America and the Automobile

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 6, Issue 257, 9 March 1917, Page 2 (Supplement)

America and the Automobile

America is being autoniobilised. This aiitoinobilisation Ls taking 11 tho .whole countr yfrom ocast to coast —«is some-

one has said, "from piggery in the Ozark mountains to the palace on Fifth-avenue," and when the benefits that have accrued to the nation through the movement have all l>een counted in they will surely attest that few public servitors have contributed more to national development than those men who demonstrated the possibility of a cheap and durable, motor car.

In Hil-"), 802,000 motor car* were sold | in tin* tilited States for home conj '-lomption. While this numlicr reprel son ted an increase of .'lB per cent. : n ! niiniehr of cars sold over the year before, only 10 per cent, additional outlay ' had lie-en invested. In 191") there were over l,()00,0iii) cars in operation, and n (, o there were a great many in excess of this number. In Massachusetts, one out of every 2.~> jsersons holds a licence to drive a car. In New York State 270,000 cars were licensed in I'JIG (incidentally bringing in a reveue to the State of more than 2,00!),000 dol.). Coming west, we find the State of Ohio registering 182.1K10 cars in 1910, a steady increase of Jo per cent, each year since 1!' 0. In Missouri, 80,000 cars were registered in 1916, an din California one person in every 20 holds a driver's licence. One of the most striking features of the movement i stile decline in the number of excessively high-priced cars purchased and the steady increase in the numlicr of moderate!;,- low priced ones. Nil longer are buyers grabbing motor cars out of the manufacturers' hands at 0000 to 12.000 do!. They have struck a conservative average of 800 dol. a car instead. The low-price automobile genius of Detroit, now so well known, has already proved that the automobile market's depth and capacity is exactly in ratio to the possible price reduction, and e<unomists have figured that there is a potential market in the States fr ato leiast 2,000,000 motor car*. 'I he Ford factories alone are producing UIB,OOO ce,re annually. As he rise of the cinematograph of to-day is analogous to the rise of the drama in the days of Elizalieth (and who among us may say it is not as important and as far-reaching in its effects). so the rise of the steam engine, and the aiitomobilisation of the American nation in comparable to its railroad-

isation, which was in full bloom 110 or 40 years ago, when the barriers of great distances were being removed, and a. consequent lowered cost of production was stimulating every form of human activity. Our quarter of a million miles of railroad (far in excess of the

railroad and miles of any other nation), emcieiit as the yhave. been in obliterating distances, still fall short in that they are a mass transportation method, carrying people and merchandise ii bulk along main trunk lines, and leaving untouched, or inadequately touched, rich byways, which are thus left unavailable for the individual and his private uses. Then we had the trolley jump, .which in a few years was covering IoJHX) miles of country, and alelviating, but not remedying, the situation. And then came the automobile. sMi dfound the. world nnl rij>e for its reception. It was said that the Americans took to tho automobile as a savage tribe takei to an intoxicant. Persons who coui dafford to do so (and many who couldn't) grabbed any old car at any old price, and those who couldn't or wouldn't afford it wrote and spoke virtuously of me automobile as a degenerating factor in modern life. Then, about 1907, aiitomobilisation began in earnest. This was the beginning of the vision which enabled manufacturers to appreciate the folly of an unstandiardiscd industry, and to see the wisdom of making interchangeable parts, for they said, "All mechanisms destined for the us,, oil the millions must l>e standardised or die." To-day automobiles are the most interchangeaole ofia.ll me-ban-inis. Last year occurred one of the most remarkable bits of co-operation that has ever been recorded in the history of big business, when the National Automobile Chamber of Commerce of the Cnitcd States announced that a cross-licensing agreement in connection patent rights had become effective through the joining in the agreement of • 80 companies. The verified patents of these companies readied 500, and covered all the various forms of detail construction found in motor cars. Leaders . of other big industries stood agape at 1 such a monumental piece of co-opera-tion, and competition got an awful knock. In the automobile business this move must- maKe for greater values at less cost, and economically and sociologically it must furnish a remarkable object le<«-on in the value of co-opera-tion, a lesson which the world is sadly ill need of. Automobile factories oqiiiipi>ed at enormous cost are machining parts by automatic action in multiple numbers, and adding to the facilities while tliev reduce the cost.

To-day 800 dol. will lwiy a car equi]>ped in such a fashion with high grade accessories that, when eonijxired with l.io 2:SiH) dol. car of six or seven yeais ago, it is as a Turkish prince-"* in nil her regalia compared to Psyche rising from her bath, or, as someone has said, "It is to the car of 190.1 a* Cinderella's fairy coach to an abandoned dust waggon." In 190:5 no motor o.ir had a leather top. Not until I!HH were they furnished with speedometers. In 1909 came the self-lighting systems, and n 1911 the self-starters. Now, at the l>cginning of 1017. comes forth a company engaged in the manufacture of .storage batteries and gas tanks, with tho first self-stopper. It is a vacuum brake, which enables the motorist to bring hi* car to a gradual stop with ease and smoothness, or to stop it instantly with a minimum of personal effort.

