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Show 1UITB OF COIL SAVEDJYiVlQTOBS Auto Maker Explains How Cars Conserved a Vast Tonnage. , MILLION TONS HAULED Estimated Sixteen Billion Coal-Consuming Miles Were Eliminated. Feiv even of those moM elopely ii'leu-tifieil ii'leu-tifieil with motor oar industry oompro-head oompro-head hotv miraculously the passenger car has conserved vast mountains of i:oal for America in this year of her first fuel famine. Without our ears and the useful work they Jiave done this coal would have been consumed in transportation work by steam roads and by electrically driven trolley and interurban cars throughout the land. Facing the peril of international coal famine the work of the motor car in saving coal through consumption of gasoline, gas-oline, "for transportation work has been of stupendous value to humanity. There are more than four million passenger ears in America to say nothing noth-ing of'half a million trucks right now.-Each now.-Each one of these ears we know will averasre 4000 miles a year most of themVill run tiOOO to SO 00 miles, but let us use the conservative 4000-mile figure. On a conservative estimate the average car carries three passengers for practically every mile it travels. This means' that 'our passenger motor mo-tor vehicles have transported 12,000,000 passengers 1 0,000,000.000 miles this last year. All the coal the steam roads, the city trolley cars and the interurban cars would have consumed in transporting transport-ing these passengers has been saved for America and our allies and friends o-verseas. How It Was Done. Take it another way. Suppose those 32,000.000 passengers which were carried car-ried by motor car had ridden entirely in railroad trains fifty passengers to a car. It would mean 240.000 loaded steam passenger ears going clear across the continent" with the 12,000.000 passengers. pas-sengers. Such a colossal and stupendous stupen-dous emigration of a city three times as large as Xew York with its four j million people, has never occurred in ' the world's history. Think of the coal j it would take to haul 240.000 passenger cars from New York to San Francisco. An official tells us that it would re- I quire 100.000,000 tons. It is staggering j and fantastic. You say, -'anyhow, I weren't the 12.000.000' motor' ear passengers traveling those 16,000.- j 000,000 miles needlessly!" Weren't; the cars really pleasure cars? That is i the rub. There is the garden variety j of information looking at the motor j car through the wrong end of the micro-! scope. Xow let's look at the real facts of! the case. The city of Indianapolis, ! where the Marmon 34 is made, is an average American city. Jt is a city of homes, but it is not really as prosperous pros-perous in fpiickly acquired fortunes as "W F. CULMER I f it. : " - '!. I ' 1 f 4 President the Culrners Co. certain other middle western1 cities we could trite. Nevertheless, it is not be-ioy be-ioy the average American eitv in prosperity. It is a pood healthy American Ameri-can average. Xlarion county, which includes the city, and a few thousands of suburbanites and farmers, has some ;it).00o motor cars. Jt has been csti,- i mated there are not a thousand chauf- feurs in the whole city. Our is a ! eomimmity of owner drivers. Of course, j a lot of our cars are driven for pleas- ure just as millions and millions of j passenger miles on American railroads j every year are pleasure miles pure and simple. Desert the Street Cars. j But bow do you account for this? Indianapolis, a city of a quarter of 3 : million, has had a normal census growth in the last few years. There has not been a boom, but there has just been ! about a normal growth. Of late it has increased beyond this a trifle, we : think. Nevertheless our street car I companies tell us that they carried in the lat year 1.400,0no less passengers than they did in previous years. " . In the ordinary course of events the 1.400. r-00 passengers actuallv lost by the street car companies and the 600.-000 600.-000 which should have been gained (2.000.00m pnssengers, or fares) would j have ridden in street ears. Thev motored because they liked it and j saved eo:.l. This same process happens j right, along in every other American city which is a motor car owning community. com-munity. Tf an average American town of -a 'quarter of a million can conserve two ; million coal consumption street car j rides, consider what the entire conn- try could conserve in a year with ' 14,000.000 ears instead of "the C0"0 j which Indianapolis possesses. 1 If the motor ears of the entire enun- try have taken from the street cars and other transportation factors as many passengers as they did in Indianapolis, Indian-apolis, the saving would be &o staetrer-ing staetrer-ing that no one would dare claim it unless absolute statistics Erathered from every community were obtainable. That, of course, is out of the question. but the very fact that the city of Indianapolis, In-dianapolis, an average American city, has had .i")0n,000 normal street' car passenger trips converted into motor car trips and into a consumption of gasoline" rather than of . coal, shows that our origiual estimate that the 4.000,000 motor cars of the eountr.v carried car-ried J 2,000,000 passengers 16,000,000,-000 16,000,000,-000 miles last year is not tremendously short of the mark. One hundred million mil-lion tons of coal saved represented by this figure is large enough in all conscience. con-science. The vast saving hints at what utter ruin would have reached America Amer-ica and the world if gasoline had not been substituted as a transportation fuel, and if we had not had millions of cars these last few years. The next time anybody talks to you about the abuses of the pleasure car, tell him about the 12,000,-000 12,000,-000 people carried 16,000,000,000 miles bv these same - American motor cars i and of the 100,000,000 tons of coal they ! save every year they run. , j |