36 SCIENCE REMAKING THE WORLD 



may be none, unless some means may be found for add- 

 ing brains to enthusiasm. A sylvan solitude loses its 

 chief attraction when it becomes densely thronged. 



The motor furniture van has facilitated the fondness 

 of Americans for moving. All the contents of a seven- 

 room flat in New York City may be stowed, without 

 crating, in a van and set up in a house in Washington 

 next day without breakage, loss, or delay. Already the 

 motor truck is a close rival to the railroad car in ton- 

 nage carried. (In 1921, tonnage carried by truck, 

 1,430,000,000; by railroads, 1,641,000,000). In the 

 number of passengers and the number of miles they 

 were carried the motor cars have gone far beyond the 

 trains. (In 1921, passengers carried in motor cars, 

 7,000,000; in railroad cars, 1,000,000. Passenger mile- 

 age: motor cars 71,000,000, railroads 37,000,000). 



The spread of the automobile created a demand for 

 new materials in large quantities, for something that 

 would give a stouter skeleton and a softer tread. 

 Metals like vanadium and molybdenum, names so 

 unfamiliar to the people that they had to be taught in 

 advertisements how to spell and pronounce them before 

 they could ask for them, were needed to give steel a 

 greater elasticity and strength, and these "rare ele- 

 ments" had to be provided by the thousands of tons. 

 During the automobile races of 1905 in Florida a French 

 machine went to smash. There happened to be hang- 

 ing about, a man with an abnormal curiosity, Henry 

 Ford. He picked up a fragment of the wrecked racer, 

 a valve stem, and found it lighter and stronger than 

 anything he could make. He had it analyzed and 



