enty-five factories
turn out, in a year, more than ninety thousand cars, or more than sixty
per cent, of the total output of the United States. These cars alone
would stretch from New York to Boston.

But these figures do not convey any adequate idea of what the motor-car
has done for Detroit. You must go to the spot to feel the galvanic and
compelling force that the industry projects. The city is like a
mining-camp in the days of a fabulous strike. Instead of new mines,
there are new factories every day, and the record of this industrial
high tide is being made in brick, stone, and mortar. Energy, resource,
and ingenuity are being pushed to the last limit to take advantage of
the golden opportunity that the overwhelming demand for the automobile
has created. It is a thrilling and distinctively American spectacle,
and it makes one feel proud and glad to be part of the people who are
achieving it.

Some of the new plants have risen almost overnight, and on every hand
there are miracles of rapid construction. The business is overshadowing
all other activities. A leading merchant of Detroit asked a contractor
the other day if he could do some work for him. On receiving a negative
reply, he asked the reason, whereupon the man said: "These automobile
people keep me so busy that I can't do anything else. I have a year's
work ahead now."

A visit to any one of the great automobile factories reveals an
inspiring picture of cheerful labor. As you wind through the
wildernesses of lathes, hearing a swirling industry singing its iron
song of swelling progress, you find enthusiasm blending with organized
ability in a marvelous attack on work. Plants with a daily capacity of
forty cars turn out sixty. You can behold a complete machine produced
every three minutes; you can see the evolution from steel billet to
finished car in six days. Formerly it took five months.

While the development of the automobile business is in itself a wonder
story, no less amazing is its effect on all the allied industries. On
rubber alone it has wrought a revolution.

Ten years ago practically all the rubber that we imported went into
boots, shoes, hose, belting, and kindred products, The introduction of
rubber tires on horse-drawn vehicles only drew slightly on the supply.
To-day more than eighty per cent. of the crude article that reaches our
shores goes into automobile tires; and the biggest problem in the whole
automobile situation is not a ques