The Key West citizen. [volume] (Key West, Fla.) 1879-current, 1933-01-30
Auto Car Americas Most
Important Transportation
By B. E. HUTCHINSON
Chairman of the Board, Plymouth
Motor Corporation)

1 Within approximately the last
| twenty-five years, American ini-
tiative and ingenuity and vast
sums of American capital have
produced, in the form of high
ways and highway motor vehicles,
a system of transportation which,
in it's nationwide local ramifica-
ton, connects even more COM
pletely than do the railroads,
every city, village and hamlet of
the country. This, as contrasted
with the mass transportation sys-
tenn of the railroads, is essentially
an individual transportation sys-
tenn, and it is inconceivable that
the country could get along with
out it.
In 1901, there were only $4,000
automobiles in the United States.
At the end of 1881 there were
rs, 814, 900 automobiles registered
in this country. There is nearly
one automobile for every five peo-
pie in the United States; that is
practically one automobile for
each family. There are more
automobiles in this country than
telephones. A writer for one of
| the country's leading publications
| pointed out not long ago that we
THE most bathroomed nation
have more automobiles than bath
rooms; that every day more of US
use car than use a toothbrush,
and that the automobile above
everything else is the American
standard of the American stand
ard of living.
This enormous growth of the
automobile industry would not
have occurred had the automobile
| been merely an instrument for
pleasure. It's wide use in this
country and its growing use
abroad testify to it's value as es-
sentially an instrument of utility.
The pleasure car of twenty years
ago is now called a passenger car,
and this change in nomenclature
is expressive of the change in
| function which has taken place.
In its principal service function
today-the transportation of per-
sons-the automobile has en-
ormously increased the mobility of
people, widened their normal
horizon and broadened their out
look. 1t is conceivable, too, that
the influence of the automobile
has contributed to the noticeably
lessened social tension incident to
the times of stress through which
this country has recently passed,
as compared with what has occur
red in other like periods.
Due to it's flexibility, safety,
| convenience and economy more
than 80 per cent of the passenger
miles by all means of transport is
by automobile. 1t travels over a
network of highways twelve times
as extensive as the railway tracks
in the United States; it carries
four or five people at practically
the cost of carrying one, and en-
ables the passenger to start and
stop when and where he chooses.
The school bus is today rapidly
eliminating the little red school
house of yesterdays fame, and it
it logical to assume that in max
ing our people less provincial, the
automobile may even change the
course of community development,
eliminating many of our smaller
villages and building up the larger
trading centers.
Estimates of the volume of
freight transported by truck vary
widely. The fact is, however, that
the actual transportation service
of the truck, its potentialities for
service, and the value which the
public places on truck trans
portation, are very much greater
than available figures indicate.
1t is quite natural that a trans
portation factor as great and as
rapid in its growth as the motor
vehicle should raise many prob
lens of adjustment. There win
doubtless be a considerable ex-
pansion in the transportation of
persons and goods by automobile.
Doubtless, too, there will always
exist the need for a very sub
stantial part of our transportation
service by rail, 1t is perhaps not
to be expected that the adjust
ments which are necessary to the
proper coordination of these two
land transportation agencies-the
automobile and the railway--will
be accomplished overnight.
In the end, of course, the most
economical forms of trausporta-
ton win survive, preserving to the
people of the country the bene-
1