Category Archives: General

Musings and storytelling

Kingsbury Run – once innocuous enough

Posted on June 1, 2012 | 1 comment

Here’s a picture of Cleveland in 1858, the meandering Cuyahoga River, the pastures and small city ambiance, the long Lake Erie shoreline to the north. Just to the right of this scene, a ravine ambles off the Cuyahoga to the south and east, named after one of Cleveland’s earliest European inhabitants, Judge Kingsbury, a gully that used to demarcate the southern border of the town.

Kingsbury Run is probably best known these days for the Kingsbury Run “torso murders” of the 1930s. I found this description of it on the trutv web site.

Kingsbury Run cuts across the east side of Cleveland like a jagged wound, ripped into the rugged terrain as if God himself had tried to disembowel the city. At some points it is nearly sixty feet deep, a barren wasteland covered with patches of wild grass, yellowed newspapers, weeds, empty tin cans and the occasional battered hull of an old car left to rust beneath the sun. Perched upon the brink of the ravine, narrow frame houses huddle close together and keep a silent watch on the area. Angling toward downtown, the Run empties out into the cold, oily waters of the Cuyahoga River.
—Crime Library, “The Kingsbury Run Murders or Cleveland Torso Murders“

Somehow, growing up, I missed the story about the Kingsbury Run Murders, but I did hear of the historic danger of Kingsbury Run dating back into the 19th century. My father used to tell this story. “Before they built the E. 55th St. bridge [completed for the first time in 1898], your great-grandfather Hoppensack had to walk through Kingsbury Run each day on his way to and from the bank, so he always carried a gun. It was a jungle down there, overgrown and full of vagrants.”

Photo courtesy of Cleveland Public Library

But it was not always so. Here’s a story found in the book “The genealogy of the descendants of Henry Kingsbury.”

In 1800, Governor St. Clair appointed Mr. Kingsbury Judge of the Court of Common Pleas and Quarter Session of the County. The first session is said to have been held in the open air, between two corn-cribs, Judge Kingsbury occupying a rude bench beneath a tree, the jurors sitting about on the grass, and the prisoners looking on from between the slats of the corn-cribs. A brook running into the Cuyahoga is called Kingsbury Run, and is the only memorial which has been dedicated to the first settler. At the mouth of Kingsbury run are the works of the Standard Oil Company.

Can I visit Kingsbury Run today, you might ask? Not exactly. The Van Sweringens bought up Kingsbury Run property in the early 20th century, and installed a four-track railroad line through it. Gone (underground?) is the brook: today, Kingsbury Run is the corridor of the Rapid Transit Line between E. 30th and Shaker Blvd.

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Early, surprising uses of oil

Posted on May 16, 2012 | Leave a comment

In The Titans by Ron Chernow, I came across the following:

Oil was put to myriad uses during the Civil War, treating the wounds of Union soldiers and serving as a substitute for turpentine formerly supplied by the South. Even on the battlefield, the use of kerosene refined from crude oil spread, and Ulysses S. Grant often sat in his tent, drafting dispatches by the flicker of a kerosene lamp.

Wait, wait, back up. Did it really say “treating the wounds of Union soldiers”?! I assumed it must have been so, but had no proof until I stumbled across The Foxfire Book, the first volume in a series containing “a wealth of the kind of folk wisdom and values of simple living” from times of yore. In addition to tips on hog dressing and moonshining, the book offers a chapter on “Home Remedies,” where I found the following:

BLEEDING
-Place a spider web across the wound.
-Apply a poultice of spirit turpentine and brown sugar to the wound.
-Apply lamp black directly to the wound.
-Use a mixture of soot from the chimney and lard.
-If the cut is small, wet a cigarette paper and place this over it.
-Use kerosene oil, but be careful not to add too much or it will blister the skin.
-Use pine resin.

There are a variety of such “recipes” under each of the subject headings below, but from here on out I will only share the oil-based recommendations.

CHEST CONGESTION
-Make a poultice of kerosene, turpentine, and pure lard (the latter prevents blistering). Use wool cloth soaked with the mixture. Place cheescloth on chest for protection, and then add the wool poultice.

IRRITATION CAUSED BY INSECTS
BEE STINGS – Place either turpentine, chewed tobacco, tobacco juice, kerosene, or a mixture of sugar and dough on the sting. Any of these will relieve the pain and draw out the poison.
BUGS–For head lice (cooties), shingle hair close and use kerosene.

