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Show raer ie fliFMEII HERE Stacy G. Carkhuff of Firestone Fire-stone Company Gives Views on Conditions. Amon the promineut men of the country connected w i t Ii tb automobile laisinesg is fcitm'v i.r. Carkhi:!l who was a visitor at Salt Lake during the past Tveek. Mr. CarUhuri' is secretary of the Firestone Tiru 4: KubK'r company of Akron, Ohio, and is making a western trip, primarily on business, but will visit the coast fairs before returning home. His western trip at this time, is to observe business conditions in general gen-eral and the automobile business in particular. par-ticular. He h;i visited seve:al J-ire-etone branches on hi way west, and therefore has already a fairly good idea of conditions. . Salt Lake City, however, is the ban-r.er ban-r.er automobile town of them all, according ac-cording to Mr. Carkkuff. He reports "Pirestnnp business here far'abovp nor mal in fact. Wiling the T'nited States in gain of business over the preceding year. .,-He was unable to give an explanation ex-planation of this vintil after looking over the sales of the past year be found Utah had probably made "a larger percentage per-centage of gain in the number of automobiles auto-mobiles sold than any other state in the union, which, together with the popalaritv of Firestone tires, coupled with a remarkable selling organization nf the local branch, had accomplished the results. ffpeaking of conditions generally, Mr. Carkhuff paid: I believe renditions the farther west I go show marked improvement. improve-ment. ou people out here do not seem to suffer as much from the war as the east. Conditions in the east are what might be termed feverish. fe-verish. Many factories are closed and there is "much pessimism. On the other hand, factories which are making supplies for the European countries at war nre working overtime, over-time, and naturally these manufacturers manufac-turers are very opitimistie. Coming farther west, where the farming interests in-terests predominate, I find the conditions con-ditions were never better. Lari:e prices for foodstuffs are responsible tor that. In these sections the. automobile business was never better. bet-ter. I rind the copper industry has not affected you acre as much as one would expect, but. of eourse, hiii prices for wool probably offset off-set the loss of copper. Mr. Carkhuff gave the first clear reason rea-son for the wonderful chancing of price? iu automobile tires, which has puzzled the autuinomile world sinc the outbreak of the war, that has yet been announced. He said: "When the war broke cut England placed fn embargo on all ruober, cud rubber iniuiediately tsoarod. You know, rubber is f hipped ail over tho world t bronh Londoc. Wo found ourselvfs u nable to obtain ob-tain rubber at any prire. and n h t -urallv prices at OLce jumped sk v-ward'. v-ward'. jing'and soon round itstilf loaded with rubber, which had to be sold, and lifted t'n1 embargo on rubber to the United inte. but at the fame time refused to alHw any of it to o tn Oerinany. In the meantime the tire faeforins of Germany Ger-many had betn eloicd. Tlu- !-rin:e was" true to a great extort in J rz a n c e , ft u s i a and E c g i a n d . 1 e a -in. the United if:arr-? aione to absorb ab-sorb the entir-'1 r.atural outv':t f the world. Kaw ruober immediately immediate-ly dropped in price, an you people Lere are now ertiu tiie bencut of prices. ?-Ir. CarkhutT declare? tha: tie ooun-tn- is tciay srrpred of motor tru-ks. Europe has absorbed ail tper- wer.j in stock and every m':or trufk factory in fhe country is swum pea w:th order-. As the Fir-tone factory supplier many of r.iert fa-'tories v:'u lirti?. .Mr. l arljiutf ib iu position to know jn.rt 'hat is taking tak-ing place lu these taiUoritV. ' |