by Rube Borough.

Upon the industrial battlefield of America where the Captains of Big Business struggle for control of the means of commercial exploitation a new rival for honors has forced his way to eminence. Born but yesterday, he has nevertheless attained the proportions and powers of a giant and he strides among the dominant figures of the day with the confident hauteur of a world conqueror. Who is this newcomer in the ranks of the nation's capitalists? He is the maker and seller of a toy   - of the most popular toy of the ages. With a hand of magic he devised that modern sensation and wonder, the automobile, and he proclaimed its merits so effectively that he has swept the nation into a frenzy of buying. So great has been the success attending his efforts that if he should be able during 1910 to meet the demand already made upon him for his product he can truthfully boast a volume business near to a quarter of a billion dollars.  As it looks now, his probable production for the coming twelve months, according to conservative estimate, will reach a total value of around $160,000,000. And for his entire output, if he lives up to his reputation, he will get CASH….. The automobile business for the past two years can be no more accurately described than as a scramble for cars on the part of the agents and the general public…The eagerness of middle class and upper class America to actually possess this newly invented plaything gave the manufacturers the whip hand and being in the position, they made the terms.  Back of this quick-sweeping, nation-wide hysteria, there is a reason. Aside from the undeniable appeal that the self-propelled vehicle per se makes to the popular mind, we are confronted with the appeal of social prestige which its ownership from the beginning implied. For a number of years our comfortable classes have been deluged with magazine fiction whose main function has seemed to be the establishing of a wide-spread conviction of the intimate relation of spark plug and carburetors to the lives of our social patterns - the idle rich. Our most fetching romances have made excellent free propaganda for the automobile - the hero's trail of progress has been marked by the smell of gasoline.

Our periodicals, monthly and weekly, have not only been most liberal in the exploitation, gratis, of the social desirableness of the motor car, in their voluntary efforts to make this plaything stand before our provincial culture as a symbol, par excellence, of the leisure class, but, today, in pay of the millionaire manufacturer, they are spreading over the country a volume of straight-forward, hard-hitting advertising unprecedented in the industrial world.  The biggest share goes to the muckrakers: It seems like an irony of Fate that this latest galaxy of stars in Millionairedom, the motor car manufacturers, should be compelled to seek for their most efficient agents of publicity a group of periodicals that have gained their tremendous influence by hostile criticism of the system that has created these millionaires… 

This is a big country, a rich one, but let us remember that this wealth is unevenly distributed. At the beginning of last decade it was estimated that some 30,000 of our citizens, held title to over one half of our total resources. And in the last twenty years the process of wealth centralization has gone unchecked: the big fortunes have enormously increased in size while the smaller middle class holdings have decreased. What does all this mean? It means just this, that the consumptive capacity of our average citizen is far less than our spread eagle orators would have us believe. Coming back specifically to our subject, it means that our people cannot long continue to absorb 150,000 to 175,000 motor cars in a single year, as they will during 1910. If some tradesman in the Middle West whom I talked to are to be believed, "People are mortgaging their homes in order to buy motorcars. "The automobile, " said a piano salesman, " is our stiffest competitor we have in our dealings with farmers. Usually the woman of the house wants a piano for the benefit of the children, but the man too often holds out for a car."

Read how Henry Ford solved this problem. Click.