The Birmingham age-herald., 1904-08-10
AUTOMOBILES HAVE A GLORIOUS FUTURE They Were at First Considered
 Mere Toys FAD IS ONLY il YEARS OLD When Machines Were First Exhibited at Chicago FaIr They Were
 Eyed Askance, Now They
 Are Useful Vehicles.
FAD IS ONLY il YEARS OLD

From the New=York Mail and Express.
 The debt of the world to It's toymakers is an ever growing one. Watts Stephen so.-, Morse. Edison-how long the list runs of those who came bearing the invaluable gifts that at first were called futile little things fit only for the babies to play with after the new toy had satisfied the amused curiosity of the elders. There was a case In point no longer ago than the Chicago World fair of 1893. The automo- piles shown in Jackson Park were few in number of small horsepower and more capable of much noise and the production of smoke evil odors and explosions than 1 of speed and comfort. They were toys, and the majority of those who saw them marveed at the rich fools who were will ing to risk their necks in the new-fangled, freakish playthings.
 Only eleven years have gone by and the picture now presented of the long pro- cession to another orlds fair of big touring cars. in which the members of the American Automobile association ara speeding from New York and Boston to- St. Louis tells a story that Is an indua trial romance.
 l Seldom if ever, has a novelty become so swiftly commonplace utility. Except when we note that a speed maniac has come to grief or that some unhappy own CT has been made target by country con- stables or the city's youthful Hooligans, we give scant attention to the automo- bile. Yet in little more than decade 1t has provided the one reany new element that enters into our industry, our sport, our fiction and our daily lives.
 Score Not one-sided.
 The latter entrance it effects too forci- bly sometimes. and life and the auto take their exit together But the score is not wholly one-sided. We note that one of these tourists to St. Louis transformed his automobile into an ambulance, and by whirng a wounded man from a lonely farm house to the nearest hospital, many miles away saved a life. Fortune, as well, is sometimes saved by 1t. Only the day before a banker in Ohio who had missed a train tossed bags of gold into rotor car and raced forty-eight miles. ar ] riv ng just in time to prevent his bank from closing it's doors in the face of a | run
 Fiction reflects existing conditions, and 1t is difficult now to pick up a magazine in which an automobile does not figure in some one of the short stories. An English novelist presents us with motor car hlghwayman who holds up King Edward himself and in every way, com ducts himself as befts twentieth cen tury Claude Duval in rubber coat and goggles. Fact in turn follows fiction, and we hear from the police of Rye that by the tracks of tires and the traces of gas- olne we are to understand that a band of Long Island Sound burglars is operat 1 Ing in automobiles Clearly, Sherlock Holmes must set to work and become az great an expert in fuel odors and tire breadths as he is in the matter of cigar ashes.
 Out in Wisconsin Governor La Toilette, undeterred by the fate of Tom Johnson and his red devil" in Oho is conducting his campaign from a touring car and SO the tale grows constantly of new uses for the one-time toy
 Future Is Unlimited.
 So great has been it's growth that the future of automobilng seems practically unlimited. It is hampered today only by the foolhardy and inconsiderate conduct of a few of it's votaries. Disregard for the rights of other users of the highways by the reckless minority has brought into being an indiscriminate prejudice that amounts to active enmity against all mo- l tor cars. But all the present evils will be corrected and friends and enemies will share in the coming changes. Respect for rules of the road will be enforced, but needless restrictions wlll be repealed. The speed mania will be held within the 1 bounds of race courses and, with better acquaintance. even the village constable will acquire tolerance.
 The motor car is here to stay, and since 
 gun fairly 1t Is good news that a move ment has started to rid the sport of the numerous French terms now used A for l eign word is welcome only when we can 1 find no English equivalent. It is carrying zeal for the mother tongue too far, for example when the German emperor by his order to Germanize the language, 1 forces his unhappy subjects to call an el- evator 'chairupstairsgoing.' But we can well spare the chauffeur" and the garage and all that alien brood, since we have such words as driver" "engin-