The Automobile's Impact on American Society and Culture

Before the Automobile: Travel and Community Life

There is perhaps no other invention of the twentieth century that had such a profound impact on American society as the automobile. It has become an intricate part of American culture. For many, it is a status symbol of wealth. For others, the car they drive defines their personality. For still others, it is simply a means of getting from one location to another. No matter how one interprets what the automobile symbolizes, it has become an important part of American society and culture.

Before the automobile, people traveled across land by horse or by train. Living within distance of a train station was therefore important, and the livery stable was one of the most important businesses in any community, much as gas stations are today. Livery stables often served as inns for travelers, providing a place to rest or board a horse, as well as a place to rent horses, carriages, sleighs, and even drivers.

In pre-automobile society, people lived in cities and worked in cities, or they lived in the country and worked on farms. It has been said that Henry Ford freed the common citizen from geographical limitations, because the automobile created mobility on a scale that had never been known before, and the total effect on living habits and social customs has been endless.

Prior to cars, transportation was by horse-drawn wagons that generally could travel only about fifteen miles per day. Therefore, anyone who lived in a community or on a farm more than fifteen miles from a city, railroad, or navigable waterway was essentially isolated from the mainstream of economic and social life. Automobiles and paved roads narrowed the gap between rural and urban areas, enabling farmers to ship products easily and economically by truck.

Before the automobile era, there was a sharp physical division between city and rural areas. The city was a confined area beyond which lay rural land, and in some directions rivers or other bodies of water. City workers who lived outside urban zones depended on rail transportation for commuting; however, railroads were limited to station-to-station service, and accessibility extended only a relatively short distance on both sides of the tracks. As a result, suburban areas were quite restricted. For the most part, upper-income residents inhabited the suburban areas, along with those who catered to their needs, thus "providing for a small sector of the bourgeoisie many of the advantages of country living in close proximity to the urban centers."

This situation changed little when the automobile first came to market. During the early years, cars were not only expensive but unreliable as well; only the wealthy could afford to buy them and bear the cost of their upkeep. Moreover, except for city and town streets, roads were few, far between, and in poor condition. Therefore, as far as the suburbs were concerned, automobiles simply complemented existing patterns and lifestyles rather than changing them.

As Paul Sweezy points out in the April 2000 issue of Monthly Review: "Owned by the upper-income commuters and largely chauffeur-driven (the chauffeur fulfilling the role of mechanic as well as driver at a time when repair and service stations were all but nonexistent), cars expanded the area within which commuters could conveniently live but introduced no new elements into the picture."

During the 1920s, a process began that ultimately culminated in what is known today as the "urban crisis." The immediate forces behind this were the falling cost of the automobile and the rapid expansion of the road and highway network.

A Brief History of the Automobile

Self-powered vehicles were demonstrated as early as 1769, yet it was more than a hundred years later before the history of the automobile truly began. Automotive history is divided into several eras based on major design and technology shifts. Although the exact boundaries of each era are somewhat hazy, scholars generally define them as follows: Antique (1885–1979), Veteran (1885–1904), Brass/Edwardian (1905–1918), Vintage (1919–1930), Classic (1931–1979), Pre-war (1931–1948), Post-war (1949–1979), and Modern (1980–present).

By the mid-1800s, steam, combustion, and electrical motors had all been attempted, and by the 1900s it was still uncertain how the automobile would be powered. In the beginning, the electric car was the most popular; however, no battery existed at the time that would allow a car to move at speed over much distance. Although electric cars actually set some of the earlier speed records, they did not remain in production after the first decade of the twentieth century.

Steam-driven engines lasted only until the 1920s, largely because the cost of building and maintaining steam-powered engines was incomparable to that of gas engines, and there was always a significant risk of boiler explosion — all of which prevented the steam engine from becoming popular. The combustion engine beat out the competition on every level, leading early American automobile pioneers such as Ransom E. Olds and Henry Ford to reject steam or electrical designs and build reliable combustion engines.

The first person to be granted an automobile patent in the United States was Oliver Evans in 1789, who in 1804 demonstrated his first successful self-propelled vehicle. This was not only the first automobile in the United States but also the first amphibious vehicle, as it was capable of traveling on wheels by land and via a paddle wheel in the water.

The first American automobile company was the Duryea Motor Wagon Company, founded by Charles and Frank Duryea in 1893. However, it was Oldsmobile that was first to begin large-scale production in 1902, followed within a year by Ford, who began producing cars by the thousands. The Ford Model T, produced from 1908 to 1927, became the most widely produced and available car of its time, and from 1927 to 1931 the Ford Model A sold more than four million units, making it the best-selling car of the era. What began as a toy for the rich soon became affordable for the general population, freeing people to choose locations anywhere they wished as long as roads were available to connect them to other places.

Henry Ford, Mass Production, and Economic Impact

Henry Ford achieved two important things: first, he made the automobile affordable; and second, he paid his workers enough to be able to buy the cars they were manufacturing, thus helping to push wages and car sales upward. Most states established motor fuel taxes that were used to build and maintain highways and to help the transportation system become self-supporting.

When Ford perfected the idea of mass-producing automobiles on a production line, he also created the need for specialized tools and heavy-duty machinery. This forced machine tool manufacturers to develop more efficient methods of producing parts and to create specialized tools, fostering demand for better and different raw materials. To keep up with the fast-growing demands, steel makers developed better and more modern processes and built more mills, which in turn created thousands of new jobs for construction workers, electricians, and plant workers.

The need for new plants also spurred opportunities for more engineers, increasing the demand for engineering schools throughout the country and resulting in additional new jobs for teachers. Furthermore, because books, repair manuals, dealer brochures, and owner's handbooks were needed, authors were in great demand, resulting in added growth for the publishing industry and increasing business for paper mills, printing presses, and even ink producers.

Works Cited

Kay, Jane Holtz. "Hell on Wheels." Planning. January 01, 1994. Retrieved October 28, 2005 from HighBeam Research Library.

Lentinello, Richard A. Motoring Madness. Retrieved October 21, 2005.

Sweezy, Paul M. "Cars and Cities." Monthly Review. April 01, 2000.

Wedd, George. "Traffic Is Other People: 'The Automobile: A Chronology of Its Antecedents, Development and Impact.'" Contemporary Review. April 01, 1998. Retrieved October 28, 2005 from HighBeam Research Library.

History of the Automobile. Retrieved October 21, 2005 from Wikipedia.