Horse & Cycle

Last week there came indications that neither the bicycle nor the horse is being put out of business by the automobile.

Bicycles. Before the 21st Annual Convention of the Cycle Trades of America, at Manhattan, rose De Witt Page, a vice president of the General Motors Corporation, to tell the assembled sellers of man power two-wheelers how the four-wheeled motor is actually pushing their sales. "Many of my friends," said Mr. Page, unsmiling, "now find parking conditions so intolerable that they ride on bicycles to their offices. . . The automobile has made suburban life possible. In the suburbs children can and do ride bicycles in safety. In nearly all of the fashionable girls' colleges and preparatory schools there are bicycle clubs."

Horses. Said The Christian Science Monitor: "73 per cent of trucks in the docking district of New York City are horse drawn. . . Haulage in New York is now on a time, not a mile, basis, due to the extreme congestion of traffic. . . It costs 6-c- per minute to operate a five-ton truck in the city, and only 2-c- a minute for a team and wagon of the same capacity. . . The matter of length of service also has an important bearing on this problem. The initial cost of a motor truck is three times as much as a team and outfit, with a depreciation of 25 per cent to 33 per cent, which gives it only from three to four years' profitable service, as compared with ten years' team service."