Facilitating the Passing of the Horse.
A horse, it is estimated, consumes each year the production of five acres of land. There are 21,000,000 horses in the United States, and therefore the fertility of 100,000,000 acres is enlisted annually in behalf of this animal. If this area, which is as great as Ohio, Indiana and Illinois combined, were released from this burden, and the products were human food, a very large addition would be made to the food stuffs of which the world is in such sore need.
The elimination of the horse is progressing at a very rapid rate in cities, and the prediction is made that it will come to an end ultimately in the country, and that a horse in future will be only a pet or an element in sport. Thomas A. Edison has decreed the horse’s life for practical, general use, to be only ten years. Those who foresee his passing on the farm say that automobile engineers are working on small tractors which will be practicable in the cultivation of farms as small as 60 acres, and that they will ultimately be gotten down to a price which will not exceed the original cost and upkeep of a horse, and will do more and better work in the field.
The list of benefits conferred by the automobile is incomplete, if its use in war is omitted. It has been said that it saved France twice during its latest war. When the onrush of Germans in 1914 brought them almost within sight of Paris, General Gallieni, then Governor of Paris, rushed troops by the thousands in motor vehicles to the aid of General Foch. They turned the tide and made possible the victory of the Marne.
Motor trucks saved Verdun. The German advance had cut the French railway connections. Horse drawn wagons never could have brought the supplies. Motor trucks did. Had there been no such things as motor trucks, nothing, it is claimed, could have saved Verdun.
In war or peace, then, the automobile is a factor. As an agent in the advance of civilization it occupies a secure place. It has doubled the population of at least one city, and has given new life to others.
In forcing good roads it has enhanced the value of agricultural land. It is a well settled fact that the increase in selling price of farm lands through good main market roads is from one to three times the cost of the road improvements.
The likelihood is that with the increased use of the automobile, benefits from it will multiply. These benefits are, naturally, not as great with only three and a half million automobiles in use as we can well imagine they would be with the use of the motor car practically universal for passenger, hauling and farm cultivation purposes.
Much bigger things for the automobile than it has yet accomplished can be safely predicted.