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THE NATION'S INDUSTRIAL PROGRESS

Believing that the advance of business is a subject of vital interest and importance, The Outlook will present under the above heading frequent discussions of subjects of industrial and commercial interest. This will include paragraphs of timely interest and articles of educational value dealing with the industrial upbuilding of the Nation. Comment and suggestions are invited.

THE ECONOMIC STATUS OF THE PASSENGER

MOTOR CAR

BY H. BERTRAM LEWIS

T

THE growth of the motor-vehicle industry in America has been so amazingly abrupt that few persons not directly informed have any conception of its proportions, or of the economic consequences that would certainly follow its curtailment. The fact that it stands third on the National list of manufacturing resources has been given considerable publicity, but the public has not grasped it. Steel, the material for our buildings, bridges, ships, locomotives, rails, machines, and tools, comes first; clothing, the prime essential of life after bodily sustenance, stands second in value of production; and third is private transportationthe passenger motor car and motor truck.

By creating wages for a million employees the automobile directly supports approximately five million souls. Capital invested in its manufacture amounts to $736,000,000, and the annual total of salaries and wages earned in its production is approximately $1,035,000,000. By providing a market for raw materials from mine, stock range, cotton field, rubber plantation, lumber camp, sand pit, oil field, stone quarry, clay pit, etc., it contributes indirectly to the support of other millions. By its demand producers of steel, copper, aluminum, zine, lead, chemicals, curled hair, glue, leather, textiles, thread, tires, insulating material, dressed timber, paper, glass, oil, cement, brick, and their derivatives have expanded manifold, and furnished employment at excellent wages to a host of workmen, whose earnings bring comfort to still greater hosts of dependents.

By producing a livelihood for the garage owner and his workmen its influence reaches into every hamlet in the land, for the garage is omnipresent and the garage owner and his workmen bring revenue into the local market and help distribute the tax burden of the community. By encouraging the manufacture and sale of tools and accessories its ramifications run still deeper into the economic fabric of our country, with the prosperity of which it is indissolubly bound up. It is not too much to say that the motor car brings some benefit to every household in America, with very few, if any, concomitant evils.

tonic hate sucked us in, motor-carriage engineers began the experiments which gave Uncle Sam the Liberty Motor (pronounced by aviation experts the most efficient airplane engine yet designed) as a finished product within a few weeks after war was declared. Motor-truck manufacturers, foreseeing the event, were enlarging their facilities to care for the anticipated Government demand even before the Mexican mobilization, and when the fatal hour had struck were among the readiest of the ready to meet the call to service. Thousands of workmen, trained in automobile factories, have entered the Army and Navy to do the host of indispensable things which no other training would have fitted them for. And as for its war output, how many of The Outlook's readers realize that Government orders to automobile factories total over $1,000,000,000 already, or that the automobile industry and the steel industry together are considered America's first line of industrial defense-our surest guarantee that her man power will be effectively utilized?

The great industrial structure thus developed, which had already taught the Nation new standards in steel alloys, heat treatment, quantity production, and a host of other manufacturing methods and details that are being utilized to-day to the uttermost in the building of superior war machines, was one of the first weapons of America, if not the very first, to be sharpened for war. Approximately two and a half years before the maelstrom of Teu

The passenger motor car practically alone has developed these resources, for the motor truck is only to-day coming into its own as an indispensable utility, and of the 4,500,000 motor vehicles estimated to be now in use in the United States, but 400,000 are of the commercial type; but in tabulating the contributions of the passenger car to modern civilization we are not limited to indirect services. The institution stands squarely on its feet as a system of transportation which, averaging up its passenger miles per annum, plus its baggage, parcels, and general merchandise miles, and figuring against these the cost of any other combination of transportation methods from house to house for the same total mileage, will probably show a dollar-and-cent saving without reckoning anything for the value of its comfort and convenience. Certainly the possibilities are there, whether fully utilized by every owner or not, and, if not, of course the owner, not his automobile, is at fault.

As another illustration, consider the case of a low-priced car or used car, bought and operated inexpensively from house to office, carrying three or more people. One such, to the writer's knowledge, costs its owner less than three hundred dollars per annum, and saves its three passengers more than thirty dollars apiece annually against the combined railway and trolley fares they would otherwise have to pay. Incidentally this car saves each of its passengers forty minutes per day time worth nearly fifteen hundred dollars in a year according to the passengers' combined earning power-and has actually made all the difference to one of the daily riders, whose health is retained only by the nicest balance in the face of heavy responsibilities and an exacting routine, between keeping his present job or giving it up.

