168 
Modern Business Geography 
trucks, in spite of their costliness, are cheaper and more speedy. This 
is why many large companies that constantly handle heavy loads 
have displaced their horse wagons with motor trucks, at least for long 
hauls. Small local companies with only a few customers and many 
large companies in cities where the congestion forces trucks to move 
slowly still use horses and will probably do so for some time to come. 
Although the automobile ordinarily works best on graded roads, it 
can also be used on bad roads. Tractors also enable motors to perform 
many kinds of farm work, such as plowing and reaping, especially if 
it can be done on a large scale. Nevertheless, even in our own coun- 
try there are as many horses as there are automobiles. In Great 
Britain there is only one automobile for every two horses, in France 
one for three, in Germany one for about twenty, and in most other 
countries the proportion is still smaller. 
Motor vehicles in cities and on farms. Motor trucks are preémi- 
nently vehicles of the cities. At such a shipping point as Jersey City, 
trucks in a seemingly endless line are backed up against scores of ware- 
houses. No sooner does one rumble away from the docks of the great 
transatlantic steamship lines with its load of boxes, bales, machinery, 
bananas, or other products, than another takes its place. 
At first used only in cities, motor trucks now carry goods hundreds 
of miles from one city to another or from farms to railroads. So 
heavy are they and so much do they wear out the roads that the up- 
keep of the highways where they are used is a most serious problem. 
Ordinary passenger automobiles are about ten times as numerous 
as motor trucks. On such a street as Fifth Avenue in New York, cars 
of every make, from morning to midnight, form a vast procession, 
two abreast on each side of the street. In certain cities, like Detroit 
and Akron, automobiles are important not only because great numbers 
are made there, but because the workers in the automobile factories 
are so highly paid that they can afford to own cars, while the surround- 
ing country is level and a motor car can go almost anywhere. In the 
level prairie states, such as Iowa and Kansas, the number of automo- 
biles in proportion to the population is even greater than in the cities, 
for almost every farmer has one. 
Airplanes. Airplanes are so new that they have as yet had little 
effect on transportation. Their use is to carry passengers, mail, and 
light, expensive articles, like silk and precious stones, very rapidly for 
long distances. To carry a ton a mile by airplane costs several dollars. 
How geography influences air navigation. At first thought it may 
seem that airplanes and dirigibles can go everywhere with equal ease.