Decorah public opinion. (Decorah, Winneshiek County [Iowa]) 1895-1928, 1912-09-18
NOTABADCE OF WEALTH
Progress of Auto Industry Now
Brings Motor Car to
Middle Class.
WILL DOUBLE MANS CAPACITY.
Affords Healtiiful Relaxation and
Solves Problem of Individual
Transportation.

Today it would be considered
strange If we were to find an other
wise we'll informed man who would
undertake to deny that in the auto
mobile the problems of individual
transportation have been solved with
degree of success that has no par
allel in history, says Benjamin Bris-
coe in the Chicago Tribune.
Yet little while ago-so recent
ly, in fact, that to many of us the
recollection of it seems like men,
DRY of yesterday-the automobile
was considered an almost unattain-
able luxury; its possession was syn
onymous with affluence or reckless,
living.
All that has changed. Perhaps by
reason of the fact that we assumed
sponsorship for the industry after it
already had outgrown its infantile
weaknesses in Europe, our American
automobile business progressed in
leaps and bounds, and became the
first to settle into a tranquil state,
just as the American automobile was
the first to become standardized in
it's mechanical features, being now
subject to further development by
refinement of less important details
rather than by radical changes.
Today the motored vehicle is recog-
nized as the best and cheapest vehi-
Gle in existence, whether it is to be
used for business or for pleasure.
AS a pleasure vehicle the automobile
has no equal; in fact, it performs on
the highways of the country the
same service to the individual that
has been rendered by the locomotive
on steel tracks to the country at
large. The bugbear of the traveller,
the rigid, figured-Out-in-adv time
schedule, does not burden the auto
mobile tourist who owns and man
ages his own system of transporta-
ton.
To the man who is his own chauf-
feur, automobiling affords rare re-
Taxation. Requiring in itself no great
physical exertion, it trains the pow
ers of coordination; the attention
which the motorist gives to the prop
er running of his car takes his mind
away from the cares and tribulations
of, business and from the irritations
of modern life, Fresh air and good
company cause his worries Ito fold
their tents like the Arabs, and silent
ly steal away" leaving in their wake
only the memory of well spent hours,
the conviction that life is indeed
worth living, and the knowledge that
the automobile has added one more
Incompatible charm to our hyper
civilized and complicated existence.
All this being as it is, is there any
wonder in the condition that con-
fronts us today or anything strange
in the fact that the automobile more
than ever holds the center of the
industrial stage and the attention of
the public-that our highways are
fairly dotted with motor cars?
Ask the motoring suburbanite who
has emancipated himself from the
tedium of travelling railroad trains,
in a motley of sweItering and tightly
packed humanity-ask the physician
who now visits thirty patients where
he could see only ten before, and
who in consequence has increased
not only his income, but at the same
tine his usefulness to the commun-
ity in which he lives-ask the bust
ness man whether he would like to
return to merchandise hauling with
the old fashioned, though faithful
old horse, and you will receive but
one answer, which will incidentally
lgive you the means of peering into
the future and Judging what the
automobile is destined to accomplish.
If you were to take from the auto
mobile all its glory, strip it of all
its splendor and admit nothing but
that the motor car doubles mans
usefulness by cutting distance in
half, the automobile would still stand
forth as one of the most powerful
factors in human progress.
AS matter of fact, the automo-
bile does much beyond extending
mans usefulness to himself and to
others into wider fields; it also SIM
plifies the traffic problems of great
cities, for the fact alone that the
automobile occupies only half the
Ispace taken up by the horse and car
riage speaks loudly in favor of the
machine, without mention of the
further fact that the car may be
started, stopped, and Unanswered
with greater dispatch and safety
than the poor brain and four willing
legs of its animal predecessor. 1t
makes for better sanitary conditions
and consequently for improved