Butler to Indy for Glidden

The attached article was originally published in the May 15, 1910 Indianapolis Star.
 
It concerns a visit by American Automobile Association (AAA) Contest Board Chairman Sam Butler to Indianapolis. Butler was seeking entries to the 1911 Glidden Tour. The reliability trial, which came into being in 1905 as a way for the automotive industry to demonstrate the durability of its products, was flagging as people increasingly embraced the automobile as an inevitable part of everyday life.
 
Habits die hard and Butler took responsibility for drumming up interest. Given that Indianapolis was an important center of automobile manufacture at the time one of the stops on the AAA chair's campaign was the Hoosier capital. Cole, Premier and Parry - all three companies located in Indianapolis had already filed entries. There were 17 total entries at the time of his visit.
 
Among the companies on Butler's schedule were: Overland, Empire, American, National and Marmon. Butler had lunch at the Flat Tire Club in the Denison Hotel as the guest of H.O. Smith and George A. Weidely of Premier and while there discussed a Glidden entry with Empire Company Vice President Hassler. 
 
The article gives a hint that some of the auto executives were frustrated that the Glidden Tour had never started from Indianapolis. The article asserts that it was a certainty that the event would launch from the city in 1911. It did not. It started from New York.