Grind them into iron filings! America’s infatuation with the automobile wasted money, warped the young, and threatened the nation’s existence.
A pox upon those cars! Carriages of Satan!
The country’s obsession with the automobile posed an existential threat, Chancellor James Day warned Syracuse University’s 1910 graduating class. Should this unhealthy fascination continue, the United States faced financial ruin, dissolution or…repossession.
Every town, every city offered evidence of this spreading blight. Sensible men — “mechanics, clerks, and business men” — were planning to squander their hard-earned savings on the purchase of an automobile. The young and unmarried were car-smitten. Money that in a more sensible age would have been earmarked for the down payment on a house or a college fund — gone. Too many men, when offered the choice between a mortgage or a road trip, chose the latter.
Chancellor Day decried this automotive foolishness. Financial ruin threatened family life, and, by extension, the ongoing viability of the country. 500 million dollars were already tied up in the automobile industry, he told the graduating seniors. 500 million! Ponder what that sum could achieve if it had been invested in worthwhile projects.
“This enormous capital is non-productive,” he said. “That is, it adds comparatively nothing to the wealth of the people, but on the contrary, absorbs it. It means 90 per cent of wasted money and wasted time.”
The automobile was an existential threat, a danger that threatened to destroy all that had made America great.
Guggenheim Imprisoned
Do you doubt this incisive analysis? Look no further than New York city for the sad tale of the morally-corrosive effects of motorized transport.
A couple of days before Chancellor Day’s address, police officers apprehended Edmond Guggenheim, nephew of Colorado US Senator Simon Guggenheim, running his car at a pace that exceeded the city’s speed limit.
Newspaper accounts failed to specify the magnitude of the violation: in an era before speed cameras and radar traps, these judgments were rendered by an experienced constabulary. But it was fast — too fast.
Guggenheim’s love of high speed driving carried him off the road of moral rectitude and sensible behavior. And it wasn’t the first time: Edmond’s record contained two previous speeding citations. Fortunately, he told the judge, he was now a rehabilitated motorist. No longer the seduction of the roaring engine, the thrill of scattering pedestrians. If the judge suspended this sentence, he would never drive in New York again.
The judge was unpersuaded; vehicular malfeasance demanded a strong tonic: a $100 fine and a day in jail.
It was a stiff blow. $100 in 1910, adjusted for inflation, equals $3,266 today. More money wasted on a non-productive pursuit, Chancellor Day might have thundered.
On the other hand, as a member of the extraordinarily wealthy Guggenheim family, Edmond had a personal fortune worth more than one million dollars. One hundred clams wouldn’t strain his resources.
More painful was the mooted jail term. State law required a jail term for third-time speeding offenders. A one day stay in the clink represented the law’s lightest tap, but young Edmond was bound to be embarrassed when the newspapers uncovered the story. Compounding the misery, he was scheduled to marry three days later. How could he expect to arrive, freshly-released from prison, and face his bride, her family, and the guests at his wedding?
It was an “unnecessary humiliation” argued Edward Carpel, Guggenheim’s attorney.
The judge disagreed, the state legislators disagreed, and the newspapers disagreed. “This is as it should be,” wrote the Brooklyn Citizen, “for as the only cure for the speed craze is a jail term, the courts should have no discretion left them when dealing with a confirmed offender.”
Warders led the speeding scofflaw away to the Tombs to serve hard time.
Or at least a millionaire’s portion of the sentence.
A small portion.
In 1910, a “legal day” concluded at 4:00 p.m. Guggenheim was sentenced at 3:15. He reached the cell block at 3:25. The warden allowed the young millionaire to serve the 35 remaining minutes of this sentence in the counsel’s waiting room.
He was released at 4:00.
Automobiles, Pastors, and Dogs
Chancellor Day didn’t indicate if he had heard about the Guggenheim case; he only knew that automobiles were destabilizing society, tempting those who wanted to join the mobile class to spend their money poorly. And speaking of wrong-headed financial priorities, what about dogs? The American public, claimed Day, spent more money on dogs than it did upon preachers of the gospel.
Canines above clerics.
Just another example of how America was going to the dogs…and cars.
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