THE BATTLE OVER THE “ Midnight Oil ”
By Daniel C . Munson
That quaint 17th century rhyme takes us back to a world that vanished comparatively recently . Electric lighting is about the same age as the automobile , and the world it extinguished was quite different from the incandescing , fluorescing , diodeemitting world we inhabit today .
Revisiting that world can be done by financial historians through the mid-19th century commercial tussle over the fluid used to “ burn the midnight oil .” Tree extracts , lards , whale oils and distillates of crude oil all contended for market share .
Perhaps inspired by those thinkers who worked long hours by oil or candlelight , modern economic theorists have devoted pages and pages to this battle . Some subscribe to the “ invisible hand ” school of economic thought and argue that intensive whaling depleted whale populations and whale oil supplies , creating market conditions in the 1850s that “ incentivized ” the discovery of crude oil in Ontario and western Pennsylvania . Others prefer the “ corruption ” school of human affairs to explain economic history and point to the
Wee spend our mid-day sweat , or mid-night oil ; Wee tyre the night in thought ; the day in toyle .
Civil War-era tax on ethyl alcohol — the ingredient common to so many adult beverages — that was also a key ingredient in a popular tree extract-based lighting fluid and constituted , they assert , the first of many corrupt government subsidies to the oil industry .
This theorizing is all very laughable to an old chemical engineer and presents the opportunity to impart a little edification to those whose devotion to any single school of economic thought may leave them somewhat myopic . Shakespeare hinted at this myopia in composing the part of Hamlet , who tells his good friend that “ There are more things in heaven and earth , Horatio , than are dreamt of in your philosophy .”
In 1850 , the market for “ midnight oil ” offered customers whale oil , sperm whale oil ( not quite the same thing ), lard oil from slaughterhouse waste ( you can imagine the smell ) and coal liquid residues , as well as a blend of tree extracts dissolved in alcohol called “ camphene .”
Price and value govern markets , so the costs incurred in producing these fluids were important to their market position . These costs are sometimes ignored by theorists , for the simple reason that producers only grudgingly divulge such cost information to try to preserve their pricing flexibility . “ Midnight oil ” customers in 1850 , therefore , had an interesting and diverse group of options and costs .
Camphene — sometimes “ camphine ”— was a blend of camphor oil from camphor trees and turpentine from pine sap dissolved in ethyl alcohol , a mixture that burned with a somewhat pleasant smell . In use it was a fire hazard , but camphene was a low-cost option and the volume leader . The alcohol was the low-cost component , but if the blend contained too much alcohol and not enough camphor or turpentine it did not produce much
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