GASOLENE 33 



cred by a change in the standard of measurement. The 

 length of the day is one of the few things that the war 

 has not altered. Has there been a decline in sleeping, 

 reading, seeing motion pictures, playing cards, going to 

 church or what? Unfortunately we have no census 

 figures on how we spend our spare time although many 

 less important queries are asked us by the Census 

 Bureau. 



I used to ask such questions as these of my students in 

 the School of Journalism at Columbia and while the 

 answers were not always valuable I am sure the ques- 

 tions were. The important thing is to get a realization 

 of the innumerable and various ways in which any such 

 invention affects all our lives. The same question 

 would often bring opposite answers but I was not under 

 the painful necessity of marking either one of them 

 wrong. Take, for instance, this question of the effect 

 of the automobile on church attendance. Some of my 

 students would report that the congregations had fallen 

 off, for the people went riding on sunny days while on 

 rainy days they could not be expected to go to church. 

 But students from other sections would say that church 

 attendance had increased because the people could 

 come from many miles around and it took less time. 

 There would seem to be something in this because the 

 churches have grown in membership during the auto- 

 mobile era and why should people join a church if they 

 do not go to its meetings ? 



Another question bringing different answers was the 

 effect of the automobile on the spirit of democracy. 

 Students from New York City were apt to say that it 