INFLAMMATION
-To kill infection, pour some turpentine or kerosene mixed with sugar on the affected area.

NAIL PUNCTURE
-Put some old wool rags into an old tin can, pour kerosene over the rags and light. Then smoke the wound.
-Pour kerosene oil over the cut, or soak it in same three times a day. This will also remove the soreness.

SORE THROAT
-Make a poultice of kerosene, turpentine, and pure lard (to prevent blistering), and place this on your neck. In five minutes you will be able to taste the kerosene in your throat, and the cure will have begun. Then take two or three drops of kerosene oil in a spoon with a pinch of sugar and swallow this to complete the treatment.
-Put a drop of kerosene on a lump of sugar and eat it.

In an opening paragraph of “Home Remedies,” the authors write: “Some of the remedies undoubtedly worked; some of them probably were useless; some of them–and for this reason we advise you to experiment with extreme care–were perhaps even fatal.” With such a caveat, I include this advice on curing spider bites: “If bittem by a black widow spider, drink liquor heavily from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. You won’t get drunk, you’ll be healed.”

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Reviving what was (almost) lost

Posted on May 10, 2012 | Leave a comment

The shift from the 19th to the 20th century was dramatic for its increased reliance on machines, which rang the death knell for the ancient art of blacksmithing.

“At the beginning of the 19th century, with the industrial revolution, the blacksmith craft had passed its peak. The increasing precision in dimensions of the milled iron stock fundamentally changed the appearance of finished works. Chamfering and texturing was supposed to recreate the old familiar look.

“The development of cast iron has to be considered as an additional factor contributing to the descent of blacksmithing, and the invention of new welding techniques (gas and arc welding) was the final major step towards the decline of the art of traditional blacksmithing.” (From The ABCs of Blacksmithing by Fridolin Wolf, Blue Moon Press, 2006.)

I keep an eye out for signs of the “old methods.” Here is a photo I took during a visit to Roosevelt University’s Auditorium Theater in Chicago. The building, constructed in 1887, is replete with hand-crafted balustrades.

The art of blacksmithing might have evaporated entirely, except for a few people like Francis Whitaker. Here is a Youtube of Francis Whitaker instructing others on how to make a wrought iron gate. There are important levels of initiation into the art — apprentice, journeyman, master. The way Francis Whitaker kept the craft alive was by visiting the old masters in the U.S. and Europe, and subsequently, passing his knowledge down to those eager to learn.

In 1966, just as the popularity of TV dinners were threatening yet another corrosion of people doing for themselves, the Foxfire magazine was born, a publication that began to revive ancient knowledge via interviews with residents in the Appalachian Mountains of Northeast Georgia. Numerous books and how-to publications have sprung from this initial effort.

But it appears a revival of this ancient art is underway. My niece who is currently attending CSU in Fort Collins tells me in her backyard, her roommate has cobbled together a blacksmithing forge. I hear the membership of the Northwest Blacksmith Association continues to rise. Such reports give me hope that all is not lost.

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The early days of oil

Posted on April 27, 2012 | Leave a comment

In researching about my blacksmith great-great-grandfather, I’ve often turned to a book called Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. by Ron Chernow.

John D. Rockefeller (born 1839) was a contemporary of Michael Harm (born 1841), and both men migrated in the mid-19th century to Cleveland to build their fortunes (Rockefeller’s fortune was more substantial and enduring, but still).

Photo courtesy of Cleveland Public Library

Rockefeller set up his first oil refineries, the Excelsior Works, Chernow writes, “on the red-clay banks of a narrow waterway called Kingsbury Run.” In this tidbit, I find two startling coincidences. One, Michael Harm spent his three-year apprenticeship in Cleveland at a wagon shop situated quite near Kingsbury Run. And two, before the refineries cropped up in Kingsbury Run, another ancestor, my great-great-grandfather H.F. Hoppensack, operated his brickworks there. In the obituary of Henry F. Hoppensack, it states: “From 1848- 1851, Mr. Hoppensack manufactured brick on Broadway Hill where the Standard Oil Co. is now located.”

Here’s another coincidence–Harm & Schuster made business wagons for the Chandler & Rudd grocery. In Chernow’s account of Rockefeller’s life, he states: “[Rockefeller’s] younger sister, Mary Ann, married a genial man named William Rudd, the president of Chandler and Rudd, a Cleveland grocery concern.”

