Certain banks blocked, as far as possible, loans for purchases of automobiles. A prominent banker as late as 1910 declared that the initial cost of automobiles to American users, being $250,000,000 a year, with as much more for upkeep and incidental expense, was equivalent in actual economic waste each year to twice the value of property destroyed in the San Francisco earthquake. A year after this statement was made, 1911, saw the dawn of the epoch of low priced cars, and the low priced car has reversed the condition from an economic waste, if such it was, to an economic gain, which it undoubtedly is. Through all the storms of protest and criticisms, manufacturers went on their way, just as the automobile inventors had done under similar circumstances when men laughed and scoffed at them and called them crazy. The depression of 1893 came too early to affect the automobile industry, but that of 1907 hit it at the time when it was by no means as strong as it was later; and yet, while in that year dozens of companies were bankrupted, and in 1910, fifty-two went out of business, it should be said that the great majority of them were not actually starters in the race. They were entrants that never toed the scratch. Their failure to make a start was due to lack of capital or inefficient organizers. A very large proportion of automobile companies that actually started in business have survived and are successful. Names of automobile manufacturers who are prominent today were familiar names in the earlier stages of the industry, and more of the original automobile makers have survived than have fallen by the wayside. REMOVING OBSTACLES TO AUTOMOBILE PRODUCTION. One objection the old philosopher has to the automobile is an objection that is strengthened by the fact that he does not own one. It is that the automobile contributes toward making the age one in which a really short time appears to be and is generally regarded as a long time. It destroys proportions as it annihilates space. Seventeen years is a shorter time in the view of the philosopher of 60, accustomed to reviewing events in his past life half a century back, than it appears to a man of 34. It is just half the length of this young man’s years. Time, as to duration, is thus comparative to different views. Seventeen years is not long for a commercial industry to take the place which the automobile business now occupies in a country as great as this. It is a short time in which to build up a business representing the figures of two billion on the mark of the American dollar. But this business, which has not been a business for even a score of years, did not arrive at its present estate without vicissitudes, and without strenuous work in removing obstacles in the way of its progress.