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Show AUTO GREAT FACTOR IN THE UPLIFT OF UNITED STATES The automobile gives health and wholesome recreation to millions o people, extends the business and professional pro-fessional ranges of men, widens and deepens social relations, plays a big part as a new. element In the modern transportation system for the moving of crops and manufactured products, furnishes life to the movement for good roads, employs nearly a million workers directly and billions In capital, cap-ital, cuts down distances, lengthens time itself. "Any agency that performs such desirable de-sirable and valuable functions certainly certain-ly Is not a luxury," declares H. H. Hills, assistant general manager of the Packard Motor Car company. "It Is an essential in modern economic and social life. Considered as a means of communication, as an Instrument of commerce, or as a factor in social conditions, It is more useful than any other single mechanism you can name and stands out as the leading invention inven-tion of the age. "It Is impossible to place a money value on the extent and number of the automobile's services to mankind. The range of the physician's capacity, to speak of a single example, has been trebled and quadrupled by the addition of the motor car to his equipment. equip-ment. The sphere of the man of affairs, af-fairs, in business, in statecraft, in the industrial sciences, has been enlarged en-larged so that thanks to this swift, personal means of transportation his energies are spread over many times what he could attend to less than a quarter century ago. The result In the case of the physician is life snv-ing; snv-ing; in the case of the business man, money-making, asset building. How much richer America is in both because be-cause of the automobile, no one dare estimate. ' "Sniritually. America, considered as one big community, has profited just as much. The automobile takes us nnt in the open, gives us a chance at fresh air, the fields and flowers, the rcenory of mountain country, lake land and prairie. While it refreshes us physically, It opens new vistas to minds otherwise cramped in the narrow nar-row channels of routine life. The very law of the road which has been developed in the use of the automobile automo-bile has taught us all how to be social minded much more thoroughly than the most learned sociologists ever could have taught us from their books. "The automobile has brought us good roads, efficiency in industry, better bet-ter wages and better factory conditions condi-tions and a higher general standard of both labor and pleasure than the world knew in ail the centuries before its Invention. It is our greatest modern mod-ern convenience. It is directly responsible re-sponsible for a big share of America's happiness, prosperity, broad minded-ness minded-ness and general alertness." As to the proportions of the industry indus-try which the automobile has built up for America, Dr. Hills drew on figures which are of record in the present congress. One million five hundred thousand automobiles were manufactured manufac-tured in 1916, valued at 810,000,000. There are 450 manufacturers of motor vehicles and 825 manufacturers of parts and accessories. Of wage-earners in this and allied industries there are 855,000, and it is a conservative estimate that 2,000,000 men, women and children in America are dependent depend-ent on this industry. The automobile has increased the value of the United States as improved real estate by splendid plants and sales and service establishments the country over. "Moreover, with each succeeding improvement of the automobile engine en-gine we are achieving more economl- 1 cal operation,' making better use of fuel and building cars that last longer," long-er," said Mr. Hills. "Owners, realiz- ! ing more acutely the value of their ' automobiles, are giving them better 1 treatment. Thus every phase of auto- 1 mobile making and using is refuting 1 the mistaken notion that the motor 1 car is a luxury." |
