AMERICA MOTOR-MAD.

Auckland Star, Volume LI, Issue 242, 9 October 1920, Page 17

AMERICA MOTOR-MAD.

PLAGUE OF AUTOMOBILES. SECOND-HAND »CA3>S FOR £50. Statisticians tell us that there are now getting on for 7,800.000 motor cars m the United State?, or one car to I every 13 persons in the population (says! a correspondent in the rcec-nt American ' number of "The Times"). It will jllus-. trate what this means if we say that whereas in the British Isles :i 'village with a population of 270 would, in its right proportion, be ontitli-d to have two motor cars, an American village of the same size would have 20. "A town of 27,000 of a population in England would normally possess 200 cars. In America it would po.-sc:-:. 2000. As a matter of fact, the contrast is even more striking than this, because in the United States there is the large Negro population which owns mu.-h lees than its due shore. Throughout the great Middle West the proportion of ears to people is much above the average. In the State of lowa, a rich agricultural State, without any great centre of urban population, there is said to be just about one motor vehicle per family. By the end of the present year the number of atitomobiles in the United States will have increased to about 0.(100,000. Supposing that there is no increase in demand after that, tiie manufacturers will have to turn out about 1.r>00.100 vehicles a year merely to make replacement.*. GROWTH IX THE MIDDLE WEST. Dense though the street traffic is in Xew York ti'.ul other cities of the East, it is in the Middle West that the obtrusion of tile motor car is most overwhelming. In such towns as Detroit (the chief centre of the automobile industry), Minneapolis, a great entrepot serving v vast farming territory in the North-west, or Dcs Moines, in the State of lowa, already mentioned, there are moments when one is tempted to believe that there arc more cars than people. Residents will give the visitor astounding figures of the annual turnover in i the local automobile, trade, and of the number of hands employed, and square feet of building floor space occupied in the manufacture or sale of the machines. liesides the door space, one may see rows of secondhand cars packed in vacant lots, where they are sold almost as if they were whelks off a stall. A man may go out, and for the equivalent [of £oo'or £00 pick up a secondhand car. as men buy postage stamps in the kerb market in some foreign towns. ; Along almost every street, except the , few main business thoroughfares, where parkins is forbidden, the cars stand herring-boned so thickly along both Miles of the road that it is impossible I lor anyone driving up to approach the sidewalk. A street with a few big office buildings will have more cars than it can accommodate, so they flow round the corners into neighbouring streets, which again overflow until, filling all waste and vacant spaces on the way, they at last thin out towards the residential sections of the towns. I forget how many millions of dollars the packed mass of cars which stand parked all day in the Lake Front Park in Chicago is said to represent. IN COUNTRY TOWN?. Even in the residence sections of the small town's and villages, as one passes through them on the train, it is a strange sight to see the cars standing. In these straight, long, tree-shaded thoroughfares, with their sloping green lawns on either side, there would have been 20 years ago perhaps one horse and buggy standing hitched to each miledong vista. Now, as you look down, you see five or six, ten or a dozen cars standing -waiting at the kerbs. Out on the country roads, in the wide level lands, it is still more curious to see the little black things crawling ever}- - where like flies. During a great part of this year there has been serious congestion on the railways, so that the shipment of cars by rail has been subject to much delay. The manufacturers, therefore, have taken to making delivery of their machines—though to points a thousand or two thousand miles away —by road, sending them -under their own power. Everywhere (especially on the roads running from Detroit) one has seen long trains of vehicles, all brand new, travelling over the open farmlands like the long strings of transport which one used to see behind the f*©nt in France. WORKMEN OWN CARS. However incredible it may sound, I believe it to be true that at a certain town in Ohio a company which makes a well-known business specialty is now about completing a huge shed adjoining its factories to house its employees' automobiles during working hours, at a cost of 250,000d0l (£50,000). Buying of cars by factory hands is as striking a phenomenon as for some years past has been their acquisition by farmers. One day I went to pick up the head of a large concern at his office at the works in order to go and play golf. There were some 300 cars parked in the factory yards waiting to take the workmen home. The average wages earned by the owners were, my friend told mc. 7dol or 7dol 30 cents (28/ to 30/) a day. The cars were either bought outright out of savings or on the instalment plan, with payments of £3 or £4 a month. There is a certain large factor}'. I was told, some distance out of a town which theoretically depends on an electric tramline to bring its employees to and take them from their work. The tram line was tied up by a strike, but the next morning there were less than half a dozen workmen who failed to turn up either in their own cars or in those of their fellows. Undoubtedly many people in the United States own cars who would be much better off without them. None, the less, individually there is everything to be said in favour of any man possessing I one who can legitimately afford and has proper use for it. It is. an immense economiscr of time, and, what is more important to the worker, of physical strength. It gives him and hi* family the means of rational recreation in the fresh air, and much increased social contact with their friend?. [n the aggregate, however, there is no question that the. motor ear adds greatly to the wastefulness and fevi:rishnesa of American life. The possession of a car inevitably tempts to much extravagant expenditure. The demands of the industry raise the prices of many things —like rubber and plate class —which are ! essential to other fundamental indus--1 tries. Most serious of all. perhaps, is ' the immense wastiiac. Or non-essential use, of petrol or .lm-uloiic. It has been estiinitd"! thai v'i:~ wast;' rV.ns to some :>.C00.0110 -allon- « daw taking the country as ,i whole. With uli it.s benefit.-.. nnd in spite of all that is to be said in its defence, there can be no question . that the automobile is to-day one of tht J main factors in the costliness of life.