The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-09-23
4 NEW PERIL.

AAO AlslOlS O1 lA4O past 5HAlAASI uS- monstrated beyond the shadow of doubt that unless pedestrians exercise unusual care in crossing streets or alighting from trolley cars the ubiquitous automobile is there to run them down. Scarcely a day or week passes but what the newspapers print accounts of such fatal collisions. In other words new peril has come into the lives of absent-minded and reck- less people as a consequence of the introduction of the auto.
 The question arises whether the au- tomobile threatens to offer itself as a menace to our political institutions as we'll. Heretofore it has been possi- ble to keep an eye on professional politicians and candidates for office, to say little of those in office. Their goings and comings have been easily watched. Witnesses to their wander ings have been supplied in large num- bers, from the watchful station agent to the railroad car conductor and the travelling public. The art of newspa- per illustration has come in to famili- arlze the people with the features of the public men of the hour. A per feet stranger picks up a newspaper has his attention attracted by the smiling face in print of local cele- brity and becomes at once the source to others of the needed information which exposes the owner of the phiz If he happens to be aboard the train. Then follows in rapid succession the speculation which in ninety-nine times out of hundred uncovers the destin- ation of the distinguished traveller and permits the political mathematician to add two and two together with all that that implies. The telephone does the rest and the missionary among the faithful is from then on under con stant surveillance.
 It begins to look now as if the au- tomobile has found for the silent po- lltieal fortune hunter his escape from the eyes of a prying public in spite of the art of newspaper illustration The Hartford Times declares that Con- gressman Lilley is "kiting" all over the State in his auto, deliberating with this local political magnate and fixing that weakened fence. In it's Bridge port correspondence we find this sug- gestive statement of MT. Lilley's visit to New London: While in New Lon don the other day Lilley had a long talk with the three county commits sioners of that county and he was in conference with some of the other Republican leaders in that town" Be- goggled and otherwise disguised he slipped into town, did his business un- noticed and slipped out again with horn a-tooting but no one the wiser for the noise. Bridgeport has just heard of this visit and hastens to tell our esteemed contemporary about 1t but that does not help very much af- ter all. To know that he visited New London where he saw the big-wigs of the Republican party there is to know very little.
 Far more to the point is it to ascer- tain what other towns of the State he
 has visited in his fast running auto
 mobile, unknown, unheralded and un- Isung except by those he went there for to see? Will his chauffeur tell curi-
 ous public? Of course not. MT. Lil- Iley's car driver and machinlst is said
 to be dumb and to have invented a
 muffler which will let the auto slide right into the executive chambers of the State capitol building without the
 superintendent knowing it. The Hart
 ford Courant asked few issues ago
 for information about "the machine. 9
 It said that it had been hearing a
 great deal about "the machine" and would now like to hear something de-
 finite about it. We modestly suggest
 that it drop a line to Congressman
 Lilley's chauffeur. He knows.