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Show j - : Professor Finds a Gas Tax By HARLEY L. LUTZ Professor of Public Finance, Princeton University (Special Correspondence) DOVER, England An increasing ' number of Americans are taking their cars abroad, or renting them upon arrival. Since the superiority of the Book Dedicated To Prof. Merrill ASPEN GROVE 'The Alpiniall,' annual summer view-hook at Brigham Young university Alpine term, was issued Tuesday at the Aspen Grove campus. Distribution is to be completed Friday by business managers Royden and motor license tax of about $3.75 per unit of horsepower, explains why some English cars are little more than perambulators equipped with an engine. en-gine. Touring information is scarce, but fortunately the roads are well marked. Really good highway maps are lack-better lack-better maps than can be bought in ing. Our oil companies give away far England. The American driver misses those services which our filling stations sta-tions give such as cleaning the windshield wind-shield and checking the water. But he also misses the rudeness and 1 ivil-ity ivil-ity ot some of his own country s traffic traf-fic officers. The two automobile associations asso-ciations have at least 10,000 employees on the roads. These scouts do everything every-thing from directing cross-road traffic traf-fic to giving first aid to the disabled cars of the association's members. The English drive on the left side. By simply following the traffic the adjustment is quickly made. Even ! 17 1 & . motor car, for sight- seeing purposes, is as evident in Europe Eu-rope as it has been found to I be in the United States, the practice may be I expected to increase. in-crease. For the benefit of those who may be considering a foreign auto tour, the following fol-lowing notes i and comments are ottered on after days of left-side driving however how-ever the American driver is likely to have some bad moments when a car :. comes at him round a narrow, hedge-hidden hedge-hidden turn on what seems to be the wrong side of the road. England has her road pests, as we have With us, the Model-T Ford and the one-armed driver are near the top. In England the bicyclist takes the first, and all the other prizes. They come singly and in swarms. They ignore ig-nore all autos and they take all o the road. If one had to choose between, watching a herd of cows and a flock of English cyclists, he would choose the cows. They are more alert to danger, dan-ger, and much less expensive to hit. An immense expenditure will be required to transform the English highway system from the stagecoach to the motor era. Much of the mileage is quite as the stagecoaches left it, hut some sDlendid experimental roads Alice Braithwaitc of Heher. Editor of the book is Oto Done. Tucson, Ariz., who was editor also of the "Banyan," university yearbook, year-book, in 1935 and luCo. winmrred Cannon of Ames, Iowa, is literary editor; and other staff members are: James McDougal, Campbell-sport, Campbell-sport, Wis.;; Wendell Rich, John Hawkins, Violet Jensen, Logan; Elizabeth Hill, Salt Lake City; George Strebel, Vera Bagley. Elayne Boyle, Trovo; Harold H. Smith, Vernal; Martha Howard. Nephi; Louise Fowlca, Ml.' Pleasant; Pleas-ant; Jonathan Cannon, Farming-ton. Farming-ton. The "Alpiniaii" is dedicated lo the lale Professor Harrison R. Merrill, who was rccenlty called by death from teaching duliC3 at j the current summer session. In dition to a portrait and an "In Memoriam' page, tne prolessor is honored in the publication of his own poem, "Let This Be Heaven," decoratively enhanced by a pen drawing of Mount Timpanogos. As in farewell, the poem concludes: con-cludes: "Dear God, let this be heaven I do not ask for angel wings-Just wings-Just leave that old peak there and let me climb 'till comes the night I want no golden stair. Then, when I say my last adieu and all farewells are given, Just leave my spirit here somewhere Oh God, let this be heaven!" motoring in England. The details ol . shipping a car are passed over, as the , steamship companies will supply , such information. Suffice to say that they will carry your car to any port at which you may desire to debark. The English road surfaces are uniformly uni-formly good. They should be, for the English have been doing more or less with macadamizing their highways ever since the Scotchman, Macadam, devised this method of road surfacing in the later Eighteenth Century. But both the roads and the streets are quite variable as to width. They range all the way from broad thoroughfares thorough-fares to passages too narrow for a good-sized wheel barrow. The British Brit-ish reluctance to cut trees extends , also to the hedge-rows, and the driver must be clairvoyant to be sure of what is around each hedge-screened corner. Good American gasoline is available avail-able everywhere, and at a fixed uniform uni-form price all the way from Lands End to John O'Groats. This year the Price is one shilling and seven pence per English gallon. The tax is nine pence per gallon. This is equivalent to a price of 37 cents, of which 18 tents is tax. In terms of the United Slates gallon, these figures work out as a price of 31.1 cents per gallon, and a tax of 14.4 cents. This is one sample of the high foreign taxes we are to be thankful for not having, although there are some places, in the United States, in which the combined federal, state and local gasoline taxes are not so much below the English level. The gasoliae tax, together with an annual may be seen. One of these, running West from York, provides three separated sep-arated traffic lanes in each direction for cars, for cyclists and for pedestrians, pedes-trians, respectively. All in all. however. It is impossible properly to see and enjoy rural England En-gland without a car. Much of this is so charming, so thoroughly new and interesting to the visitor from America Amer-ica as to offset the petty annoyances he mav experience from the cyclists, the narow concealed turns, and the mutton with boiled potatoes that awaits the hungry traveler at the end of each day's run. |
