Story of the automobile: Its history and development from 1760 to 1917: With an analysis of the standing and prospects of the automobile industryBarber, H. L. (Herbert Lee)
History
Story of the automobile: Its history and development from 1760 to 1917: With an analysis of the standing and prospects of the automobile industry
Barber, H. L. (Herbert Lee)
Automobiles -- History
To estimate the extent to which this informs and instructs, we need
only go back in memory to the isolated farm of a quarter of a century
ago, and vision the limited horizon of the general knowledge at first
hand of the farmer’s family. Practically all the current knowledge they
had was from reading, occasionally going to town or through visitors
whose appearance was rare and made at long intervals. Seeing a new face
in those days was a rarity.
The situation with a majority of the people in the country, before the
automobile, was very much like the isolated farm family. It was like
that of the entire country before the advent of the railroad.
No greater agencies for instruction in first hand knowledge than the
railroad, the steamboat and the telephone had been introduced into
civilization up to the time of the automobile. Now the motor car
penetrates into places where the railroad, the steamboat, or even the
telephone does not go.
MEDIUM OF DISTRIBUTION OF KNOWLEDGE.
Exchange of ideas between people is the life of wider knowledge, as the
exchange of commodities is the life of world trade, and the automobile
is the medium of exchanging information as money is a medium of
exchange of commodities.
From time immemorial the greatest advancement of the human race has
been made in groups; and the larger the groups, the higher the thought,
and the more progressive the accomplishments have been. Big cities have
surpassed small towns; small towns have been in advance of the country.
The reason for this is the greater opportunity afforded by numbers
for the exchange of ideas and knowledge. The citizen of Rome or of
Venice had the advantage of personal contact with numbers of citizens
which the isolated rural Latin was denied, as the citizen of London,
Paris, New York or Chicago has, before his own eyes, the thought and
achievements of millions which the citizens of the country only hear of
or read about.
The railroad first enabled the resident of the country to go to the
small town, and the resident of the small town to go to the big city,
and by personal contact gather the fruits of himself seeing the results
of community or group work, which, before, had been monopolized by his
city brother.
The automobile supplements this work of the railroad, and is even
more widespread as it enables more frequent visits to be made, and
penetrates regions the railroad does not reach. What was a frontier is
now a suburb, while the suburb has become the downtown. The motor car
has opened up the far reaches as nothing else has done.
Bigotry and prejudice are the fruits of ignorance. Where knowledge is
they will not abide. In enabling people to acquire knowledge in their
own way—the way that most impresses knowledge on them—the automobile
is changing the thought and the habits of the denizens of the entire
country. It is broadening the human mind, by giving it a solid
foundation to work on.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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