MAKES TRIP BY ROAD
FASTER THAN TRAINS.
Captain Lawton's Journey to Topeka
in Studebaker a Hard Trip
Through Mud.
Back from to Topeka by motor car, Captain Frank H. Lawton, in charge of the army's purchasing department in Kansas City, says he didn't believe the automobile could come through such a journey as he completed Monday afternoon. Most of the distance the mud was up to the hubs, but even where the roads were most impassable, the motor car forced a way under its own power.
The flood made Captain Lawton's trip imperative. A message from the war department on Saturday afternoon told him to go at once to Topeka, where stores bound for Fort Riley had been stopped by the high water. There was no chance to get a train, so Captain Lawton, thinking of the trip of the army car last winter, called up the Studebaker company and asked for a motor car. W. L. Walls, of the motor car department, was ready within an hour and the plow to Topeka was begun.
As nearly as possible, the route had been laid out on high ground, and but for this fact the journey would have been impossible. The motor car, leaving Kansas City at 4 o'clock Saturday afternoon, was run all night, with stops only for food, and reached Topeka at 1:30 Sunday afternoon. The distance by odometer was about 150 miles.
The car, returning, left Topeka Monday morning and got back in twelve hours, while it took a train fifteen hours to go the same distance, on account of the detours that had to be made. T. G. Sweeney drove on the return trip to Kansas City.
