Story of the automobile: Its history and development from 1760 to 1917: With an analysis of the standing and prospects of the automobile industryBarber, H. L. (Herbert Lee)
History
Story of the automobile: Its history and development from 1760 to 1917: With an analysis of the standing and prospects of the automobile industry
Barber, H. L. (Herbert Lee)
Automobiles -- History
Time is likewise life under some circumstances, and because of this
fact, the professional men who were first to make practical use of the
automobile were physicians, commandeering it in behalf of life itself.
How many lives have been saved by the automobile, which would have
been lost through the slow going gig or phaeton, it is not possible to
say, because there is, of course, no exact record, but the number is
large. The mortality of today among people is greatly reduced from that
of twenty years ago. The advance of science has, of course, brought
this about, but the automobile is an important instrument of medical
science, just as are the X-ray, the stethoscope and the pulmotor.
And the same cause—the element of time—which operated in the adoption
of the automobile by the physician to the human body, has forced the
veterinarian to use the automobile. This is irony—for the horse—and
another nail in the equine coffin, but it is at the same time another
demonstration of the automobile’s superiority in efficiency over that
animal.
The farmer demands that the veterinarian shall come in an auto to
attend his sick horses or cattle, because he will not take the chance
of death through delay. And this is scarcely gratitude—by the farmer to
the horse—but it is economic pressure.
At every turn in the road of the automobile’s advance, we see its
economic value. We see in cities that the big department store is able
to cut down its delivery expense from $990 to $350 a day by using a
fleet of motor trucks instead of horse drawn wagons; that coal, ice,
groceries, feed—practically all commodities in cities—can be delivered
by motor trucks at a large saving of cost. Contractors, plumbers,
plasterers, tinners, and craftsmen in substantially all lines,
have figured it out and concluded that with the facilities of the
automobile available, the horse is a distinct economic waste in their
businesses.
The possibilities of similar economy by the farmer in the substitution
of motor power for horse power have been indicated by many progressive
farmers who have by experiments demonstrated that the cost of hauling
and cultivating with motor wagons and machinery is less than by using
horses, but the general economic saving by the use of the motor vehicle
in hauling cannot get its fullest and conclusive demonstration until
better roads are more numerous. Where roads are nearly perfect, results
have shown the cost of horse hauling to be 30 cents a ton, against 14
cents a ton by motor truck, by the mile, figuring everything.
INFLUENCE IN GETTING BETTER ROADS.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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