Theodore Roosevelt: An American Sissy

Just as it was good to encourage trucks and autos as competitors and alternatives to railroads, I can't help thinking that it would have been good to keep trains, trams, and trolleys as viable alternatives to private cars, buses and trucks.

You can't have it both ways. Auto trucks were a development of the automobile. It is no mistake that commercial use of motor trucks followed the political and cultural acceptance of automobiles. Trust me on this: the automobile arrived in 1909 with Taft. The motor truck arrived commercially in 1911. Both were around before Taft; both became normal under Taft. The White Co. is case in point. Up to 1909, the company was principally involved in automobiles. (It made steamers, which were the best in the world and Taft's favorite.) Up until then, the Army toyed with trucks, but mostly for ambulances. Under Roosevelt, Army policy was that motor use had to have a justifiable economic rationale. Staff use and ambulances were the only accepted uses under that policy. As early as 1901 (I think), an Quartermaster officer recommended automobiles for use in depots if only for the savings in space they presented. The Army didn't buy the idea. When Taft endorse the automobile, the Army suddenly found new uses for the motor. Truck use, especially, increased. Tests and trials were implimented. Sadly, under Wilson this policy lapsed. Meanwhile, the White Company used its experience therewith to develop its great line of trucks. The company soon became the biggest producer of trucks in the world. Its 1-2/1 ton trucks helped win WWI, and it contributed no less to the winning of WWII.

[The USSR survived the German onslaught in part due to its fleets of White trucks. There's a great story of a Russian emissary who loved maple syrup. As a gift, the White Co. shipped a truck to his name filled with it in the tank. Unfortunately, when the truck arrived, word of its fuel content didn't reach the operator, and they tried to start it . Ruined the engine. One hopes the Russian enjoyed his french toast. ]

Nevertheless, the idea that transport was more efficient by motor was lodged and irrevocable. City services were universally converted to motor. All this happened because of the persistence of the idea of utility of automobiles by rich motorists. Taft showed the rest of nation how true this was.

Without the winning case for personal transportation by motor the notion of utility/ freight motor transport would not have been made, at least not as quickly or with as much success. Trolleys, trains, etc. are a great option. They could never do what automobiles did. The savings brought by automobiles to farm transport in the early days, alone, outweigh every cost of today's urban mess. The automobile is a blessing all around.

When William Allen White wrote his memoirs, he looked back upon the hysteria of 1912 and concluded that all the progressive agitation came to nothing compared to the beneficence of the automobile. He wrote,

Yet we Bull Moosers... were fat and saucy in our attack upon aggrandized capital, were almost alone in our charge upon the citadel of privilege... the whole cause and justification of our attack upon the established order was paling. And the injustices of the distributive system were being corrected, not by laws but by speeding up the wheels of industry in the United States and to an extent around the world... In our own country a new element had come into the industrial and commercial picture. The automobile age had arrived. Ford’s assembly belt was turning out Model T’s. A kind of democracy was coming into the world and not through the ballot box, not by marching cohorts in the streets carrying banners, not even out of Congress nor its laws. The thing which was changing our world was the democratization of transportation.

What an asshole. At least he figured it out by 1946. Of course, he credited Henry Ford for it...

Politics do matter. To answer out W. Wilson symposium friend, Wilson's 1906 demagoguery of automobiles delayed the great "democratization of transportation." We can thank William Howard Taft for it.

And never were there any rumors that Taft slapped a girl's horse.

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