pression of 1907, and many were
tottering toward failure. Here came, almost out of the blue sky, a
condition that at once taxed their brains, their resource, and their
energy, and at the same time rescued them from bankruptcy.

You have only to go to any of the great factories in Detroit, in
Cleveland, in Indianapolis, in Buffalo, in Flint, or elsewhere to see
the result of this hurry call for tools and machinery. You find
automatics cutting the finest gears by the score, while one man
operates a whole battery; you see drills doing from fifteen to twenty
operations on a piston or a flywheel; you see an almost human machine
making seventeen holes at one time without observation or care.

Through these machines run rivers of oil. From them streams a steady
line of parts. The whole scope of the tool business is broadened. In
the old days--which means, in the automobile business, about ten years
ago--an order for ten turret-lathes was considered large; now the
motor-makers order seventy-five at a time by telegraph, and do not
regard it as more than part of the day's work.

The whole effect of this revolution in machinery is that time is saved,
labor is economized, and it is possible to achieve quantity production.
This, in turn, enables the large manufacturer to turn out a good car at
a moderate price.

So with steel, where likewise wonders have been wrought. Ten years ago
the great mass of the steel output in this country was in structural
metal and rails. We had to import our fine alloy and carbon steels from
Germany and France. But the automobile-makers had to have the lightest
and toughest metal, and they did not want to import it. The result was
that our mills began to produce the finer quality to meet all motor
needs, and it is now one of the biggest items in the business.

In half a dozen other allied industries you find the same expansion as
you saw in rubber, steel, and machinery. For instance, the
automobile-makers buy twenty million dollars' worth of leather a year.
So great is the demand that a composition substitute was created, which
is used on sixty per cent. of the tops. A new industry in colored
leather for upholstery has been evolved.

Wood, too, has had the same kind of experience. Whole forest areas in
the South have been denuded for hickory for spokes. A few years ago,
aluminum was used on ash-trays and exposition souvenirs. Now hundreds
of thousands of pounds are employed each year for sheathing