SPEAKING OF traffic, easily the most significant statistic of the fortnight was the traffic director S.S. Taylor's estimate that every hour of every day 10 more vehicles — 87,000 a year — are added to the L.A. 3-million-car traffic maze.

    The figures do not surprise beleaguered 5 p.m. drivers.  In fact, one man, hearing them, said, "Only 10 more an hour? I demand a recount!"

    MAN'S HELPMATE
Man must toil from dawn
    till dusk.
That fact is indestructible.
But woman's work is
    never done–
Of course she's so
    deductible.
        PEARL ROWE

    THE VAGRANT line of type "Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party" appeared in the Legal Journal, of all places, amid a list of more than 50 bankruptcies filed in federal court.  In fact, right above a poor man with liabilities of $6,014 and assets of $1,000.  But look at it from the typesetter's angle.  It gets mighty depressing, sitting there banging out bankruptcy after bankruptcy, like mixing into other people's troubles.

    KID STUFF — John Dolle heard Barbara, 5, singing  a familiar tune but with a malaprop.  He got closer and sure enough she was chanting, "Oh my darling, oh my darling, oh my darling — Frankenstein!" . . . Tony, 5, was playing with Cecille , 5, when she picked up his toy tank.  He grabbed it back and said girls had nothing to do with the Army.  She said they did.  He asked his mother and she said Cecille was right, there were girls in the Army.  "They're WACs," she said.  "Do they melt?" Tony asked hopefully.

    THIS IS TO REPORT that another epoch has passed.  George Watkins' doorbell rang yesterday and when he opened it the woman there said, "I'm your Fuller Brush lady!"

    PUBLIC AT LARGE — Arthur Wenzel, the unpredictable press agent, writes from Kuala Lumpur, Malya, and Alexandria, Egypt, that the show he's with, "Holiday on Ice," is "real cool."  There's really nothing you can do about these fellows . . . Woman in a  Hollywood store insisted she'd had the flus, plural.  "I had all of them," she explained.

    AT RANDOM — Sign on the Florentine Room on Melrose Ave.: "Only children over 21 years of age admitted" . . . Feeling among photogs generally is that their profession has been upgraded by Princess Margaret's engagement to one of them, Antony Armstrong-Jones.  But not 100%.  The hyphenated name is a little heady for photogs . . . About 20 top pro golfers have license plates with the letters TEE, courtesy of an auto dealer . . . A public official being interviewed on TV remarked inadvertently, "There are some men who aren't helped by capital punishment at all!"  Hardly anybody is . . . Incidentally, on a macabre note, people in bars are betting even money that Chessman does or doesn't get gas.