And when we consider that the American motor car rolls up annually a total estimated at 60,000,000,000 passenger miles against 35,000,000,000 by the railways, what must be the combined savings of all cars driven for useful purposes the country over, and how tremendously must they overbalance the combined cost of all useless motoring! For it is estimated, and probably with justice, that not more than ten per cent of all automobile mileage is for travel without a useful objective. As a motorist, list the uses of your car. Where does it take you? To market, to church, to business, to the shop, to the recreation we all must have-golf, perhaps, or tennis, the concert, the play; to your Red Cross work, your Y. M. C. A. meeting, your National League for Women's Service duty, your Home Defense drill, your missionary funetion, your favorite charity, your country home--to every necessary and useful destination in your daily routine. If you were faced with the necessity for retrenchment, is it not the sheer truth to say that everything down to fuel, food, clothing, luminants, and drugs would go before your motor car? There must be at least two million people in this land who have had to choose between their motor cars and other things in order to own cars at all. Perhaps that is true of all but a very limited number of owners-and there has never been any hesitancy in deciding to sacrifice in every other direction before parting with what experience has taught them to be the most useful possession of all.

Take the average journey of a hundred miles or so from house to house by a five or seven passenger motor car utilized to capacity for passengers, luggage, and miscellaneous "tonnage," and its mileage bill per capita and per unit of merchandise load will generally be the lowest possible for the same journey. Consider as an example a trip from some Long Island or New Jersey point ten miles from Manhattan to a Connecticut point one hundred miles distant. Suppose your party consists of five people, including women or children, or both, with luggage for all passengers. Assume that points both of departure and arrival are far enough from the nearest rail base to require supplementary transportation of some kind from house to rail, and from rail to house, which is normally the case. The bill for two rail fares, porters, Pullman chairs if necessary (as they are when age or health precludes travel by public coach), two carriage fares (or even two trolley fares, at fifty cents gross) could hardly be less than three dollars per capita at the very least-and it might be four or even five; whereas the average five-passenger motor car costs much less to operate than fifteen cents per mile (three dollars per capita for the distance), and every advantage of parcel space, direct through routing, comfort, fresh air, and independence are clear "velvet," to speak in popular terms. And for the average journey of this description the automobile party will be first to arrive.

Suppose we should eliminate the motor car from American life and still attempt to carry on the same range of useful activities by other means of transportation. If the estimate is correct that ninety per cent of all automobile mileage is for useful purposes, there would then be 54,000,000,000 passen What ger miles to make up in other ways. substitute could we use (since it must be assumed that railways and trolleys cannot be substituted, inasmuch as such routes are already worked to capacity and, so far as the railways are concerned, well over capacity, and inasmuch also as neither one furnishes house-to-house transportation)? Obviously, nothing but the horse. There are few, if any, idle horses on the earth today; therefore we should need enough more to handle this additional mileage before the substitution could be made. A horse will carry two people, on the average, thirty miles a day at the outside, and he needs a Sabbath rest as much as a man. Rough speaking, we can estimate his average possi bilities at 20,000 passenger miles per an which is probably much in excess of s actual capabilities. Therefore it would require 2,700,000 more horses than we now have to do the work, and, as a horse eats

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the product of five acres every year, it would need the cultivation of 13,500,000 additional acres to support them. As our present acreage barely suffices for the needs of the men and animals already dependent on it, the economic problem created by such a change of motive power will readily be appreciated.

The time loss that would result is of course incalculable, but, as a rough illustration, let us assume that the average mile by motor car is covered in three minutes and the average horse mile in ten minutescertainly a comparison eminently fair to the horse. On that basis, these 54,000,000,000 passenger miles we are using in our estimate would entail a loss by horse of 378,000,000,000 minutes annually, or of 6,300,000,000 hours. Assuming that some of the time thus lost has no economic value-a doubtful proposition, but one that makes the case for the motor car properly conservative-it is certainly safe to average the value of this time at twenty cents an hour, or $1,260,000,000 a year, which would be a sufficient item in itself to establish the case for the passenger automobile beyond any hope of successful attack by its critics.

The effect on our agriculture if the motor car should cease to save the farmer's minutes, and keep his family and his labor contented where they are, need hardly be discussed. Some 2,700,000 cars combine their services to better the conditions of rural life and conserve the farmers' working hours, and the consequences of their withdrawal reckoned in terms of these calculations need no verbal embellishment.

