mr. Vernon. We must depart." "But the Colonel will be here shortly," protested Vernon, and Lucy took Ida's hand kindly between her own. "The Colonel may do what he pleases," said Lady Corsoon loftily. "I am not bound by his actions. Ida, I learn, is not my niece, and therefore I shall instruct my lawyer--since there is no will--to demand a surrender of Martin's property. Now that Miss Dimsdale-- no, not that--what is your name, may I ask?" And she hoisted the lorgnette again. Ida shrank back before that severe look, and broken down in health as she was with all she had gone through, burst into tears. Frances stepped between her and Lady Corsoon. "You are a cruel woman," she said indignantly, "and you shall leave my house at once." "Only too willingly, only too willingly," cried Lady Corsoon swelling with pompous indignation. "But I call everyone to witness that I shall have these matters examined into, and intend to claim my rights. Ida, you are no niece of mine by your own showing, so I have finished with you. Lucy! Mr. Vernon!" and she sailed out of the room and out of the house in a high state of indignation. The fact is, the good lady was greatly perplexed over the unexpected information that she had received. She had believed that her brother had made a will in her favour which Ida had destroyed; but she had never
  • 63.
    expected to hearthat the girl was not Dimsdale's daughter. In her hurry she left Vernon and Lucy behind, while she simply rushed down the short avenue and came face to face with Colonel Towton, who was riding in at the gate. "What is the matter?" asked the Colonel surprised at seeing his guest alone. "Matter!" Lady Corsoon halted, breathing hard with anger. "I really don't know, save that the Hest woman has insulted me. Also I have heard that Ida is not my niece, and therefore I am sure the property belongs to me. I decline to stay longer in that house, and so I am returning home. Perhaps, Colonel, you will demand an explanation. If I don't receive a satisfactory one to-night, I write to my lawyer. So there!" Towton tried to stem the torrent of this speech, but without any result. Still talking of the way in which she had been treated, Lady Corsoon babbled her way out of the gate and disappeared. The Colonel rode up to the door, and, alighting from his horse, bound the bridle to a ring in the wall. As he stepped inside, Vernon appeared in attendance on Lucy. They had stayed behind to comfort Ida, who was weeping over the harsh treatment she had received from her presumed aunt. "What on earth is the matter?" asked Towton, putting the same question to the couple as he had put to Lady Corsoon. "Miss Lucy, I have met your mother rushing home in a high state of anger." "Miss Hest and mother have fallen out," said Lucy, hesitating how much to say, for she knew how Towton loved Ida. "And Lady Corsoon has learned that Ida is not her niece," put in Vernon. "Go in and comfort her, Colonel. I shall go after Lady Corsoon with Lucy."
  • 64.
    "That is thebest thing to be done," cried Frances, overbearing, and putting her head out of the window. "Colonel Towton, I desire a private conversation." "Do you wish me to remain?" Vernon asked his friend in a low voice. "No, no. I must see Miss Hest alone. I understand what she wants. Go with Miss Lucy. She has already reached the gate." "But if you want me----" "I don't. When I return you shall know everything." "What do you mean?" demanded Vernon anxiously. "Colonel, Colonel," called out Miss Hest again. "I must go. Follow Miss Corsoon and pacify the old lady," said Towton hurriedly, and hastened into the house, leaving Vernon much astonished by his behaviour. Had the young man known of Miss Hest's visit on the previous evening, he might not have been so perplexed. As it was, he hastened after Lucy, who by this time was rapidly gaining on her indignant mother, with a feeling that Towton knew more than he did concerning the present state of affairs. Which as he afterwards learned, was precisely the case. The Colonel entered the gloomy drawing-room to find Ida weeping on the sofa and Frances comforting her. Before he could say a word, the latter turned on him indignantly. "Why did you send that insulting woman here?" "She came of her own accord," explained Towton frowning at the speech, "and surely Lady Corsoon has not insulted Ida." "And me. She has insulted us both," cried Miss Hest angrily. "I should have had her turned out of the house had she not gone."
  • 65.
    "It was myfault by telling her that I was not her niece," said Ida in an agitated tone. "As if I could help that. But I won't trouble her in any way; she has never been kind to me. I shall not set eyes on her again." "But, Ida," said Towton, taking her hand and striving to speak cheerfully, "I want you to come to the Grange." "Not while Lady Corsoon is there, Richard." Frances drew a long breath of relief, which annoyed the Colonel. "Are you detaining Miss Dimsdale here?" he asked snappishly, for late events had tried his temper greatly. "Oh, no," cried Ida before her friend could speak. "As if Frances would do such a thing! But Lady Corsoon has been so rude." "You speak of her as Lady Corsoon?" "Naturally, since I am not her niece," said Ida simply. "When she leaves The Grange I shall be delighted to come." Colonel Towton flushed through his tan. "I am a bachelor, Ida," he said in stiff tones. "You can't come to my house without a lady is staying there. That is unless you will marry me at once." Ida placed her two hands on his shoulders and looked at him kindly through her tears. "If you will take a girl without a sixpence, I shall marry you as soon as you please, Richard." "Don't put his chivalry to the test, Ida," remarked Frances in somewhat acrid tones. "Colonel Towton knows that you have ten thousand a year." "But if this story is true----" "It's quite true, only there is a will."
