SIMPLE FACT OF MOTOR TRANSPORT.

Manawatu Times, Volume 62, Issue 37, 13 February 1937, Page 15 (Supplement)

SIMPLE FACT OF MOTOR TRANSPORT.

The rapid growth of automobile operation throughout the world is due to a simple fact. That fact is that the motor vehicle provides needed transportation better and more satisfactorily than do other agencies.

In thinking of it, we arc likely to assign many attributes to it. One, and only one, of these attributes, the automobile, should concern us here. Consider it solely as a machine, easy to operate, for the economical transportation of peoples and goods from place to place, at the will and volition of the driver, as a part of normal, daily life. If the motor vehicle does not perform that service, in superior fashion, then it is of no advantage and the purpose for which it was created, has been defeated. The automobile is the wheel in more useable form. By combining the wheel —which, in itself, is the greatest labour-saving invention of the ages—with an engine and then by endowing that combination with the necessary adjuncts of controls, body, brakes, springs, tires, etc., wo have attained the twentieth century machino o‘ transportation. Harnessed in such new and improved fashion, the world has a vehicle that eliminates tho barrier of distance for the individual, as it has never been done before. We could ascribe to the automobile many stirring, dramatic characteristics in the social and political sense. But to comprehend why its use is extending so rapidly we must consider it only in the simplest terms, that of a transportation machine. Then, wo see that as passengei car, motor truck or motor bus —it is an agency of service, for all peoples, and that, for no other reason, its operation has spread, literally, to every part of the world. Fourteen years ago, in 1922,' when the first annual census of motor vehicles was compiled, scarcely more than two million automobiles were in use in all countries of the world other than the United States. That number now has been increased nearly six fold and, by the end of 1936, nearly twelvo million cars, trucks and buses are providing needed and essential transportation. Every week, in more than JOO countries of Africa, Asia, Europe, Oceania and the Western Hemisphere (not including the United States) oillions of miles of travel are required from tho automobiles in present operation. More than ninety per cent. r >L all this huge travel is production of income and cannot, therefore, bo curtailed. The enlargement of motor traveller the world as a whole —has continued practically without a break, as on*7 in one year, at the bottom of the depression, was there recession in tho steadily mounting registration totals. Perhaps, in the roaring decade after the World War, when automobiles were first beginning to be used in large numbers, there might have been question as to tho permanency of this new form of transport. Conceivably the argument could have been justified in those days that automobiles were not necessary and that motor vehicles indeed vrerc “ pleasure cars"—unessential luxuries. But, in the meantime, every country has gone through crisis and financial despair. Whatever was not essential, passed from public use, or was delegated to*inferiority. It was not =o with the automobile, which proved its utility and its value in those days of strain and threatened collapse. Now it has taken its destined place in tho daily affairs of the nations and, indeed, many governments, fraught wth difficult financial problems, have even recognised ofiicially tho necessity of continued motor transportation, by placing the automobile in a preferred position for exchange requirements. The automobile is no longer a “pleasure" car. With that radically altered recognition of automobile 0 utility, public opinion regarding it must change. No longer is it a novelty or a machine to be considered in terms of the entire population, that is, for its service and usefulness to the whole nation. In short, proven essential and demonstrated as necessary, automobiles and motor transport are to-day of major concern to governments, to bankers, to agriculture, to industry and to the peoples of every country. Accepting as a reality that the automobile :s here to stay—a fact no longer open to debate in the view of the depression experience of continued mounting of automobile registrations—many new transport problems have

1 come to the front and must be attacked 5 and solved-in the interest of the people »of each country. These problems | concern motor vehicle taxation. the provision of needed streets, 5 highways and bridges, the creai .■■■ - ) r > > i , 1

tion of new and changed transport facilities—-alt. of which aro of the utmost concern to those in every country charged with control and supervision. Directly and indirectly, it provides too much employment, creates too much wealth, and performs too many vital services to delay longer the proper solution of its problems. The automobile and motor transport are embedded in every country. The' day of tho “pleasure" car has passed, and it is no longer a luxury. It is a necessity, in every sense of the word, and must so be regarded, as are other essentials needed to sustain life, to promote business and to serve the entire community. Mechanically, the wheel has been harnessed in a new and improved form, for the utility of all peoples, as motor car, motor truck or motor bus.