Page:Walter Renton Ingalls - Wealth and Income of the American People (1924).pdf/239

Rh average expense of direct operation, i.e., gasoline, oil, tires, sundry supplies and repairs, is about 10 cts. per mile. The average car is supposed to run about 5,000 miles per annum. This gives an expense of $500 per car, exclusive of garaging and many incidentals. Shall we put the number of pleasure cars at 4,000,000, allowing for work and utility cars? We should have then an annual expense of two billion dollars, for direct operation. Allowing for other expenses and for depreciation in the cars themselves, I have no doubt that automobiling as a luxury was costing the American people at the rate of upward of three billion dollars per annum in 1919.

F. R. Pleasonton estimates the national expense for automobiling at a very much larger figure. On the basis of keeping 9,211,295 vehicles in operation he computes the following annual expense:

At the rate of 45 cts. per hour for labor and 2500 working hours per year, Mr. Pleasonton reckons that this annual expense is equivalent to the preëmption of 7,250,000 workers on full time. I am of the opinion