The herald and news. [volume] (Newberry S.C.) 1903-1937, 1921-06-03

Columbia, June 1.-Columbia ought
to be good town for life insurance
agents. Certainly when one walks
Me streets he takes his life in his own
hands. Going from home to bus
mess, or from business to home, one
never knows whether OR not he will
reach his destination. There are
speed limits for automobiles, provided
by ordinance and by State Statute,
>but the automobiles seem to think
that is, good many of thenl-that
speed limits are enacted to keep up
with at least, and to exceed, if pos
sible. There are black automobiles
here, blue automobiles, green auto
mobiles, yellow automobiles-and all
the other colors of the rainbow-and
+ possibly some colors that the rainbow
Nnever thought of. Speeding up and
down Main street or Gervais street,
aor. any of the other streets-whether
main thoroughfares or cross streets
some of them simply are streak on
the landscape-here they come, and
there they are gone. When the vari-
colored cars follow each other in
>quick succession, it has the effect of
an artificial rainbow made for the
pleasure of those on the sidewalks,
but for those crossing the streets it
has the appearance of that long
range German Bertha" that shelled
Paris from some seventy-odd miles.
!. This may sound a little exaggerat-
ed, but the facts are by no means
overdrawn. Two recent instances will
serve to illustrate the point. A gen
tlennan was crossing Gervais street
the other night, going across Main
from the opposite side of the city hall
toward the State House, and when he
had got out of the way of the street
cars and the automobiles speeding
bQth ways on this busiest corner of
Columbia, an automobile without the
sign of a light swung around from
the State House grounds into Ger
vais street, at the rate of something
like twenty-five miles an hour, and
narrowly missed the man in question.
Had it been a woman with some little
children in her care-or even by her
self-there is no telling what the
consequences might have been. The
people in the automobile slowed up
not a particle-but laughed as the
man got out of the way. 1t was an
hoying- enough to catch
Neir number and report them. But
. there is no use now to try to catch
a number. The State Highway Com
misien has adopted a pretty red num-
ber-one of these parlor plush num-
bers-that are good for nothing but
Ito catch dust. Evidently when they
Thought of the color they had in con-
sultation an eye specialist, who fgur-
ed that it would be well in sizing up
numbers to size up ones eyes as well,
and if one could catch a number, even
with spy glass, he would be cofnpe-
tent to oficiate in any branch of op-
tometry.
On Saturday night a mail car COM
ANing from the Union station up Sumter
street-a truck-swerved around an
other car just on the Gevais street
crossing, and came near running into
some people. The mail truck had no
lights, but evidently thought that hu-
man life was worth nothing as com
pared with getting the mail to the
Apost Office in haste, even though lights
tost very little, and the government
; tax on two or three coca colas would
have paid for enough light to run
from the station to the post office, a
distance of less than two miles, and
though without those lights some
n lives might have been lost. Or may
pc the driver of the truck was late for
supper, and it didn't matter much to
him if some women and children
should be mangled under the wheels
of the United States mail.