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Show 3! ME ITSJTILITY Tendency to Speed Up Nation's Na-tion's War and Industrial Program Proven; Auto Not Non-essential. In a timelv article In the San Francisco Chronicle, Chester N. Weaver, president of the Motor Car Dealers' association of thst city, exposes the bias contained in the recent attacks upon the automobile as non-essential in war times. Mr. Weaver's article follows: "During the last ninety days the question ques-tion of conserving materials needed by the government arid by the allies has been mentioned in hundreds of papers, and in practically every instance the one item which is brought out as a glaring example of the nonessential is the automobile. auto-mobile. "In Bcare heads in various newspapers, where reference Is made to taxation, to shortage of materials, to lack of patriotism, pa-triotism, the automobile is used as an example. Why the Automobile? "Why not one of the dozens of items which are really non-essential, because I contend that the automobile Is not nonessential non-essential as.,jtJs used today, and that way down 1 deep in their hearts, 90 per cent of our citizens agree with me that the automobile is a necessity. "Why not pick on the telephone? It is in a way non-essential. Why not the moving picture show? It in a way is non-ssentlal. non-ssentlal. Why not the theater? It in a way is not essential. Why not prohibit People from riding on railroads unless the Y 'rip is one that is absolutely necessary? Hherwlse, the trip is not essential. Why jistreet cars? People could walk. Why e white collars? We can just aa t.ell wear flannel shirts. The white col-r col-r is not essential. Why buy jewelry? It essential? : J "None of these Items are ever men- -loried, but it is always the automobile, when as a matter of fact the automobile (has come to be one of the most essential essen-tial Items connected with American business. busi-ness. "From actual figures taken In our 1 place of business, it has been found that of the last one hundred cars sold In San Francisco, eighty-two of them are being used for business purposes. "From actual records kept it has been found that the traveling man can increase his efficiency from 50 to 100 per cent by using the automobile. Not only is he increasing in-creasing his efficiency, but certain strain or draft on railroad transportation has been relieved. It is the tendency of automobiles au-tomobiles to speed up the entire business Program and increase its efficiency to an I enormous extent. Railroads Overburdened. "The railroad facilities at the. present JJme ar inadequate to handle the additional addi-tional amount of burden which they have en called upon to assume under the Present conditions. You cannot think of a single line of business activity in hich the automobile does not play a tal part In its program. In the shipbuilding program its usefulness use-fulness begins from the time that the ore js taken out of the ground until the superintendent su-perintendent of construction of ttea shipbuilding ship-building concern, the busiest man in the orld today, through the use of his au-J'lwWe au-J'lwWe in traveling from place to place T'Jf his completed ships successfully -jinched. Curtail the vise of the automobile automo-bile and you place a restraining finger on the very pulse of the entire war program. pro-gram. "la the money that the buyer of an automobile au-tomobile spends wasted? "Is it not distributed throughout the whole of the United States and Is not ' "' same money again distributed by the people who receive It, and are not these same people using It to purchase necessities necessi-ties and In turn using It to buy Liberty bonds, war savings stamps and for sud-scrlptions sud-scrlptions to the Red Cross? "Do the people of the United States as a rule realize the vast number of people, men and women, who are making afliving from the automobile industry? Do they realize that the doctor must have an automobile au-tomobile to take care of his practice? 1 ask any person, any one of the o, 000, 000 people in the United States who are using us-ing what are called passenger automobiles, automo-biles, to take, five minutes of his time, go over the use that he has maae of his automobile for the last thirty days and then conscientiously answer the question in his own mind: Is his automobile essential es-sential or non-essential? Can he' get along without it? Is it an expense or is the money that he Is helping to distribute in turn helping the government? "I contend that the automobile is not a non-essential. I contend that the automobile auto-mobile is being used to a very great extent ex-tent today as an absolute business necessity. neces-sity. A few days ago I had occasion to take a trip up through the country and stopped and talked to a man who is running run-ning a ranch and a wayside hotel, w e naturallv drifted on to the subject of automobiles. au-tomobiles. He asked me what I thought In regard to government regulations in the use of automobiles, prohibitive prices that might be asked for gasoline, advanced ad-vanced prices on automobiles, etc. The gist of his information was that he was twenty miles from the source oi his supplv, that a few years ago It was necessary for him to take a team ot horses, start early in the morning, go to town, returning home late at night, doing a hard day s work in order to get his supplies for the week: hence, a waste ot time two horses and a man for one full dav Todav he takes his automobile, goes into town after the evening meal Is bacK home, loses no time; hence, adds that much time for work on his farm and around his hotel. In one year this means liftv-two davs: hence, there are tifty-two" tifty-two" davs saved. If everv traveling man in the country increases Vila efficiency M per cent, or even 10 per cent, figure out how manv days are saved and how much more is accomplished. "Go on to the roads between San Francisco Fran-cisco and Camp Fremont and see the transportation that Is done, and necessary neces-sary transportation, by automobiles. Is this non-essential In this case or is it a lie'Teannot understand why the automobile automo-bile is being used as a glaring example of extravagance in so many instances b it it see as as if the average person who is not thoroughly convent wuh i he automobile conditions picks on t.ic atUomobile or the automobile man as the Uto n.l the one Person tor whom there is no place in the sun. v |