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    "A will?" Idastared and flushed with pleasure. "Then poor Mr. Dimsdale did not entirely forget me." "He did not forget you at all. I found this will--well it doesn't matter where, since I explained everything to our friend here last night. But you inherit the Dimsdale property as Ida Menteith, so Lady Corsoon will not be able to strip you of your worldly goods." "Oh!"--Ida grew even more scarlet--"then, Richard----" He caught her hands and pressed them to his breast. "My dear, I would take you without a single penny." "And that is the way in which you will have to take her," said Frances drily, "unless you consent to my demands." "I leave that to Ida," said Towton, once more stiff and military. "Leave what to me?" asked Ida, looking from one to the other. Frances turned to her in a business-like way. "The property my brother has made over to me is mortgaged and I am penniless. If you marry the Colonel I lose your society and also the chance of being your companion at a certain wage. To make amends I ask for ten thousand pounds." "You shall have it, of course,' said Ida promptly. "Will you sign this document giving it to me?" asked Miss Hest pulling a sheet of paper out of her pocket. "At once, if you will give me pen and ink." The two women went towards a table upon which stood what was required. Apparently Frances had made all necessary preparations to get the money. "You can give me a cheque also. Here is the book," she said eagerly.
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    "Ida, Ida! Areyou wise in doing this?" warned the Colonel, following. "Yes," said the girl rapidly signing her name and without even reading the document. "I want to marry you and be rid of Frances." Miss Hest sneered, while Towton started back, utterly astonished by the change of tone. "I thought--I fancied--I believed," he stuttered, "that you were deeply attached to Miss Hest." "I was, but--there are circumstances----" "Oh, let us have the truth," interposed Frances sharply. "You liked me well enough and I liked you until you found that I was too clever for you, so----" Ida caught at her lover's hand and made an effort to pull herself together in the face of Miss Hest's contemptuous eyes. "You treated me shamefully, Frances," she said in tones of reproach. "I loved you dearly until you began to bully me and to make my life a burden. You got me down here in order to gain possession of my money, and have been trying to influence me into giving up not only my property but Richard also. I saw what you were ever since we came to this house, but, to deceive you, I played my part, and led you to believe that I still loved----" "Oh, rubbish," said Miss Hest, whose eyes were as hard as jade. "You played your part very badly. I saw through your weak tricks. You were afraid of me, you know you were." "Yes, I was," said Ida, clinging to the amazed Colonel. "Because I believe if you could have got me to sign away my property that you would have killed me. I am willing to give you ten thousand pounds, as I once had some affection for you; but now that you have got your pound of flesh I shall leave this house with Richard." "To go to Lady Corsoon?"
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    "Richard will protectme. And, heaven help me!" said Ida, putting her hand to her head piteously. "I feel so dazed that I scarcely know what I am saying." "You are not too dazed to sign a cheque." Ida without a word stepped to the table and began to write in the cheque-book. Towton protested. "You shall not do this," he declared. "While I fancied you loved Miss Hest, I was willing you should make her a present of this large sum. But since she has treated you badly- ---" "If Ida does not sign the cheque she does not get the will," said Frances imperiously. "You can save your breath, Colonel." "You may hand over a false will?" "If I did that I should not get the ten thousand pounds," retorted Frances. "Don't be a fool. I am acting straightforwardly enough." "Here is the money," said Ida tearing out the signed cheque and passing it to her quondam friend. "And here is the will," replied Miss Hest, offering a paper, which Ida took and gave to the Colonel. Towton glanced rapidly at the document. It certainly seemed to be a genuine will signed by Martin Dimsdale and also by Venery and Smith. He felt sure that there was no trickery about the paper, since Miss Hest--now that Lady Corsoon knew the truth--would not be able to get the money unless the testament of Martin Dimsdale was above reproach. "It's all right," he remarked, slipping the precious paper into the breast pocket of his coat. "But you, Miss Hest, are little else than a blackmailer. You are the worthy sister of your confounded brother."
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    The woman laughedafter a critical glance at the cheque and signed document to make sure that both were in order. "I am able to bear all your hard names since I have secured the money. But that Ida refused to obey me and kicked over the traces you would never have had the will." "I thought that the money did not belong to me," protested Ida, sheltering herself under the wing of her lover, "and wanted to return it to Lady Corsoon." Frances nodded with a sneer. "Oh, I know how tender your conscience is. You have whimpered enough about it. Only because of your silly attitude did I make this arrangement, which is the best I can do for myself. But I must say one thing, Ida, and you can take it as a compliment. Clever as I am, you with your soft over-scrupulous nature have been too many for me. Few people can say that. And now that all is over between us, you can leave my house, as I hate the sight of your insipid face." Ida shrank back into the Colonel's arms, and he addressed Miss Hest in a voice rendered hoarse with indignation. "You are a thoroughly bad woman. I never did approve of you, and now that I see you, as Ida does, in your true colours, I tell you----" "My true colours," scoffed the other contemptuously. "No one knows what they are. You least of all, you narrow-minded idiot." "What do you mean?" demanded Towton, taken aback by the malignant look on her hard white face. "Don't ask her," implored Ida, striving to pull her lover to the door, "she will only lie. Let us leave this wicked house, as I am certain that there is something terrible concealed here." "Something terrible," echoed Towton looking startled.
