The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

TRANSPORTATION AND COMMUNICATIONS that our girls should be warned, and that steps should be taken to prevent this kind of thing from going on in our town. The writer concluded his letter by saying that the sinister aspect of the case was that the rear red-lamp was not burning. No doubt he had good cause for being perturbed. Foolish girls were probably eager to experience the novel thrill of riding in an automobile. But why did he not also protest against the older and usual practice of rig-riders' picking up young girls -with or without a red light? The coming of the automobile led to a demand for better roads. During wet weather, particularly in the spring and fall, when deeply rutted, they were almost impassable for cars. In September, 191o0, for example, when a group of British bowlers was visiting Paris, the members of the local club planned to take them on a grand automobile tour of the town. But when rain fell, they had to call off the tour because the cars, with their smooth fabric tires, could not climb the hills. The majority of roads were improved by being graded towards the crown. Many complaints were made against the pushing of sods and stones from the sides to the middle. It was asserted that these sods and stones were a "terror to horses and bicyclists", and that such roads were quite unsuitable to cars. As a result, crushed stone, packed down by a steam roller, was spread on the main streets. During a dry spell, an automobile speeding along at fifteen miles I an hour raised a thick cloud of dust -far more than was raised by a horse-drawn vehicle. This led to the spreading of sticky tarvia on the main thoroughfares. In 1917, the tarvia was covered with a coating of sand. A car skidded sideways on the slippery mess and bumped into a telephone pole, and a number of cyclists slithered and slipped and were tarred and sanded. However, crushed stone, tarvia, and sand made the roads more suitable to the automobile. By i920, Paris was connected with the outside world by telegraph and telephone, by four railways, and by automobiles and trucks travelling on improved roads. Seventy years had brought tremendous changes. Paris was no longer an isolated pioneer community. 239