good approximately in similar industries, that the capital reproduces itself, gross, every year. The total valuation of the industry to date, in rough figures, is about $275,000,000. Yet to buy and operate all the automobiles in the world would cost less than one fourth of the amount spent for alcoholic liquor in the United States for one year. But the automobile is at present measured in sentiment, not in money. It promises more which it was supposed they ought to wear, the power mechanism being crammed into a carriage of the traditional pattern. Then came the first strong type, that of 1894-1895. It had the merit that to its frame many styles of clothes could be fitted equally well and within the same frame changes could be made in the mechanism without ripping it to pieces. That simplified development immensely. All vehicles of that type of power mechanism, how THE SIMPLIFIED MECHANISM OF MANY AUTOMOBILES The engine turns the big disk, which turns the small disk, which turns the wheels by sprocket chains than it has achieved in utility; but it has done much more than it promised in other respects. Road-building, the unification of city and country, the industrialization of agriculture, school reform, the centralization of retail business by the expansion of its zone, the upbuilding of international amity, the reconstruction of warand-peace conditions, the extension of the boundaries of science-these are but a few of its far-reaching results. Early automobiles were fitted with the clothes ever dressed and for whatever purpose intended, became alike in undress, except in size, strength, and power. To-day that feature is universal among manufacturers. Types have multiplied and subdivided, but that one feature of the first strong type of gasoline vehicle has been adopted by all of them in one form or another. The omnibus, the dray, and the luxurious and speedy but heavy limousine are substantially the same automobile in different clothes. To understand the automobile is to under Thirty thousand Englishmen, mostly young but not often of the artisan class, nearly as many in France, and perhaps five to ten thousand in Belgium, Germany, and Italy combined, share the saddler's delight in the enginedriven bicycle; and not a few women are joining their ranks. At a cost ranging from $150 for a single-cylinder machine to $300 for one fitted with four cylinders, each of one horsepower, the condensed automobile offers practically all they could obtain from a luxurious A REFINED FOUR-CYLINDER AUTOMOBILE ENGINE This is equipped with what is called a self-starting device, which does not require any preliminary turning of a crank In motor-bicycles the saddle is the body; the touring-car (at a purchase price of $6,000 and rest is all chassis, turned edgewise. THE MACHINES ON THE ROAD I met a journeyman-saddler at Cologne, Germany, with a motor-bicycle of four horsepower. "If I want to work in Paris," he said, "I go there in one day; to Rome in two days; to St. Petersburg in three days. I can carry all I need in my knapsack, and my club certificate saves me nearly all bother at the frontiers." an expense account of $200 to $300 per month), except carrying capacity, comfort, and style. The somewhat democratic host of motorcyclists in Europe is more numerous than the main army of automobile owners, but the latter of course carry more persons in their vehicles. In America, Mr. George A. Weyman, in 1903, and Mr. W. C. Chadcayne, in 1905, have crossed the continent on motor-bicycles, re AN AMERICAN HUNTING-PARTY IN THE CANADIAN WOODS The steam touring-car stands admirably the severe test of running over rough country Each car received two gallons of gasoline and ran until the fuel was exhausted. The air-cooled car is passing the heavier stalled cars conditions, one turns to the touring-car, in one of its many styles. It is furnished open or closed, even with seats convertible into bunks; or semi-closed with canopy top and side curtains, or Cape cart extension-top with front straps and plate-glass wind-break; driven by gasoline engine or by steam; moderately powered or a racing machine in disguise. The ideal touring-car, according to the award made by a jury of experts at the last automobile exhibition in Paris, has an engine of 32 horsepower and a body weighing 660 pounds; it seats four passengers, carries 330 pounds of baggage, and runs at a maximum speed of thirty-two miles an hour. Vehicles of similar type form the main item in the $22,000,000 worth of automobiles exported annually from France (mostly to England, America, and Germany) and of three or four millions from Germany, Switzerland, and Italy. They also constitute the majority of the cars made and sold in America for $1,200 to $5,000 apiece, though cheaper and smaller vehicles largely outnumber them here. They are by far the commonest form of automobilethe same in Shanghai, Bombay, and Melbourne as in Buenos Ayres, San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Paris, London, Berlin, and Viennaand they are employed as family carriages for city and suburban use quite as much as for touring over great distances. Their variations are merely technical. All touring-cars, speaking broadly, accomplish the same work. Even the difference between gasoline and steam Not a car of an early type, but a recently devised one, that shows how an engine can be introduced into a carriage of in a conventional style use. Government statistics show that 21,306 pleasure cars and 1,441 trucks and delivery wagons, valued at $26,600,000, were produced in 1905. The year 1906 is credited with 25 per cent. more manufactured and with 80,000 machines in use. The exports in 1905, $2,500,000, were almost exclusively small City; huge electric "sight-seeing" vehicles, with terraced open seats; small electric runaabouts for ladies, mostly in cities not so large as to exhaust the batteries by one trip; small steam runabouts with boiler, gasoline fire, and without condenser, mostly used by mechanics and tradesmen in New England; and a multitude of |