Automobiles spread socialism?

With all the current talk about socialism I ran across a 1909 article in the New York Times.

President Woodrow Wilson was speaking to a North Carolina audience. He accused the “automobilists” of encouraging the spread of socialism. Remember that in 1909 people in the United States were transitioning from the horse and buggy to those newfangled automobiles.

“Nothing has spread socialistic feeling in this country more than the use of automobiles. To the countryman they are a picture of arrogance of wealth with all its independence and carelessness.”

But John Fargo, then President of the American Automobile Association, disagreed.

Fargo added that as soon as “any class of people realize that the automobile is useful for the ordinary work and duties of life apart from its pleasurable attributes as a touring car, it will be regarded with favor, and this feeling is growing all the time in the agricultural parts of the West.”

A fellow named Winthrop E. Scarritt, ex-president of the Automobile Club of America, weighed in:

So as the current debate in the United States rages on, it might be worthwhile to consider the argument over socialism a hundred years ago.

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