And never since the motor car became a dependable device had it such capacity for usefulness as now. We are taking for National service from two million to five million workers chosen out of all walks of life. To finance the war and produce the equipment needed for its prosecution our industries of every kind must be speeded up in spite of this great shortage of human factors. Without stopping to present the figures, it may be broadly stated that the thing is impossible unless each worker's time can be made to go approximately a third further than ever before; and no agency we have can do so much to provide this extra time as the passenger motor car. Instead of suggesting curtailment of its use we should be seeking out new ways to realize on its wonderful possibilities.

There has been much loose thinking in this country based on England's war-time economic history, than which no process of reasoning could for us be more absurd. The motor car has come in for the effect of such logic because privately owned motor cars have in general been ruled out in England. The reason why they should have been ruled out in England is the very reason why they should not be ruled out here. England does not produce gasoline, and cannot get enough for war purposes and for private motoring besides. We do produce gasoline. It is a by-product of the manufacture of fuel oil. We produce fuel oil in large quantities for war purposes. We cannot ship abroad more than enough gasoline for war purposes because the tonnage is not available. Therefore we must either use for non-war purposes about sixsevenths of the gasoline we produce or waste it. If we waste it, we commit an economic sin and greatly increase the cost of fuel oil. We have facilities to store but little gasoline, and evaporation takes place when it is stored; therefore its use, to be truly efficient, should pretty closely keep

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pace with its production. Could there be any wilder insanity than to lay up four million sorely needed vehicles-which depreciate rapidly in idleness and throw away millions of gallons of useful fuel just because England cannot get fuel to keep the wheels of her few private passenger cars turning?

Canada's case is the true parallel, for Canada's war demands have been as exacting as England's, but under American, not English, conditions. Canadians have given as freely as the Mother Country of all they held most dear to help the cause. Their unselfish devotion to it is not subject to challenge from any quarter, yet Canada in 1917 was using one hundred and ninety-one thousand motor cars-nearly five times as many as in 1914-and the great majority were bought for private use.

The spirit of sacrifice is truly the war's great message to the American people. God grant each of us may have it seared into his very soul! But the sacrifice required is not that of useless abnegation, but of effective service.

The Red Cross of a Clara Barton is its

fitting symbol, not the bloody back of the cringing flagellant. Every man and woman of us must make time and effort go further now than ever in our lives, and whatever will multiply our minutes and conserve our health under the tremendous pressure entailed in the meeting of that obligation must be turned to account as a matter of duty.

Wars are not won by negative tactics. Grant's victories were largely gained by the application of his theory that the best defense is a strong attack. We must work, not wail; use, not store; hurdle our difficulties, not multiply them by applying false remedies. It was not America's Army or her Navy that gave our allies the assurance of victory when Congress declared a state of war; it was her resources, the fruits of her peaceful industry. By those fruits we shall win, if we utilize them. Neglect or destroy them, and the surest reliance we have becomes impotent. We must mobilize them every one and use to the utmost the advantages they assure us over an enemy who would give thousands of men for a tenth of them this minute if the exchange were possible.

Better than a mustard plaster

Once when grandma's joints commenced to pringle and twinge, she used to go to the mustard pot and make a mustard plaster. Now she goes to Musterole and gets relief, but does without the blister and the plaster, too!

My, how good that Musterole feels when you rub it in gently over that lame back and those sore muscles. First you feel the gentle tingle, then the delightful, soothing coolness that reaches in the twinging joints or stiff, sore muscles.

It penetrates to the heart of the congestion. This is because it is made of oil of Mustard and other home simples. And the heat generated by Musterole will not blister.

On the contrary the peculiarity of Musterole lies in the fact that shortly it gives you such a cool, relieved feeling all about the twingey part.

And Musterole usually brings the relief while you are rubbing it on. Always keep a jar handy. Many doctors and nurses recommend Musterole. 30c and 60c jars$2.50 hospital size.

