MIRACLES OF SCIENCE 



year 1911, and not far from a quarter of a million in 

 1912. The officially estimated value of the materials 

 used in the automobile industry in 1909 is just under a 

 quarter of a billion dollars, and the value added by 

 manufacture ($117,116,000) brings the total value 

 to $336,758,000, that is to say, about 18 dollars for 

 each and every family in the United States. 



These figures are impressive. They become doubly 

 so when we reflect that this colossal industry has 

 been developed in the past fifteen years. In the 

 decade 1899-1909, according to the Census Report, 

 the automobile industry showed an increase of 5,148.6 

 per cent, in value of product, and 3,278.9 per cent, in 

 number of wage earners. Meantime there are only 

 thirteen other industries that show an increased 

 output of more than one hundred per cent. Stated 

 otherwise, only fourteen industries all told doubled 

 their output in the decade, while the output of motor 

 cars increased fifty fold. The merest tyro can gain an 

 inkling of what that must mean in the way of econ- 

 omic readjustment; but the most expert student of 

 the subject could not guage its full meanings. 



In the face of this sudden development of popu- 

 larity of the self-propelled vehicle, it is interesting to 

 recall that the prototype of the automobile was in- 

 vented more than a century ago, and that steam-pro- 

 pelled omnibuses were used commercially in England 

 as early as 1830. Public prejudice, instigated perhaps 

 by the owners of horses, led to the enactment of laws 

 that virtually ruled the automobile off the roads of 

 England before the middle of the nineteenth century, 

 and the vehicle did not gain a footing elsewhere un- 



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