Dec. 22, Brigadier-General Sir William Horwood's denunciation of the trams as "an anachronism in the streets," causes one to note the rapidity with which milestones in cur civilization are passed. For centuries, the good old horse carried man "from place to place, unless he depended upon his own motive power. In backward countries, the ox, the ass, the camel and perhaps a few other cattle served to keep man from utilizing his own strength for the mere business of locomotion. Steam transport. ation ushered in the age of speed, which apparently the mod, ern man still finds slow, for efforts are unceasingly being made to cut down the aeroplane time across the Atlantic and at this moment French aviators are attempting to make the distance between Paris and Hanct more of a jump than a journey.
The first tramway—which is a track and not a vehicle—was laid down in New York as recently as 1832 and was not successful, for, twenty years later, a French engineer revived this system of locomotion. England did not see tramways until 1860 and London not before the following year. The British public found the tramway system employed in London at that time dangerous and obstruct on ist and the tracks had to be removed. A Tramway Act was passed in 1870 and after that tracks were laid everywhere. When electricity was finally plied to this means of ccmmunication, apparently the last word in rapid and modern transit had been achieved and the world settled down to strap-hanging and all the virtues of modern ation. Yet Sir William Harwood denounced this very recent innovation—with its existence of only a few decades—something which caused "his biacid to boil when he saw the roads blocked by these ancient vehicles." So moves the present world!
Tt was the motor car which drove the horse te the world of sport and which will probably ultimately send the tramway into the class of railroads. The motor bus has become popular because it is more flexible than the fixed tramway, but the old order changteh slowly and the trams upset the bus's calcul; tions by running without rails. But the development of good roads, the cheapness of motor fuel, the improvement of the motor vehicle, and its compara tive inexpensiveness, have resulted in an increase in the use of this medium for both street transportation within cities and inter-urban transportation between towns. The charabanc is 3 favoured in Britain as the "rubberneck" is in the United States.
Of course, this is by no means the end. Colonel Lindbergh has
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.