line
runabout, and, in addition to seeing twice the number of customers, he
can get their goodwill by taking them for a spin. Fire-engines,
hose-wagons, and police patrols race to conflagrations propelled by
motors, and get there quicker than ever before.

Just as practically every great American activity ultimately harks back
to the soil and has its real root there, so, in a certain sense, may
the farmer be regarded as the backbone of the automobile business. We
have six million farms, and more than forty-five millions of our
population live on the farm, or in communities of less than four
thousand people. To these dwellers in the country the automobile has
already proved an agency for uplift, progress, and prosperity.

It began as a pleasure-car; now it is a necessity on many farms. In
Kansas you can see it hitched up to the alfalfa-stacker; in Illinois
and Iowa it is harnessed up to the corn-cutter; in Indiana it runs the
dairy machinery. But these are slight compared with the other services
it performs for the farmer.

For years the curse of farm life was its isolation. Its workers were
removed from the shops, the theaters, the libraries, and good schools.
More farm women went insane than any other class. The horses worked in
the fields all week, and had to rest on Sunday, so that the farmer
could not go to church.

The automobile provided a vehicle not excessive in cost, and able to
provide pleasure for the farmer's whole family. It annihilated the
distance between town and country. Contact with his coworkers and
proximity to the market made the fanner more efficient and prosperous.
More than this, the motor-car has made the whole rural life more
attractive, and offers the one inducement that will keep the boy on the
farm.

A hundred instances could be cited of the automobile's aid to the farm.
One will suffice. In times of harvest, when a big gang is at work, the
breakdown of a thresher will stop operations for a whole day, if the
farmer has to drive to town behind a horse to get needed parts. With an
automobile, he can dash in and out in a few hours.

No one expects the automobile to replace the horse on the farm. But for
work that the horse can not do efficiently--such as the quick transit
of milk, butter, and garden products to the markets--the motor-car has
a future of wide utility. Incidentally, the farmer may be the first to
solve the fuel problem, for by means of cooperative distilling he could
prod