Petroleum polity: Law and politics in the California oil economy, 1900--1940

This study of the California petroleum economy between 1900 and 1940 challenges the idea that simple market logic caused the rise of the oil age. The dissertation dissects the relationship between government and the California oil economy, examining how governments distribute access to resources through property law and public land policy; exercise regulatory power over business; invest public revenues in infrastructure such as highways; and make choices about how to raise government funds.; How did California and the nation become so dependent on petroleum? Common wisdom holds that popular demand, abundant oil, and new technologies, all operating within a free and unfettered market, fully explain the rapid increase in petroleum use in the twentieth century. Yet legal and political struggles over property rights, regulatory rules, and infrastructure investment profoundly influenced the contours of the oil economy. Their outcomes fundamentally shaped the California oil market, increasing oil production, moderating overproduction, and building an infrastructure for consumption. Evolving in creative tension with each other, law and politics established an ever-changing framework of market rules that oil producers and consumers relied upon to make economic decisions. These economic rules were continually renegotiated in the political sphere and the courts, with Standard Oil, the Southern Pacific Railroad Company, governors James Gillett, Frank Merriam, and Culbert Olson, and many others playing crucial roles.; Changing economic conditions and political sentiment repeatedly raised fundamental questions about the basic structure of the oil economy. Who would control access to oil in the San Joaquin Valley or in the Huntington Beach offshore field? How would California regulate petroleum output, if it did so at all, during the flush production of the 1930s? What public investment would California make in its highways, key infrastructure for oil consumption? The oil market and price structure depended on the answers to these hotly contested policy questions through the time period under consideration. Understanding how political conflicts and legal institutions structured past markets for oil casts light on the historical relationship between business and government and on the origins of contemporary environmental problems such as climate change and urban sprawl.