Special Supplement To Plumbing & Mechanical<br>Sid Harvey's Company History
Automatic heating was still in its infancy then, and coal-to-oil conversions had yet to challenge coal as the heating fuel of choice. But as Harvey correctly assumed, oil heat would quickly establish itself as the dominant mode in the Northeast, and would offer a continually expanding market.
For that to happen, the fledgling business would have to survive the Depression and then wait until the end of World War II. That period probably proved beneficial to the young businessman, forcing him to develop more innovative marketing strategies than would have been necessary had the times been more prosperous.