  • 70.
    "Don't talk rubbish,"muttered Frances, with a dangerous expression in her eyes. "Colonel, you had better take away that fool, or it will be the worse for her. I warn you." "I have heard strange noises," went on Ida feverishly. "People have been coming and going in the dead of night. Then that Hindoo----" "Hokar!" cried the Colonel. "Miss Hest, how do you explain Hokar?" "I explain nothing," snapped Frances, marching to the door in an imperious way and throwing it open. "Out you go, both of you," She recoiled. "Ah! you dare to!"--with a gasp she tried to close the door again, but Towton dashed forward and caught her arm. "I have seen; it is too late," he almost shouted. "Maunders. Come in!" It was indeed Maunders who stood on the threshold. He looked the ghost of his former handsome, insolent, prosperous self. Thin and haggard and worn, with his clothes hanging loosely on his figure, he presented a woeful spectacle. "What have you been doing to yourself? How did you come here?" asked Towton, stepping back much startled, with Ida on his arm. "Ask that woman how I came here; ask her how she has treated me. But I escaped from the room she locked me in by climbing out of the window. Now I shall show her the mercy she has shown me. She is-- --" Frances darted forward and clapped her hand on his mouth. "I'll kill you if you say the word. You cursed fool. Be silent or I give you up." Maunders, with a strength which his frail looks scarcely suggested, threw her off and staggered against the door. "I give _you_ up," he shrieked, wild with anger, "you thief, you blackmailer, you murderess!"
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    "What?" cried Towtoneagerly, and grasping vaguely at the terrible truth. "Yes." Maunders pointed an accusing finger at Frances Hest. "There is The Spider. A woman; a devil! Arrest her; imprison her; hang her on the gallows," and he sank down on the floor, his back to the door, with hatred written on his white and ghastly face. CHAPTER XXI. JUSTICE. There was a long pause, a sinister lull in the tempest of passion which was raging in that quiet, prosaic room. Gasping with impotent passion, Maunders lay, resting his head against the door, an obstacle which prevented the guilty woman from escaping. Not that she attempted to escape. With a deadly white face, with steady, cold, malignant eyes, like those of a snake, and with a contemptuous smile on her thin lips. The Spider, visible at last in all her brazen wickedness, stood defiantly at bay. Towton, with Ida clinging to his arm almost terrified out of her senses, stared aghast at the evil being who had been such a curse to many. The ominous silence was like the year-long moment before the bursting of a bomb. Ida, with chattering teeth and trembling limbs, was the first to recover the use of her tongue; but she could scarcely form the words. "Oh, God! oh, God!" she whimpered, hiding her face on her lover's breast; "it's too awful. I never thought--I never thought--oh-- oh--oh!" She broke down with a strange, hysterical, choking cry, and
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    would have fallento the ground but that the Colonel placed her gently in a near chair. Then he turned with military precision to face Miss Hest. "You are The Spider?" he asked in dry, precise tones, and now entirely master of himself. "Yes," she replied coolly, and her mouth closed with a triumphant snap. "You infernal fiend----" "Gently! Gently! Hard names break no bones, Colonel. You should be more of a man than to throw words at a woman." "Are you a woman?" "Yes," gasped Maunders, raising himself on his elbow and wiping the froth from his pale lips; "she is Frances Hest right enough. Her brother is a myth invented by herself to mask her devilries. But Frances or Francis--she is The Spider!" "I did not mean that exactly," said Towton in his hard voice; "but I asked if one capable of the enormities credited to The Spider can possibly be a woman." "I am The Spider," said Miss Hest with a shrug. "There is your answer." "You are a demon." "More names! Really, Colonel Towton, you are very childish. You sink to the level of that fool," and she pointed scornfully to Ida, who was weeping in the chair as though her heart would break. "To think that I should have been her friend," moaned Ida with a fresh burst of tears and hiding her face.
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    "You little fool,"said Frances in a gentle, dangerous voice. "I have been a better friend to you than you think. But that I pitied you as being a poor, weak, silly worm, I would have murdered you long ago." "You murdered my father," shivered Ida, not daring to meet the cold eyes which rested on her prostrate form. "Martin Dimsdale was not your father." "You--you--you murdered him." "Yes, I did." "What!" Towton could scarcely believe his ears. "You admit the crime?" Frances yawned ostentatiously. "If I admit that I am The Spider it follows that I must have murdered Dimsdale." "Well, no," replied Towton, truthfully and justly. "You may have employed Hokar to strangle him." "That is very good of you," said Frances satirically, "but I don't place my own sins on the shoulders of others. Hokar taught me how to strangle in the Thug fashion certainly, but he did not kill Dimsdale. I did." "Still, I don't believe that the murder was premeditated," insisted Towton. "Upon my word," said Miss Hest good-humouredly and as coolly as though she were gossiping over a cup of tea, "one would think you were counsel for the defence. No, you are right. I did not intend to murder Dimsdale. Having got you out of the way----" "You mean that you got Vernon out of the way?"
