But for the manufacturers’ quick recognition that the future of the automobile did not rest with the rich, that to be a great money-making industry, they must make automobiles for the mass and not for the class, the business would probably today be no further advanced than it was fifteen years ago. A parallel of what might have been may be found in yachting or motor boating—two methods of deriving pleasure and speed which are confined to the rich, largely because prohibitive in cost to the mass. Popularization of the automobile demanded standardization. Automobilization of the nation would never be accomplished if the hundreds of manufacturers that sprang up produced hundreds of different cars with different sizes of parts, and different standards, requiring owners of cars with which something had gone wrong, to wait indefinitely for a particular device used by a certain company. Early owners of cars learned by bitter experience what it meant to have a screw loose or a tire put out of business in a town where the supply stores did not sell that particular screw or that particular tire. The spread of distance, annihilated by the auto, was threatened by difficulties such as these. High maintenance and repair costs ate up many an automobile buyer in the early days of the craze. It wasn’t the original cost, although that was high enough; it was the upkeep. Men of real ability—competent business men and expert engineers—got into the business, fortunately, largely for the rewards it promised, and by standardization and systematization brought the cost production down. GETTING THE PRICE OF AUTOMOBILES DOWN. The engineers banded together and studied standards of hard steel, screw threads and wheel rims. The manufacturers, preserving open minds, co-operated, and today automobiles are the most interchangeable of all assembled mechanisms. But for this the farmer, the moderate salaried city man, the mechanic and the small tradesman would not today be consumers of motor cars. But for this the average price for passenger cars, originally in 1900 around $3,000 and by 1911 reduced to $1,000, would never have been gotten down in 1916 to $605. The average price of all motor vehicles, combining pleasure cars and trucks, was, in 1916, $636. The preponderance of passenger cars at the lower prices brought the average down, since the average price of motor trucks alone was about $1,800. For every motor truck sold, eighteen passenger cars were disposed of in 1916. With standardization and the consequent lowering of cost, the automobile industry acquired a momentum that has carried production forward on a constantly ascending scale, as witness these figures of passenger cars alone: Year No. of cars made 1909 80,000 1910 185,000 1911 200,000 1912 250,000 1915 842,249 1916 1,617,708