THE ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL EFFECTS OF THE SPREAD OF MOTOR VEHICLES

Also by Theo Barker

A HISTORY OF LONDON TRANSPORT (with Michael Robbins)

THE TRANSPORT CONTRACTORS OF RYE

AN ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL HISTORY OF TRANSPORT IN BRITAIN (with C. I. Savage)

THE GLASSMAKERS

A MERSEYSIDE TOWN IN THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION (with J. R. Harris)

The Economic and Social Effects of the Spread of Motor Vehicles

An International Centenary Tribute

Edited by Theo Barker Professor Emeritus of Economic History University of London

© Theo Barker 1987 Softcover reprint ofthe hardcover 1st edition 1987 978-0-333-41299-2

Ali rights reserved. No reproduction. copy or transmission of this publication may be made without writtcn pcrmission.

No paragraph of this publication may bc rcproduccd. copicd or transmitted save with written permission or in accordancc with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amcndcd).

Any person who does any unauthorised act in rclation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosccution and civil claims for damages.

First published 1987

Published by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke. Hampshirc RG21 2XS and London Companies and representativcs throughout the world Transferred to digital printing 1999 02/790

British Library Cataloguing in Puhlication Data The Economic and social cffccts of thc sprcnd of motor vchiclcs. 1. Transportation, Automotivc 2. Transportation, Automolivc- Social aspccts 1. Barker, Theo 388.3' 4 HE5611

ISBN 978-1-349-08626-9 ISBN 978-1-349-08624-5 (eBook)

DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-08624-5

Contents

Notes on the Editt;Jr and Contributors vii Editor's Preface ix

1 A German Centenary in 1986, a French in 1995 or the Real Beginnings about 1905? Theo Barker

2 The Beginnings of the Automobile in German~ 55 Otto Nilbel

3 The Motor Vehicle and the Revolution in Road Transport: The American Experience 67 John B. Rae

4 The Early Growth of Long-distance Bus Transport in the United States 81 Margaret Walsh

5 Diesel Trucks and Buses: Their Gradual Spread in the United States 97 James M. Laux

6 The Automobile and the City in the American South 115 David R. Goldfield and Blaine A. Brownell

7 Some Economic and Social Effects of Motor Vehicles in France since 1890 130 Patrick Fridenson

8 Why did the Pioneer Fall Behind? Motorisation in Germany Between the Wars 148 Fritz Blaich

9 Motorisation on the New Frontier: The Case of Saskatchewan, Canada, 1906-34 165 G. T. Bloomfield

10 The Internal Combustion Engine and the Revolution in Transport: The Case of Czechoslovakia with some European Comparisons 194 Jaroslav Purs

vi Contents

11 Japan: the Late Starter Who Outpaced All Her Rivals 214 Koichi Shimokawa

12 Motor Transport in a Developing Area: (i) Zaire, 1903-59 236 Epanya Sh. Tshund'olela

13 Motor Transport in a Developing Area: (ii) Soviet Central Asia 256 M. A. Akhunova, B. A. Tulepbaev and J. S. Borisov

14 Death on the Roads: Changing National Responses to Motor Accidents 264 James Foreman-Peck

15 Advances in Road Construction Technology in France 291 Dominique Barjot

Index 313

Notes on the Editor and Contributors

M. A. Akhunova is Professor and Director of Research at the Insti­tute of History, Tashkent, and Corresponding Member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences.

Theo Barker is Professor Emeritus of Economic History in the University of London, still teaching on a part-time basis at the London School of Economics.

Dominique Barjot is Attache de Recherche Agrege, CNRS, Institute of Modern and Contemporary History, Caen.

Fritz Blaich is Professor of Economic History at the University of Regensburg.

Gerald T. Bloomfield is Professor of Geography at the University of Guelph, Canada.

Yu. S. Borisov is Professor and Head of Section in the Institute of History of the Soviet Union at the Academy of Sciences, Moscow.

Blaine A. Brownell is Professor of History and Urban Studies and Dean of Social and Behavioral Sciences, University of Alabama at Birmingham.

James Foreman-Peck is Lecturer in Economics at the University of Newcastle Upon Tyne.

Patrick Fridenson is Directeur d'Etudes at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris.

David R. Goldfield is Robert Lee Bailey Professor of History, Uni­versity of North Carolina at Charlotte.

