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.
Liberalizing the People.
The automobile is a factor in creating open minds. When one travels extensively, notions and prejudices, based on false conceptions, are amended and revised by observance of the facts. In this respect the automobile is conferring on the masses a benefit which, before its advent, was confined to the classes. Time was when broad and liberal views were generally the possession of the rich, who alone could afford to indulge in contact with their fellows many miles distant. Now the automobile has aided in making broader views the possession of anybody able to own a motor car.
The degree in which the social life of the world has been benefited by the automobile is the favorite theme of the enthusiast on the automobile’s advantage to mankind. This phase of the automobile’s value is of less importance than is its benefit in informing and enlarging the horizon of the mind, but the social advantages which the use of the motor car confers are not to be underrated in an age when the most favorable mental conditions are recognized as of equal importance to a desirable physical state.
The happiness of the human race is added to by social enjoyment, and the automobile is a most important link between isolation and human intercourse. It has rendered the means of communication between people so easy and pleasant that it has encouraged and increased their association. Everybody is brought into greater accessibility to everybody else. The farmer with his family can visit his neighbor farmer and his family, many times now to once formerly.