LEARNING FROM THE MOTOR VEHICLE.
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The Thoughts that are Initiated, the Ideas that are Given, and the Remembrances that are Awakened from the Observation of Traffic.
ONE may still be young and yet able to remember the early "motor" buses which ran in London. There was at one time a service of strange-looking craft along Bayswater Road. They were similar to the ordinary horse bus, but were steam-driven and had a very long funnel in front which carried the smoke' well above the heads of the passengers on the top deck.
At a later period came the forerunners of the more orthodox type we know to-day. There were Vanguards, Pioneers and others, and one's chief interest in these was whether they would lasr the journey without one being called upon to walk from somewhere about halfway. Anyone who depended on these buses could always be sure of starting the day adventurously. One's adventures began in boarding, or attempting to board, the bus. They .continued for so long as one's journey lasted.
We travelled very hopefully in those days—and sometimes we arrived. But it is very interesting to consider how quickly that phase passed. Drivers came to know their new charges—to humour and understand them. More important even than that, engineering science was progressing and the etolution of the internal-combustion engine was producing a more simple and efficient model. And new one may see, even in remote villages, buses with engines slung low and tucked away out of sight, or others in which the bonnet has been made to conform to the line of the whole vehicle.
In watching the development of _ the bus, we have thus been reminded of the evolution of its engine. The Londoner, travelling hopefully as . ever, arrives to time because the engine is better than it was. This may seem so elementary-as to be hardly worthy of mention ; it is in the natural e..ourse of things that the vehicle improves side by side with HS engine, but, obvious as this is, it does serve to illustrate how the commercial vehicle marks the movement of other things not so closely associated with it.
There are many instances to prove the point. People nowadays have a far better idea of the road connections of heir locality than they had a few years ago. Longdistance lorries and the far-reaching bus services have taneht geography in a new way. Few can be indifferent to the word "London" on a lorry some hundreds of miles from home, and 'village names on the side of a fins can be very alluring to the dweller in an industrial town.
Even the state, of trade may be gauged roughly by one's observation of commercial traffic in factory towns. The writer Was in Devishiiry in 1920. before the .boom had spent itself. • Now, Dewsbury, being the centre of the world's rag trade, saw the boom chiefly as it affected rags. One could see lorries, laden with dirty-brown bales, passing and repassing in the streets, 'telling by their continual activity that business was good. The change in that part of the country was very sudden. Within a month or two the town had slowed down, shoddy manufacturers had put their people on short time, and fewer lorries were seen in the streets. Similar happenings occurred in most industrial towns, and engineering firms also became affected. Yet there can be bright spots even during trade depression. In another Yorkshire town a certain heavy lorry would sometimes be seen leaving the works of a large firm with a load bearing strange shipping marks. A closer look showed that this particular consignment was going to Brazil or to some other distant country. It seemed to show that whilst world-wide trade connections might be strained, evidently they were not broken.
The Advertising Side of the Commercial Vehicle.
In London a period of bad trade gives little outward sign. A few hundred lorries more or less would hardly be noticed—probably not even by a traffic expert. But other aspects of commercial traffic may be noted. For a number of years it has been interesting to observe how advertising has become allied to commercial vehicle design. The method is sometimes direct, as with vans built to represent a chocolate box, a beer bottle, a wireless valve or lighting bulb or some other proprietary article. On the other )iand, there are many vehicles from which the message is conveyed more subtly—as Maples' heavy -wagons, with their delightful maps, and the Robbialac vans with their tasteful colouring and glass-smooth finish.
Beside the advertising aspect one sees so much of in London, there are the problems of how London's day-time population is catered for, when every article of food has to come from outside. The large catering firms each have their own problem of distribution to branches—most of which, incidentally, are in trafficcongested areas. London's milk supply! One can hardly conceive of the problem, much less how it is overcome!
And so one could go on. Transport has been called "the Magic carpet of industry," and nowhere is this more true than in London. The milk IS on one's doorstep every morning. Then, on some rare and extraordinary occasien,it is mi,esitig.• Does one wonder how it came to be there before? Nei; one is annoyed because if is not there now. Magic enters so largely Into our daily life that we take its effects for granted. The most ordinary-looking lorry may be engaged on some magical errand.