MOTORING AND AVIATION Continued company. This report has been accepted by the Cabinet and proposals in regard to the formation of the company are now being received. Doubtless the most noteworthy feature of British commercial aviation is the comparative freedom from accidents. We read: From April, 1919, to March, 1920, the British machines on the air routes made 754 flights with a total mileage of 168,000 and one passenger killed. In the next twelve months 2,641 flights were made with a mileage of 500,000 and two killed; from April, 1921, to March, 1922, 1,156 flights were made with a mileage of 259,000 and none killed. From April, 1922, to March of this year, 4,000 flights were made covering 778,000 miles and none killed. Another surprizing phase of civil flying in Europe is that "in spite of handicaps imposed by the Peace Treaty, Germany's commercial air service is thriving this year as never before, and, as a matter of fact, the very restrictions of the peace agreement upon aviation have as a stimulant," for The borders of Germany are connected with air lines almost as numerous as trunk railroads, and there is scarcely a large city that can not be reached by air from Berlin on regular schedule. Had the country been allowed to continue with an air program unrestricted by allied rules it is doubtful if the local service would have developed to its present state. These restrictions have caused the use of lower horse-power, and consequently air dynamics has received more attention than otherwise. This combination furthermore has made for cheapness of construction and operation to such an extent that commercial flying has been actually benefited almost as much as it has been injured. While no speed records have been attained nor no great international flights attempted, the German air service is a healthy, self-contained industry, growing rapidly, and patronized extensively. At present there are seven active lines running on regular schedule within Germany and connecting with outside lines. The most ambitious of these is the BerlinAmsterdam-London line, which became a reality only this spring. Others connect Berlin, Hamburg, Bremen and Amsterdam; Hamburg, Copenhagen and Malmo, Sweden; Koenigsburg, Berlin, Zurich and Geneva; Berlin, Danzig and Koenigsburg; Berlin, Munich and Prague; Koenigsburg, Smolensk and Moscow. The latter, one of the longest lines in the German schedule, has been thoroughly established and is perhaps the best passenger service from Berlin to Moscow. A line from Berlin to Vienna will be put into operation soon, following new mergers which have been effected to push passenger service further into the important places of central Europe. The first of these merged groups, the Trans-European Union, is composed of the Ad Astra Aero at Zurich; Rumpler Air Service Company at Munich; Austrian Air Service at Vienna; Aero Express Company at Budapest; and the Aero Lloyd at Berlin. This includes all the lines interested in the services connecting Geneva, Zurich and Munich, at which latter place junction is formed with the Vienna-Budapest-Balkan line and another connecting Berlin, Nuernberg, Leipsig and Dessau. The powerful Junkers firm is not mentioned in the merger, but is closely allied with the Rumpler company. The second group, known as the East Europe Union, is composed of the Danzig Air Mail Company at Danzig, Aero Lloyd at 'Warsaw, Lithuanian Air Traffic Company at Riga and the Aeronaut Company at Reval. This group also includes the Danzig, Warsaw and Lemburg line, which is maintained by Junkers planes manned principally by German pilots. The subsidy from the Government, while still undetermined, probably will not be more than one kilogram of gasoline for every kilometer traversed, and this will give little aid. Therefore a basis of foreign money has been used in fixing prices on lines connecting with other countries and a sliding scale based on the gold mark or dollar used for interior service. Under this arrangement the Berlin to London trip costs £6 10s.; Hamburg to London, £6; Bremen to London, £5 15s.; Amsterdam to London, £4. On the same line the trip from Hamburg to Bremen costs 15s.; Hamburg to Berlin, £1; and Hamburg to Amsterdam, £3. The long journey from Koenigsburg to Moscow can be made for £22, while the lines in the Baltic are priced in dollars as follows; Koenigsburg to Riga, $14; to Memel, $3.50; Reval, $28. The German end of the Moscow trip-that is from Berlin to Koenigsburg-is made for practically £1 at the present rate of exchange, but is priced in German marks based on the fluctuations of the exchange. TAKING THE "UN" OUT OF "UNAVOIDABLE" AUTOMOBILE ACCIDENTS "IT T COULDN'T be helped!" This is the sad, yet consoling dirge to which motorists usually give vent while gazing upon the ruins of their automobile after a mishap of one sort or another has made Grade A junk of it. In calling to mind the events which preceded the awful moment when something went wrong the drivers find little difficulty in either fastening the blame upon other drivers or upon a certain set of circumstances for which no human agency was responsible. The one excuse for a mishap which is sure to bring a melancholy satisfaction to all concerned is to declare that the accident was unwhole avoidable. The result is that classes of accidents have come to be regarded as belonging to the "unavoidable" category, as, for example, that in which the steering gear fails to function properly. Very disconcerting, therefore, to