Chapter III: Commercializing the Motor Vehicle (2)

But the tires put out with new automobiles form only a slight proportion of the total tires sold by tire companies. It is stated that each of the over three million cars in use in the United States consumes an average of eight tires a year, so that automobile buyers are purchasers of probably 20,000,000 tires a year.

The pneumatic tire was one of the greatest factors in giving the automobile business its impetus. Charles Goodyear, in a broad sense, laid the foundation for popularizing the automobile, when, by accidentally dropping rubber on a stove, he discovered the principle of vulcanization.

The development of the automobile was retarded for years, because, while iron shod horses, it would not successfully shoe automobile wheels. The greatest obstacle to the mechanical perfection, as well as to the development of the automobile by general adoption, were road shock to the automobile and mutilation by the automobile of the roads.

The pneumatic tire removed both obstacles simultaneously.

The pneumatic tire was invented by an Englishman named Thompson, who patented it in 1845. Dunlop, an Irishman, was the pioneer manufacturer in 1888, and Michelin of France first applied it to the automobile.

The manufacture of body parts is obviously a tremendous industry, and while the body is a prime essential to the automobile, it was a part that existed in horse drawn vehicles, and, therefore, did not play the part that the pneumatic tire did in accelerating auto development.

Comparable in importance to the tire was the nonskid chain, the invention of Parsons, an English engineer, who patented it in 1903. As the pneumatic tire enabled the automobile to be used more successfully and in larger numbers in good weather, so the nonskid chain enabled it to be used in bad weather. Prior to its adoption automobiles were used to only a limited extent in wet or slippery weather. Its adoption is credited with having added one month a year to the possible use of every automobile, a result which would naturally increase the number of automobiles used, through making them more efficient, and by decreasing the life of a car through added use.

Next in importance in extending the field of purchasers of automobiles was the self-starter, the invention of Coleman, who, though little known to the public, is the inventor of so many things in electrical use as to be comparable to Edison.

The electric self-starter is credited with creating a million automobile buyers, a large proportion of whom are women, and with having added nearly 15 per cent to the service of the motor car.

Other aids to the successful commercialization of the automobile are solid tires, invented by Grant in 1896; the demountable rim, invented by Perlman in 1906; sliding transmission, the invention of Dyer; the nonskid tread, and chambered spark plugs, the latter invented by Canfield in 1898. Of minor improvements, of which there have been scores, the most notable were those of side doors, introduced by Marmon in 1902; tops to bodies, introduced in 1903; speedometer, gasoline pressure system, carburetor, shock absorber, electric lighting and oil gauge.

The evolution of the automobile has been facilitated by every improvement which makes it easier of operation, and the sale of motor cars has been increased by them.

The more one reviews the advance made by the automobile during the seventeen years of its commercialization, the more one can appreciate the feverishness characterizing its production, which can be seen and felt by anyone who visits the automobile manufacturing sections of Detroit, Cleveland, Indianapolis or Toledo. The demand is so great for automobiles, and they are being bought in such numbers, that the factories producing them work at a speed and under a pressure such as are paralleled in our industrialism only in munitions of war plants. Busy are the cities where automobile manufacturing forms an important industry, and busy they are likely to continue for years to come, for as a commercial industry the business of making and selling automobiles has not yet even approached high water mark, in the opinion of those best qualified to judge.

The country districts have yet to be heard from in louder tones. The possibilities of the automobile in the country, from a commercial standpoint, constitute a fascinating subject for speculation. Although there are over 6,000,000 farm families, only 300,000 automobiles were bought by them in 1916, indicating that the rural element so far has not really begun to take hold of the automobile, because the normal yearly sales of horse drawn vehicles, most of which were sold in the country, prior to the automobile’s adoption, were over 1,000,000.

By far the greatest proportion of motor driven vehicles bought in the country are now passenger vehicles. When the farmer wakes up to the economic superiority of the motor truck and motor tractor over the horse, the sales of other forms than passenger cars in the country will scarcely have any bounds. The best grounds for this belief lie in the fact that at present there are 5,000,000 horse drawn vehicles in use, against less than 300,000 motor trucks.

In this development of the motor freight vehicle in the rural districts, the matter of education will play its part, as it does in all evolution, but slowly, as it always does.

Just as the creation of farm products as a whole is being increased by educational means, so will the use of the motor wagon in place of the horse be increased by the farmers’ information and knowledge of its advantages and saving.

When the farmers all learn and realize the full extent to which the use of the work automobile pays dividends on their labor, the commercializing of this vehicle will be in quantities probably exceeding those of the passenger car.

CO-OPERATION’S PART IN THE AUTOMOBILE’S COMMERCIALIZATION.

If there is any one idea more than another that is productive of results in development of large proportions, it would seem to be that represented by co-operation.

Individuals may make successes, but they are successes that are limited in their proportions.

The era of greatest material development in this country has been that in the period represented by the last quarter century. This is shown in the fact that our national wealth during that period has increased in a ratio unparalleled in any previous period of time.

Only a little reflection will show that same period to be that period in which the value and benefits of co-operation in business as a whole were realized and taken advantage of.