James M. Laux is Professor of History at the University of Cincin­nati.

vii

viii Notes on the Editor and Contributors

Otto Niibel is Archivist of Daimler-Benz, Stuttgart.

Jaroslav Pur8 is Professor of History at Charles University, Prague, and Director of the Institute of Czechoslovak and World Histovy at the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences.

John B. Rae is Professor Emeritus of the History of Technology at Harvey Mudd College, Claremont, California.

Koichi Shimokawa is Professor of Business Administration at Hosei University, Tokyo, and Director of the Japan Business History Society

Epanya Sh. Tshun'olela is Associate Professor of History at the University of Lubumbashi, Zaire.

B. A. Tulepbaev is Professor and Director of Research at the Institute of History, Moscow, and Member of the Soviet Academy of Sci­ences.

Margaret Walsh is Senior Lecturer in Economic and Social History at the University of Birmingham.

Editor's Preface

Professional historians still love to write about railways. the heyday of which lies so far in the past that only the elderly can remember it. Few interest themselves in the much more recent, rapidly growing and widespread development of motor transport. and those who do. concentrate upon motor vehicle (and almost exclusively motor car) manufacture. Their books are primarily business histories, studies in the spread of mass production and the new problems of management and industrial relations to which this gave rise. Very little indeed has been written in any organised way about the effects of motor vehicles of all sorts when they left the factory and took to the roads. It is as if the railway historians had confined their attention to the building of engines and rolling stock.

This is surprising. for it is not hard to demonstrate. as these pages will attempt to do, that the internal combustion engine in its loco­motive form has had an increasing effect upon people's lives during the past century so that, during the past forty years. certainly in the wealthier parts of the world and probably in developing countries too, it has had a greater influence than railways ever had. Indeed. by the 1980s it is no longer unthinkable to argue that. taking the world as a whole, motorisation has had a greater effect than any other inter­connected series of inventions in the history of mankind. We all appreciate the significance of the wheel. We have still to appreciate the greater significance of the mechanised wheel. running not on a fixed track but, much more freely. flexibly and economically. on the world's vastly improved roads.

Motor vehicles were first developed to replace horse-drawn trans­port over shortdistances as the railways had replaced it over medium and longer journeys. And, even on longer journeys. the railway had not by any means completely replaced the horse. Only in the case of goods traffic between large customers who owned their own sidings did railways provide a door-to-door service. All other loads had to be carried overland at the beginning and/or end of their journey; and all passengers had to travel by road, either on foot or in horse-drawn vehicles, to and from railway stations. Because of railway stimulation of short-distance traffic and also because of population growth. especially in towns, in only the very largest of which did people use

ix

X Editor's Preface

trains to get about, horse-drawn goods and passenger transport by road vastly increased during the Railway Age.

It was this rich prize which the mechanisation of road transport was intended to win. Direct motor competition with the railways for their medium- and long-distance traffic was never originally envisaged. But, as roads were improved (and especially during the past forty years or so with purpose-built motor roads and larger, faster, more powerful and efficient vehicles to run upon them), the new tech­nology gained more and more railway traffic, too. This book aims to show how and when these momentous developments took place in various parts of the world.

We are not, of course, dealing solely with private passenger trans­port, the motor car and the motor cycle, but also with the motor bus and the motor lorry. These heavier vehicles are now between one­fifth and one-sixth as numerous as the former in mature economies and a far higher proportion, often 1:1, in developing countries. They affect the lives of vast numbers of people all over the world who do not possess their own private vehicles, as well as the millions more who do.

It is hard to think of any major technological development which has not had some disadvantage, even if it was that of increasing the social division between those who could afford it and those who could not. The slaughter on the road, and the noise and air pollution associated with motor vehicles are obvious disadvantages; and in so far as private cars discriminate in favour of the 'haves' against the 'have-nots' by, for instance, causing a deterioration in public trans­port, motorisation has been socially divisive. The young and the old, the poor and the handicapped are being discriminated against. So are all those who wish to get about easily on foot or by bus in the centres of towns or suburbs, the streets of which are choked by private cars or narrowed by parking.