Compared with the self-starter, all otliep htock equipment of the p;ist years lia-i been of minor inijxirtance. Together with t-!ie demountable rim, it lias placed the automobile in the hands of womankind, and then by enormously accelerated suburban living and the back-10-t-he land movement. A motor

ciir which enables the average woman (ami she is not tlio woman who could yank oil an oid-tiino tiro, patch it, blow if. up with a hand pump and remount it), to start off wthout the labour attendant upon crankng, to cope with tiro troubles on tho road, in short to dispense with the services ol the cliaullcur, has lilted tlie motor oar from tho luxury li~t. and made of it, if net a necessity, at least a very durable convenience. Such a convenience enables tlie woman of moderate means to live in the country and shop conveniently churches accessible to her children, and a near-by neighbour ot a .woman whose distance is measured by miles iind t-luis it rob-i tho farm of its loneliness and so'ation —the two greatest foes of happy life in the country. Making possible

participation in community recreations and pastimes, it iias greatly broadened and sweetened the whole rural life ot the nation in the most directly traceable way. Likewise it has accelerated surburban living, s-into it offers a convenient and comfortable method of transportation from horii" to_ business. While it is making commuting popular in the vicinity of tlio ! ig cities, it is reversing the order in -onie of the isoIfcitwrl sections of the west and allowing oil operators, zinc miners and cattlemen to live comfortably in their city heme.-: and -till be in daily attendance upon their properties miles away. Take the oil fields of Oklahoma, where tlie automobile has been ol inestimable service in developing the indintry on account of the isolation of the oil-bearing tracts. The operator has breakfast at. home at 7 o'clock in the morning, and bv 9 o'clock is on his lease 30 or

-10 miles away. He spends the day oil the jol. and is homo tor dinner at dark. Ho motors into new territory and picks out new leases, and liis little motor car enables him to watoli easily tli? de\elopment of the entire district. His car til's emergency needs when small pieces of machinery nurt he obtained or a plant shut down, and tho nearest supply house is ten miles away. These men say that the development shown in their fields could net possibly have l>een brought about without the motor car. 'I he automobile has replaced the oldtime hor.o-drawn mail coach 011 all over Land mail routo, with mutual satisfaction to the people and the Government to say nothing of the horse. Apropos of the horse, the humane and the busings instincts of the nation vie with each other in the amount of satisfaction they are getting because tlio hor.so is passing out of tli-p trucking industry. The motor truck development, federated by th-;» war, has been only which of course lias been gr?atly axv slightly loss phenomenal than the development of passenger cars. In America orio of the mo>t salient parts played by tlio automobile sus a natonal benefactor has been that of road developer. Koad improvement has doubled in tlio last three or four years, and at least two-thirds of the reasons for present read development are automobile reasons. Good roads and automobiles are inseparable terms, and a look at all motor car literature will convince that an interest in one (in the mind of the editor at least) implies an interest in the other. Automobile magazines carry as much road news as they do motor car news. Any motor magazine of size that does not report a tour of road inspection by the Dixie Highway Association, the voting of road •bonds by tho State of Oklahoma, the locating of a concrete link I>ctwccn sucn and such a point, etc., is a remarkable number. Tlx;? number of voters who own motor <a, s, both by their votes and tlulr influence, yield a very tangible influence in read legislation.

Anrl everywhere there has been a tremendous jump ill land values in proportion to the money spent on roads. Iso« In tod districts, isolation brought about by I roth actual distances and by eompiiratively short distances ot impassable roads. which liavo existed through some of oisr most fertile sections, are now giving wav before tne combined attack ot the automobile and the good road. 1 ho automobile has concentrated tecliliical attention on road construction, with the result that there are everywhere ever-increasing stretches of concrete roads and oiled macadam roads, ■where formerly existed common dirt roads, unoiled macadam roads, or maybe no road at all. A common dirt road permits a haul of from nothing (in rainy weather) to 800 i>ounds. A macadam road j>erinit' a haul of from 2000 to 5000. Consider now fclio economic effect of replacing these roads with a conivreto road, which will permit a haul of from 5(K>'J to 8000. The cost of producing and selling must Ive greatly lesened. A farmer hitches two or throe teams to an Bl>oo load, hauls it to the nearby public concrete road, unhitches al' but olio ot his teams, and

.'vnds them home to work on the farm while the load of produce goe.s to market. Many crops which could not l>e marked profitably at all in the old days am now being produced, and everywhere good roads tend to an improvement in varieties. A certain variety of strawberry, for instance, which formeri\ might have been kept oft the market I ecaiwa it was too perishable to stand a haul over miles of rough road, can be tranSij)ortiHl with profit over the new roacK Ah horticulturists weH know, the of fruit and vegetables is generally in inverse proportion to thoir transferability.

And tlius the work of the automobile goe.s on like ;i golden chain for the good of tl: ; , iiiition. mentally. morally and physically. Not long ago a, Wineonsin probate judge gave permission to a minor lirir to buy a motor car, " i>ec;iUH> such ownership stimulated intercut in public affairs, :md stimulated mental and physical growth, and about, the .<llllO time a company of New York bankers, made up of tho inner ring of big Wall-street financiers, thatoligarchy you read so much a-U>ut. g-sive a banquet to tho president of a wellknown automobile manufacturing company, thus evidencing wluit they thought a'out 'me •automolfcle a,s a national factor. —(Exchange.)