the motorists' peace of mind is the flat assertion of an article in Motor Life that "barring a few rare exceptions, one might say, truthfully enough, there ain't no such animal as an unavoidable accident." Frank Farrington, its writer, bids us Think over the automobile accidents that have come to your personal attention. How many of them were really unavoidable and could not have have been prevented by a reasonable amount of care? Can you think of one single accident that Why these Great Walker Fleets in the Service of Leading Corporations? Because the Walker gives "lowest trucking cost on city If you use gasoline or horse trucks on city routes, On request-bulletin telling how well-known concerns in your line America's Leading Manufacturer of Electric Street Trucks WALKER ELECTRIC TRUCKS Lowest Trucking Cost on City Routes MOTORING AND AVIATION Continued would have been unavoidable if every one concerned had done everything possible to insure safety? The really unavoidable accidents are usually due to some unforeseen breakage of a part of the car. We hear drivers attribute their accidents to the steeringgear going wrong, but that steering-gear excuse should be taken with a grain of salt. And as to accidents really due to a disconnected steering-gear-a reasonable watchfulness would have prevented the very few that do occur at rather infrequent and therefore unduly conspicuous intervals. Not long ago I was looking for a rattle on my car and I found that the rod which reaches from the steering-arm of the left wheel across to the steering-arm of the right wheel was loose. It rattled up and down at one end on the bolt that held it. I saw that the cotter-pin had come out of the nut underneath it and that the nut had unscrewed perhaps half-way to the end of the bolt. In a very short time that nut would have worked entirely off and the end of the rod would have dropt to the ground, and I would have been the victim of an "unavoidable" accident, due to my steering-gear becoming disarranged. But would that accident have been unavoidable when it could have been prevented by reasonably frequent inspection of the steering apparatus? We depend too much upon the permanence of cotterpins. They are remarkably reliable and durable. They seldom fail us. But ought we to count on their serving indefinitely? We give a good deal of thought to the regular inspection of our cars for lubrication and rattles, but we do not think often enough of the need of inspection for safety. There are some unavoidable accidents, if we classify in that way all those due to mechanical conditions that might have been prevented by reasonable care and foresight. Most of us know of instances where an accident was due to a wheel coming off an axle. A little investigation once in a while, the occasional removal of a hub cap, and inspection by a competent person, would prevent most of such accidents that are called unavoidable. The very infrequency of accidents due to mechanical troubles speaks wonders for the perfection of the American automobile. Unfortunately mechanical perfection can not make up for human imperfection. Perfect cars will not make perfect drivers. In fact, the perfection of the car has a tendency to make a driver careless and reckless. Eliminate the avoidable accidents and the number of deaths and injuries and property losses due to the automobile would be reduced to an insignificant figure. Regarding railway-crossing tragedies, Farrington asks, "Can you think of one that was unavoidable?" Obviously a negative answer is expected, as evidenced by the following illustrations cited. A driver waits for one train to pass on a double track line and drives onto the track right back of that train only to have another train coming in the opposite direction wreck his car and injure the passengers. A driver comes out of a private lane with his side curtains on and his engine so noisy that he does not hear an approaching trolley-car, which hits the automobile as it crosses the tracks to reael the open road. . . . A river comes down a steep grade onto the railroad track, his engine shut off for the instant, or his clutch out. Perhaps the motor is so stiff from newness or from overhauling and tightening up that it stalls easily. The engine does stall and the train which seemed a safe distance away arrives before the car can be started. The driver underestimated the speed of the train, as most of us generally do, and he was careless about his engine. He should have had the transmission in second speed and thus played safe. Giving another "horrible example" of motorists' carelessness, the writer goes on: A driver a few Sundays ago was speeding along a new piece of concrete road with only a little bank on each side. He took both hands from the steering-wheel at the same time, for only an instant. The car was in the ditch, hit a tree and was split in two nearly its length in another instant. The driver was not seriously injured and lived to say that he could not understand why the car left the road, that something must have gone wrong with the steeringgear! A more sensible explanation would be that his right front wheel hit some little obstruction, perhaps a seam in the concrete. The people responsible for these accidents talk about their being unavoidable, about the other fellow being to blame. They go into court and testify to conditions and actions that are not upheld by the faets. The truth is that when an accident happens so much occurs in