Immediately following the craze to buy the high priced cars, developed the “man Friday” of the industry—the chauffeur. And the chauffeur worked readily with the wealthy man, often advising the purchase of the foreign machine upon which Uncle Sam collected a very large duty. But the foreign made car had its stamp of distinction, perhaps much easier to utilize in the form of extravagant, even snobbish, style of life that the owner of the foreign car elected to affect, and the United States manufacturer of cars was not at all prepared to put out a car that would correct the desire of Americans to drive around in an imported article.
But the domestic car had a friend in this contingency. Economical living was that friend. Ruin often followed the extravagance of those who bought the high priced and, as many experts said, inferior imported cars. Homes were mortgaged and all the financial trails were traversed in the effort to maintain an impossible extravagant life. The banker began to detest the automobile. It seemed to him that it was undermining the life of the nation. Something had to be done to correct, also, the tone of the domestic automobile maker’s life. He developed a desire for watered stock. Over capitalization of his plant was suspected by the banking interests, and on every hand the motor car industry was decried. Waste and inflation stalked arm in arm through many plants. It even was said that the industry was only a “game”; that incompetent executives kept their eyes on the broker’s tape, while corps of associates in the factories were ready to play the “game” for all it would stand.
Few were blind to the prospects in the motor industry at that time, if the financial interests of the country were estranged; but no one was able to withstand the developments. The fire of criticism cleaned out the dross. Organization, the big thing needed to eliminate the “game” and give the industry the foundation upon which the large “billion dollar business” subsequently was built, began to come into being. Men of energy and brains got to work. These characters have remained. There are those veterans of the industry who say that the year 1907 marked the start of the business on the basis of a real industry. In that year 44,000 cars was the total output, and the value of the product was registered at $93,400,000. This was the highest total of value for the output of the industry so far reached in the United States.
The next year the industry built 85,000 cars, valued at $137,800,000, and quantity production, efficient buying of material, strict attention to cost production in the plants, effective steps toward standardization, engineering methods that abolished a great deal of weight, etc., began to be set standards among car makers. The official statements of the industry show how well the improvements fitted in. In 1909 the production of automobiles amounted to 126,500, valued at $164,200,000. The following year the output climbed above the 200,000 mark, and since then the production figures have mounted steadily. Automobiles were sold and competition became keener, but the output increased.
Value of Reliability Contests.
With the new era of development in the early nineties came into prominence farseeing manufacturers who paid heed to the thought that the best way to put a fit and efficient motor car into the hands of the public was to test the car, its material and its mechanical practices, in some officially conducted series of reliability contests. Besides, it was urged there was a “romance of business” attached to the motor car industry that would lead to a greatly increased amount of publicity in the press.
The national annual reliability competitions grew into wonderful favor. Makers strove hard to win the reliability titles. The “Glidden” tours became the tests that attracted not only the attention of every automobile man, but the general public. The whole country became the testing ground. For several years these national events did well the work they were expected to perform. Automobile building received, perhaps, its most practical aid. Makers learned. They took advantage both of the mechanical data and the publicity. A complex but valuable adjunct of the national tours became popular—every region in which the American Automobile Association was a factor, and this organization continues to be a powerful aid to the industry, had its reliability or its endurance classic.
It has been said that the manufacturers of automobiles lost interest in national reliability tours after the test of 1911. Perhaps many did. But the truth, as told by a wonderfully efficient engineer, is that there remained nothing more that a national tour could teach the car builder. He had measured the power of his steel to withstand shock, he had calculated the efficiency of his motor to stand its daily tasks on a strenuous schedule, he had learned of the troubles of his rivals and he had spent his money liberally, at the direction of his engineering department, to make a car that would do anything a less skillful driver than a national tour pilot could ask of the machine. The national tour became a luxury. It was revived in 1913 on the long and strenuous grind from Minneapolis to the Rocky Mountains, and an immense amount of valuable information was the result. But the national tour seems to be now chiefly remembered by the occasional discourse of an engineer who tells of the long struggles in the mud and the hardships of sand and dust storms.
With the added development of the plants, came another reason why the national tour was not necessary. Testing tracks were added to the maker’s plant assets. Testing on the roads followed the block tests of the motors, and it began to be accepted as an axiom in the industry that the engineer knew to a hair’s breadth what his engine could do before it went out of the secret room where the chief engineer worked.
Meanwhile prices constantly were beaten down. The field of opportunity to own a car widened. It was, even then, so much bigger, in comparison to that in the Old World, that even the clerk and small salaried man in general looked with a smile toward the day when he would own a car.