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    "Of course," assentedFrances, sitting down and crossing her legs in a gentlemanly fashion; "but you must excuse my bad memory, as I have so much to think of. I got Vernon out of the way, as I overheard, and Maunders there overheard, the arrangement for a trap. We were both on the verandah." "And I was with you," wailed Ida, shivering again. "So you were," said Miss Hest raising her eyebrows, "but you heard nothing. Maunders caught a word or two through the open window of the library and warned me. While you, my dear Ida, were talking to him I stole round the corner and listened. Knowing all about the trap, I had Vernon decoyed to the Kensington house, and at the appointed time I went into the library, masked and cloaked, as were the other guests at the ball. Dimsdale was waiting for me. I stole up behind him and slipped a handkerchief round his neck." "Oh!" The Colonel was revolted. "And you say that the crime was not premeditated?" "I say truly. I simply prepared to strangle him slightly should he have made an outcry. Remember, I was in a dangerous position and could not stand on ceremony. Had Dimsdale given me the money and permitted me to leave by the window I would have spared his life. As it was, he saw me in the mirror, which was directly in front of him." "But you were masked: he could not recognise you?" "I am coming to that. He waited for a moment, until I made my demand for the money, then suddenly threw back his hand, and before I guessed his intention he tore the mask from my face. When he recognised me I was obliged, for my own safety, to strangle him. As the handkerchief was in position I simply tightened it, and he was soon dead. Then I searched for the money, but, not being able to find it, I resumed my mask and returned to the ballroom. Maunders, of course, was with me all the time, and awaited my return."
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    "I did notknow that you had committed a murder," said Maunders gloomily. "No, I did not tell you at the time: it would have spoilt your pleasure. But when Ida learned the truth by entering the library you guessed what had taken place. I kept you with me for your own sake, to provide an _alibi_ should you be suspected, as I feared Vernon might be clever enough to guess that you had something to do with it. As a matter of fact, he did hint at it when he called many days later, but I was enabled to say that you were with me all the time, and so he was put off the scent." "I remember," murmured the Colonel to himself, but not so low as not to be overheard by Miss Hest's marvellously sharp ears. "Vernon was quite satisfied when you provided the _alibi_ for Maunders. He never suspected _you_." "No one ever suspected me," said Frances coolly. "There is no need for me to speak of my own cleverness. Anyone who can baffle the police as I have done has no need to boast." "But why, in heaven's name, with your abilities, did you embark on such an evil course?" asked Towton amazed at her _sang-froid_. "Fate, Fortune, Destiny: what name you will," said Miss Hest carelessly. "But you have tried to exonerate me, Colonel, and because of that you shall hear the whole story," and, leaning forward, she pulled the bell-rope. "Remember, I shall repeat all you say to the police," warned Towton. "I am not afraid of the police," retorted Frances with a shrug; "all my plans are made--to escape. As that fool," she pointed to Maunders lying sullenly on the floor, "has betrayed me twice I give him to you as a sacrifice. But I shall never stand in the dock, you may be sure." "Will you kill yourself?" cried Ida, terrified at this strength of mind.
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    "No, my dear.I am too much in love with life. You shall know my plan presently. Meantime, you shall hear how I came to be a blackmailer, as you have already heard why I murdered Dimsdale, to my misfortune." "To your misfortune, indeed! sharply. "You may well say so, Colonel. I never intended to soil my hands with blood, least of all with that of a man whom I liked and who was kind to me. Don't sigh, Ida; after all, I did not shed his blood, as I merely strangled him. But that death brought you and Vernon in chase of me, Colonel, and so I am hunted down. Still, had Maunders been true, I should have been safe. You knew Francis Hest as the criminal, thanks to Maunders. I merged the brother in the sister and made everything safe. Now," she shrugged her shoulders, "I must flit." "You shall go to prison with me," panted Maunders furiously. "I think not," rejoined Miss Hest contemptuously. "Don't you know me well enough yet to be aware that I provide against all contingencies. Come in!" she added, raising her voice, and, when the door opened, looked at Towton. "I shall ask my old nurse, Miss Jewin, to relate the beginning of my career; at a later time I can take up the tale, and then our tumbled-down friend yonder can finish the story. Sarah, enter and close the door." Miss Sarah Jewin was peaked-faced and white, with thin lips, scanty grey hair and cold grey eyes. She was thin and bony and very tall, so that in her plain black dress she looked like a line--length without breadth. As she entered Maunders with a groan hoisted himself into a chair. Miss Jewin had already pushed him aside when she entered the room and, in place of replying to her mistress, stood looking at his scowling, haggard face with a look of consternation. Maunders replied to the look with petty triumph.
