Co-operation’s Part in the Automobile’s Commercialization.
If there is any one idea more than another that is productive of results in development of large proportions, it would seem to be that represented by co-operation.
Individuals may make successes, but they are successes that are limited in their proportions.
The era of greatest material development in this country has been that in the period represented by the last quarter century. This is shown in the fact that our national wealth during that period has increased in a ratio unparalleled in any previous period of time.
Only a little reflection will show that same period to be that period in which the value and benefits of co-operation in business as a whole were realized and taken advantage of.
The principle of co-operation has been known since man learned to reason. It was applied in the building of the tower of Babel and of the Pyramids. The foundation of it was a fact that man early in his evolution from the cave stage discovered—a simple fact plainly demonstrated, when primitive human beings found that one man could not lift a battering-ram, but that twenty men could make of it an instrument with terrifying powers of destruction.
An aspect of co-operation that was slow in imposing itself on the understanding of the business world was that if a man conceived a new idea, and he concealed it from others, he was not only depriving others of its benefits, but himself as well. In locking the door on his idea, he locked himself in. He did not reflect that the world rests on a foundation of co-operation; that nature is co-operative; that without co-ordination between the planets in space, the cosmic void would not continue to be occupied; that co-operation is the invisible chain linking together the world, sun, moon and stars, and without the binding twine of co-operation they would fall apart like the stalks from the sheaf when unbound.
Almost every valuable lesson might be learned from nature if we knew and fully understood her laws, and co-operation is one of the most potent of these laws. But it took man a long time to learn even the rudiments of this law of co-operation—that it supplied a force of a hundred horsepower where one horsepower was used before; that its moral influence was tremendous, and that it was to business what the steam radiator, internal combustion, or the electric storage battery was to the horseless carriage—a means of propulsion, a driving force, an agency of high power to produce progression.
There can be no question that the automobile industry had, in the era in which fate decreed it should make its debut, favorable conditions. Not only did this era happen to be the era of a better understanding of the science and value of advertising, but also the era in which a better understanding has been gained of the principle and value of co-operation.
Standardization in the automobile industry, as has been said herein, was an important factor in popularizing the motor car. But how could standardization have been brought about without co-operation?
Producers of automobiles, even, did not immediately adopt the real spirit and practice the true principle of co-operation. They formed an association with that purpose, but in the first meetings they approached the matter of genuine co-operation like a man walking in his bare feet on ground strewn with broken glass.
They kept up the practice of secretiveness; each man was afraid to “put the other man wise,” still clinging to the ancient practice of hiding his light under a bushel—an impulse founded on that same semi-savage selfishness of primitive man which impelled him to hug to his hairy breast the shin bone of his “kill,” while eyeing his fellow man with fear, hatred and distrust.
Gradually, through the influence of minds more original, independent and far seeing, the glacial reserve was thawed out, and automobile producers began practicing co-operation in its unrestricted, untrammelled form.
With the genial, warming rays of co-operation turned on the industry, problems of vast quantity production at remarkably low cost, easy and rapid assembling, inexpensive maintenance, and the vexatious problems of freight movements to bring in raw material and take out the finished product for distribution, became no longer work, but fascinating play. Thus does co-operation make an elysium of the workshop, turn the darkness of gloom into the light of day, and give grounds for the belief that if the millennium ever comes, co-operation will be the vehicle it will be transported in.
At one stage of the American automobile industry, the European cars displayed a strength and sturdiness so superior to ours that our manufacturers nearly despaired. This was another crisis of many in the industry. But co-operation enabled the cause to be found and the crisis to be met. The European manufacturers knew why their cars stood up better than ours, but they wouldn’t tell. This was the same old dog-in-the-manger that has helped to make the world’s progress slow. So our manufacturers, co-operating, went to work and found out for themselves. Tungsten, vanadium and chromium spelled the reason. The Europeans had been using these and other alloys, and with scientific heat treatment had been producing a special steel, and keeping it strictly to themselves.
Trust the peeking, inquisitorial, persistent “Yankee” to find out when he once gets well started on the scent. And when there are a lot of them, all peering and peeking about, what chance has the poor European? But it is to be doubted if one “Yankee” could have “tumbled” to chrome steel. It took a combination of them to do it. They didn’t discover the secret until they were banded together by co-operation.
Co-operation contributed to the general adoption by the motor industry of the automatic machining of parts. What that meant in economic production was the saving of millions in cost of construction, which in turn got the automobile down to the level of the common people’s price.
In the adoption of the system which substituted the “machining” of automobile parts for hand production, the industry instituted savings of time and labor and therefore cost, one instance of which illustrates the almost incredible potentialities in scientific economy.
A block of cylinders, which takes eleven hours to bore by hand, is bored in two hours by automatic machinery.