Among the business problems which confront the trolley lines and other urban carriers one of the most difficult, as we saw in Chapter VIII, is competition with other methods of transportation. Another is the issue of transfers. The European method is to pay a small sum for a short ride and to pay for zone after zone on a long ride. In America, although this system has been tried, it is not common. Most American cities prefer to have a single fare for the entire city and to have a free transfer system. It sometimes seems unfair to pay as much for a ride of half a mile as for one of 15 miles, but this is like the single postal rate on letters to all parts of the country and even to many foreign countries. The flat rate of fare for rides of all lengths is good for a city because it tends to prevent congestion and slums. When a city is divided into small street car zones, the poor people tend to crowd into the quarters around the factories or other places where they work.
Automobiles as the most Distinctive American Mode of Conveyance. —We have already seen that the United States and Canada have far more automobiles in proportion to the population than any other countries in the world. Of the 12,600,000 automobiles in the world in 1921 the United States and Canada had together almost 11,000,000, leaving only 1,600,000 for all the rest of the world. Such a condition is one of the chief reasons why the road problem is one of the most serious that confronts the United States.
P It is noteworthy, however, that in proportion to the population automobiles are not most numerous in the parts where the roads are most improved, but in the central plains where the wealth of the farm ers and the levelness of the land are favorable conditions, even though the roads are not improved and are very muddy at certain seasons.
The reasons for the great number of automobiles in the United States and Canada may be summed up as follows: (1) Inventiveness. The American countries lead the world in inventions and in the speed with which they adapt new ideas to their uses. (2) Standardization of products. Only in America have automobiles been built on a huge scale with standard parts so that they can be turned out cheaply in enormous quantities. One result of this is that today in America three fourths of the cars cost less than one thousand dollars. (3) Abundant gasoline. The fact that the United States is by far the world's greatest petroleum producer has had a great deal to do with the growth in the use of cars. So too has the huge size and complicated organization of the Standard Oil Company which makes every effort to provide gasoline wherever it is wanted. (4) Natural wealth. Although the automobile has now been reduced to a price not much greater than that of a horse and wagon, it still is too expensive for ordinary people except in a coun try where there is abundant wealth. (5) The level interior plains. All forms of transportation are greatly helped by levelness. In the case of the automobile this is not only because it is cheaper to run on a level than up hill, but because good roads are far more expensive in the rugged regions.
The automobile has not only introduced many new transportation problems such as are discussed in Chapter VIII but has brought impor tant new social conditions. Even more than the telephone and rural
free delivery system it has brought the farmer into contact with other people. With the further development of good roads the farmer who lives 5 or 10 miles from town and a quarter or a half mile from his nearest neighbor will find it as easy to come in touch with people as did the person who lived in a village a generation ago. The automobile has also changed the recreation system of the United States. It not only enables city people to get into the country, but it permits people to have summer homes in numerous places to which formerly they could not go because of the difficulty of getting supplies. As an offset to these good effects the automobile has made some forms of crime easier and more frequent than formerly. It enables the city miscreant to rob the farmers' orchards, gardens, woods and streams, and it makes it easy for the wrong-doer to escape from the city. The fact that a criminal can escape so quickly in an automobile has been one of the great reasons why robbery and other crimes of violence are more abun dant in America now than ever before, and are probably more frequent in the United States than in any other country with a supposedly high standard of civilization.
American Harbors and Ocean Waterways.—We have already seen that a great seaport can grow up only where the population is dense, whore there is a productive hinterland, where communication with the hinterland is easy, and where there is room enough for a city and depth and space enough for a large harbor. The way in which the water borne commerce of the United States is concentrated on the north Atlantic coast shows how important these conditions are. Today some of the greatest problems connected with ocean transportation are (1) the St. Lawrence waterway, (2) the development of better chan-, nels and larger terminals, (3) the problem of American versus foreign rates of pay for sailors, and (4) the problem of an American merchant marine and national subsidies. A deep waterway navigable for ocean, vessels to Chicago or Duluth is entirely practicable. It requires that the St. Lawrence, Niagara, and Sault Ste. Marie canals be enlarged. Engineers believe that the St. Lawrence canals, which would be the longest and most expensive, can be made to pay for themselves by developing water power in conjunction with the canals. They also claim that the new supply of power would stimulate manufacturing in New York, New England, and southern Canada, the uninterrupted waterway would give the farmers of the interior cheaper transportation rates, and both conditions would stimulate the interchange of goods between the farmers and the manufacturers as well as between this country and Europe. Canada would benefit more than the United States, but this does not mean that the United States would suffer. Some business would be diverted from New York, but that might be a distinct advantage for already New York suffers from congestion far more than from lack of business. The one great disadvantage of the St. Lawrence-Great Lakes route is that parts are frozen for three months each winter, and sometimes five.