Thnx, you too. The internet has a Looong way to go in comparison: "A Revolution Built in Mr. Ford's Factory. IN 1942, in the face of the bloody tyrannies and colonial empires that
covered nearly the entire globe, Aaron Copland composed "Fanfare
for the Common Man." How defiant, even na‹ve, it looked then. How
prescient it looks now.
For all the real power that political rulers, corporate masters and
technological forces have over our lives, the century just ended (I know,
I know: supposedly another year to go) was shaped more than anything
else by the passions and desires of millions upon millions of ordinary men
and women.
Think how unprecedented that was. Before 1900, the middle class in
Europe and the United States was a relative drop in the bucket -- mostly
small merchants and a sprinkling of professionals; it scarcely existed
elsewhere in the world. Few industrial workers earned a living wage. The
largest group of people, even in the most advanced countries, still
worked the land from dawn to dusk. Domestic servants of the rich were
another big part of the work force.
Aristocracies and caste systems were the order of the day. Genuinely
representative democracy existed in only a handful of countries, and even
in those, all women and many men, including nearly all blacks in the
United States, were barred from voting.
For all our worries today about economic inequality, wealth in the era
before World War I was really concentrated. "In the half-century before
1914, most capital flows traced back to a few thousand wealthy
European families," David Hale, chief global economist for Zurich
Financial Services in Chicago, recently wrote. "Today they are driven by
fund managers allocating the savings of hundreds of millions of people in
pension funds and mutual funds." HAT brought about this revolutionary
change, in which workers themselves came to own much of the means of
production? Many things, of course, including the spread of democratic
practices and public education. And one product above all others
powered this transformation: the automobile, built on a moving assembly
line.
At the turn of the century, the horseless carriage was widely derided:
contemporary observers said it was simply a plaything for the rich, a
machine to impress the ladies. But in 1908, Henry Ford introduced the
Model T. And in paying his workers what was then the princely wage of
$5 a day to make a car selling for $850, he helped create a consumer
mass market at the same time he was offering something to satisfy it. The
combination released a torrent.
"The mass-production automobile broke all the traditional boundaries
that held people in place," said Daniel Yergin, president of Cambridge
Energy Research Associates and author of "The Prize," a Pulitzer
Prize-winning history of the oil industry. "Everywhere you go, it
represents independence, mobility, freedom."
So, before we bury the 20th century, let us praise its essential icon. For
despite the environmental ills that cars have brought in their exhaust trail,
nothing else so represents the empowerment of ordinary people.
Mr. Ford knew exactly what he was after. "I will build a motor car for
the great multitude," he said, "constructed of the best materials, by the
best men to be hired, after the simplest designs that modern engineering
can devise." It would be, he added, "so low in price that no man making
a good salary will be unable to own one and enjoy with his family the
blessings of hours of pleasure in God's great open spaces."
Well, maybe he miscalculated a bit on the open spaces. Our bottomless
demand to own and drive automobiles has transformed the landscape
almost beyond recognition, inexorably producing the highways we crowd
onto and the suburbs where most of us in America now choose to live.
For all the attention devoted to computers and the Internet, the auto
industry still defies comparison. Roughly 7.5 million people, about 6
percent of the American work force, are involved in building, selling or
repairing cars and light trucks, almost four times as many as are
employed by all electronics and computer makers. Three of the four
largest companies in the nation by sales -- General Motors, Ford and
Exxon Mobil -- make cars or fuel them. In 1999, Americans bought a
record 17 million of the vehicles.
The phenomenon is global; there are more than 550 million cars around
the world. Americans own the most -- one car for every 1.7 residents --
but even in crowded Japan there is one for every 2.1 people, and there is
one for every 5.3 Britons.
Do all these automobiles represent too much of a good thing? Perhaps,
but good luck persuading people to stop buying them. No matter what is
done in the form of taxes or regulation to discourage their use, as soon as
incomes in any nation reach a certain level -- on average, around $6,000
a person -- sales of cars invariably skyrocket.
In the United States, higher gasoline taxes would at least encourage the
production of more efficient autos and slightly restrain driving. New
technologies, like electric/internal-combustion hybrids and, eventually,
fuel cells, should help further reduce the air pollution they cause. But
don't expect more.
As long as democracy and free markets persist, personal transportation
in some form will be ubiquitous. Why? Because that's the way we want
it. " |