These disadvantages, as well as the gains, of motorisation are considered in these chapters and concentrated upon in one of them. Few of those who read this book, however, will fail to appreciate the enormous benefits which motorisation has bestowed. The motor vehicles now running on the world's roads have given increased freedom of movement to vast numbers of people, together with their families and friends. The private carriage is no longer the flaunted symbol of wealth, but the often treasured possession of a multitude of ordinary folk. For the growing number of fortunate, the ability to climb into a car or jump on to a motor bike to visit relatives or

Editor's Preface xi

friends, or to go on some errand quickly and without delay. has given a new dimension to life. Moreover, the private vehicle makes it easier and cheaper to do this as a family or a group. The luggage or the child's push-chair are easily stowed in the car. No time-tables need to be looked up. There are no walks to the station or bus stop, or waits there, perhaps in the wind and the rain.

Or, if there are other goods to be carried, the motor vehicle can also oblige. Shopping habits have been greatly changed. Motors have made possible the supermarket in its most modern form and the hypermarket. They are supplied by motor lorry and customers carry away their purchases by car which can be accommodated in the spacious car parks adjacent., Those women, in particular, who no longer have to carry heavy baskets and bulky parcels, benefit par­ticularly. Life in the countryside, too, has been greatly changed by closer links by car and bus with near-by towns. They were beginning to break down rural isolation even before the coming of radio and electricity.

In the wealthier parts of the world the benefits of motorisation will spread farther down the social scale as economies grow and as these countries realise the need to cater for the remaining 'have-nots'. Buses, for instance, can be adapted to meet modern needs by, providing smaller, as well as larger, vehicles and equipping them with radio (more like taxis) which can bring to those who do not own their own private carriages more of the advantages of those who do. And the vast improvement in the speed, cost and comfort of long-distance coaches running on specially built motorways offer obvious advan­tages to all non-car owners. In less wealthy lands, where the private car is a much rarer sight, motorised public transport is still a necessity for all who can afford to ride; and this number will grow with the inhabitants' real earnings.

All these basic themes are central to the chapters which follow, whether they deal with the spread of diesel engines (which greatly improved and cheapened heavy, long-distance transport), with the effect of motor vehicles on cities in the American South (which deals with traffic congestion in the centre and the relocation of shops) or with the problems of traffic accidents. Such a wide geographical coverage of so many aspects of motorisation inevitably means that we are involved essentially in a ground-clearing exercise. It is the first, not the last, word. Our aim is to indicate the pace of change as the new technology spread and to see to what extent its economic and social results were similar, and to what extent different, in various

xii Editor's Preface

countries depending upon differences in income per head, state activity, geography or other factors. It is written with the intention of arousing interest in a crucial topic which. despite a massive detailed literature, has up to now hardly been approached in the widely sweeping way which we have tried to do. We hope that others will adopt our approach for other countries which we have not covered, or draw attention to general benefits or disadvantages of motorisa­tion which we may have overlooked or exaggerated.

A book on this scale could not have been wri'tten in such a short time by any one person. No doubt this is why it has never been attempted before. My first debt. therefore. is to the International Historical Congress, the meetings of which in Stuttgart in August 1985 gave me the opportunity to assemble a group of specialists in precisely that part of the world where our story began almost exactly a hundred years before. I must thank all the contributors for rallying round so nobly and letting me have their chapters on time.* In doing my best to translate the writing of those whose native tongue is not English into more idiomatic English. I have taken greater liberties with their texts than an editor would normally do. I hope they approve of the results even if they are sometimes rather shorter than the original copy.

Writers on this subject in different countries use the same words to mean different things. Automobile. for instance. is often used to mean more than motor car; we have tried to use the latter in the interests of precision. Most readers of English understand that truck and lorry are synonymous. though the former is more common in America and in those parts of the world that have taken to American English. The word motorisation. another American word. is a most convenient piece of shorthand; but we have set our face firmly against the monstrous transportation. preferring. whenever possible. the more economical and unambiguous transport. Transportation was the punishment meted out upon many British people convicted of crime in the eighteenth century which often soon gave them a chance in life they would not otherwise have enjoyed.

Individual acknowledgements will be found in the notes to the various chapters; but I should like here to thank my secretary. Jenny Law, for help in preparing some of the final typescript and Tess

*The papers on that occasion were summarised and appear in full here for the first time. A full recording of the Stuttgart session is available on three sound tapes from the Audio-Visual Aids Centre, University of Kent, Canter­bury, UK.

Editor's Preface xiii

Truman for typing and circulating the series of newsletters with which I kept in touch with the contributors while the chapters were being prepared. Other personal acknowledgments will be found at the end of Chapter 1.

THEOBARKER

London School of Economics and Political Science