Replies

Here's my reply to the article you pointed to, Tom McCarthy's "The Arrogance of Wealth." That is, I'm replying to him, not you. I'm so glad you showed this to me. Into my bibliography it goes, right there along with every other book on the era that I disgree with...

We're off to a flying start with this one, on the existing treatment, that is, the dismissal, of Wilson's remarks as "silly" or "futile":

The subtext of these treatments, intended or not, is usually a celebration of technological progress with the implied suggestion that it is best to leave the ramifications of innovations to be worked out by producers and consumers in an unfettered free market.

We don't get to it until the very end of the article, Taking Woodrow Wilson's early feelings about the automobile seriously rather than holding them up for ridicule helps us to better understand this history.
Wilson's was a distinctly uncourageous attitude. Rather than fight the source of his anger, as McCarthy noted, the "scorchers," he condemned the whole class. Typical of the school marm that he was. The automobilists fought desperately this demagoguery. The AAA started out in 1902 to promote "good roads, good laws, and good behavior." It was no use. Not with fools like Wilson, whom McCarthy tells us we must pay attention to simply because he was Woodrow Wilson.

In the 1914 "The new Democracy," progressive Walter Weyl complained,

Our jogging horses are passed by their high-power [sic] automobiles. We are obliged to take their dust... We are creating new types of destitutes -- the automobileless...

This is from the same book that complained of -- and he really said this, I am amazed whenever I see it, it is so ridiculous, so unfortunate, so shameless and so awful, the originator of such stupidities as the modern New York Times and the Democratic party who throw at us endlessly his special creation, the "income gap": ...an increasing bitterness is felt by a majority which is no worse but better off than before.
What an asshole.

Compare this to what McCarthy wrote in defense of Wilson's attitude,

...here was a sense that an immense social transgression was taking place, that the wealthy were suddenly flaunting a marvelous new privilege

Sweet Jesus, save us.

McCarthy credits 1910, Henry Ford, and the Model T with bringing on the Motor Age. Firstly, if that was the case, it would have been the Model N that revolutionized not the Model T. The "N" was everything the "T" was, deficient only in particulars. And it was cheaper. The breakthrough year was not 1910, it was 1909. Production that year increased 110%, the most it has ever gone up. Automobiles suddenly became normal. That was because Taft made it ok to buy and to use automobiles. Lacking before then was political leadership. Wilson's kind of leadership halted the Motor Age, that is, Roosevelt's leadership. Roosevelt spurned autos. He had a sign on his gate, "No Automobiles." He suppressed their use and encouraged the demagoguery. I have no instance of his actually speaking out against them. I suppose he was smarter than that. He damned them by ignoring them.

It took the politically monochromatic William Howard Taft to free the nation of Wilson and Roosevelt's demagoguery and prejudice, and doing so, Taft helped more people than a thousand howling reformers.

P.S. Lacking any other basis for his theories, McCarthy goes after chauffeurs, and says they took over the onus of automobile hatred. This is a silly conclusion and wholly unsupported by the facts. Yes, chauffeurs were out of control and the law reacted in kind. It had nothing to do with the image or acceptance of automobiles. Buy my book on limousines to learn more about that. Also see "The 'Chauffeur Problem' in the Early Auto: Structuration Theory and the Users of Technology," by Kevin Borg, Technology and Culture, October 1999 (maybe you'll find a link to it...) Borg studied that "chauffeurs used new automotive technology to enhance their social power... New technology can inject destabilizing resources into an existing structure. As those resources are exploited, other interested and affected parties marshal countervailing resources in an attempt to reestablish a social order in their favor."

Of course, it'd be easier for y'all just to buy my limousine book... it's all there. Stretching It: The Story of the Limousine , featured on Discovery Channel's "Boy Toys" week of the Modern Marvels show, coming the first week of December.

re. my #71

Walter Weyl is alive and squirming at the New York Times. Yesterday's Review section's article on China frets that the rich aren't paying their share in China.

China! That's too funny. Do you suppose the "income gap" spells death to communism?

If the Times has its way, China will be much like Westchester in ten years time: the rich will prove their compassion by tithing 60% of their (declared) income to the state, throw stupefyingly boring charity auctions and give freely to China National Public Radio in order to bring that 60% down to 45, all while keeping the real money in Cayman. The poor won't be seen.

I don't recall that the article worried about zoning rules and takings rights in China. That would get the Times going. What, rules about where to put your new building? What, the city not evicting your neighbor to make room for it?

Wilson had been engaged in two fights with wealthy Princeton trustees. One was over the control and location of the graduate school. The other was over elite eating clubs versus common dining arrangements. It may be that Wilson was thinking of those who might have been most likely to have cars in 1906 Princeton or Manhattan: wealthy businessmen with chauffeurs, and arrogant, rich, idle young men likely to race down the streets -- the sort of people that he saw himself as struggling against. Ordinary people, and even well-off local businessmen probably still didn't have cars.

I don't think Wilson was really weighing the situation carefully and thinking about the future, but just venting against his personal opponents. It's part of the pattern of his behavior. Rather than downplay personality conflicts and clashes over practical questions, Wilson elevated them into battles over high principles. He had to be right in all his disputes and others had to be morally wrong and selfish.

Curiously, the warrior Roosevelt wasn't so different at times from the priest Wilson: “We fight in honorable fashion for the good of mankind, fearless of the future, unheeding of our individual fates. With unflinching hearts and undiminished eyes, we stand at Armageddon, and we battle for the Lord.” – Theodore Roosevelt, Chicago, IL, June 17, 1912.

Anti-automobile sentiment does look exaggerated and ridiculous now. If TR had his way, only Vanderbilts would have cars, and the public's resentment would be greater. But looking back, there does seem to be some sense in hostility to cars. The country had millions invested in railroads, trams and trolleys. Putting everything into private automobile transport would have meant a massive change in ways of living and thinking. Had we not gone so decisively with private transportation, we would probably be more like Europe today, with stronger socialist sentiments and welfare institutions. But it's also possible that there would have been advantages in terms of community and sociability to taking the other path.

“ The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first. Instead of duty first, the love of soft living and the get-rich-quick theory of life.” – Theodore Roosevelt, Washington, D.C., January 1917