ROAD TO RECOVERY

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 25, 29 July 1933, Page 15

ROAD TO RECOVERY

THE WAY IN AMERICA

MOTORING'S BIG PART

Motoring figures rjroiuincntly in the United States programme as set out in the Industrial Recovery Act.

The first section, -which concerns particularly the producers and marketers of motor products, including vehicles, petrol and oil, tires, parts, and accessories, involves control of production, of competition, and of prices within each field.

The second section provides grants to the highway departments of the States, in an amount not less than ■100,000,000 dollars, to be expended for the construction and improvement of roads and bridges and, in general, for providing more and safer traffic routes.

Motorists of the jiation will pay a large share of the 3,300,000,000 dollars, to be made available under the Act. While receiving 400,000,000 dollars for highways,- car users will pay in the lifteen-year amortisation period a sum estimated at more than 1,000,000,000 dollars through the extra one-half cent a gallon fuel tax alone.

The measure also extends for another year the Pederal excise taxes imposed last year on passenger cars and trucks, tires, lubricating oil, and other motor products; as well as the one-cent Fedoral fuel impost. The motor industry was directly

linked with the industrial recovery programme by the appointment ol Mr. Alfred P. Sloan, president of the General Motors Corporation and a director of the National Automobile Chamber of Commerce, as a member of the Industrial Advisory Board to work with General Hugh S. Johnson, administrator of industry under-the Act.

,A committee of the chamber has been considering the desirability of formulating a trade code. The industry for some time has not suffered from overproduction, and it does not seek prieeh'xing privileges. - At the same time it is interested, patricularly in the face of possible .increases in commodity prices, in lowering its own costs by improving certain trado practices. -Among these aro jtho advertising of delivered prices, agreement on the time for bringing out new models and a definite procedure for disposal of superseded models.

Motor-car rotaileos, too, have been considering ways and means under the Eecovery Act of solving some of the problems in their field.' Agreement on trade-in, allowances, better arrangement of dealer territories and elimination, of discounts to large fleet owners are among the topics discussed.

Trucking interests also are preparing to take concerted action in line with the recovery programme. A committee was formed., to work for the organisation of a National Federation of State Motor Truck Associations and a nucleus created by motor truck associations of nine States—New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Khole Island, Virginia, and North Carolina. It is believed that the recovery measure will have a farreaching cff.ect on the trucking industry, especially on the operation of vehicles for hire.

Producers and marketers of oil and gasoline have been framing new codes, of practices, likewise the tire dealers.

Under the roading programme it is not necessary-for the States to match any of the new funds as is required with, ordinary Federal aid appropriations, consequently road work can be begun, as soon as the Federal funds are available, which will be about July 1. A portion of the 400,000,000 dollars will be retained by the National Government to be employed on the Federal Aid highway system, and the rest is to bo devoted to secondary and feeder roads. This is believed to bo the first time that Federal funds havo been permitted to be used for secondary highways.

The Act specially provides that the amount apportioned to any State "may be used to pay all or any part of the cost of surveys, plans, and of highway and bridge construction, including the elimination of hazards to highway traffic, such as level crossings, the relocation of highways to eliminate railroad crossings, tho widening of narrow bridges and roadways, the building of footpaths, the replacement of unsafe bridges, the construction of routes to avoid congested areas, the construction of facilities to improve accessibility and the free flow of traffic, and the cost of any other construction that will provide safer traffic facilities or definitely eliminato existing hazards to pedestrian or vehicular traffic."

Tho Act also provides that at least 50,000,000 dollars shall be devoted to roads in the national parks, forests, and Indian reservations.