MOTOR CARS. TA ARGE revolutions come from small beginnings, and this
second week of November, 1896, may hereafter be looked back to as the epoch of the first executive recognition of a vast change in the methods of locomotion. Motor carriages have long been talked of, and of late they have occasionally been seen on the roads. There have even been two exhibitions of them, at which Members of Parliament and other notable people might be seen making their first essays in their guidance and management. All their first essays in their guidance and management. All this, however, has been but the first circling flight of the homing pigeon. Not till to-day will the bird make its definitive start in the shape of a procession of motor carriages from Northumberland Avenue to Brighton,—or as near Brighton as fortune and an unfamiliar vehicle will allow their drivers to get. There are two different ways of looking at motor carriages,—the business way and the pleasurable way. For the moment, at all events, it is the former that seems to have the greater future before it. Notwithstanding the immense extension of railways, there are still large tracts of country in which the sound of the passing engine is either not heard at all or heard but very faintly. The slow-moving waggon is still the only means of carrying goods to market. Here, if there be anything in vendors' assurances, is a field for the new industry which can be worked with great profit. Every kind of agricultural pro- duce will be heaped upon motor waggons, and that large item in the cost of farming which is concerned with the management and care of horses will be suppressed. The motor waggon, or the motor which is to draw the waggon, will be loaded as opportunity offers, and then will start for the distant town or station with no more outlay in labour than the wages of the man who sees that the power, -whatever it is, is in working order, and that the machine itself is under proper guidance. In one point, however, the expectations of farmers have been disappointed. They used to fancy that the motor-car when it came would carry behind it a long train of loaded waggons, collected, perhaps, from half a score of farms, and drawn at a very small cost to each owner. For the present, at all events, this hope must remain unrealised.
The regulations of the Local Government Board apply only to motors "not used for the purpose of drawing more than one vehicle." The object of this limitation is obvious. One heavy waggon may be well under the control of the man who is driving the motor ; but half a dozen heavy waggons, loosely coupled together, would be like the unmanageable tail of a kite. They would spread over the road at different angles, and move with an impetus varying with their weight. The driver might have his attention fixed on some obstacle in front of him, and meanwhile some member of his unruly flock would be making itself into a worse obstacle in the rear. At the same time the limitation which this necessary provision will place on the utility of the new invention is exceedingly great. So long as a motor-car can only draw one vehicle the extension of the carrying industry to which many people had looked forward cannot be realised. Each farmer must have his own motors in a number determined by the amount of produce he has to send to market. But what is really wanted in many parts of the country is a co-operative motor,—a motor which shall go about the villages and pick up a waggon here and a cart there, and so put large farmers and small farmers on a level in regard to the carriage of their goods. That this is impossible now we can quite see, but it may not be always impossible. It may not, that is, be beyond the power of science to devise a kind of vehicle, or a mode of coupling vehicles together, which shall make it safe to attach many to the same motor, even on an ordinary road. There will be abundant stimulus to the ingenuity of inventors in the large profits that might be made by any one who put an end to what is for the moment an insuperable ifficulty. It is the business aspect of the new motor that has taken most hold of the imagination of the Local Government Board. The regulations for the use of "light locomo- tives " on roads which appeared on Wednesday and come into force to-day, do but imperfectly express the interest with which a large number of people are looking forward to the introduction of "motor carriages." The difference between the two conceptions is shown even in the names given to the new vehicles in official and popular speech. A "light locomotive" may be the same thing as a motor carriage, but the evolution of the two ideas is quite different. A motor carriage has a pleasurable sound about it. It suggests a development of the victoria or the pony - carriage. A light locomotive is only an improvement on our old friend 'Puffing Billy.' We seem to see a long procession of agricultural machines drawn by an engine with a modest oil- can underneath instead of the tall chimney with which we have been so long familiar. But whatever there may be in the several names by which they are known in law, a motor carriage is nothing more than a light locomotive, and it will equally have to submit to the rules and endure the disabilities which the Local Government Board have devised. It may be suspected, indeed, that in framing their regulations the Board have had in view the agricul- turist rather than the amateur. Their conception of a light locomotive savours of the manure-cart or the loaded waggon. It is "a vehicle propelled by mechanical power which is under three tons in weight unladen, and is so constructed that no smoke or visible vapour is emitted therefrom." Evidently the Board cherishes no engaging visions of young ladies flying along country roads in dainty little carriages which weigh only a few hundred- weight. It is not dreaming of the revolution in the art of getting from place to place which is hoped for by more enthusiastic people. The young ladies in question are known to the Board simply as so many persons "com- petent to control and direct the use and movement" of a light locomotive. They might all be stokers or engine- drivers for anything the official mind cares.
As we have seen, this indifference to the ornamental aspect of the new invention is natural and inevitable; the question is, Will it be permanent ? We are inclined to think not. We see no reason why there should not eventually be as great and as rapid an extension of the use of motor carriages for what in a large sense may be called pleasure, as there has been in the case of bicycles. Only a few years back no one foresaw the numbers of these last that would be in use by the end of the century, or dreamed that walking and riding were alike on the eve of being superseded. But usefut as bicycles are, then are some purposes for which they are not suited. The very old and the very young are debarred from using them ; they are not altogether pleasant in wet weather ; and their value in carrying luggage to the station has yet to be discovered. In all these ways the motor carriage may have a great future before it. So far as carriages are used solely or mainly for show or pleasure they will continue to be used. No improvement that science can devise is likely to make the box that holds the motor as handsome an object as a fine pair of horses, and the man or woman who is proud of being a good whip will not easily be tempted to exchange that honour for the inferior function of guiding a motor. But in the whole field of commonplace utility the superiority of the motor carriage will be evident. It will mean saving of labour, saving of horseflesh, saving of anxiety. The motor carriages will not share the many drawbacks to which horse carriages are exposed. They will not be sensitive to weather, they will not need to keep regular hours, they will not know fatigue. All these are qualities that will recommend them to that vast multitude of persons to whom carriages are in various ways a necessity. They will not be largely bought, perhaps, until they become cheaper, possibly not until experts are better agreed than they are at present upon the best kind of motor. But when once this is settled improvements will be effected with wonderful rapidity. The foolish conservatism which models the horseless carriage on the same lines as the carriage drawn by horses will disappear, the management of the motor will be made easier and more cleanly, and a lady will be as well able to manage her own motor as she now is to drive her own pony. We have said nothing about the application of the new system to public carriages. Whether London is about to witness an irruption of motor cabs and motor omnibuses, and what will be the effect of such an irruption on the street traffic, especially in the dark evenings when Regent Street is as crowded as a fair, and whether, again, the combination of horsed and horseless carriages will in the end be found consistent with the safety either of their occupants or of foot-passengers, are large questions, which the next few months may help us to answer.
Previous page
