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little more energy in transmission than is
lost in sliding gears. Against these slightly
greater losses are to be set some remarkable
gains in control. An electric switch
takes the place of both clutch and gear
shift; one can reverse by electricity, go
up a grade at any speed from a crawl,
stop, start again, and back down simply
by manipulating the switch—nothing else.
Speeding or slowing the engine automatically
speeds or slows the car. With the
switch properly set, speeding the engine
gives the necessary pull for a slow climb
up-hill. Only for extreme demands is a
special low gear provided.
Such a car would, indeed, solve the problem
for the woman driver ! I don't know
what it will cost, though I don't see how it
can ever be cheap. But add that to six
cylinders, a self-starting engine, automatic
spark advance, electric lights, and punctureless
tires, and tell me what more is
needed to make motoring luxury!
But what of the families that cannot
afford fifteen-hundred-dollar cars with
electrics added ? And what of the farmers'
wives and daughters, for whom electrics
are clearly impractical? Each of these
classes is much larger than that just mentioned.
Is there an ideal car for them, too ?
The answer for the present must be
"No." But we need not despair, for few
ideals are ever quite realized, and most of
us have to get along with the best substitute
we can find. There is a substitute
already on the way here, in the shape of
the miniature gasolene runabout, which
bids fair to afford at least a workable
solution of the problem.
Dubbed in some of its forms a cycle-car,
touted with mistaken zeal as a pocketedition
man's car, and still undergoing
changes in design with kaleidoscopic rapidity
and variety, this miniature type of
car yet holds the germ of a great possibility
as a woman's utility runabout.
Even with the standard forms of clutch,
transmission, and control, the very lightness
of all the parts makes operation little
more difficult than that of a motor sewingmachine—certainly
not harder than, say,
running a small motor-boat.
At present it must be said few of these
machines have reached such a stage of perfection
as to promise good results in unskilled
hands. Some of them are shock­
VOL. LVII.—22
The Woman at the Wheel 223
ingly crude, and even the best have not
been in use long enough to have their
weak points eliminated. But the logic of
the demand is too strong to be gainsaid.
I believe the next few years will see many
thousands of these machines used by
women with as much satisfaction as can
be had from anything short of the electric.
And as their cost will be but half that of
the smallest practical electric, a small
touring car can be kept with them at a
total first cost which need not exceed one
thousand two hundred dollars. Not impossibly
this will ultimately be the plan
adopted by the greatest number of carowning
families.
Still other thousands of women, after
learning to drive for fun, will find the
small gasolene family car sufficiently drivable
for daily use, and the one machine
will then serve all purposes—as, indeed, it
does to-day in thousands of families that
cannot afford to have two cars. The
necessary compromise here is a car serving
both uses as nearly as may be and
costing not over, say, eight hundred dollars.
In this class of owners will no doubt
be found the majority of farming families,
not always from motives of economy, but
because farming women take to driving
more readily than their urban sisters.
The fact that the present trend is setting
so strongly toward small cars is significant
of the time to come when women
will feel much more generally at home in
them than is to-day the case; and for the
present we may well be content with this,
without crying too insistently for an ideal
woman's car not yet in sight. We know,
at any rate, that a million and three
quarters pleasure cars are in use in this
country, and it is a safe guess that two
hundred thousand women are managing
very well with the cars they have. That
is surely a good beginning, and a pleasant
augury of the time when the automobile's
liberating mission will be fulfilled. For
of one thing we are already sure—be it
ideal or only near-ideal, the woman's
motor-car will have a vital place in the
social economy of the future. It will supply
the one link till lately missing in the
chain making for a saner distribution of
population and a more wholesome environment
for our children. And as such
we welcome it with thankful hearts.