The New York herald., 1922-03-26
MOTOR CARS AID
TO REAL ESTATE
Passenger Cars and Trucks
Are a Form Of Realty
Insurance.
By GEORGE NJ. GRAHAM.
yice-Presidept TIE Chandler Motor
Car Co.

Car Co..
There are still in this country many
millions of persons who think OF high
ways and automobiles as having to do
alone with pleasure.
We do not apologize for the fact that
the automobile is an important medium
OF diversion This is quite legitimate
but Il Is important that its utility func-
ton be properly recognized.
Those who think of the automobile
merely as a pleasure car" have perhaps
never contemplated what terrific real
estate upheaval there would be il the
passenger carrying and the freight
carrying truck should suddenly be with
drawn.
The evil consequences resulting would
affect both city and rural population.
Within the last twenty years. farmers
have found 1t possible to go beyond un-
productive or Improbable land. pur-
chased originally merely because it was
contiguous to steam railways.
They have penetrated further and
further into remote rural sections, be-
cause in the motor truck they have
connecting link between the point of food
production and the point of marketing.
Records of the United States Bureau
of Roads show that the farmers haul
no market has increased from 60 miles
10 17.6 miles. an expansion based en-
airely on motor truck haulage.
IT the motor truck should be elimi-
nuted what would happen to farm land
values can be readily imagined
Similar would be the baneful effect
on city dwellers. The city man no
longer lives In the city. lie has gone
far into the suburbs.
It will be found by analysis of con-
ditons in any great city that its central
portion is more and more given over to
commerce and manufacturing. and that
J the residence section constantly moves
further into the suburbs.
The man of wealth, the man Of only
reasonable means, finds that the auto
mobile gives him ready touch with the
heart of the city.
He ever has at hand a medium Of in
diVidual transportation. In this one
point alone is the assurance OF the per-
nanencX Of the automobile business.
Therefore the automobile and the
motor truck actually constitute kind
Of real estate insurance.
| have used the term individual
transportation" ! should like to ana
I'VE that term to some extent, and un-
dertake to show most interesting re-
version OF method.
Generally speaking, the impulse OF our
life has been to progress from individ-
began as an association of individual
States, but their boundary lines seen
constantly to become less important and
the Federal idea more dominant.
At one period. for centuries. in fact,
individualism dominated transportation.
The man with a horse and wagon, the
man with boat. both are instances.
Then great steamships. steam railways
and electric trolleys took the transporta-
Al 4l.A tvaIi
This was combination, improved pub
lie service, and these great mediums will
always be with us in place OF COM
manding Importance.
But transportation also has seen a re-
turn TO the individual facilities, most
unusual development.
In both freight hauage and passenger
transportation the motor vehicle mas
turned back the hands on the face OF the
clock OF time, and we now supplement
centralized transportation with an indi-
vidual medium subject entirely to your
own whim. preference or need.
This Is A great economic development.
II is potent now and destined to be still
more so.
In 500 years the world had not ad-
yanced beyond the point OF man hauled
or the beast hauled wagon or cart, or
the man propelled or wind propelled
boat.
1t is an amazing thought when set
against all that happened In the world
in that time.
Actually the history of modern trans
portation can be written within the last
40 years.
The world has accomplished more in
that interval than in 1900 years OF prior
Christian history
When Robert Fulton launched the
Clermont on the Hudson, and when
Stephenson two decades later invented
the steam locomotive, they discounted
everything that had gone before in the
history of transportation.
Now at the beginning of the twentieth
century we also have motor vehicle and
aeroplane, depending upon internal com
bustion motors, gasoline driven, just as
their predecessors depended upon steam
and electricity