Cycles, Motor-vehicles and Tubes 489 



ceeding, while manufacturers who have hitherto devoted 

 their attention mainly or exclusively to pleasure motors are 

 now adapting their plant, etc., to the making of commercial 

 motors either instead or in addition. The demand for pleasure 

 motors is limited ; that for public service motors and motor- 

 vehicles for traders is illimitable. From the great stores 

 which keep their " fleet " of delivery cars, and from the 

 furniture-remover who wants the equivalent almost of a 

 traction-engine down to the draper, the grocer or the butcher 

 who is content with a modest three-wheel auto-carrier for 

 loads up to five or ten cwt., every class of trader is to-day 

 finding that, to keep pace with the times, and to deliver goods 

 as promptly and at the same distances as his competitors, he 

 must needs have a quicker means of road transport than a 

 horsed-vehicle. 



Then, while large traders having their fleets of motor- 

 vehicles set up their own repairing shops, the needs of smaller 

 traders with only two or three delivery vans are provided 

 for by motor manufacturers or others who undertake " main- 

 tenance " on contract terms, thus saving such traders from 

 all trouble in the matter of repairs and upkeep. 



When one adds to these considerations the fact that traders 

 not only in the United Kingdom but in the colonies, in every 

 European country, and even as far away as Japan, are looking 

 to English and Scotch manufacturers to supply them with 

 motor-traction vehicles, the impression is conveyed that the 

 further great development of the motor industry in the United 

 Kingdom will be far less in pleasure motors, or even in the 

 motors used by doctors and others for professional purposes, 

 than in commercial motors ; and this impression is confirmed 

 by a remark made by Sir Samuel Samuel at the Motor- 

 Aviation dinner given by him at the Savoy Hotel on October 

 30, 1911. " The future of the motor-car industry," he said, 

 " lay in the commercial motor traffic, the solution of the street 

 traffic problem lay in motor-omnibuses, and in ten years time 

 most of the tramway stock would be scrapped." 



Apart from figures as to the number of public service or 

 commercial motors chiefly, as I have shown, of home manu- 

 facture already in use, the only available statistics indicating 

 the growth of the British motor industry are those given in 

 the Board of Trade Returns concerning " cars, chassis and 



