Jasper County Democrat, Volume 6, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 September 1903 — FUTURE OF THE AUTOMOBILE. [ARTICLE]

FUTURE OF THE AUTOMOBILE.

Kouts of the Changed Conditions It* Use Will Brina About. The automobile is no longer an experiment, and motoring is no longer a pastime or a luxury, says World’s Work. What Is the probable influence of the automobile upon contemporary life? Every car owner has at once a vastly Increased radius of movement. The old coaching roads and coaching inns will once more be thronged with travelers. We shall know the land we live in—lts rural interests, its beauties, its antiquities. The man who has business in the town will no longer be dependent upon a slow and rare service of trains. Therefore, thousands of the town dwellers of to-day will be the country dwellers of tomorrow. This will bring Into the market at good prices a great number of country places unletable and unsalable to-day. There will soon arise, In consequence, an irresistible demand for better roads.

One great organization alone —the greatest of all —the railways, will suffer from the coming of the motor. The motor will rob them of passenger traffic, of the transport of mails except for long distances, of the carrying of light goods and light agricultural produce, and will prevent them from opening up new districts, which will be served by light lines and motor vehicles as to-day In America by the trolley. To some extent the injury will be mitigated by the motor bringing to them agricultural produce from ( wider areas than can produce it profitably to cart to the rail; and, of course, the mqtor engine or rapid succession of mot>r carriages, as already planned in France and Australia, will replace the strain locomotiv for suburban and light fast traffic. But on the whole the stage coach will be avenged upon the railway by the motor.

A Variation. “Heartless girl! The old story of the moth and the flame!" “Except that it’s only the moth's money that is burned in this case.”— Detroit Free Press.