No. 7. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. " 399 



The gentleman said that their use was a saving of horse-flesh. That 

 is true; many a good horse is standing in the barn because of the 

 use of the automobile, and many a farmer hesitates to drive his 

 horses around in the road because of the danger that exists on ac- 

 count of the reckless use of that vehicle. I do not know, but I 

 would be in favor of making the roads so rough that a man with an 

 automobile could not get over it. It resolves itself right down to 

 this. The man that rides in the automobile rides in it for pleasure, 

 and to a certain extent we are sacrificing our right to use the high- 

 ways for work in order that he may enjoy his pleasure. Now why 

 shouldn't he pay a pretty good tax? It is said that the average 

 automobile man will take care of the horses when he uses the high- 

 way. I have seen that myself and experienced the danger there is 

 where the automobile is driven at the speed it often is along our 

 public highways. 



MR. DETRICH^ Mr. Chairman, I am surprised that a man in this 

 enlightened age would make such a statement on this floor. The 

 automobile is destined to be and is now one of the most rapid and 

 frequently used ways of traveling from one point to another and 

 is one of the cheapest modes of conveyance of anything that I know 

 of. Like the steam and the electric railway, the automobile is with 

 us to remain, and how any one can doubt its utility and its conve- 

 nience for traveling from point to point is something incomprehen- 

 sible to my mind. 



MR. STOUT: I did not make this suggestion to tax those people 

 any higher than anybody else; but an automobile, as I understand 

 it at the present time, costs about as much as a fairly good farm 

 in my community, and I know that the same amount of money in- 

 vested in some of our farms must at least be closely approached by 

 some of them. Now if we were to tax the automobile, dollar for 

 dollar as our farms are taxed, it seems to me that it would not be 

 an injustice to those who can afford to own them. They have 

 some privileges additional to those possessed by the farmer, and 

 why should they not pay a little additional tax. 



MR. SEXTON: Great reforms move slowly and it takes a great 

 while to educate the people up to the point where they are prepared 

 to support a movement of this kind. We have had in Pennsylvania 

 the worst public road system of the United States for hundreds of 

 years; we all know that. We have been hauling mud from the gut- 

 ters into the highways in the same old way year after year for the 

 frosts, rains and snows of winter to act upon and take it back into 

 the gutter again. Now we have been agitating the road question 

 in this Commonwealth that is nearly an empire, and so far we have 

 succeeded very well. This road question is taking shape and we 

 are getting there, so to speak. In the session of '97 when the 

 Hamilton road law was before the House, my friend Creasy was 

 opposed to it. It didn't go far enough, but it was the entering 

 wedge to bring about such discussion as we have had since that time. 



Now my friend Creasy says that this present law is not good 

 enough, but we are going to have something better. If you keep 

 talking this up among yourselves, we are going to get there, and 