Although John D. Rockefeller and Michael Harm were about the same age and lived and worked in Cleveland during the same era, I doubt they knew one another on a first-name basis. The English, German and Irish enclaves in Cleveland in the mid-19th century did not fraternize so often. Nonetheless, it’s a six-degrees-of-separation kind of thing. In The Titans, Chernow describes those early days of oil that I am certain had a profound impact on my great-great-grandfather, and all Clevelanders, as well.

“At the time [just following the Civil War], refiners were tormented by fears that the vapors might catch fire, sparking an uncontrollable conflagration. … Mark Hanna, who later managed President McKinley’s campaign, recalled how one morning in 1867 he woke up and discovered that his Cleveland refinery had burned to the ground, wiping out his investment …’I was always ready, night and day, for a fire alarm from the direction of our works,’ said Rockefeller. ‘Then proceeded a dark cloud of smoke from the area, and then we dashed madly to the scene of the action. So we kept ourselves like the firemen, with their horses and hose carts always ready for immediate action.’

“… In those years, oil tanks weren’t hemmed in earthen banks as they later were, so if a fire started it quickly engulfed all neighboring tanks in a flaming inferno. Before the automobile, nobody knew what to do with the light fraction of crude oil known as gasoline, and many refiners, under cover of dark, let this waste product run into the river. ‘We used to burn it for fuel in distilling the oil,’ said Rockefeller, ‘and thousands and hundreds of thousands of barrels of it floated down the creeks and rivers, and the ground was saturated with it, in the constant effort to get rid of it.’ The noxious runoff made the Cuyahoga River so flammable that if steamboat captains shoveled glowing coals overboard, the water erupted in flames.”

Randy Newman’s “Burn On” may have been about the Cuyahoga River fire in 1969, but apparently, that river had already burned one hundred years ago.

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Games making history

Posted on April 22, 2012 | 2 comments

Yesterday, Phil Humber of the Chicago White Sox pitched the 21st perfect game in baseball history. Yes, it was here in Seattle against the Mariners, and no, I wasn’t at the game to see it happen.

In a weird synchronicity, though, this week I happened to be editing a scene in Harm’s Way where the characters are enjoying some outdoor recreation. The year is 1862. What sort of game would they have been playing? Baseball?

Often, I’ve looked for answers about the past by logging into the King County Library web site to visit their 19th Century U.S. Newspapers database. First, I searched “baseball” in 19th century Ohio newspapers between 1857 and 1865. Guess what happened? “Your search found no results. Try again.” But I knew it had to be there. I have visited the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY, so I knew the pastime, if not the official game, extended back to the 18th century. What did they call it back then? In a moment of inspiration, I tried separating it into two words: “base ball.” That did the trick.

From The Daily Cleveland Leader, May 4, 1858
Base Ball.
        Never within the memory of that venerable old fogy, “the oldest inhabitant,” has the “base ball” epidemic raged so fircely [sic] as at present. Fields, open lots, streets, alleys, and yards, everywhere can be found a troop of boys and men with a ball and a couple of bats, working at play as earnestly as if it were the greatest business of the day. All ages and all classes have caught the infection. The toddling, unbreeched youngster crows as he hits the tiny ball with the little wand; the school boys make the streets echo with their uproar as they dispute about a “tip” or a “first bound;” out in the fields the portly men grunt as they run past the bound, and grey-bearded Nestors plant themselves firmly to await the swift coming ball. The ragged and shoeless urchin enters with heart and soul into the game he is playing on the street; the staid merchant, the cautious banker, and the millionaire are just as excited and eager over the same game a little out of town.
        Hurrah for base ball! There is no game superior to it in strengthening the muscles, expanding the chest, invigorating the frame, and enlivening the spirits. It is a thoroughly republican game. The possession of wealth or social station does not make a man hit the ball better nor run his rounds faster, nor will the mechanic who bowls shrink from hurling a swift shot after the running millionaire. Cricket is a very good game, but there is too much looking on in it. The good “bat” has all the time to himself, and the green hand loses his first chance, and has to sit on the grass for the remainder of the day. “Keep the pot boiling” is the only way for health and fun, and this “base ball” does.

From The Daily Cleveland Herald, September 20, 1865
Base Ball.–The Forest City Base Ball Club, recently organized in this city, meet twice a week on its grounds on Kinsman street for practice, and the general develpment of muscle in its members. An exciting game was played yesterday afternoon. It is rumored that match will be arranged before many days between this club and another located in a neighboring town.

