The railroads are also complaining that the automobile is cutting into their passenger earnings. This is no doubt true. What else can be expected with approximately 11,000,000 machines now in operation? Thousands of tourists are daily traversing the country. They find the outing pleasant and when several occupy one car it is cheaper than railroad travel. Free camping along the way avoids hotel bills which have grown inordinately during the past few years. If these rates continue, simple inns as in the olden days may grow up and cut into the business of the high-priced hotels. Lower charges for both railroads and hotels will mitigate but not entirely eliminate the automobile competition. The motor car is here to stay and automobile travel will continue to increase. It is no longer a theory but a condition which exists, and the railroads and hotels should adopt the policy of the wily politician,--who said, “If you can’t lick ’em, jine ’em,”--meet the automobile half way and make the most of it. If predictions of those in close touch with the automobile business be any criterion the railroads will feel the influence of the motor car more and more. H. F. Blanchard, writing in _Popular Science Monthly_, January, 1923, p. 26, claims that the $150 passenger car is in sight, and that the “saturation point” which has been a worry for years has not yet arrived and will not if the lowering of prices keeps pace with increased production. It is pointed out that the production of automobiles and trucks is still increasing. The 1922 output (2,577,220 machines) is more than the 1920 output (2,276,000) and these are bought by the public as fast as made. Mr. Durant, a prominent manufacturer, is quoted as saying that: “The development of a cheaper car than we now believe possible is only a question of the development of the highways. Millions more of automobiles would be in use in America to-day if the conditions of our highways permitted. When our automobiles can be built to run on highways that are on the average as good as our city streets--and this is bound to come sooner or later--we shall have lighter, better and far cheaper cars. And the time is not far distant.” In Roger W. Babson’s weekly comment dated September 30, 1922, we read: Railroads have already felt the effects of pleasure automobiles, but they have not really begun yet to feel the effects of auto trucking. The trucking of goods within a radii of 50 or 100 miles has only begun and this radius may readily be extended to cover 200 or 250 miles. Transcontinental systems ... have nothing to fear from trucks. In fact the trucks may help them. Other roads [those intermediate in length] can survive and perhaps profit under this competition. With roads such as [short-line roads] this is not true. These roads are bound to suffer far more from the truck than they now think possible.