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.
In the courts of law, among judges, lawyers and court attendants, it is notorious that no two witnesses ever testify exactly to the same set of facts. There is a variation of detail, and many times there has been such a difference in the statement of material facts that the dispensing of exact justice has been defeated.
This condition is ascribed to the fact that few people are trained observers. The automobile is correcting this popular defect more than any other one agency—by education. It is educating people to exact observation and precise knowledge.