The Great Events by Famous Historians

Another new owner could not find the key to fasten one rear wheel on the axle when he unloaded his auto from the car in which it had been shipped from the factory. Nevertheless, he started up the motor according to directions and traveled twelve miles with one wheel driving. By this time the outraged motor was red hot. Whereupon the new owner stopped at a farm-house and dashed several buckets of cold water on it. Then he plugged around the country a week or so before he decided to go to the agent to lodge a complaint that his derned car didn't "pull" well.

Still another new owner complained that his car did not give satisfactory service. The agent was not at all surprised that it didn't when, upon investigation, he found that the car had been driven five hundred miles without a single drop of oil being applied to transmission gear and rear axle.

George Robertson, the racing driver, in tuning up for the Vanderbilt race, went over the embankment at the Massapequa turn on Long Island at the rate of sixty miles an hour. The car turned over twice, but finally stopped right side up. Robertson received a cut on one arm in the fracas, but neither he nor the car was so badly injured but what they could get back to New York, a distance of twenty-five miles, under their own power. There the steering wheel was repaired at a cost of $5, the radiator at a cost of $3, and Robertson's arm at $2.

But the prize-winner was the Fiat racing machine which threw a tire while going fifty-five miles an hour on the Brighton Beach track. The flying racer, now utterly uncontrollable, dashed through two fences, one of them pretty substantial, cut down a tree eight inches in diameter, and finally came to a stop right side up. E.H. Parker, the driver, and his mechanician, were somewhat surprised, but otherwise undamaged. They put on a new tire and in twenty minutes were back in the race again.

What the automobile can do in the way of cheapness was shown by the cost tests, sanctioned and confirmed by the American Automobile Association, between a Maxwell runabout and a horse and buggy. In seven days, in all kinds of weather and over city and country roads, the horse and buggy traveled 197 miles at a cost per passenger mile of 2-1/2 cents. The runabout made 457 miles in the same time, and the cost per passenger mile was 1.8 cents. This covered operation, maintenance, and depreciation, and, incidentally, all speed laws were observed.

The Winton Company, which conducts a sort of private Automobile Humane Society, offers prizes for chauffeurs who can show the greatest mileage on the lowest charge for upkeep. The first prize winner in the contest for the eight months ending June 30, 1909, drove his car 17,003 miles with no expense whatever for up-keep. The second prize winner drove 11,000 miles at an outlay of thirty cents, while the third man drove 10,595 miles without any expense. This makes a total of 38,598 miles by three cars at a cost of thirty cents for repairs. And all the cars were two years old when the contest began.

The moral for those who really want to see what an automobile can do is obvious.

ISAAC F. MARCOSSON

Every automobile that you see is a link in a chain of steel and power which, if stretched out, would reach from New York to St. Louis. What was considered a freak fifteen years ago, and a costly toy within the present decade, is now a necessity in business and pleasure. A mechanical Cinderella, once rejected, despised, and caricatured, has become a princess.

Few people realize the extent of her sway. Hers is perhaps the only industry whose statistics of to-day are obsolete to-morrow, so rapid is its growth. In 1895 the value of the few hundred cars produced in the United States was one hundred and fifty thousand dollars; in 1910 the year's output of approximately two hundred thousand machines was worth two hundred and twenty-five millions. Behind them is a stalwart business representing, with parts and accessory makers, an investment of more than a billion and a quarter of dollars. Four hundred thousand men, or more than five times the strength of our standing army, depend upon it for a livelihood, and more than five millions of people are touched or affected by it every day.

Through its phenomenal expansion new industries have been created and old ones enriched. It withstood panic and rode down depression; it has destroyed the isolation of the farm and made society more intimate. There is a car for every one hundred and sixty persons in the United States; twenty-five States have factories; the honk of the horn on the American car is heard around the world.

Such, in brief, is the miracle of the motor's advance. Its development is a real epic of action and progress.