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    "Yes, I gotout," he said, rubbing the ragged beard which disfigured his well-moulded chin. "I wrenched a bar out of the window and climbed down by the ivy. Now the murder's out, and you and your hellish mistress are about to be brought to book." "Don't mind him, Sarah," said Frances lazily and leaning back in her chair to light a cigarette; "you are safe and so am I. Let the fool talk. In the meantime, tell Colonel Towton here how I came to England and how you knew that Ida was merely Dimsdale's adopted daughter." "I thought you wanted these things kept secret," said Miss Jewin in dismay and turning pale with dread at the situation in which she found herself. "The time for secrets is past, Sarah. Shortly, thanks to your having allowed Maunders to escape and to Colonel Towton's sense of justice, the hue and cry will be out against the whole of us. Is Hokar at his post?" "Yes. He went away when you gave orders." "That's all right. I'll escape, sure enough, and so will you. We'll leave Maunders behind to face justice: he can declare himself to be The Spider instead of me if he chooses." "Oh!" Miss Jewin started back looking terrified. "Do they know----" "Maunders has told them, you dear old idiot. But there's no time to be lost, Sarah; tell your story." "And be frank," broke in the Colonel, who was truly amazed at Miss Hest's cool composure. "If you turn King's evidence you may receive a short sentence for your complicity." Sarah Jewin folded her arms primly. "Begging your pardon, sir, but I won't receive any sentence at all. I am quite sure that Miss Frances
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    will save mefrom going to prison." "I fail to see how she can save herself, let alone you," said Towton coldly. "My horse is at the door. After placing Miss Dimsdale in safety I shall ride to Gatehead and send for the police. You needn't chuckle, Miss Hest, and think you will escape meantime. I shall raise the village and you will be carefully watched." "You can act as you please," said Frances coolly. "I am not The Spider for nothing, and I shall baffle you as I have baffled others. Meantime since you were so just to me, I shall satisfy your curiosity, which I am sure is very great. Sarah, tell your story." "One moment," said Towton, turning to the prim woman, "you lured Vernon into the kitchen of that empty Kensington house?" She dropped an ironical curtsey. "Yes, sir. Miss Frances was pleased that I managed so cleverly." Ida stared wide-eyed at the shameless looks and speech of the housekeeper, and Towton frowned. That these creatures should so audaciously confess their crimes when they knew he would shortly summon the police puzzled him greatly. Also, remembering the wonderful craft of The Spider, he felt uneasy as to what might happen, but he could not conjecture in what way she could extricate herself and her accomplice from the trap in which they were safely caught. However, he made no comment on Miss Jewin's insolence, but merely ordered her to proceed. "About thirty-five years ago," said Miss Jewin, plunging into her story without any preliminary explanation, "I was in India and nurse to Mrs. Hest, who was the wife of Captain Theodore Hest, stationed at Bombay. The Captain's father, who lived here, was angry when his son went into the Army, and cut him off with a shilling, but my master believed that if a son were born to inherit the estates his father would relent. When my mistress's baby proved to be a girl he was much disappointed. However, as his father was old and might
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    die before hefound out the trick, he sent home news that the baby was a boy, and had her baptised Francis." "So you see," broke in Miss Hest who was smoking quietly, "that my real name is Francis, and by law I am a man. As a woman I am Frances, so there is merely the difference of one letter. Go on, Sarah." "She," said Miss Jewin, pointing to her mistress, "was dressed as a boy and brought up as a boy, so that the estates might come to her. My master's father relented when he heard that he had, as he supposed, a grandson, and made a will in the boy's favour." "The boy, you understand, Colonel, being a girl--myself," said Frances for the sake of clearness. "I quite understand," said the Colonel frowning. "Go on." "Then my master and mistress were carried off within a month of one another by fever," continued Miss Jewin. "They died in Burmah, where the Captain had gone with his regiment. I then took charge of Miss Hest, who was always called Master Francis, and came to Gerby Hall. Old Mr. Hest, the grandfather, just lived six months longer, but he died under the impression that his grand-daughter was a grandson. Miss Frances thus became possessed of the property." "Didn't the lawyer know that she was a girl?" asked Towton surprised. "No. As she had always been brought up as a boy the deception was complete, sir," said Miss Jewin, using the word with shameless deliberation. "The lawyer came here and saw Miss Frances in her boy's clothes." "And in this way," explained Miss Hest, "it became current gossip in the village that I had a twin brother."
  • 80.