The Musterole Co., Cleveland, Ohio

MUSTEROLE

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BY THE WAY

Just when explorers were beginning to think that everything had been discovered and that there were no more worlds to conquer, the announcement comes that one of the greatest natural wonders ever seen has been found in Alaska. It is called the "Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes," and presents an astonishing scene of volcanic activity. Mr. Robert F. Griggs, leader of the exploring party, says in the February "National Geographic Magazine :" "If one could pick up all the other volcanoes in the whole world and set them down together, they would present much less of a spectacle, always excepting a period of dangerous eruption, than does the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes day in the year." every Adjoining the Valley is the Katmai volcano, called by Mr. Griggs "the greatest active crater in the world," not excepting gigantic Kilauea in the Hawaiian Islands.

A correspondent of the London "Sphere" who was in Petrograd in January of this year says that prices were then almost unbelievably high. His figures remind one of prices in the Confederacy in the later days of our Civil War. An overcoat, says the" Sphere" correspondent, cost in Petrograd £100 ($500). Boots cost from $150 to $250 a pair. A spool of thread was $1.50. Lunch cost $5 and dinner $10. "In the first-class restaurants one could have wine in spite of its prohibition '--$20 a bottle for white, wine, $60 a bottle for champagne." Sugar was $5 a pound, flour $2.50 to $5 a pound, and potatoes 622 cents a pound, while soap was $2.50 to $5 a cake.

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The widespread belief among Mohammedans that a man answering General Allenby's description would break the Turkish power, which was alluded to in The Outlook of January 16, is commented on thus by a British subscriber: "A letter from a friend in Cairo, dated November 29, 1917, says: There is a curious excitement here among the Moslems, for long ago an old prophet said that when a man named En-haby should enter Palestine riding on a white horse the power of the Turk should come to an end. Now the Arabic for Allenby is En-haby, and General Allenby rides a white horse.'" This letter, it will be noted, was written before the fall of Jerusalem.

Commenting on the "adoption" of a French orphan by a young American aviator, the "Harvard Alumni Bulletin " says:

An aviator's chief business is of course to bring down Germans. When they add to that the bringing up of Frenchmen, they are really doing even more--they are giving a concrete interpretation, a sort of parable, of the American share in the present war.

lunch?" "Not exactly," was the reply. "But I'll pay for your pie, anyhow."

Some autograph letters of James Russell Lowell were recently sold in New York. One of them contains this keen characterization of Grover Cleveland: "I have been to Washington, where I saw Mr. Cleveland-a dogged man with the neck of a minotaur, and well fitted, I should say, for the rough and tumble fight that is in store for him. He is of a distinctly American type and yet in England might easily pass for an Englishman. I told him that I came like St. Denis to make my bow to him with the head he had cut off under my arm, which seemed to amuse him." Mr. Lowell had been Minister to Great Britain, hence the allusion.

"Bringing down Germans and bringing up Frenchmen" is a business in which we can all help, directly or indirectly, and the "Bulletin" has summed up our duty in a good phrase.

"Silence can sometimes be heard," said one salesman to another, according to the "Typographic Messenger." "How do you make that out?" asked his friend. "I can prove it." "If you can, I will pay for your lunch." "Well, it's this way: Hearing means getting impressions to the brain through the ear. Now you take a boilermaker or a machinist, and talk to him during the noon hour when the shop is quiet. You'll find he can hardly hear you. He is too busy listening to the silence, to which he is not used. Have I earned the

A letter from Whistler in the sale referred to above is equally characteristic. In it he tells of the action of the French Government in buying one of his pictures, while as a contrast another picture was "skied" in London. "Was ever revenge more complete?" he says: "One work received with high honour in the Luxembourg at the very moment that another is hoist with equally high disrespect in a Gallery in Regent St. !"

The stutterer has added to the world's fun since time began. So has the Irishman. Here is a contribution offered by the twain for the amusement of the readers of the "Scottish-American," from which we quote: "His name was Sissons, and he was before the Court. What is name?' your asked the magistrate. Sss-ss-8888-88-,' began the man of many s's. Stop that noise and tell me your name!' exclaimed the magistrate, testily. Sss-ss-s888-585-' "That will do,' growled the magistrate. "Constable, what is this man charged with? 'Begorra, yer worship, I think he's charged wid sody-wather!' replied the Court's Irish assistant, earnestly."

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A misplaced linotype slug in the New York "Evening Sun" of March 1, in its report of an archaeological theory advanced by Professor Wood Jones, of the Univer sity of London, made the scientist say:

In deposits of the same age as those in which the Taigai skull was unearthed were found bones of Savings Stamp campaign, dingo dogs, and also bones of extinct pouched animals gnawed by these dogs. The argument that the Taigai man was of a high order of intelligence is certainly strengthened by the discovery near his skull of remnants of a "Savings Stamp campaign."

