Automobile statistics must be irresistible to minds that revel in figures. Their volume is tremendous, and it changes almost from day to day. Looking into the future, a lightning calculator takes no risk of contradiction when he says that there will be 51,000,000 motor vehicles in the United States in 1975, at which time he makes our population 171,600,000. A Johns Hopkins mathematician is responsible for this speculation. The problem presents no difficulty to him, for he takes the present ratio of vehicles to population, studies the tables of increase in both in ten years and arrives at his conclusion without regarding a saturation point in sales or waste of life by war.

It is different with the totals compiled by the Bureau of Industrial Technology relating to the present cost annually of motor vehicles to the American people. The bill is put at $14,293,000,000, and it includes not only cars and trucks with accessories, but repairs, depreciation, tires, “garaging,” gasoline, oil, drivers' wages, insurance, taxes and interest on investment. The cost of cars and accessories is set down at $3,750,000,000, while depreciation is figured at the large sum of $2,500,000,000. As most owners drive their own pleasure cars, of which the number registered in 1924 was about ten times that of motor trucks, $1,600,000,000 seems to be an excessive total for drivers' wages. The table, with more than fourteen billion dollars at its foot, is apparently one of liberal round numbers; but it is a big subject. Any man's imagination might take the bit between its teeth and run away.

The estimated value of farm crops in 1924 was $12,404,000,000, so it may be true, as this statistician asserts, that the automotive industry has become the greatest in the United States. The Department of Commerce is authority for the statement that on Jan. 1 there were 19,999,436 motor vehicles registered in the United States. Only 5,974,492 were allowed the rest of the world. The increase in this country was 3,278,000 over Jan. 1, 1925. New building construction is dwarfed in the picture, being less than half the motor vehicle total. This will not astonish the skilled workers on buildings; many of them own automobiles and can easily pay for them out of wages. The Bureau of Industrial Technology says:

One of the countless direct results of the great development of the automobile industry is the enormous road-building program now in progress in this country, calling for the expenditure of about $1,000,000,000 a year.

It is pointed out that another result, even more impressive, is the extent of suburban construction which the automobile has made possible. In many American cities this neighborhood building on new streets stretching away for miles exceeds strictly urban construction. The bureau feels warranted in describing the automobile as “probably the most important factor, both from an economic and social standpoint, in modern life.” Recently Colonel Leonard P. Ayres, Vice President of the Cleveland Trust Company, said that but for the automobile most of the new homes in suburbs would not have been built. Almost every one of them has a garage on the lot. He added:

If the new allotments and extensions of the suburbs had waited, as they must have in earlier years, for the building of new street-car lines, many of them would not have been developed.

An interesting study would be the “financing” of the motor vehicle industry. It is perhaps the best proof that the credit of the country is built on firm foundations. Both the wholesale and the retail dealers have to borrow money from the banks to carry on their business. From 60 to 70 per cent. of the pleasure cars and 90 per cent. of the trucks and tractors are bought on the instalment plan.