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Take the HgvSpeed Sidewalk!
How the Humble Roller Skgte
May Free the Straphanger
F E E T are going out of date.
Business and pleasure today
both demand rapid transit;
wherever flivvers, street cars,
subway trains, elevated railroads,
or camel caravans are possible
means of transportation, shoe leather is
spared. Every man, woman, and child
today is geared up to an eight-cylinder,
direct-drive exi.stence, and woe comes
unto him who walks. His leisurely path
leads straight to the Grotto of Rack
Numbers.
The penalty? Scientists mope, and
forecast a generation of nervous wrecks
who, with palsied fingers, scarce can set
down coffee cups safely as they start
their dash for the 7:54. Be that as it
may. Even if feet atrophy and become
near-rudiments like our appendixes, we
cannot obstruct progress.
Comfort, and in some degree, health,
however, can be improved materially by
changing the conditions of travel. Let
us accept speed as a necessary evil. Let
us do away with the health-destroying
concomitants of speed, as they exist
today, however, and by the same means
make business men and pleasure seekers
a thousand per cent more comfortable.
Modern city and business life have
demanded wheels. Very well! Let us
put men and women on wheels! Only,
instead of packing them like so many
anchovies into fiend-manned tunnel
busses, or making them cling desperately
to dirty straps in garlic-saturated trams,
or forcing them to use football tactics to
cram themselves into the last jitney that
goes their way, let them wear their own
wheels and use their own boulevards!
This is not the inspiration of a dope
fiend; it is transportation evolution.
Street cars, elevated railroads, automobiles,
subways, and railways have made
big cities possible. Cities now have
turned about and are making these methods
of transportation impossible. There
is no room on, above, or below the
streets for these bulky conveyances. Because
the limit has been reached, today
men are trying to raise the coefficient of
elasticity of human flesh—trying to
crowd more people into cars than the
cars are capable of holding. It cannot
go further.
The remedy ? It is suggested by many
of our up-to-date factories. The employes
of these establishments, having
to make time over miles of floors, and
not being able to use mechanical carriers
of any kind, have adopted roller skates.
The minute they start work they don
skates, and until closing time at night
they use no other means of transportation.
The big city of tomorrow is going to
adopt this plan. Besides the ordinary
sidewalks as we know them, which
doubtless will remain for the use of the
lame, the halt, and the blind, high-speed
sidewalks will be constructed. These
probably will be built above the present
walks and will be limited to wheeled
human traffic moving in one direction.
The walks will be of some smooth ma-
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