Jasper County Democrat, Volume 6, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 October 1903 — MOTORS AND FAMILY STEED. [ARTICLE]

MOTORS AND FAMILY STEED.

Inoffensive Domestic Machines Are Bound to Be Popular. There are two ways by means of which the motor vehicle tends to supersede the horse. It may scare him off the road, and It may do his work better, or cheaper, than he does It. Any one who goes about In the country must notice this summer increasing numbers of motor vehicles, put to strictly family use. A family may go out In a devil wagon, but those conveyances smack incurably of sport, and the processes of domestication are sluggish with them. ? They cost so much, too, that they could never compete with family horses. But the lowpower vehicles that carry a man and wife and a child are of quite a different order. For one thing, they are Inoffensive. They don’t go faster than the law allows, no reasonable horse has any objection to them, and persons who use them are not subject to the disagreeable consciousness that the average observer regards them as enemies of the public peace. For another thing they are comparatively cheap; cheap, that Is, compared with the big touring cars. Four or five hundred dollars will buy one. But, alas! that Is not cheap compared with the horse and buggy or two-seated wagon of familiar country use. Farmers and native villagers are not going to have them yet a while. The great advantage of them at present to men of moderate Incomes is that they can be kept in a small shed, and do not absolutely necessitate the maintenance of a hired man. They wear out and they break down, but they don’t eat, and when funds are low you can lock them up in a shed and wait, If necessary, for pay day, without Inhumanity or loss. And when winter comes there is no problem about wintering them. Put them away; that Is all The low-price and low-power vehicles are sure to come into very wide use. My venerable friend, who shrinks from guiding a hired horse past a devil wagon, admired and praised the Inoffensive domestic motor vehicle, writes Ward Sandford In the Illustrated Sporting News. He would gladly have one, I think, and would feel safe In It, for It doesn’t get scared, no matter what passes, nor how fast But the family motor wagon must arrange to carry more children. You take but one child; what becomes of the rest? It must clear Itself of all suspicion of being a promoter of race suicide.