full of horsehide trunks that hold the brocaded satins in which our great-greatgrandmothers danced with Lafayetteyou just read about them in the storybooks; they don't exist. The only thing that goes clomping right along just as if steam had never happened is the dear old Constitution. For all it has ever heard, the patent on Pickard's new and brilliant invention of the crankand-fly-wheel whereby the back-and-forth motion of a piston-rod can be transformed into the round-and-round motion of a wheel-for all the Constitution knows, Pickard's patent still has six or seven years to run, and Watt, too grudging to pay royalties, will have to wait till it runs out before he can perfect his engine, run. by the vacuum of condensed steam. Gasolene has probably no serious intentions upon industry. Whatever happens to that further will be along the lines laid out by steam, nothing revolutionary. What little of the home remains may safely be left to the cost of living to break up, which cannot be otherwise than high "Just as if steam had never happened is to those who buy by dribs and dabs. It is not afternoon yet to the steam-engine. Do not think it. It is probably close on to twelve o'clock as far as its perfectibility is concerned, although one would think there might be room for improvement in a device which, at its best, cannot utilize more than sixteen heat-units out of a hundred; gasolene gets twenty-four out of a hundred. Still, hooked up with the dynamo, the steam-engine will be chugging away successfully long after you and I have gone to bed in a pine box. But when you talk of the changes gasolene will work, applied to transportation, you certainly have something to talk about. The Saul of steam hath slain his thousands, and if David hath not yet slain his tens of thousands, that is because he 's only a stripling. Let 's see, is this next annual automobile show the sixteenth or the seventeenth? In 1898 there were just fifty-eight automobiles in the United States, and now I hear that there are two millions-about. To be strictly accurate, I should have to look up the figures in next year's almanac. Kill us? Of course gasolene means to kill us. Read your newspaper. Note the curtness of the chronicles of automobile fatalities. Space is too valuable for routine stuff. No doubt the relatives and friends grieve for the victims; it's only natural that they should, but for the rest of us to brood upon such matters and to say that something ought to be done about it, that 's kind of morbid, don't you think? Kind of looking on the dark side, don't you think? There is no light without a shadow. Every great improvement brings a certain amount of violent death, but ought one to block the wheels of progress by being fussy about human life? It is n't as if it were in any way scarce at all, though how it will be after the European War I do not know. That 's our attitude. Call it happy-golucky if you will, but, I ask you, what three words could be more eloquent of Americanism than "happy" and "go" and "lucky"? This is a matter that will adjust itself. In the course of time the slow-footed and slow-witted will be eliminated or kept at home. Children will be systematically in structed that there are two places where they must not play, the railroad track and the street, since both are the habitat of high-speed heavy bodies. Walking the picket-fence used to be looked upon as risky, but I should think it safer than the sidewalk on a skiddy day. Now that eternal punishment has gone out, a person ought to have something to cling to in the hour of trial. And survival of the fittest is such a comfort every time you get across the street all in one piece! It sort of establishes your position for you, don't you see? Despite secret misgivings, you must be worthy, for you 're still alive. I certainly agree with those who say there ought to be a stringent law passed to keep the automobiles down to a speed that any one can dodge, just as I think the sun ought to rise to-morrow morning. Nothing can be more disconcerting than to expect phenomena that don't come off. To those who hold that such legislation does no good, the answer is that it does do good to the law-book printer, and also it gives employment to judges for their seventeen thousand dollars a year, which is certainly good wages for that sort of man. But if you ask me whether passing speed laws will make automobiles go at a safe rate along our present roadsmy dear sir, do be reasonable. England once had an excellent law of that sort. Steam-railroad men pronounced it admirable. It provided that every vehicle propelled by other than animal power upon the public highway should keep within four miles an hour, and always be preceded by a man carrying a red flag by day and a red lantern by night. A pattern for speed legislation! In England it was repealed by act of Parliament; in America it would be repealed by act of placing the thumb to the nose and waggling the fingers at the constable. The automobile goes too fast for all that nonsense. There are some who say they do not enjoy the scenery so much in an automobile as they do behind a white horse that walks with its front feet and trots only with its hind ones. But what do they want of