The Great Events by Famous Historians

Before going further, it might be well to ask why and how the automobile has achieved such a remarkable development. One reason, perhaps, is that it appeals to vanity and stirs the imagination. A man likes to feel that by a simple pressure of the hand he can control a ton of quivering metal. Besides, we live, work, and have our being in a breathless age, into which rapid transit fits naturally. So universal is the impress of the automobile that there are in reality but two classes of people in the United States to-day—those who own motor-cars and those who do not.

It must be kept in mind, too, in analyzing the causes of the automobile's amazing expansion, that it is the first real improvement in individual transportation since the chariot rattled around the Roman arena. The horse had his century-old day, but when the motor came man traded him for a gas-engine.

Characteristic of the pace at which the automobile has traveled to success is the somewhat astonishing fact that while it took inventive genius nearly fifty years to develop a locomotive that would run fifty miles an hour on a specially built track, it has taken less than ten years to perfect an automobile that will run the same distance in less time on a common road.

Since this business is so invested with human interest, let us go back for a moment to its beginnings. Here you find all the properties, accessories, and environment to fit the launching of a great drama.

Toward the close of the precarious nineties, a few men wrestled with the big vision of a horseless age. Down in Ohio and Indiana were Winton and Haynes; Duryea was in Pennsylvania; over in Michigan were Olds, Ford, Maxwell, with the brilliant Brush, dreaming mechanical dreams; in New York Walker kept to the faith of the motor-car.

At that time some of the giants of to-day were outside the motor fold. Benjamin Briscoe was making radiators and fenders; W.C. Durant was manufacturing buggies; Walter Flanders was selling machinery on the road; Hugh Chalmers was making a great cash-register factory hum with system; Fred W. Haines was struggling with the problem of developing a successful gasoline engine.

Scarcely anybody dreamed that man was on the threshold of a new era in human progress that would revolutionize traffic and set a new mark for American enterprise and achievement. And yet it was little more than ten years ago.

Those early years were years of experimentation, packed with mistakes and changes. Few of the cars would run long or fast. It was inevitable that the automobile should take its place in jest and joke. Hence the comic era. With the development of the mechanism came the speed mania, which hardly added to the machine's popularity.

You must remember in this connection that the automobile was a new thing with absolutely no precedent. The makers groped in the dark, and every step cost something. New steels had to be welded; new machinery made; a whole new engineering system had to be created. The model of to-day was in the junk heap to-morrow. But just as curious instinct led the hand of man to the silver heart of the Comstock Lode, so did circumstance, destiny, and invention combine to point the way to the commercially successful car.

Out of the wreck, the chaos, and the failure of the struggling days came a cheap and serviceable car that did not require a daily renewal of its parts. It proved to be the pathfinder to motor popularity, for with its appearance, early in this decade, the automobile began to find itself.

Now began the "shoe-string" period, the most picturesque in the whole dazzling story of the automobile. There could be no god in the car without gold. Here, then, was the situation—on the one hand was the enthusiastic inventor; on the other was the conservative banker.

"We will make four thousand machines this year," said the inventor.

"Who will buy them?" asked the banker in amazement; he refused to lend the capital that the inventor so sorely needed.

The idea of selling four thousand motor-cars in a year seemed incredible. Yet within ten years they were selling fifty times as many, and were unable to supply the demand. No fabulous gold strike ever had more episodes of quick wealth than this business. Here is an incident that will show what was going on:

A Detroit engineer, who had served his apprenticeship in an electric-light plant, evolved a car which he believed would sell for a popular price. He tried to interest capitalists in vain. Finally, he fell in with a stove-manufacturer, who agreed to lend him twenty-seven thousand dollars.

"But I can't afford to be identified with your project," said the backer, who feared ridicule for his hardihood.

That small investment paid a dividend as high as thirteen hundred per cent. in a year. To-day the name of the struggling inventor is known wherever cars are run, and his output is measured by thousands. This, in substance, is the story of Henry Ford.