In the above articles, I notice a few variances in terminology — click here for a chronology of 19th century rules of the game. But what grabs me too is a sense of nostalgia. As a child, I remember faculty picnics and family gatherings where an impromptu baseball game was the centerpiece.

Times change. The closest “all ages” romp I can think of in recent years was in 2008, the year my son graduated from high school. That spring, the high school teachers teamed up against the seniors in a pot-boiling match of Ultimate Frisbee. History in the making.

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Mosquito frets and legends

Posted on April 12, 2012 | 1 comment

ImageSomewhere, I read (at the Cleveland Natural History Museum? the Great Lakes Science Center?) that the mouth of the Cuyahoga River was a swampy, mosquito-ridden land when Moses Cleaveland first surveyed the lots for Cleveland in 1796. When it comes to that, it still is. Enter any Cleveland woods mid-summer and the mosquito whine is sure to drive you back out.

How did 19th century denizens of Cleveland cope with mosquitoes? Window screens did not come into use until after the Civil War. Research tells me they did have mosquito nets. I also found an 1862 reference to “head-bags made of crape.” Another source mentioned a practice of wrapping one’s hands in green baize–the fabric that covered billiard tables.

A search through 19th century newspapers elicited the following:

9/8/1858 – Newark Advocate

Where Mosquitoes Come From

These pests of summer proceed from the animalculas commonly called ‘wiggle tails.’ … If a bowl of water be placed in the summer’s sun for a few days, a number of ‘wiggle tails’ will be visible, and they will increase in size till they reach three-sixteenths of an inch in length,–remaining longer at the surface as they approach maturity. … In a short time a fly will be hatched and escape leaving its tiny house upon the surface of the water. … In fact, standing by a shallow, half-stagnant pool on a midsummers day, the full development of any number of ‘wiggle tails’ to the mosquito state can be witnessed, and the origin of these disturbers of night’s slumbers thus fully ascertained. — Scientific American

8/8/1870 Daily Cleveland Herald

Sparrows and Mosquitoes

… Four years ago, 20 pairs [of English sparrows] were imported [into New York City], and provision was made for their accommodation. Now it is estimated that there are five thousand pair in the New York parks and gardens; and their active and industrious habits are believed to have materially diminished the swarms of mosquitoes which have heretofore made New York a byword and a hissing among all light sleepers who have sensitive skins. This theory is stengthened (sic) by the fact that the same experience has marked the introduction of sparrows into Jersey City–the mosquitoes having greatly diminished there even, which is mosquito land itself. If there is anything to this … then we [of Boston] go for importing one thousand, or five thousand pair at once, to be domesticated in Boston and immediate neighborhood, as a matter of more importance to the peace and comfort of our citizens than would be the addition of a hundred extra policemen. — Boston Traveler

9/3/1881 Cleveland Herald

A 15c box of ‘Rough on Rats’ will keep a house free from flies, mosquitoes, rats and mice the entire season. — Druggists

Finally, I found a reprint of this legend in the 9/7/1872 Cleveland Morning Daily Herald:

Origin of Mosquitoes

We take the following legend from the Minneapolis Tribune:

The Red River Indians have a legend respecting the origin of mosquitoes. They say that once upon a time there was a famine, and the Indians could get no game. Hundreds had died from hunger, and desolation filled their country. All kinds of offerings were made to the Great Spirit without avail, till one day two hunters came upon a white wolverine, a very rare animal. Upon shooting the white wolverine, an old woman sprang out of the skin, and saying that she was a “Manito,” promised to go and live with the Indians, promising them plenty of game as long as they treated her well and gave her the first choice of all the game that should be brought in.

The two Indians assented to this and took the old woman home with them–which event was immediately succeeded by an abundance of game. When the sharpness of the famine had passed the Indians became dainty in their appetites, and complained of the manner in which the old woman took to herself all the choice bits; and this feeling became so intense that, notwithstanding her warnings that if they violated their promises a terrible calamity would come upon the Indians, they one day killed her as she seized upon her share of a fat reindeer which the hunters had brought in.

Great consternation immediately struck the witnesses of the deed, and the Indians, to escape the predicted calamity, boldly struck their tents and moved away to a great distance.

