History of the Automobile, Part 3

By Audrey Robinson

NECCM Education Committee

The week of Nov. 12-18 is National Education Week. The Northeast Classic Car Museum is a great medium to cultivate a student’s interest in history, literature, science, math and technology. The third part of this five part series will show how automobiles effected the changes to society.

Automobiles have ended the isolation of rural communities and set an example of industrial efficiency for the world to copy. It has also spoiled the cities and small towns as neighborhoods are obliterated by highways smashing through; it has polluted the environment, and has caused shortages in natural resources. Yet the car itself is still the object of endless fascination. Some economists state that one worker in every five (others say six or seven) workers in the U.S. labor force is employed by some activity related to automobiles.

One of the first social changes brought about was in mating habits. Motorized courtship had been established even before the Model T offered a love nest within everyone’s price range. And it wasn’t just in America. The automobile manufacturers had no qualms about using sex appeal to sell their product and some car companies turned out models with seats that folded down to become a double bed.

Automobiles opened up the possibility of farm children going to town schools, where they were provided with better facilities and greater educational choices. It also gave farm communities the ability to shop at will, rather than once or twice a year. Town was the shopping range and there were also clubs, theaters, and numerous other activities that the average farm family had previously been denied.

The feminist movement, which had been dragging its feet ever since the 1820’s, had a rapid growth from the automobile. In 1898, Genevra Delphine Mudge drove a Waverly Electric in New York to become the nation’s first known female motorist. It was also in 1898 that Chicago began requiring licenses in order to drive, and one of the first licensed was a woman. Women were not a real part of the automotive scene, however, until Henry Leland produced a self-starter in a 1912 Cadillac.