In 1899 we produced 3,700 automobiles, in this country. In 1915 we produced 842,249 cars, and in 1916 the production reached the unexpected number of 1,617,708 cars.
The value of the production in 1899 was $4,750,000, or about $1,283 a car. In 1916 the value was $972,336,400, an average of a little over $601 a car.
In 1916, also, we produced 92,130 commercial vehicles, valued at $157,000,000.
And this is not all. A comprehensive survey of the automobile industry will include the industries that the automobile has created, as manufacturing tires and accessories, and not to forget the enlarged market for gasoline and oil. As the jokesmiths have it, “It isn’t the original cost, but the upkeep that counts.”
For illustration, in the matter of tires, C. H. Williams, of the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, who is in a position to know, said that in 1916 the motorists of the United States took from their wheels and replaced some 9,000,000 tires, representing an expenditure in that year of about $300,000,000 for tires.
Any motorist can draw from his experience and compare the expense for tires with that for gasoline, and from these tire expense figures arrive at a reasonably accurate estimate of the tremendous amount of money that was used in 1916 in paying for gasoline to run automobiles.
By way of an interpolation, it may here be remarked that these tire figures show that there is one problem in the automobile industry that the engineers still have to solve, and that is to produce a wheel that will give satisfactory service without requiring a pneumatic rubber tire.
Little Original Capital Invested.
The remarkable thing about the automobile industry is that, in comparison with its present magnitude, there has been but little original capital invested in it. Today the industry represents a large investment, to be sure, but the bulk of it is made up of profits on the original small investment. Companies started with small original capitals, made money, and used some of it to enlarge plants and increase outputs, until today we have the gigantic institutions that some of these companies are.
The automobile industry has been and is one of the most convincing of modern proofs of the efficacy of the science of investment in operation.