The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-10-25
INCREASE IN USE
 OF AUTOMOBILES Billings Has Largest Private Garage In America STORIES OF SPEED LAWS One Well Known Has Figured That 1t Costs $1.27 Per Mile To
 Run His Big Ma
 chine.
BY FREDERIC J. HAsKIN.

| power and high priced cars is almost be- yond relief. There are many thousand l cars in the United States the cost of l each of which would have been sufficient
 to buy and stock a. pretty decent sort | of a farm, cars that cost more than the | average farmer in the United States is
 worth. Some men in the United States | spend as much in the maintenance of
 their automobiles in one year as the | average newspaper reporter earns in half | a lifetime. One car is not enough for
 many of them, and there are some who | are not satisfied with even half a dozen. l At least one man in the United States has more than a dozen machines for
 his own private use.
 That man is c. K G. Billings, owner 1 of Lou Dillon, the trotting queen of
 the American turf Like many other ] lovers of horse flesh, MT. Billings has ! gone in for automobilng as well as for
 horse racing, and he Is today the owner of the largest private garage in America.
 He has 13 cars, some of them the best 1 that money can buy, and they represent 1 an outlay of more than $100,000 in cold ! cash. It costs him from $25,0O0 to s30,O
 a year to maintain them. His garage con-
 sists of two stables, and the rent for 1 them, one of the smallest of his expendi- 1 lures, is s90O a month. He has an expert
 machinlst to keep them in repair, and chauffeurs galore.
 Another man who goes in for the besc there is in the automobile line is w. Gould Brokaw of New York He has | placed his order for three of the finest
 cars ever seen in America. One of these will be veritable palace on wheels. Its comfort-making devices will be as com plete as those of the average private
 railroad car. There will be a compart- | ment that by day will serve as a living room and by night a sleeping apartment. Berths as comfortable as
 those in best of sleeping cars be ! made up. There will be a little kitchen
 and dining room, fsll toilet set, fold 1 ing bathtub, ice box-in short every thing that is needed to make an up-to-date | home, even down to "the little button on | the wall' and the incandescent light. | France has dozens of cars of this type,
 some of them even larger than that or l dered by MT. Brokaw.
 
 1 tomobes in America is John D. Rocke- | feller. gle goes in for good cars, but he is 15ing to be sure that each is a good 9le before he buys it. He has a special American made machine that is his favorte. yet whenever he buys one of this make he is just as careful to have it's possibilities thoroughly demon
 strated as if he had never seen one be- | fore. Recently he bought a new one of ffa lrn but haf ha so that individual machine had to be put through every pace that an auto ! mobile can go. Another close buyer IS | Senator Elllins of West Virginia, who since the retirement of William A. Clark, 1 is probably the richest man in the United l States Senate. Not long ago he was in
 the market for a machine. An agent was
 showing him one. Though born in Ohio, l MT. Elkins lived and grew to manhood | in Missouri. and always wanted to be
 shown. The agent made his machine do | everything that an automobile can do, | and then the Senator wanted it to do | something else But the agent turned | away. Senator IllSins called him back ] and wanted to know where he was going. i The agent replied that he was on his
 way back to the garage, as it was no use | to show the machine further; that he had
 made it do everything but talk and he
 
 The Senator bought the machine. Speed laws, from the view point of the ! automobilist, are the most detestable | things ever invented. The public has
 not much judgment as to how fast | car is really moving. In New York they l have a law that they must not go over ] 10 miles an hour. Partly to ridicule the ! law and partly to educate the public to nf al arlr | speedometer maker rigged up to gigantic 1 speedometer on an autoombile. It's face | was four feet across, and the figures on | the dial were F inches high. The ma 1 chine has been run through the streets I of New York within the lawful speed | limit. Everything in the street except 1 the draft teams are said to pass it. The l thing has been one of the most mirth | provoking of Gotham's many sights. 1 No village marshal in the world ever 1 secured the international reputation that | Collins of Glen Echo, Md, did in hold- l ing up violators of speed regulations. more than one titled person paying the penalty for speeding over his roads. But Philadelphia recently had one on whom it's motorists showered left handed bene- dictions. and finally got even with him. ! Taylor never overlooked an opportunity 1 to hold up speed regulation violators At
 
 discovered that it was his duty to keep
 the stones out of the road. They gath cred bags full of them and haled him into court on charge of malfeasance in office. The magistrate before whom he was brought held him on aca300 bond to be tried on a msdemeanor charge. If there is any plea to be set up to escape a violation of speed law one may be sure that an automobiles will find 1t and use it. Recently a wealthy citizen of Connecticut was arrested for
 speeding At his trial he set up the de- fense that he was asleep at the time
 and that he knew nothing of how fast the machine was running. and that if any one was to blame it was the chauf- feur and not he. He was acquitted. and as the chauffeur was then out of the jurisdiction of the court there was no fine to pay
 Wisconsin enacted an automobile law, which has four sections that should not | be violated. It read that anyone vio- I latng sections. 1. ,. and should be | fined. W. F. Barnes of Rockford. vio- l lated the law and was arrested. He | set up defense that he had not violated | all of these sections. and could not there | fore be legally fined. He pointed out that | the word and was used in the statute | where .'or'' would have had to be in order to make it cover violation of one l of the sections. Since then motorists may violate the law with impunity, only l being careful not to violate all tile sec | tions in bunch.
 l New England court has an amusing