134 The Stock Market Crash—And After 
the first to discern the possibilities of the network 
of more than one hundred thousand miles of high 
voltage electric power lines, distributing energy over 
a large part of the United States, and making it an 
asset, not only in the big cities, but available at 
almost any point on the map. To this Mr. Tripp 
added the advantages of improved transportation— 
the faster rail service, the automobile and the high- 
way systems, all of which made transportation flexi- 
ble as well as more speedy. 
These causes work together to explain why the 
present gain in number of industrial wage earners 
is vivifying, as it were, the extremities of the nation, 
in the towns of less than 10,000 population. The 
smaller communities are living richer lives. They 
have better schools, they have built new highways. 
Nearly every family owns a car. Its members visit 
the metropolitan centers, but they return to the 
“open spaces” with all the amenities of the city. 
The amount of primary factory power applied 
through electric motors has increased from 5 per 
cent in 1899 to 39 per cent in 1914, and to 78 per 
cent in 1927. The increase exceeds one-fifth since 
1919. 
By the same speeding process the motor car has 
increased prosperity and added to expectations of 
gains in real income. It has created the modern 
suburb, freeing it from the limited area around the 
railroad station. At the beginning of 1929 there 
were 5,426,900 motor vehicles on farms. Of these, 
697,300 were motor trucks, and 4,729,600 were