a few seconds that it is almost impossible for participants to realize just what does occur. USED CARS RUINING DEALERS RE EPORTS that 3,000,000 automobiles will probably be produced in the United States this year may strike some motorists with awe and terror-awe at the magnitude of the industry to whose upbuilding they have in a small way contributed, and terror at the thought of such a vast throng of additional cars and trucks being turned loose on already crowded highways. The fear, however, seems groundless, for the reason that, as pointed out in The Michigan Manufacturer and Financial Record (Detroit), only 300,000 machines, or one-tenth of this enormous output, actually will become a burden upon traffic. The other nine-tenths, roughly speaking, will replace used cars traded in for the latest models. Writing in the manufacturers' magazine, J. W. Beckman has no hesitancy in calling the trading-in policy, as now practised, an unqualified menace to the stability of the automobile industry as a whole. "The used-car plague has proven the ruin of 25 per cent. of the automobile dealers annually," he says, and adds, "No automobile factory can thrive when its dealer organization is suffering the high mortality rate it has for the past three years." We read: That this situation exists is a most embarrassing commentary on the business ability of the men who should control the 口 At This Moment Other Executives, too, Are Reading This Ad! And they have the same thought "What will the P-A-X do for my organization?" Your problems of overhead, production and service cannot be radically different from those of the thousand concerns who are actually profiting by the P-A-X today. 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WATEREORD The Disappearing Propeller Boat MOTORING AND AVIATION Continued destinies of the industry, instead of allowing the used car to. Ordinary business sense is all that is needed to handle this situation; business sense on the part of the manufacturer as well as the dealer. Used cars must be taken in trade at not one penny of loss to the dealer. Manufacturers who are crowding their dealer organizations with automobiles in such quantities that the dealers are forced to give over-allowances on the used cars, so as to market their unjust quotas of new cars, are only ruining the morale of their dealers by cutting down their profits, and are the big factor that is causing the large mortality rate that is now prevalent in the retail branch of the automobile business. Manufacturers of our standard make automobiles are not the ones that are causing this degraded condition to exist. It is those manufacturers that are existing on the business that can only be had through merchandising their products in this unfair way of forcing their dealers to allow more than the used car is worth. Dealers are gradually waking up to the fact that they are the ones who are suffering through the unbusinesslike procedure, and are taking on the dealerships of cars produced by manufacturers who believe in honest merchandising. It will not be long before the unthinking manufacturers will sign their own death warrants and hasten the day when only manufacturers of high caliber will be supplying the automobile demands of the American public. When taking in used cars constituted only about 10 per cent. of the business and the dealer discounts were longer than they are to-day, there was perhaps little reason to give much heed to the used-car problem. But, like the cub bear grown up, it is showing its teeth, and is taking a toll of one dealer out of four every year. Manufacturers have left the used-car problem to the dealers, it seeming to be entirely their concern because they come in most direct contact with it; but to-day manufacturers realize that the used-car problem is their problem only one step removed. The grown bear is already leering over the dealer's shoulders. Not only must a knowledge of costs be had and used cars handled on a basis that will not entail a loss, even if not allowing a profit, but better organization of the usedcar department must be effected. In this work the manufacturer must give his help by instilling better business methods into his dealers. But, if the manufacturer needs awakening to a sense of responsibility in connection with the problem, so does the dealer, we are told. Thus: Dealers, for one thing, will have to devote more effort to their used-car departments. A prominent automobile manufacturer recently told us that in a certain large city one of their dealers had nine salesmen in the new-car department and one in the used-car department. The nine salesmen of the new-car department were marketing their new cars in a satisfactory manner, and in so doing they were taking in trade a sufficient number of used cars to make it necessary for nearly as many salesmen in the used-car department as in the new to merchandise these trade-ins. No Travel with INDESTRUCTO They cost no more than ordinary trunks PATENTS. Free Guide Books and RECORD INVENTORS should write for OF INVENTION BLANK before disclosing inven- Keep Your Skin-Pores Soap, Ointment, Talcum,25c.everywhere. For samples Blistered, sunburnt skin made soft and smooth by promptly applying antiseptic, healing mentholatum Write for free sample Mentholatum Co., Buffalo, N.Y., Wichita, Kans POLICE! Swinging a policeman's club and strolling along the street in a spiffy uniform may be easy. 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