Any attempt to analyze fully this comprehensive and extremely complex subject would require at least a book, not a short paper. Businessmen in the American petroleum industry came face to face with governmental institutions in the United States on every plane from townships, counties, towns, and cities to states and the Federal authority. Since petroleum products entered into American trade with practically every national entity on the globe, producers, manufacturers, and marketers of oil were vitally affected by foreign legislation and administration of the laws in the various lands. No scholar has ventured as yet to investigate fully and evaluate carefully the historical relationship between government and oilmen on a local or state level, much less on a national or world-wide basis. This paper can only show the breadth of the subject and the size of the task presented to the historian.

The financing of economic development became a major concern of governments in liberal societies and economies largely during or after the Great Depression of the early thirties and the economic debates of that period. At first the state was assigned the role of minimizing or eliminating economic cycles. Later this role was enlarged to include the guiding and promotion of national economic activities toward progressive económic growth. The instruments advocated and used for these purposes have been mainly financial. The revolution which has occurred in the nature and scope of these instruments is far from complete, especially in the underdeveloped areas of the world.

I take it as a truism that for at least the past half century the relations between government and private enterprise in Europe have irregularly evolved in such a manner as to expand the role of government policy and action. Leaving aside the European countries which now have Communist governments and almost wholly socialized economies, this trend has been, in only small part, a matter of conscious or ideological development. Primarily, it has been the consequence of piecemeal adaptation of societies to the specific pressures and problems with which they have been confronted, latterly the problems of world depression, of war, and now of postwar adjustment.