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Show TIRES CAST OFF; SUM S290.000.003 Last year, according to a statement Issued by the national automobil chamber of commerce, motor car users discarded 9,000,000 tires, representing an expenditure of more than 290,000, 000. What would be the result if half of this sum. approximately $150,000,000, could be saved annually? It would pay for the construction of five concrete highways across the continent each year; it would build another Panama canal in three years; pay off the national na-tional debt in seven years; or build a fleet or ten first-class battleships every ev-ery year. That there really is an enormous economic waste, and that a saving of $150,000,000 of the annual tire bill is not an idle dream, is shown by figures fig-ures which have been gathered and averaged by a prominent statistician. For the year 1915, 476. miles per set of tires was the average on all cars li6ted except one. This car, the Franklin, established an average of 9630 miles per set over the same period, pe-riod, more than fifty per cent better than the general average Hiram Percy Maxim, famous inventor, inven-tor, finds the secret of tire service to be a question of the load and the type of suspension. He says: "If the load on pneumatic tires never exceeds the elastic limit of the rubber, the will endure a very long time, whereas if loaded but Blightely beyond the clastic clas-tic limit they soon go to pieces." His theory is that rigid construction and heavy weight account lor the low general average. Obviously a flexibly constructed car will relieve the tires of strain, and prevent ir stretching beyond the elastic limit of the rubber. Another obvious deduction is that the less weight a tire carries per cubic inch of tiro displacement, the longer will he its life oo |