The Great Events by Famous Historians [Volumes 1-14]

No one was more surprised at the growth of the automobile business than the parts-makers themselves. A leading Detroit manufacturer summed it up to me as follows:

"Ten years ago I was in the machine-shop business, making gas engines. Along came the demand for automobile parts. I thought it would be a pretty good and profitable specialty for a little while, but I developed my general business so as to have something to fall back on when it ended. To-day my whole plant works night and day to fill automobile orders, and we can't keep up with the demand."

What was looked upon as the tail now wags the whole dog, and is the dog. The volume of business is so large, and the interests concerned so wide, that the manufacturers have their own organization, called the Motor and Accessory Manufacturers. It includes one hundred and eighty makers, whose capitalization is three hundred millions, and whose investment is more than half a billion dollars.

There still remain to be discussed two phases of the automobile which have tremendous significance for the future of the industry—its commercial adaptability and its relation with the farmer and the farm. Let us consider the former first.

No matter in what town you live, something has been delivered at your door by a motor-driven wagon or truck. These vehicles at work to-day are only the forerunners of what many conservative makers believe will be the great body of the business. Here is a field that is as yet practically unscratched. Now that the pleasure-car has practically been standardized, vast energy will be concentrated on the development of the truck. Wherever I went on a recent trip through the automobile-making zone, I found that the manufacturers had been experimenting in this direction, and were laying plans for a big output within the next few years. This year's production will be about five thousand vehicles.

The ability and efficiency of the commercial truck for hard city work are undisputed. It has had its test in New York, where traffic is dense and most difficult to handle. Here, of course, are the ideal conditions for the successful use of the motor-truck—which are a full load, a long haul, and a good road. In a city, a horse vehicle can make only about five miles an hour, while a motor-truck makes twelve miles, and carries three times the load.

Some idea of motor-truck possibilities in New York may be gained when it is stated that there are nearly three hundred thousand licensed carrying vehicles there.

The amount of work to be got out of a motor-truck is astonishing. John Wanamaker, for instance, gets a hundred miles of travel per day out of some of his delivery-wagons. The average five-ton truck, in a ten-hour day, can make eighty miles, and keep constantly at work. On the other hand, a one-horse wagon can scarcely average half that mileage.

Already your doctor whirls around in an automobile, and he can make five times more visits than with a horse. So, too, with the contractor and the builder. The drummer carries his samples in a gasoline runabout, and, in addition to seeing twice the number of customers, he can get their goodwill by taking them for a spin. Fire-engines, hose-wagons, and police patrols race to conflagrations propelled by motors, and get there quicker than ever before.

Just as practically every great American activity ultimately harks back to the soil and has its real root there, so, in a certain sense, may the farmer be regarded as the backbone of the automobile business. We have six million farms, and more than forty-five millions of our population live on the farm, or in communities of less than four thousand people. To these dwellers in the country the automobile has already proved an agency for uplift, progress, and prosperity.

It began as a pleasure-car; now it is a necessity on many farms. In Kansas you can see it hitched up to the alfalfa-stacker; in Illinois and Iowa it is harnessed up to the corn-cutter; in Indiana it runs the dairy machinery. But these are slight compared with the other services it performs for the farmer.

For years the curse of farm life was its isolation. Its workers were removed from the shops, the theaters, the libraries, and good schools. More farm women went insane than any other class. The horses worked in the fields all week, and had to rest on Sunday, so that the farmer could not go to church.

The automobile provided a vehicle not excessive in cost, and able to provide pleasure for the farmer's whole family. It annihilated the distance between town and country. Contact with his coworkers and proximity to the market made the fanner more efficient and prosperous. More than this, the motor-car has made the whole rural life more attractive, and offers the one inducement that will keep the boy on the farm.

A hundred instances could be cited of the automobile's aid to the farm. One will suffice. In times of harvest, when a big gang is at work, the breakdown of a thresher will stop operations for a whole day, if the farmer has to drive to town behind a horse to get needed parts. With an automobile, he can dash in and out in a few hours.

No one expects the automobile to replace the horse on the farm. But for work that the horse can not do efficiently—such as the quick transit of milk, butter, and garden products to the markets—the motor-car has a future of wide utility. Incidentally, the farmer may be the first to solve the fuel problem, for by means of cooperative distilling he could produce denatured alcohol for almost nothing.