    "A twin sister,you mean?" said the Colonel doubtfully. "Well, you might put it that way. At all events, everyone in Bowderstyke believes to this day that there is a boy and a girl, or, rather, a man and a woman Hest. I alternately wore male and female clothes." "Why was there any need for you to wear female clothes at all?" "That was my fault," said Miss Jewin quickly. "When the succession to the estates was settled I could not bear that Miss Frances should masquerade any longer as a boy. I therefore dressed her in girl's clothes, to which she was entitled, and invented the twin story. Sometimes she was a boy, so that the lawyers should not learn the truth, and sometimes a girl to please me. There's the whole story." "Now it's my turn," said Frances, throwing away her cigarette. "When I grew up and learned how Sarah had muddled my sex in the eyes of the world I decided to make use of it in order to earn money." "Why did you need money when you had the estates?" asked Towton briefly. "Oh, those were mortgaged up to the hilt, my dear sir. I wanted to be rich and to restore the Hest family to their old position For this reason I posed as a philanthropist and spent the money I did. What with the sums I have given in charity and the buildings I have constructed, and the dam, which is my work, I think, Colonel, that the Hests can hold their own with the Towtons. I hated to think that my family was down while yours was up." "Oh," said the Colonel with contempt, "so it's a case of jealousy merely. All your philanthropy was a fraud?" For the first time Frances coloured and rose out of her chair to reply with more emphasis. "No; you must not say that. I really have a mixed nature, and like to help people. My good qualities are the outcome of my evil ones. I wanted to aggrandize the Hests,
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    certainly, since theywere lords of Bowderstyke Valley, until your family robbed them of their property. But also I really wished to do good and help people. I think I succeeded." "At the cost of murder," said Ida resentfully. "That was a mistake," replied Frances glibly, "as I never intended to murder Dimsdale. When I went to London in my woman's dress, with very little money in my pocket, I simply intended to earn my fortune on the stage, and by reciting to make Francis Hest--my other self, who was supposed to live here--wealthy and popular. I found that the reciting did not pay and cast about for some better means of making money. Alternately I lived in London as Frances, and in Bowderstyke as Francis. But I could not gain my ends by honest means, and so was obliged to take to dishonest ways. If you wish to know the devil who tempted me to eat of the Tree of Knowledge, he is before you," and she pointed deliberately to Constantine. "It's a lie," cried Maunders, starting to his feet with a fine appearance of indignation. "I met you three or four years ago in London and you discovered that I earned my living by telling fortunes as Diabella. That was all, except," he added, scowling, "that you blackmailed me." "Quite so," said Miss Hest quietly. "I tried my 'prentice hand on you, and the means of making money in this way was so easy that I took it up as a trade and adopted you as a partner. Go on, Maunders, you tell the rest of the story so that everything may be made clear." "There's nothing to tell," said Maunders doggedly, and casting down his eyes as he met Ida's sorrowful look, for he was not so entirely lost to all sense of shame as were the other two law-breakers. "You made me find out all manner of secrets from my clients by hinting at things and asking questions and by----" "I know," interrupted Towton waving his hand. "I am aware of how fortune-tellers hint at a possibility and so find out the actual truth
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    from their toocredulous clients. No wonder The Spider learned much that people would fain have kept to themselves. Who told you about Dimsdale?" "You know," said Maunders sullenly, "that woman there." "Yes," said Miss Jewin, still prim and shameless. "When in Burmah with my master I heard about Mr. Dimsdale's love for Mrs. Menteith and how, when her husband died, he adopted the child. But I never said that Mr. Dimsdale delayed any expedition so as to get Mr. Menteith killed." "No. I invented that and made Maunders tell it to you, Ida, and to you, Colonel, with the additions," put in Miss Hest, with great coolness. "Also, on finding out that Ida was not Dimsdale's daughter, I became alarmed as to the disposition of the property, therefore I made myself a friend of the family and secured the free run of the house." "You intended to get my money?" asked Ida reproachfully. "Certainly, my dear," replied Frances, raising her eyebrows. "Ten thousand a year was far too much for a chit like you to handle. I intended to get command of the whole lot. First I hunted in the dead of night for the will, and found it in the library desk. Then I made Maunders tell you that you were not Dimsdale's daughter, after the murder, so that you might be dependent on me, since I knew a secret which could rob you of the money. I had the secret told also to the Colonel so that he might learn he would only have a penniless wife should he marry you, my dear Ida." "Did you think so meanly of me as that?" demanded Towton, colouring indignantly. Miss Hest raised her eyebrows. "My dear sir, my experience of human nature has shown me that there is no mean trick which the majority of men will not commit for money. You, however, were in
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    the minority, andso was Ida, as you both were honest. This upset my calculations, as I could not provide against the unseen in human nature. You, Colonel, still insisted upon marrying Ida, and she wished to hand over the money to Lady Corsoon. For this reason I was forced to play my last card and produce the will." "But you did not intend to be found out as The Spider?" "No, I did not," confessed Frances calmly. "When Maunders betrayed me at Isleworth you thought that The Spider was a man, which was exactly what I wanted and what I counted upon should such an event as unexpected betrayal happen. In the fog I dragged Maunders away, and we went to the house of a friend of mine whose name I don't intend you to know. I wired in cypher to Miss Jewin here to send a telegram to Francis Hest at Professor Gail's." "We got that," said the Colonel quickly, "and it threw us off the scent." "I thought it would," said Miss Hest coolly. "So while you were hunting for The Spider as a man in London I went down with Maunders--he was disguised as an old gentleman and I resumed my womanly dress. Then I wrote you on the plea of talking about Ida and asked after my pretended brother to still further puzzle you." "You certainly succeeded," retorted Towton, trying to conceal his wonder at all this clever trickery; "but Ida was here and must have known that you were absent from the house as Francis." "Oh, no. I appeared before her twice in this room, which is, as you see, not very well lighted, in my male disguise and with the painted scar on my face. She was entirely taken in." "The very simplicity of your disguise took me in," said Ida angrily and wincing at having been so blinded. "Had you worn a beard or a wig I should have recognised you."