Time passed on without any catastrophe occurring, and game becoming even more plentiful, the Indians again began to laugh at their being deceived by the old woman. Finally, a hunting party on a long chase of reindeer, which had led them back to the spot where the old woman was killed, came upon her skeleton, and one of them, in derision, kicked the skull with his foot. In an instant a small, spiral-like body arose from the eyes and ears of the skull, which proved to be insects. They attacked the hunters with great fury and drove them to the river for protection. The skull continued to pour out its little stream, and the air became full of avengers of the old woman’s death. The hunters, upon returning to camp, found all the Indians suffering terribly from the plague, and ever since that time the red men have been punished by the mosquitoes for their wickedness to their preserver, the Manito.

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Blacksmith axes and the tomahawk

Posted on April 6, 2012 | Leave a comment

Because I’m researching and writing about early American blacksmithing methods, people are always telling me: “You must go to Colonial Williamsburg.” And they’re right–it is an amazing place. But not the only one.

Here’s another place I must go: Prickett’s Fort in West Virginia. Housed in a fort built in 1774, “Prickett’s Fort State Park uses a living history style of interpretation to preserve, document and exhibit the past.”

I happened upon it while searching around for more details about blacksmithing apprenticeships. Here’s a guide published by Prickett’s Fort: Blacksmithing of the 18th Century. In it, I found useful info about apprenticeships, and, as is usually the case on these research forays, something more.

The blacksmith in the 18th century could make or repair just about anything of that time, but probably his greatest accomplishment was what is known as the American Ax. Sometime around 1700, the blacksmith added a square poll on the back of the ax, which added more weight. Then by the mid-1700s, the ears were added to the eye, the square poll was elongated, and the eye was changed from round to a triangle shape. All of this added to the stability in the swing of the ax and it has seen very little change in the last 225 years.

Another important invention, that took place in the 1740s -1750s, was the pipe tomahawk. These were highly prized by the Native Americans, for they loved to smoke and make war on the settlers. The Native Americans already had the tomahawk, beginning with the first encounters with Europeans. This version added a pipe bowl and hollowed out the handle to create one of the biggest trade items used by Native Americans as well as white settlers. These were produced until well after the Civil War.

Okay, I admit the language of the guide where it says Native Americans “loved to make war” is suspect, but putting that aside, I was intrigued. On further research, the existence of the pipe tomahawk is pretty widely known; more ornate versions are still made today. May the adventures of history research never end.

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Outdated? expressions

Posted on April 3, 2012 | 2 comments

“Where do you get all these weird expressions?” my daughter once asked me.

“What do you mean?”

“Some of the stuff you say. When I say it, my friends have no idea what I’m talking about.”

“Give me a for instance?”

“Like ‘Podunk.’ Where does that word come from?”

She got me wondering. I looked it up and found its (speculative) origins fascinating. Go ahead and check it out for yourself here: Podunk

My search also turned up something more: “Slang of the American Civil War.”

In this list, I recognized a number of phrases I still say. Expressions used 150 years ago, during the Civil War. When I think about it, most of them came from my mother, whose ancestors hailed from western Pennsylvania. At moments like these, the era of Civil War feels like the not-so-distant past. Here are just a few expressions I still use.

Time to bite the bullet.
Enough of these carryings-on.
I finagled my way in.
He was fit to be tied.
We’ll get there by hook or by crook.
If I had my druthers.
What a rigamarole!

Finally, have you ever wondered about the phrase: I heard it through the grapevine? It turns out “grapevines” were telegraph wires. By Jiminy!

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Falling prey to fictional realities

Posted on March 26, 2012 | Leave a comment

I am knee-deep (p. 150) in the process of revising my novel in progress. I enjoy the revision process more than writing a first draft. It’s a chance to understand themes and cull them out, to get a “big picture” view. Also, to catch times when I may have painted a scene too sentimentally. I think of these moments as a “fictional reality,” the most realistic world I’ve been able to cobble together based on research, but where I must still dig deeper to find the truth.

At the moment I’m revising the chapter where my great-great-grandfather’s packet ship Helvetia arrives in New York harbor. The year was 1857. In the National Archives and Records Administration, as I scrolled through microfilm searching for a ship manifest with Michael Harm’s name in the first half of 1857, I encountered hundreds of lists. Three or four immigrant ships might arrive at Castle Garden in one day, from Liverpool, Hamburg, and other European ports. Diary accounts of the time note how ships hailed one another in the north Atlantic sea lanes and kept track of the sightings. As I pictured New York harbor, clotted with barges, steamships, schooners, and immigrant packets, I wondered — would any of these ships be carrying African slaves? It was pre-Civil War after all.

