That automobile president had the pleasure of meeting thousands of dealers, speaking to more than one thousand of them daily, and with his factory production manager he figured the probable needs of his country-wide organization of dealers and branch houses for the year. It is significant that the few changes he made on his early winter production table, which the writer was permitted to scan, were made only in the “increase columns.”
The Part Machining Plays.
It would lead to the exhaustion of the reader were many details to be given showing how the makers made quantity production and economy of factory operation an assured thing. The largest rooms of wholly automatic machinery were equipped, so that a large amount of crude steel wires, rods, etc., practically go into a factory at one end and come out at the other, fully machined and ready to go into the assembly of a machine. Cylinder boring, all with one operation, takes the place of operations that required many hours. Progressive types of assembly of the finished components of the cars make factories look like the “last words in manufacturing.” Machining crankcases and work of that nature that required hours, is done in minutes. Aluminum, that magic metal of the early days of the automobile industry, when it was comparatively cheap, now enters so largely into engine and other parts that at its greatly increased price it is more than a magic metal. It is no uncommon thing to find in an automobile factory that a machine costing more than one hundred times the maker’s cost of an automobile, has been installed to hasten production.
In all the field of manufacturing there has not been wrought such magic as in gear cutting. Forges pound out tons of steel forms, but the most important machinery of a plant soon has these forms turned into gears and other machined parts for the assembly.
The medium priced car of today stands as the best exemplification of the approval of the Society of Automobile Engineers. This is an organization that has done so much for the manufacturer that most of the makers of cars are members. They point to the self-starter and the electric lighted car as the triumph of the Society of Automobile Engineers. And certainly from the original starter and the early lighting effects, enormous strides have been made in the industry. Fully equipped cars predominate now, where only a few years ago even tops were not provided with the car as sold on the floor.
The self-starter is considered one of the greatest of the improvements added to a good automobile. With this feature the car has become so useful to women that the manufacturers have realized big returns. Better than that, say some critics, is the verdict that the self-starter returned—the chauffeur is no longer an indispensible feature in car driving. Women master the handling of a car and with the machines requiring less mechanical attention, one might say, every season, woman accepts the gasoline car as her own. The number of women drivers has grown so wonderfully that the makers of cars have registered the woman driver as a constant factor. There’s no cranking of the car necessary, and the wearing of fine raiment and white shoes is Milady’s prerogative, even if she drives her car to the party herself. She handles a multi-cylinder car quite as readily and with the confidence of a man. The tires, always a problem, have demountable rims, or they may be set in spare wire wheels, and troubles on the road from blowouts and punctures no longer deter the woman driver. It would be difficult to get the details on the number of women drivers added to the list each season, but one of the best known automobile makers says that it is so large that he would make his fortune safe if he only made cars henceforth for women pilots. The entrance of the woman in such an important manner in the automobile driving situation has made the gas car maker lose all fear of the greater development of the electric car. Woman has played an important part in the real estate world, distinctly due to her eagerness to drive cars, by starting a movement towards suburbs. The suburbs are “farther out and yet closer” as one maker put it.
Good Roads Industry’s Greatest Aid.
When the full effect of the work of good roads advocates is felt in this country, and regular appropriations are to be available in a regularly scheduled manner in most of the states, the biggest thing the automobile industry ever had to help it will have taken up its task in earnest. Less than ten per cent of the roads in this country are improved, say the good roads statisticians. One says that at least two-thirds of the reasons for present road developments are automobile reasons. When the proportion rises and the Lincoln Highway and scores of other long distance highways, intended to add to the cross country touring practice, are made into complete roads that make for genuine touring pleasure, the automobile industry will reap great benefits—more than the most enthusiastic ever dreamed would come from concrete, brick and other forms of specially prepared highways.
The war? Makers have varied opinions on the effect of the termination of the war in Europe. A majority have expressed the opinion that our exports of trucks and pleasure cars will take a big jump soon after peace is declared. But seeking for a peace after the years of warfare has become the least of the American auto maker’s trouble. Great war orders have been received and filled by the American makers of trucks. In 1914-15 the war orders rose to 14,000 trucks, as compared with only 784 in the season 1913-14. War orders still are being filled by some American truck makers, or were until the “ruthless submarine warfare” broke out anew, and after millions of dollars worth of the old models bought up in the United States and absorbed by the European powers had been swallowed in the mystery of the continent, United States truck makers began on later design models. In that way they are able to admit that the war has been a great blessing to the motor truck feature of the industry. “All a part of the great scheme of economics that makes for the approach of the complete automobilization of the country,” is the way one manufacturer puts it.
The automobile industry is set—it is fourth in importance in the United States. It will handle itself, so to speak. The makers know they must give value for every car and truck they build, and the people have become ready to continue in the industry every maker who plays the industry as it should be—not as a “game.”