Salt Lake Tribune | 1917-12-30 | Page 41 | Farmer Buying Many New Autos

FARMER BOYING Ml M AUTOS Prosperity Has Placed the Rancher Among Largest Users of Light Cars. With every city and town in the country coun-try seemingly crowded with motor cars, it ts hard for city-bred folks to realize that farming communities buv most of the cars built. For years many of the largest maiufac-turers maiufac-turers of medium priced cars have annually an-nually sold GO to To per cent of their en- ers are looking forward to greater business busi-ness and greater activity in motordom than obtained during 1917. although the past year establishes a record. The national government has become a most potent competitor of the motor car buyers of the country. The demands of the government for automobiles and trucks to speed up the war game, both at home and abroad, will be given preference pref-erence and this fact may cause some little shortage to appear In the delivery of passenger cars. The wise buyer will place his or her order for the car or cars wanted now and have them delivered in the spring. There is and will be no shortage of steel for the manufacture of automobiles. There is and will be no shortage of gas for operating motors. There may be a change of carburetion to render the tise of a heavier grade of gasoline possible, and thereby more than double the sui-ply sui-ply that is now refined. But this change In the power-flu id for autos may not come during this year, though it will eventually come Is the belief of many automot ive engineers prominent in the world of motordom. 191S Expansion Forecast. The local auto dealers, cannot ask more than that 191X shall be as good ii year as 1917. Hut they will make preparations to go the record year one better and should t heir hopes be realized they will have much to be tha nkful for, as 191 7. with all its rumors of war and the actual participation on the part of this country in the biggest war of history, has seen the grca test expansion of the auto in the intermountain section that lias ever taken place since they wpre first offered of-fered for sale to a doubting, but now thankful And confident public. Coincident to the expansion of the auto business in this territory, the tire men and accessory men have made great headway. The Inter-Mountain Electric company, a concern that sells all over the empire surrounded by the mountains of Utah, Wyoming and Idaho and tiie sast-hrijfdi plains of Nevada, report a big year's business far in excess of their 1 :H f. turn-over. This is true of all 1 he auto accessory dealers. The hie: i rehouses re-houses of ttu- 1'nitcd States are mostly represented hm by factory branches that control thr business of several states. Th growth of these agencies, in the amount of tire business done the past year, has been remarkable, in some in -stances it has more than doubled. ' tire production to farmers. During 191S ! most car manufacturers agree that this I percentage will go even higher. i In discussing the outlook for next year ! a prominent maker declares that already ; the high profits being made by producers j of foodstuffs aro making themselves felt in an increased demand for motor cars. I "Farming today," he says, "is a business i which offers a higher, percentage of profit ! than the great majority of successful in-: in-: dustries found in the city. Bankers in ll ! sections of the country are sponsors for ' the statement that farm mortgages which , have stood for years are being paid off by thousands with the profits of the last ; few months. i "During the past year both crops and : prices were good and the average farmer ! entered an era of real prosperity. In j 19.1S, with every farmer in the country ! doing his best to produce the record crops this country needs to feed itself and our allies, Sjihe crops are going to break all previous records. Prospects point to prices which are fully as high as at present, pres-ent, and with tiie farmer for the - first time getting lily fuil share of the profits, his prospects for making real money are brighter than ever before, "The farmer today no longer considers himself and his family condemned to the comparative isolation experienced by those who lived in the country a few years ago. For some time he has been gradually assuming as-suming the attitude toward life formerly held by city bred folks. It is no longer a business of all work and no play. Practically Prac-tically every well to do farmer sees to it that both he and his family get proper recreation. "This has been made possible largely by the medium priced motor car. Now that the farmer has come into his own, a car will be one of his first purchases. "This is particularly true in t he south and southwest, where 20-eent cotton has brought a wave of prosperity that is a vast relief-from the extremities of a year or two ago. "During the years when the rest of the country was taking up all of the cars the factories could build, and more, the south was too poor to buy. Today, however, how-ever, with wealth simply flowing into that section of the country, car manufacturers manu-facturers are looking m that direction for a tremendous increase in the demand for their product."