From Our Berlin Correspondent.
Page 27
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Of the 2,142 automobiles registered in the State of Baden, only 109 belong to the industrial category. But whereas the personal class has increased 88.4 per cent, in three years, the industrials can show a rise of 286.8 per cent. The relative progress is at least satisfactory.
Vienna Taxi Drivers Strike.
As the result of a strike, the Vienna taxi-chauffeurs have secured a 12-hour day, overtime, a free day once a week, a 20-crown weekly wage (18s. 6d.), 10 per cent. of the gross takings, and engagements terminable at a fortnight's notice. Further, they have to pay for only half of the petrol instead of the whole, and their securities are not to be applied to eventual damages, but deposited at interest.
An Attempt to Resuscitate.
An effort is being made to revive the " First Zurich Motorcab Co.," which stopped working a few months back. Some members of the concern have subscribed 27,000 francs as preliminary expenses for the formation of a company with a capital of 200,000 francs to buy up the rolling stock, ete., valued at 150,000, a valuation which would leave the new owners with 50,000 francs as working capital_ The old company ran the Ajax chassis.
Road Taxes in Bavaria.
The number of Bavarian towns and villages which have imposed a road-tax on automobiles bids fair to reach a couple of hundred. These tolls range from 10 to 60 pfennigs, i.e., from 14d. to 741d. A locality called Neufahrn exacts the latter toll. Very few town authorities content themselves with 10 pfennigs, or grant a free return. As a rule, the industrial vehicle pays the same toll as the personal, but in many a place the former has to pay double. Great Britain has only one LloydGeorge; Bavaria seems to have a large number of them.
Practical Defects in the German Motor Traffic Regulations.
Notwithstanding that the trade took part in the preliminary discussions on the new German motor traffic regulations, complaints are not wanting from the industry as regards the practical effects of the Act. One of the regulations, for instance, limits electric brakes to such as operate on rear wheels, which means that a prominent firm of electromobile makers, whose cabs are fitted with a mechanical brake for these wheels and an electric brake for the front ones, are face to face with a serious loss. Another complaint concerns the low maximum speed of 10 miles an hour for the comparatively light industrial vehicle and non-metropolita:n omnibus, and it is suggested that this speed should be prescribed for vehicles which turn the scale at about eight tons. Prussian State officials seem to be impressed by the potentialities of the trolley-system for omnibus traffic, and two experts are personally investigating such lines as are now working at Bremen and in the neighbourhood of Vienna. This system is, of course, more elastic than that of tramcars ; but it has a short tether, which renders it far inferior to the motorbus in main arteries of traffic.
The Hamburg Agricultural Show.
Four firms exhibited steam ploughtractors at, the Hamburg Agricultural Show, amongst them John Fowler and Co., Ltd., who was represented by a number of superheated-steam machines. The Hartmann motor-plough, which operates on the single-machine system, with rope-anchorage at one end of the field, was also on view ; a benzol engine of 15 h.p. generates the power in this case, and the threeshare plough cuts about 10 in. deep. flowerer, the " Pfaffe " (a Hungarian invention marketed in Germany by Pfaffe Bros.), another inotorplough, travels over the ground, its petrol engine turning a cylinder fitted with cutters. Unterilp, of Charlottenburg, showed a motorplough with rotating blades; while a Bremen engineer was responsible for drawings and illustrations of a motorplough of the twinmachine pattern, with capstan-head winch. I noted, too, that the Bergmann Electric Works, Berlin, displayed one of their battery-propelled lorries, in which the Edison accumulator is used. From Marienfelde there was a Daimler " subvention " lorry with trailer.
Richard Toepfler, Pioneer of the Fowler Road-tractors and Ploughs in Germany.
Birthdays are great events in Germany; and should the central figures chance to be well-known persons, they may reckon—in fact, do reckon—upon receiving congratulations from many
quarters. In the particular case, the local Press " gratuliert," as a matter of course, with more or less lengthy articles; and congratulatory paragraphs appear elsewhere. Herr Richard Toepffer, chief of the Magdeburg branch of John Fowler and Co., of Leeds, has just celebrated his seventieth birthday with all the Teutonic circumstance called forth by the event itself and his prominent position in Germany's industrial world. Toepffer it was who introduced the Fowler road-tractor into the Prussian army forty years ago. From an acquaintance formed with John Fowler at the International Exhibition, held in London, in 1862, there had sprung up between the gifted English constructor and the young German engineer a commercial relationship, which, towards the end of the "sixties," resulted in a zealous missionary tour by Toepffer through Germany in favour of mechanical ploughing with Fowler engines, let out on hire by companies constituted for that purpose on the lines of a company which had already been founded in North Lincolnshire. When the Franco-German war broke out, Toepffer was engaged in establishing the Magdeburg branch; without any hesitation, he approached the Prussian General Staff at Berlin, and suggested that the Fowler engines could render excellent service in transport operations. Von Moltke instructed Colonel 'Klotz, of Magdeburg, to test a. couple of machines, with the result that the War Office purchased the two, and placed them under Toepffer's charge. Remaining in close touch with the War Office after the close of the war, Toepfler has succeeded in interesting the military authorities still further in the Fowler road-engine. His persistence in advocating the cause of the road-tractor in Prussia helped to break down the opposition of local powers to the use of such machines on Prussian highways ; and it is extremely interesting to note that the abandonment of that opposition was due to the report of an expert, attached to the German embassy in London, on the conditions under which road-tractors were allowed to work in England, this report having been made by the order of the Prussion Minister of Public Works at the instance of Richard Toepffer. The German Agricultural Society, one of the most powerful organizations of its kind in the world, has conferred upon him the rare honour of a life-long membership in recognition of his services to German agriculture. He was born at Stettin on 27th May, 1840. The picture of Herr Toepiler, which is reproduced on this page, has been prepared from a special portrait of him in his prime.