The principle of co-operation has been known since man learned to reason. It was applied in the building of the tower of Babel and of the Pyramids. The foundation of it was a fact that man early in his evolution from the cave stage discovered—a simple fact plainly demonstrated, when primitive human beings found that one man could not lift a battering-ram, but that twenty men could make of it an instrument with terrifying powers of destruction.

An aspect of co-operation that was slow in imposing itself on the understanding of the business world was that if a man conceived a new idea, and he concealed it from others, he was not only depriving others of its benefits, but himself as well. In locking the door on his idea, he locked himself in. He did not reflect that the world rests on a foundation of co-operation; that nature is co-operative; that without co-ordination between the planets in space, the cosmic void would not continue to be occupied; that co-operation is the invisible chain linking together the world, sun, moon and stars, and without the binding twine of co-operation they would fall apart like the stalks from the sheaf when unbound.

Almost every valuable lesson might be learned from nature if we knew and fully understood her laws, and co-operation is one of the most potent of these laws. But it took man a long time to learn even the rudiments of this law of co-operation—that it supplied a force of a hundred horsepower where one horsepower was used before; that its moral influence was tremendous, and that it was to business what the steam radiator, internal combustion, or the electric storage battery was to the horseless carriage—a means of propulsion, a driving force, an agency of high power to produce progression.

There can be no question that the automobile industry had, in the era in which fate decreed it should make its debut, favorable conditions. Not only did this era happen to be the era of a better understanding of the science and value of advertising, but also the era in which a better understanding has been gained of the principle and value of co-operation.

Standardization in the automobile industry, as has been said herein, was an important factor in popularizing the motor car. But how could standardization have been brought about without co-operation?

Producers of automobiles, even, did not immediately adopt the real spirit and practice the true principle of co-operation. They formed an association with that purpose, but in the first meetings they approached the matter of genuine co-operation like a man walking in his bare feet on ground strewn with broken glass.

They kept up the practice of secretiveness; each man was afraid to “put the other man wise,” still clinging to the ancient practice of hiding his light under a bushel—an impulse founded on that same semi-savage selfishness of primitive man which impelled him to hug to his hairy breast the shin bone of his “kill,” while eyeing his fellow man with fear, hatred and distrust.

Gradually, through the influence of minds more original, independent and far seeing, the glacial reserve was thawed out, and automobile producers began practicing co-operation in its unrestricted, untrammelled form.

With the genial, warming rays of co-operation turned on the industry, problems of vast quantity production at remarkably low cost, easy and rapid assembling, inexpensive maintenance, and the vexatious problems of freight movements to bring in raw material and take out the finished product for distribution, became no longer work, but fascinating play. Thus does co-operation make an elysium of the workshop, turn the darkness of gloom into the light of day, and give grounds for the belief that if the millennium ever comes, co-operation will be the vehicle it will be transported in.

At one stage of the American automobile industry, the European cars displayed a strength and sturdiness so superior to ours that our manufacturers nearly despaired. This was another crisis of many in the industry. But co-operation enabled the cause to be found and the crisis to be met. The European manufacturers knew why their cars stood up better than ours, but they wouldn’t tell. This was the same old dog-in-the-manger that has helped to make the world’s progress slow. So our manufacturers, co-operating, went to work and found out for themselves. Tungsten, vanadium and chromium spelled the reason. The Europeans had been using these and other alloys, and with scientific heat treatment had been producing a special steel, and keeping it strictly to themselves.

Trust the peeking, inquisitorial, persistent “Yankee” to find out when he once gets well started on the scent. And when there are a lot of them, all peering and peeking about, what chance has the poor European? But it is to be doubted if one “Yankee” could have “tumbled” to chrome steel. It took a combination of them to do it. They didn’t discover the secret until they were banded together by co-operation.

Co-operation contributed to the general adoption by the motor industry of the automatic machining of parts. What that meant in economic production was the saving of millions in cost of construction, which in turn got the automobile down to the level of the common people’s price.

In the adoption of the system which substituted the “machining” of automobile parts for hand production, the industry instituted savings of time and labor and therefore cost, one instance of which illustrates the almost incredible potentialities in scientific economy.

A block of cylinders, which takes eleven hours to bore by hand, is bored in two hours by automatic machinery.

WORLD YET TO LEARN THE LESSON OF ECONOMY.

Will the world as a whole ever learn thoroughly the lesson of what the saving of time means in its equivalent of money? Full realization of this is practically confined in this day and generation to some manufacturers, and to most efficiency experts. But the great mass does not acutely see it.

The farmer knows that if he takes four hours to go to town when it is not necessary, he has lost the money represented by four hours’ work. That is plain to him, but it does not strike him that taking four hours to haul a load of grain to town by horses when it would take only one hour to do it by motor truck is throwing money away, and is an economic waste only in another form. Nor does he quickly see that a motor truck will perform service more economically than the horse, including cheaper cost of maintenance.

He also appears unable to get the same viewpoint on the economic loss by bad roads, that he does of wasting four hours to go needlessly to town.