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    "I think not,"said Miss Hest quietly and with an amused smile. "As the man I wore my hair somewhat long----" "I noted that," said the Colonel quickly. "How clever of you. Well, then, as a woman I merely knitted in false hair. I couldn't wear false hair as a man since Ida would then have been sharp enough to have recognised me. But plenty of women wear false plaits, so I was safe on that score: she never suspected me. My sole disguise was the cicatrice, skilfully painted, and the success of the whole business lay--as Ida has submitted--in its boldness and in the belief that I had a twin brother. I have always found," added Miss Hest musingly, "that the bolder one is the safer it is: audacity always scores. At all events, I so closely resembled my own true self that no one thought I was anyone else but what I represented myself to be. As Francis I told Ida that I was taking my sister away for a week, and so slipped up to London to meet Vernon at Lady Corsoon's and to be nearly trapped at Isleworth." "What about Hokar and Bahadur?" asked the Colonel abruptly. "Hokar," said Miss Jewin, making the explanation instead of Frances, "was an old servant of Captain Hest's and came to England with me and the child. Later he sent for his nephew, who was Bahadur." "Yes. And I gave them both to Maunders when I set him up in those splendid Egyptian rooms in Bond Street," observed her mistress. "They were not engaged to strangle people, as you may think, Colonel, but I merely wished them to add to the fantastical look of the place when fortunes were being told. That you were so nearly strangled, and Vernon also, was your own fault and his own. You should mind your own business, my friend." "I am going to mind it now," said Towton with a frown; "but first tell me, since you are so frank, what about Lady Corsoon's jewels?" "They are in this house. I gave them into Miss Jewin's possession."
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    "And Lady Corsooncan have them for one hundred pounds," said Miss Jewin. "A very modest demand, Sarah," said Miss Hest approvingly, "but as the game is up I don't think you will get more. I shall leave you to arrange about getting the money and handing back the jewels. Lady Corsoon will be safe, and at a small loss. But I am glad to think that she will not get your money, Ida, dear." "Don't speak to me," cried Ida starting to her feet. "The more you say the more I see how shamefully you have treated me." "I have spared you," said Miss Hest coolly. "I could have stripped you entirely bare had I so chosen." "No. By your own showing I was too clever for you." "Why, that is true, and simply because you were honest. I always wished to keep on the right side of the law, or I could have got you to make a will in my favour, and then you would have been poisoned." "How dare you?" shouted Towton, while Ida gave a faint cry. "You have learned how much I dare," said Frances with an unpleasant look. "So, now the story is told, perhaps you will leave my house." Colonel Towton walked towards the door with Ida on his arm and roughly pushed Miss Jewin aside. "I shall place Miss Dimsdale----" "Miss Menteith," sneered Frances. "In safety," continued Towton without noticing the interruption, "and then I shall ride for the police."
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    "I shall come,too," cried Maunders starting to his feet. "She will lock me up again and perhaps may kill me." "Stay where you are," commanded Frances sharply. "I intend to----" Maunders did not wait to hear the end of the sentence. Seeing that Towton and Ida blocked the door he made a rush at the nearest window and sprang out of it with a dexterity begotten of sheer fear. Whether Frances intended to take him with her when she fled, or whether she intended to murder him he could not say, but he preferred to trust in the mercy of the law rather than in that of the woman who had been his evil genius. Crazy with terror, he tumbled to the ground, and Towton, along with Ida, ran to the front door, to see him speeding across the grass. A moment later and Frances, with a revolver in her hand, leaped from the window in pursuit. From the expression on her face she evidently intended nothing less than murder. Towton hastily unbuckled the bridle from the ring and flung himself on his horse. "Place your foot on my toe, Ida," he commanded; "up you get. There," he added, gathering up the reins as she sat on his saddle-bow and placed her arms round his neck; "now let us alarm the village. That poor devil will be shot if this fiendish woman is not arrested." And he rode forward at a moderately fast pace. "She'll catch him," chuckled Sarah Jewin, who had come to the door and was looking out from under the palm of her hand. "Shoot, Miss Frances. Shoot!" Maunders, finding that he was being chased, could not make directly for the gate and dodged behind some shrubs. Frances sighted him and fired a shot. It winged him, for he gave a yell of fear and ran directly towards her in the open. She fired another shot, which struck him in the breast, and he pitched forward at her feet. Just as she fired a third shot into his prostrate body there came a noise like thunder and a terrible cry from Miss Jewin.