A method for ridding Western farmers of the rabbit pest other than by poison is suggested by a resident of North Dakota. His township organized a jack rabbit drive last November. There were two teams of hunters. The drive lasted all day and in the evening a supper was served to the hunters. The team that shot the fewest rabbits paid fifty cents each for their supper; the winners paid only twenty-five cents each. A total of 257 rabbits were killed; these sold for $3 a dozen, and the proceeds of both supper and hunt went to the Red Cross and the Army Y. M. C. A. Good work!

A peculiar appeal to the new women voters of New York City was found tucked away under the head of " Public Notices" in the advertising columns of a city daily

Women voters respectfully informed hundreds old widows Brooklyn poor, feeble, friendless, await wages earned by husbands in Navy Yards. Certified by United States Court Claims. Oh! the shame Candidate for Congress.

of it.

French and Belgian Protestant Organizations

I

Unite in Appeal to Christian America

N all the devastated regions of France there are Protestant Communities. Their sufferings are great. Their churches are destroyed. Their pastors are in the army or held as hostages. They have undergone bombardment and pillage and lived in caves of the earth. Their houses are destroyed, their gardens ravaged and their trees cut down.

At the breaking out of the war, there were over a thousand places of worship. Some of the losses sustained are shown in such figures as the following: Ministers and divinity students killed to Sept. 1, 1917, 58; ministers' sons killed, 102; damage to church buildings, one million dollars.

There is another entente than that of military forces. We are bound to France and Belgium by spiritual ties. Their sacrifices have been in our behalf, and are our heritage. Should not their sufferings become the burdens of our hearts ?

The Huguenot churches have been in a large measure the soul of France. Christianity throughout the world owes them a debt which it can never repay, and which has been accumulating interest for centuries. But French Protestantism has a present and a future as well as a noble past. It weighs more than it counts.

A message from over there tells us that the work undertaken for sustaining these churches,

building temporary places of worship, taking care of missionaries and deaconesses, looking after thousands of Protestant refugees, housing and feeding them, calls at once for $2,000,000. This amount should be followed by another two milllion, in order that they may proceed effectively with their ultimate work of rehabilitation and reconstruction.

If our churches and Christian people want to do something effective, looking toward the reconstruction of Europe, they need not wait. They can do it now by maintaining these spiritual forces in France and in her dependent sister, Belgium, during this time of their awful disaster.

Protestant Union in France and Belgium Cooperates with United American Religious Agencies working in France through United Committee on Christian Service for Relief in France and Belgium

constituted by

The Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America

Such cooperation assures efficiency and offers unique opportunity to the people of America for the relief of suffering humanity, for giving increased power to spiritual factors in the reconstruction of France and Belgium, and for influencing the future of Protestantism.

Represented on the United
Committee are the following
French and Belgian organiza-

tions:

Federation Protestante de France.
Comite Protestant Francais.
Comite Protestant d'Entr' Aide.
Union Nationale des Eglises Reformees Evan-
geliques.

Union Nationale des Eglises Reformees.
Eglises Evangelique Lutherienne de France.
Union des Eglises Evangeliques Libres.
Eglise Evangelique Methodiste.
Union des Eglises Baptistes.

Mission Francaise Eglise Methodiste Episco-
pale.

Societe Centrale Evangelique.
Eglise Chretienne Missionnaire Belge.
Mission Populaire Evangelique (McAll).

Cooperating with the Committee are the following American organizations working in France:

American McAll Association.
American Huguenot Committee.
American Baptist Foreign Mission Society.
Methodist Episcopal Board of Foreign Mis-
sions.

The purpose of the Committee is: 1. To conserve and develop the Evangelical Churches and Missions in France and Belgium.

2. To further the interchange of thought and life between the religious forces of these three nations.

3. To render moral and financial support to the Evangelical Institutions and to the people of France and Belgium.

What can you do to help this work? Please send your check at once to Alfred R. Kimball, Treasurer, Room 605, 105 East Twenty-second Street, New York City.

UNITED COMMITTEE ON CHRISTIAN SERVICE FOR RELIEF
IN FRANCE AND BELGIUM

CHARLES S. MACFARLAND,

Chairman.

EDDISON MOSIMAN,

Corresponding Secretary.

105 East Twenty-second Street, New York City
A pamphlet with further interesting information will be sent upon request

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