The Ely miner. [volume] (Ely, Minn.) 1895-1986, 1941-08-21
A SYSTEM THAT CAN PROVIDE
GREATER Joy OF LIVING
Released by Western Newspaper Union.)

A SYSTEM THAT CAN PROVIDE
GREATER JOY OF LIVING
WHAT CHANGES BUT few short
years have wrought in our Amer
lean methods of work and play and
living.
A trip by auto from Chicago to
Sturgeon Bay, Door county, Wiscon-
sin, and return, demonstrated many
of these changes, most of them as
a result of the invention of the in
ternal combustion engine.
Horses have disappeared from
the countryside. Over a period of
10 days / saw but two on the road,
and not more than dozen in the
barnyards and pastures. Horses
have been replaced by the auto
mobile and tractor as means of
transportation for the farm family
and power for the cultivation and
harvesting of farm crops.
My little trip was made during
the height of the grain harvesting
season but l saw only one threshing
machine. They have been replaced
by the tractor-drawn combine. The
great stacks Of straw that were for
merly part of each farm picture,
marking the scene of threshing OPP
erations, are no more. The COM
bine leaves it scattered over the
field, to be plowed under and to help
to some extent to enrich the soil
for the production of another crop.
A tractor, not the faithful old
Dobbin of former years, supplied
the motive power.
Automobiles, buses and trucks
have replaced the lowly local pas
senger trains and way-freights of
former years. Many of the towns
through which I travelled were lake
ports to which lake boats for the
transportation of freight and pas
Sengers are no longer daily, semi
weekly or weekly visitors. All that
is left of water transportation are
the great ore, coal and grain car
riers, the only evidence of which is
a smoke line far out on the horizon.
The feed stores, livery stables
and blacksmith shops have given
place to the garage and gas station.
The old ice house of the country
home at which l was visitor had
given place to the electric refrigera-
tor. The work of the farm and
home was done by electric or
motor-driven power. You but
pushed button for lights, instead
of the filling and cleaning of lamps
Of yesteryear.
A visit to the market place is no
longer matter of a days travel
over rough dirt roads in a horse
drawn wagon, but is now made in a
few minutes over concrete as
smooth as floor, with a few cents
worth of gasoline in an automobile
engine to supply the motive power.
America, city, town and farm, is
on gas-driven wheels and the
change has come about in an in
credibly short period of time. The
first automobile l ever saw was
crude machine, capable of some IL
miles an hour, when it would op-
crate at all, displayed at the Worlds
Columbian exposition in 1898. The
first one I ever rode in was a single
cylinder "gas buggy" with carriage
wheels, dashboard instead of a
windshield, coal oil lamps, a crank,
with which to start it if you could,
and that was less than 40 years ago.
These represent but small part
of the progress America has made
since the opening of the present
century. They represent the rapid
upward trend of the American
standard of living made possible by
the American system of free COM
petition. 1t is a system that Gre
ates more opportunities for enjoy
ment OF living, less work and de-
creasing hours of work, at higher
wage standards, more jobs and an
ever-decreasing cost of the pleas
ures and conveniences we enjoy.
It is system we cannot afford to
sacrifice.