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
The city man’s wife in the suburbs can visit her friends oftener
and more quickly, and the facility of speedy movement has given to
suburbanites the benefit of the last acts at the theatre and the opera,
whereas, before the automobile, they missed them in order to catch the
last train.
The benefit of clergy has been immeasurably enhanced by the automobile,
which, also, in addition to being itself an educational agent, has
employed its speed and facilities in economizing time to increase the
attendance in the schools. There are districts in the United States
where children can not reach school in time without the use of the
automobile.
What the automobile does for the city dweller, in enabling him to see
the last act at the theatre or hear the last act of the opera, it does
for the people of the farm in enabling them to spare the time to attend
dances, sociables, entertainments and motion picture shows. Where
formerly the time required to drive a horse made it impossible to spare
the time, now time is scarcely a factor. The change must inevitably
react to the advantage and benefit of humanity, if all work and no play
makes Jack a dull boy.
The health advantage of the automobile is a subject on which there is
a difference of opinion among medics. The ordinary layman, however, is
disposed to cast his verdict in its favor in this respect also. Some
physicians have expressed the opinion that the only respect in which
the automobile is noticeably not a benefit is in the matter of health.
Some of them think it does not give people enough exercise, and that at
the rate its use is increasing it will not be long before man loses his
ability to use his legs!
It would be a catastrophe indeed if the human race, through the
automobile, reverted to the condition when primitive man, according to
the Darwinian theory, swung by his hairy arms from tree limb to tree
limb, using his feet only as a stabilizer. But nobody, unless a writer
for a newspaper Sunday magazine section, is likely to maintain this
seriously, and he only pretends to be serious.
Whatever man loses in disuse of his legs by riding, as compared with
walking, may be said to be made up for by his use of them on levers of
automobiles and in the other exercise or operation of a car. The fresh
air and the sunlight—the great outdoors—are the big health factors in
motoring, and man will go on taking a chance to experience these and
other delights the automobile has to give.
AS AN ELEMENT IN EUGENICS.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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