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    "The signal! Thesignal! The dam's burst!" and she bolted into the house. In a flash Towton comprehended and set spurs to his horse. Frances strove to fly, but Maunders with a last effort caught at her foot and she fell heavily, fighting for freedom like a wild cat. The next moment he had her by the throat. And in the distance a mighty roaring struck the ears of all as the flood came down gigantically. CHAPTER XXII. THE END OF IT ALL. Towton could not quite understand the situation, as there was no time to consider matters. All he knew was that the Bolly Dam had burst, and even had Miss Jewin not spoken, the appalling noise would have informed him of the catastrophe. With Ida in his arms he spurred his horse frantically out of the gate and across the village bridge. He found the crooked street filled with people, called out by the unexpected thunder. "The dam's burst: get on the high ground," shouted Towton, and with a yell of fear men, women, and children began to run wildly in the direction of the gorge and to disappear amongst the houses in the hope of gaining some level beyond the height of the down- coming flood. But there was scanty time for safety. The hollow booming sound of the waters plunging through the narrows sounded ever nearer and nearer with terrible distinctness: it seemed as though the waters were bellowing for their prey. In a moment the
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    Colonel comprehended thatit was too late to skirt the village and gain the winding road, where they would be safe. Ida gave a cry of alarm as he wrenched round the now startled horse and clattered through the village street on his way down the valley. It seemed the only chance. "I'll save you yet, my darling," muttered Towton, setting his teeth. "We must make for Gatehead," and he drove his spurs into the animal, which now was becoming unmanageable with the roaring of the flood. Ida, almost insensible with terror, clung to her lover's neck, and the horse, making no more of the double burden than if it had been a feather, tore at top speed along the road between the torrent and the precipice. There was no safety on either side, as the precipice could not be climbed, and the dry bed of the stream merely offered a deeper grave. Fortunately, the road sloped gradually to the mouth of the valley, some two miles away, therefore the downward trend offered extra means to escape the pursuing greedy waters. A backward glance showed Towton that a tremendous flood was shooting out of the bottle-mouth of the upper gorge with terrific rapidity. The whole of the huge lake, artificial as well as natural, was emptying itself in one vast outpour, and owing to the narrowness of the valley the concentrated force was gigantic. If the flood caught them they would either be dashed to pieces against the rocks or would be borne onward--horse and maid and man--to be expelled at Gatehead, as if fired from the mouth of a cannon. "Oh, God, save us! Oh, God, save us!" was all that Ida could moan. "He will; He will," cried Towton, riding under spur and whip with a mad joy in the adventure, perilous as it was. "He will save the innocent and punish the guilty. Never fear, never fear, my darling." On roared the enormous body of water, curling like a mighty wave crested with foam and glistening like a colossal jewel in the serene sunshine. It passed with a hoarse triumphant screaming over the
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    fated village, andin a single moment Bowderstyke was not. Bearing _débris_ and bodies of cattle and men, women and children on its breast, the water rolled majestically on its destroying way. Like a wall of steel it stood up, stretching from wall to wall of the valley, and before it tore the terrified horse, warned by its instinct of rapidly approaching danger. "We are lost! we are lost!" screamed Ida, hiding her face on Towton's shoulder. "We can never escape. It's a mile further." "There's a crack--a path--a break in the precipice," panted the man, almost despairing of saving what he loved best in the world. "If we can gain that we can scramble up, and--and---- Great God! How it travels!" From the sides of the valley trees were being wrenched up by their roots, and even the stones lying in the bed of the torrent were being lifted and swept onward like pieces of straw. Owing to the increasing breadth of the valley the shouting and the level of the flood had somewhat lessened, but the hoarse, steady murmur with which it smoothly advanced seemed to be even more terrible than its triumphant screaming. Nearer and nearer it rolled, towering, as it seems to the desperate fugitives, right up to the high heavens. The horse raced onward furiously, but there seemed to be no chance of escaping that rapidly approaching death-wave, which swept along with relentless speed. The man and woman were both silent, and both prayed inwardly, as they faced the eleventh hour of death. And it was the eleventh hour, for there was still hope. Rounding a corner swiftly Towton rose in his stirrups and sent forth a cry almost as hoarse as that of the flood. A short distance ahead he saw a streak of green grass marking the ruddy stone face of the precipice, and knew that here was the crack to which he had referred. It was a mere chink in the wall, of no great width, caused, no doubt, by the volcanic action which had formed the valley in far distant ages. Many a time as a lad had Towton climbed up that narrow natural staircase
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    to the moorsabove, but never had he expected to find it a means of preserving his own life and the life he valued dearer than his own. Setting his teeth, he glanced backward and then urged the horse to renewed efforts. The wall of water was almost upon them, advancing with terrible and steady persistence. The last moment seemed to be at hand. Suddenly the Colonel wrenched at the horse's bit and pulled the animal up with a jerk. As it fell back on its haunches he slipped off with the almost insensible girl in his arms and ran desperately towards the sloping green bank, which showed itself like a port of safety between the bare, bleak stones. As he gained it the horse, having recovered itself, rushed past with a loose bridle and with the stirrups lashing its sides. But Towton paid no heed. Almost in a dream he scrambled up the bank, bearing Ida as though she were a feather-weight. With straining eyes and bursting temples, and with his heart beating furiously, he clambered desperately, dragging the girl rather than carrying her, as he needed at least one hand free to grip the tough grasses. Fortunately the slope was gradual, and had it not been there would have been no hope of escape. As it was, when they were a considerable way up the mighty wave surged majestically past, and its waters shot up the crevice with gigantic force. This was rather a help than a hindrance, as it assisted the almost broken man to mount higher. But to the end of his days Colonel Towton never knew how he saved his wife. All he could remember was straining upward, dragging the now insensible woman with aching limbs and a blood-red mist before his eyes. When his brain was somewhat clearer he found himself bending over Ida in a turfy nook, while barely three feet below him the grey water gurgled and sang and bubbled as if in a witch's cauldron. "Safe! Safe!" muttered Towton, and dropped insensible across the inanimate body of the woman he had so miraculously saved from a terrible death.
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