A search for 1857 slave ships, turned up an official reality stating that the importation of slaves into the U.S. was outlawed in 1808. According to an article in Wikipedia, the last documented slave ship to arrive was The Wanderer, in November of 1858. Hmm. A fictional reality? It seems it was hotly disputed, the article elaborates, as to whether or not undocumented slave ships were continuing to reach American shores after that year. Either way, it was The Wanderer, with its 409 slaves, that received all the attention:

The slaves who arrived to the United States on the Wanderer gained a celebrity status, that spread beyond the south to newspapers in New York, Washington, and London. They were the only group of slaves who were frequently identified with the ship which they arrived on.

Here is another discovery, a link to an 1857 interview with a Captain James Smith, who describes New York’s South Street as being “the chief port in the world for the Slave Trade.” The interview continues:

My vessel was the brig ‘Julia Moulton.’ I got her in
Boston, and brought her here, and sailed from this port direct for the coast of Africa.
But do you mean to say that this business is going on now?
Yes. Not so many vessels have been sent out this year, perhaps not over twenty-five. But last year there were thirty-five. I can go down to South Street, and go into a number of houses that help fit out ships for the business. I don’t know how far they own the vessels, or receive the profits of the cargoes.
But these houses know all about it.

1857 was also the year of the Dred Scott decision, which denied citizenship to all slaves, ex-slaves, and descendants of slaves and denied Congress the right to prohibit slavery in the territories. According to this PBS Timeline, the last slave ship to bring slaves into the U.S. landed in Mobile Bay, Alabama in 1859. I’m thinking there were probably others.

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Electric Edison

Posted on March 6, 2012 | Leave a comment

Thomas Alva Edison built his winter estate in Ft. Myers, Florida in the 1880s, before the train even came to the region. His house was built with pre-cut timber shipped from Maine, delivered to this pier on the Caloosahatchee River.

The Edison and Ford Winter Estates are a window in time, with inventions and living spaces dating back to the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The light bulb, the phonograph, the motion picture and the storage battery are only a few of Edison’s inventions. In the museum, I was taken with this interpretive sign:

Edison and the Storage Battery
1872 to 1931
When he applied for his first storage battery patent in 1872, Edison believed travel by horse was doomed. An electric car would soon serve the nation’s transportation needs. Thus, he sought to perfect a storage battery to propel such a vehicle.

Two decades later, Edison’s vision of the future began to emerge. Steam and electric vehicles first appeared on the scene in the 1890s (the internal combustion, gasoline-powered engine would not enter the fray of the automotive era until the 20th century). Another display in the Edison & Ford Winter Estates Museum reads as follows:

Advantages of Motor over Horse Vehicles
I. ECONOMY
(a) OF MONEY
1. Cheap upkeep.
2. Consumes nothing while idle.
3. Requires less stable room, permitting smaller housing.
4. Requires fewer men to care for, or groom.
5. Longer life.
6. In light small package delivery it does the work of two or more wagons, reducing force of men to deliver same, because it carries more load and goes twice faster than a horse.
(b) OF TIME
1. Delivers in much quicker time than a horse.
2. Return trip to distributing centre at high speed.
3. Can work unlimited portion of day.
4. Requires no days of rest.
5. Easily handled in congested traffic, at good speeds.
6. As garages are permitted where stables would not be, it permits more convenient and nearer stabling, nearer to distribution centre.
7. Develops power despite weather and road conditions.
8. Can be worked overtime for holiday trade.
(c) OF SPACE
1. In stable.
2. In street.
3. In loading space at warehouse, permitting mroe wagons to load at same time.

II. OTHER ADVANTAGES
(a) INTENSIVE
1. Fewer wagons, on account of higher speed, will do work.
2. Fewer men will take care of same delivery unit.
3. Consumes only when in actual service.
(b) EXTENSIVE
1. Permits larger radius of delivery, meaning possible extension of free delivery limits, yet at low cost.

III. AND SOME GOOD REASONS
1. Motor transportation would go far to solve traction and congestion traffic problems for everybody.
2. Less damage to roads.
3. Dirt, dust and manure would disappear.
4. Permits the accurate and easy determination of costs.

At the museum as I ogled this display, a gentleman beside me chuckled. “Aha, I too see the advantages. No more horse apples.”

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