Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
change as a way to keep the consumer in new cars with features the older
vehicles did not have. The company succeeded not by offering consumers
a basic means of transportation (Ford's plan) but by offering faster cars
that grew with more style and power with every year. It provided GM's
dominance in the industry for decades.
By 1929, nearly half of all U.S. families owned an automobile, this
percentage was not reached in England until the late 1960s. But, there
was some opposition to the automobile, the first vehicles were noisy and
scared horses. Some Minnesota farmers even plowed up roads but most
Americans greeted the car with enthusiasm as the automobile replaced the
horse and wagon as a more efficient means of transportation. As the auto
industry grew, it changed America's relationship with farming and the
land and transformed the car from a riding luxury to a goods gathering
essential. Most of America's food and clothing was once produced in the
home, but by the 1920s it was purchased in the towns and villages.
By the 1930s, 66% of rural families and 90% of urban families bought
store-bought bread instead of baking their own. This increased shopping
resulted in more auto use as priorities changed. The auto provided a
convenient way of going to the market and stimulated the growth of
suburbs which had began as early as the 1840s with the start of railroad
travel. This growth continued with a surge after the Civil War with the
construction of streetcar lines.
As the nineteenth century ended, the larger cities such as New
York, Chicago, and Philadelphia were transformed into assembly plant
and manufacturing centers. Then after World War I the growth of office
buildings in the cities occurred and this forced workers into the suburbs.
They used cars to commute to work and by 1940 about 15 million
Americans lived in communities without public transportation.
Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal would spend huge amounts of
money building roads but little on mass transit. Starting as early as 1916,
the Federal Road Act made funds available to states to establish highway
departments. Legislation passed in 1921 established the Bureau of Public
Roads and planned a network of highways linking cities of more than
50,000 people. But, it was during the New Deal that major road-building
began. Almost half of the two million people employed in New Deal
programs worked in constructing roads and highways. During the 1930s,
the total amount of surfaced roads doubled, to more than 1.3 million
miles, while mass transportation languished. Public transit received only
a tenth of the money that the Works Progress Administration spent on
Search WWH ::




Custom Search