scenery, for goodness' sake? To see every leaf? Fortunately, these people are few. Most of us love the thrill that comes from going as though we were shot out of a gun, a thrill comparing "What are Gasolene's intentions ?" favorably with the scariest scootings of the scenic railway. Some say an automobile can go a hundred miles in less time than it would take to stay at home, but that is doubtless an exaggeration. It is the fastest means of locomotion on earth except the aëroplane, which, strictly speaking, is n't on earth when it is going 135 miles an hour. But, then, the aeroplane is not yet competitive with the auto. It needs to be a wee bit safer, for few of us have the philosophy of the Irishman who was heard to say while passing the tenth floor rapidly, "Well, here goes for a divel iv a boomp, annyways!" The best that steam can do for us in the way of speed is at the rate of 1121⁄2 miles an hour. Ho! if it comes to "at the rate of," gasolene can do a mile in 25.4 sec onds, which is- Let me figure. 25.4 into 60, how many times? Multiply that by 60 minutes-at the rate of 141 miles an hour. If you want 100 actual miles traversed, that was done in 58 minutes, 54.2 seconds, at Chicago, August 7, 1915. By all means pass a law compelling this wild thing to keep down to the old white horse's trot. Amuse yourself. If not in the home itself, gasolene intends to make great changes in the next thing to the home, the road. At present, as at any time in the last thousand years, it runs right past the Miller place, out of the front gate of which little children come on their way to school or to the grocery at the Corners, with a penny for candy in their fat hands; it runs right past old man Ellert's, who is getting hard of hearing, and whose left leg bothers him since he broke it in two places falling out of the haymow a year ago last spring; right past the cow-pasture gate, from which and to which, nights and mornings, Cherry and Brindle and Jersey Queen take their way, leisurely moving, and solid to bump against when going fast; there are dogs drifting up and down the road, and cats solemnly intent upon their life-work, ridding the country of the song-bird nuisance; poultry there is also. Chickens, once feathered out, can get a gait on, but not so the fluffy little chicks, not so the hen-mother, with her self-important Upon the public highway there are too many creatures seemingly possessed to get right in the way. When they are run over, I'm trying to put it gently, -it tends to cast a gloom over an otherwise perfect day. A railroad-track in the middle of every country road, with its "Stop, Look, and Listen!" sign would be far more sensible. You'd know when to expect trains; they'd be right in the one place, and they would stick to the track, in theory at least. But an automobile may be along any minute of the day or night on any portion of the highway, and, if anything goes wrong with the steering-gear, it may take a notion to come through the fence and part way into the house. We shall muddle through for a while, letting things drift, but some day we shall begin to grow and plan like adults. Then there will be sidewalks for pedestrians on every road, isles of safety, tunnels under, and bridges over, crossings, and complete exclusion of animal life, so that things can't happen that will cast a gloom over an otherwise perfect day. I used to think the Federal Government might better spend its money for macadam turnpikes to avert the sure annual loss that comes from mud roads, as tough as taffy, than on battle-ships to avert the mere chance of loss by invading Japanese. A certain person, when he was President, set me right, I'm glad to say. Mentioning this foolish thought to him in private conversation, he pounded on his desk and rasped out, "The man that thinks that is a greater traitor to his country than ever Jeff Davis was." After that, I could n't very well keep the thought. "It gives employment to judges for their seventeen thousand dollars a year" air, "Who but me?" not to be hurried for any sake. A pretty pastoral scene. Take a good look at it while you may. It will not be here forever. Not with an engine, swifter than a locomotive now, yearning for a chance to show how swift it is. And look how right he was! For if the battle-ships they built then are the merest junk, what is macadam by this time? The horse propels himself by thrusts, just as the early locomotive did when, though they felt pretty sure that wheels would roll, they did n't feel at all sure that drivingwheels would get along, though they might turn round. Every time a horse digs an iron-bound toe into the road he loosens up the surface. Along comes an auto mobile. Its weight buckles up a hump of rubber on the tire as it approaches contact with the ground; as it passes the contact with the ground, the rubber the wagon-train, it was thought to threaten the horse, too. It seems it did n't. If he lost one job, he found another. The plow, which for fifty centuries had been a crooked stick, ironpointed, was turned into a steel tool with scientifically plotted curves. McCormick invented the reaper; there was a multitude of inventions of horse-drawn implements for the farm. not to be hurried "The mother