The silver messenger. (Challis, Idaho) 1890-1912, 1907-05-28
Thr Atttnmnf1tlr JH tttr
MaruRl If thp AYR
BY ELLIOT C. LEE.
President Massachusetts, Automobile Club.

gm~m~9ExT to the locomotive engine, | believe that the automobile is
I ~ the greatest invention affecting the means Of transportation
d that has been made in a hundred years. The automobile, in
deed, has advantages over the locomotive, and as time goes on
EFT these advantages viii be more pronounced N $500
SA 1t is true that there are some defects in the motor cn
EsM as at present constructed, but it must be remembered that
EaWA motoring has been really practical for only very short time
N2xgSl while the improvements that have been made in the original
type Of machine have been extraordinary We may reasonably
expect very much greater improvement as time goes on.
The automobile was once the property only Of the rich, and it is still
a luxury, but it is certain to be within the reach Of the person of moderate
means and even of the average wage-earner 1t will come about so that
a number of workmen can club together and hire an automobile that will
take each man to the door Of his place of employment in the morning and
back to the door Of his home in the evening
A convenience of this kind will enable the dweIers in the congeseo
districts of the large cities to live in the country, and will go far toward
solving the much-discussed tenementhouse problem.
The perfected automobile will provide a solution for many problems
of public health, in shortening and simplifying the distance between city
and country, as the trolley already has done in its own line 1T already
enables a busy man to proceed at once from one point to another without
waiting exposed in incement weather for a steam or an electric car, and
the extension Of its use will confer this benefit on the wageeaners as a
class.
Think of what the automobile has done and will do for the merchant
who has goods TO transport through a large city and its suburbsl He
formerly used one or two horses to convey goods to a given point in the
time, say of two hours; the automobile will carry a greater quantity of
goods to and back from the given point in the time that the horses would
have taken to go there.
It is in this line of labor that the horse will be superseded by the
automobile, and nobody can question that it will be a good thing for horse
and man.
The automobile win not catch cold or run away, it viii not suffer
from fatigue or the strain of ascending steep roads; it does not require to
be banketed or hitched while it stands. Most of the fear of it is largely
imaginary, although somewhat natural to tmid or nervous persons
because the machine ts an unfamiliar thing.
In the hands of an unframed or reckless driver, the automobile may
well be a menace to public safety, just as horses have been in the past
and re now in the same kind Of hands but it will be easy to c~orrectthese
abuses by proper legislation.
One objection to the automobile has been that it destroyed good
roads. That is true in part, but only in part. The automobile improves
the natural road by rendering it smoother and more compact, but it does
affect injuriously the macadam road. But that is only saying that we
must have better roads, roads such as the anGents built which are firm
and smooth to this day not roads that are constructed for purely tenn
porary use.
After all, there is no vehicle that does not injure the roads that we
have constructed in this country, where bodybuilding has been so long a
neglected art.
Finally, we may ask, what are roads for? They are for the use Of
the vehicles that have to traverse them, and if the automobile is found to
be, as | believe it will be, an indispensable agent of modern transport
tation, we must build the proper roads mn n u
to accommodate it.