The farmer has long had demonstration of the economic superiority of the mechanical reaper over the hand cradle, that of the mechanical thresher over the flail, and that of the drill over sowing by hand. But he is slow to see that the motor truck is superior to the horse and a factor in greater economy as the reaper, the thresher and the drill were superior to man, while at the same time his liberator from the hardest types of labor, and an economic saving to boot.

When all farmers learn the full facts of the superiority of motor mechanism over horses, only one instance of which is that their cost per mile haulage is 16-2/3 cents, against 30-7/10 cents for the horse, a wider use will result. It is only the highly developed efficiency expert who yet can count a minute of time in its equivalent of cents, and an hour in its equivalent of dollars. The automobile industry has had the benefit of the highest quality of efficiency generalship.

Chalmers was making $70,000 a year with the National Cash Register Company when an automobile company secured him by promising more. Flanders was offered by Ford, in addition to his salary, a bonus of $20,000 if, in the first year of his administration, he would turn out 10,000 cars. By installing the first automatic machine tool system, which itself was mechanical co-operation, Flanders collected the bonus.

No industry, except perhaps oil or steel, has paid men such salaries, bonuses and commissions as has that of the automobile.

Co-operation by the automobile industry has been pursued in its public shows for seventeen years—the period of the industry’s greatest strides—beginning with the first one in 1900 in Madison Square Garden, New York. The Seventeenth annual auto show was that in New York and Chicago in January, 1917.

There are many lines of industrial production in which to this day the factors have not gotten together in co-operation, lines in which each producer is working alone, and it is noticeable in many of them that development is slow and advancement tardy.

The automobile makers early applied the principle of co-operation by formal association. They organized the National Association of Automobile Manufacturers to advertise automobiles at the first auto show in New York, and to “encourage general practices of mutual benefit,” a statement of principles that is brief but sweeping.

Stimulating influences in the formation of this, one of the earliest, and one of the most comprehensive and sincere co-operative industrial associations, were the necessity for presenting a united front, which legislation adverse to the automobile created, and of popularizing and inspiring confidence in an innovation. Co-operation was further made imperative by the necessity for better roads. Had the roads of the United States been better than they were when the automobile first came into being, the industry might by now be able to write its annual production in larger figures than 1,600,000 cars made in 1916.

That the automobile associations have the true principle of co-operation and not the semi-true or false variety, is evidenced by the fact that their co-operative efforts have been from the start for the benefit of the industry as a whole and not for the benefit of members of the associations alone. They have always admitted to their councils all manufacturers, whether association members or not, and co-operated on a free and full basis.

Broad liberalism has been practiced. The many young men engaged in the industry have been credited with this. Coming into the business arena at a late date, they were not handicapped by prejudices and hardening of the arteries of open-minded thought. They believed in the principle of “one for all, and all for one,” which is the keynote of co-operation.

As the world has these men to thank for the constantly enlarging pleasures and comforts of the automobile, so it has them to thank for such good roads as there are, for it is as certain that automobiles have improved roads as it is that automobiles exist.

The organization of the National Association of Automobile Manufacturers was followed by that of the co-operative Association of Licensed Automobile Owners, organized to resist the tightening of the clasp of the licensor of the Selden patent rights, and by the Society of Automobile Engineers, and still later by the American Motor Car Manufacturers Association. The Automobile Board of Trade followed, and today the trade association is the National Automobile Chamber of Commerce. Fostering trade, reforming abuses and promoting harmony, were steadily the aims of all the organizations, and how well they have done it is attested by the fact that no association of producers has better demonstrated and more completely justified the valuable principle of true co-operation.

Standardization in the automobile business has never discouraged individuality of the manufacturers in the essentials of form or speed. It was confined to those directions where appearance was not important. It never extended to bodies, stream lines or designs that would deprive a manufacturer of distinctions and selling points.

It is standardization of detail—uniformity of screws, locks, washers, spring and bearing parts, water connections, etc. Co-operation has been practiced intelligently, and the result has been that standardization favored economical manufacturing by creating a large demand, calling for quantities that fostered specialization in parts by manufacturers, with resulting low cost to the automobile maker. It also left him free to center his efforts, energy and capital on production in quantity, and himself get down the price of the finished automobile.

To the thinker, one of the most interesting features of the automobile industry is this example it has given to the world of efficiency and co-operation. We are not surprised at efficiency in the steel business or the oil business, because they are industries conducted practically by one man power; and if autocratic rule is not efficient, its last excuse for being might appear to have ceased to exist; but to find several hundred different manufacturers with divergent ambitions, ideals and interests benevolently engaged in co-operative competition, justifies, it would seem, that optimism which sees the world as growing better.

Certainly if “by their works ye shall know them,” the progress made by the automobile industry in the short space of time it has played the star part on the industrial stage, has been the most splendid demonstration of the value in commercial industrialism of the tolerant, broad minded type of co-operation, coupled with efficiency. It is an example of the value of harmonious co-ordination of the differing efforts of man in advancing the material progress of the world, and in the case of the automobile industry, the best assurance of its continued advance as the moving force in the production of one of the greatest and most beneficial forms, not alone of transportation, but of mind culture, of healthful relaxation and of sane recreation.