hen, snaps back into shape, creates a vacuum, It is the horse that complicates the problem; without him it were simple. Build the roads of concrete. Laid honestly, and not too "rich wit' sand," they would last a thousand years, which is plenty long enough for anything to last, be it good or bad. It would cost a lot, but would it cost any more, spread out over twenty years, than the everlasting But gasolene boldly invades the horse's own peculiar province, meaning to put him out of business altogether. The automobile carries passengers in small lots from front door to front door; the locomotive carries them by the battalion from station to station, leaving a gap between the station and the front door. Incidentally, the automobile has revived the roadside inn, which the horse could not keep alive. But there is now no farm-work for the locked-out carriage-horse to do. In that line, too, the gasolene-engine beats him to death for cheapness and efficiency. It drags the traction-plow and the reaper, it works not only the hay-tedder, the thresher, the silage-cutter, the cream-separator, but after a day's work that would leave the horse too tired to move, it cheer fully pumps water, and turns the dynamo for the evening lamp not only in the house, but in the barn. Idle, it does not eat its head off, and when needed urgently, you do not have to coax it up to you, only to have it dash off playfully to the other end of the lot just as you 're going to put the halter on. The main problem with the gas-impelled farm-implement is to make it small enough to fit the acreage of the horse-operated farm. But with the aid of the rapid increase of price of agricultural lands, doubling in ten years, the problem will be solved rather by enlarging the farm than by decreasing the size of the engine, for increased industrial power increases the size of the industrial unit. Take a good look at the forty-acre farm while you may. He Seemingly the horse is doomed. was first of all a beef-critter; he may be that last of all. They say he is not bad to eat. Or he may linger as the dog does, a beloved bother, not a bit of use, but nice to have around. We shall miss the horse terribly, and the flies and the typhoid. It won't be the same at all. But the disappearance of the peasant farmer, almost totally impervious to the instruction of the Department of Agriculture, will be a more important change that gasolene intends. And it not only means to do things to the public highways; it has its eye on those quasi-public highways, the railroads. The attitude of street-railroad companies to a complaining public in the past has been so snippy and up-stage that it is one of the easiest things in the world to keep one's heart from bleeding at the shrieks of agony emitted because the jitney is picking on them so. That the jitney is financially irresponsible in case of accident, and nothing like as prompt and generous as the traction companies; that the jitney cannot possibly earn dividends, and is good only to bring in cash to keep starvation from the door of the workman who has a ramshackle car, but not a real job; that the jitney institutes a wicked and reckless competition which destroys the property values of stable enterprises and robs the widow and the orphan whose little all has been invested in traction stock -these may be all true, but tell it to Sweeney, not to us. If Sweeney is alderman and, as such, passes on jitney applications for a franchise, he will be glad to hear such arguments: they will come in handy in explaining why he votes "No." But the rest of us have not only a resentful memory of the street railroad's past performances; we have also a romantic nature. To have an earnest, brave young fellow with nothing but his indomitable courage and a cheap car go to a grapple. with a purse-proud corporation, and in a little while have it squalling: "Quit now! You just leave me be!" why, that is the sort of story-book we have been reading ever since we could read. The earnest, brave young fellow should marry the traction magnate's daughter, certainly; but that comes in the last chapter, and we have only started on the book. Doubtless the jitney's destructive competition with the street-cars will not last long, keep your eye on Sweeney, but while it lasts we shall gladly pile in, ten or twelve of us in one runabout, just to get even with the traction company. It's a matter of principle with us. And we do not exactly let our love for the steam-railroad run away with us, either. If gasolene intends a hard rap for the steam-railroad, few flags will be half-masted, few bells tolled. But even with concrete highways, screened from leg-travel, I just don't see transcontinental freight moved by the gas-engine. One locomotive can pull a mighty long string of cars, you know. Oh, well, let steam have the long hauls, and gasolene take the short hauls. There should be nice pickings where the rates for local freight are just enough to keep horse-hauling out. The long string of freight-cars on the steam-railroad is up-to-date enough. It is at each end of the string, where it frays out into component fibers, where the carloads are gathered and dispersed, that it is old-fogy; right there appears the motortruck. |