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Show THE ITBfi GUI IS daily mm: ITS UTILITY 4 In a timely article in the San Francisco Fran-cisco Chronicle, Chester N. Weaver, president of the Motor Car Dealers') association of that rfiity, exposes the' bias contained -in tno recent attacks upon the automobile as non-essential in war times. Mr. Weaver's article follows: "During the last ninety days the question of conserving materials need -! ed by the government and by tho al-l lies has been mentioned in hundreds-of hundreds-of papers, and in practically every in 1 , stance the one item which is. brought1 out as a glaring example of the nonessential non-essential is the automobile. "The scare heads in various newspapers, news-papers, where reference is made to taxation, to shortage of. materials, to lack of patriotism, the automobile is used as an example. "Why not ono of the dozens of items which aro really non-essential, because be-cause I contend that tho automobile is not non-essential as it is used today, to-day, and that way down deep in their hearts, 00 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 wny is non-essential. Why not the theater? the-ater? It In a way is not essential. Why not prohibit people from riding on railroads unless the trip is one that' i3 absolutely necessary? Otherwise, .the trip is not essential. Why the Street care? People could walk Why wear white collars. Wc can just as well wear flannel shirts. The white collar is not essonlial. Why buy jewelry? jew-elry? Is it essential? ? "None of these items arc ever mentioned, men-tioned, but it is always the automobile, when as a matter of fact, the automobile automo-bile has come to be ono of the most essential items connected with American Amer-ican business. "From actual figures taken in our 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 ilic automobile. Not j only is he increasing his efficiency, but certain strain or draft on railroad transportation has been relieved. It is the tendency of automobiles to speed up the entire business program and increase Its efficiency to an enormous extent. "Tho railroad facilities at the present pres-ent time are inadequate to handle the additional amount of burden which they have been called upon to assume as-sume under the present conditions. You cannot think of a 'single line of business activity in which the automobile automo-bile does not play a vital part in its program. "In the shipbuilding program its usefulness begins from the time that the ore is taken out of tho ground until un-til the superintendent of construction of the shipbuilding concern, tho busiest bus-iest man in the world today, through the use of his automobile in traveling from place to place sees his completed complet-ed ship successfully launched. Cur-tail Cur-tail the use of the automobile and you place a restraining finger on the very pulse of tho entire war program. "Is the money that tho buyer of an automobile spends wasted? "Is it not distributed throughout the whole of the United States nnd is not that same money again distributed distrib-uted by the people who receive it, and aro not these same people using it to purchase necessities and in turn using us-ing It to buy Liberty bonds, war savings sav-ings stamps and for subscriptions to the Red Cross? "Do the people of the United States as a rule realize tho vast number of people, men and women, who arc making mak-ing a living from the automobile industry? in-dustry? Do they realize that the doctor doc-tor must have an automobile to take care of his practice? I ask any person., per-son., any one of the 5,000,000 people. In tho United States who aro using what are called passenger automobiles, to take five minutes of his time, go over the use that he has made of his automobile for the last thirty days and then conscientiously answer the question ques-tion in his own mind: Is his automobile automo-bile ossential or non-essential? Can ho get along without it? Is It an expense ex-pense or is the money that ho is helping help-ing to distribute in turn helping the government? "I contend that the automobile is not a non-essential. 1 contend that tho automobile is -being used to a very great extent today as an absolute business bus-iness necessity. A few days ago I jad occasion to take a trip through the country and stopped and talked to a man who Is running a ranch and a wayside hotel. Wo naturally drifted on to the subject of automobiles. He asked me what I thought in regard to government regulation in the use of automobiles, prohibitive prices that might bo asked for gasoline, advanced prices on automobiles, etc. "Tho gist of his information was that ho was twenty miles from the source of his supply, that u few years ago it was necessary for him to lake a team of horses, start early in the morning, go to town, returning homo late at night, doing a hard day's work in order to get his supplies for the week; hence, a waste of time, two horses and a man for one full day. Today To-day ho 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 hotol. In one year this means t'ifty-two days; hence, t,horo arc fifty-two days saved. If every travelling tra-velling man in tho country increases his efficiency 60 per cent, or oven 10 per cent, figure out how many days are saved and how much more Is accomplished. ac-complished. "Go on to the roads between San Francisco and Camp Fremont and see the transportation that is done, and necessary transportation, by automobiles. automo-biles. Is this non-essential in this case or it is a necessity? "I cannot understand why tho automobile auto-mobile is being used as a glaring example ex-ample of extravagance in so many instances, in-stances, but it seems as if the average person, who is not thoroughly conversant con-versant with the automobile conditions picks on tho automobile or the automobile auto-mobile man as the one thing and the one person for whom there is no place in tho sun." - J |