Future of the Automobile (1953)

In less than fifty years from now the working man, the mechanic and the laborer will go to their work from their cottages in the country in automobiles.

You smile at this?

Don’t smile too confidently.

Do you remember when the present model of bicycles first came into fashion?

Who used and paid for the first bicycles, at one hundred dollars or more for each?

The rich men and women.

Who made-fun of the first bicycle riders, laughing at their sensible costumes; throwing tacks on bicycle paths, doing everything to delay the manufacture of the cheap bicycle by discouraging those who paid for the first experiments?

You did, you who now laugh, or throw tin cans at the fast automobile did the same for the bicycle, not so many years ago.

And who uses the bicycle now? Get up early in the morning, especially in the country, and you will see the bicycle carrying the mechanic to his work. The cheap bicycle is almost exclusively used by working men. It is used exclusively by the people of moderate means.

The rich have long since tired of it.

Arthur Brisbane, of the New York Evening Journal.

From Popular Mechanics, February 1953.

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