THE AUTOMOBILE IN AMERICA

[Music] The Screen News Digest is brought to you as a public service by O'Neal's, the largest department store in downtown Akran. growing since 1877 with 13 stores in the greater Akran area and communities throughout northeastern Ohio. [Music] [Music] [Applause] The year is 1896. And in a little workshop in Detroit, a neighborhood tinkerer is putting the finishing touches on his homemade version of the gas automobile. Henry Ford, farmer, watch repairman, machinist, has labored for 5 years to build his own horseless carriage. He calls it a quadricycle. And on its test run, the experimental car reaches a speed of 10 mph. Next, Ford introduces a new industrial concept, the assembly line, to mass-produce his car. The idea is to keep everything in motion, to take the work to the man, not the man to the work. Soon, the Ford Motor Company plant is employing 3,000 men on its revolutionary production line. The men on the assembly line turn out the first automobile to be successfully mass-roduced in America. [Music] The Model T, says Henry Ford, is going to be light, simple, and sturdy. And it's going to be priced so that most people can afford it, which means we'll have to make an awful lot of them. [Music] Keeping Ford's promise, a Model T rolls off his assembly line every 93 minutes. In six years, half a million are built and sold. [Music] The rugged little tin lizies are made to order for a people itching to get up and go. [Music] The face and fabric of American life are changing in many places and countless ways. [Music] Motion picture theaters mirror the new look, capturing in news reels the headline people, places, and events of the day. And when the audience settles back for the feature picture, there is the fabled Model T leading the Keystone Cops a dizzy chase. This episode starring Harold Lloyd speaks for itself, just as it did more than half a century ago during the silent days of comedy's golden age. [Music] [Music] As the years pass, hundreds of companies spring up to manufacture cars of varying styles, sizes, and costs. Most fail, but a number do survive. [Music] The demands of expanding production are reflected in the growth of America's steel industry. Car makers are destined one day to buy 20% of all steel manufactured in the United States. [Applause] The number of car owners climbs into the millions as the need for oil, gasoline, and petroleum products skyrockets into the billions of gallons. The automobile and allied industries touch directly and indirectly more and more lives. In good times and bad. Through the 1920s and into the 1930s, America's production of cars is a barometer of the nation's economy. [Applause] By 1939, 25 million Fords have been built and sold. Henry Ford and his son Edel compare the new and the old. Few men and machines have changed the nation's history like Henry Ford and his quadricycle. [Music] 1941, war comes to America. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor triggers the country's transformation from a peace time to a wartime economy. Production of civilian automobiles is stopped. But a new vehicle nicknamed the Jeep rolls off the assembly line for battlefield duty around the world. On the home front, gasoline is in short supply. Rationing is imposed as supplies for military aircraft receive priority. Car pools become a way of life. Rationing is by lettered stamps. And every driver comes to know his ABCs. [Music] At wars end, the automobile industry quickly retools and sets out to meet the demands of a car- hungry country. Major automakers work at peak capacity, planning, building, and opening new factories to meet the backlog of orders from millions of customers. The phenomenal growth of automobile production in post-war America ushers in the construction of a vast network of local, state, and interstate highways that soon crisscross the country coast to coast, border to border. The spread of the parkways, freeways, and throughways begins to draw criticism from conservationists who claim the concrete ribbons are defacing the countryside and destroying the environment. The automobile is causing other problems, too. Increasing production is multiplying the problems of disposing of the hundreds of thousands of cars that are junked each year. While sophisticated machines and equipment have the capability of grinding old cars into small fragments, mountains of abandoned autos continue to rise and spread across the United States. The romance between the American and his motorc car is becoming strained. In large cities and major urban areas, automobile emissions are blamed in part for smog and air pollution. Crisis conditions in certain metropolitan areas. Prop demands from time to time that automobile traffic in big cities be sharply curtailed or banned completely. The federal government also takes action directing car makers to introduce by 1975 new mechanical systems to eliminate pollution from auto exhausts. At the same time, research is carried out on batterypowered electric automobiles. Models of these so-called clean cars have been successfully built, but their battery power limits size and speed. [Music] While the electric car overcomes the problem of pollution caused by the internal combustion engine, its top speed is only 35 mph. And so the automobile industry itself must meet the growing challenges to its future and the future of a million and a half workers directly employed by America's car makers. These employees and hundreds of thousands of others in Allied industries join in 1970 to produce more than 8,400,000 automobiles in the United States. 75 years after Henry Ford successfully tested his quadricycle, there are more than 80 million cars on the road in America. One car for every two and a half persons in the country. [Music] Recent years also have seen a growing tide of foreignmade cars from Europe and Asia. In 1970, a million and a quarter automobiles from overseas were imported and marketed in the United States. [Music] Faced with the increasing inroads of foreignmade compact cars, the major American automakers are introducing or expanding new lines of lowpric cars. In all cars, the industry is caught in a cost price squeeze, attempting to hold down prices while carrying out safety improvements that may add an average of $500 to the cost of each car. [Applause] Modifications are to be made both inside and out. in 1973 and 1974 as the automakers attempt to reduce the 55,000 deaths caused by traffic accidents in 1970. [Music] Despite the problems and setbacks, more than 10 million cars, domestic and foreignade, are expected to roll off assembly lines and out of factories in 1971. [Applause] And American consumers will spend more than $30 billion to buy them. The infusion of automobiles in America will mean that four out of every five families will own at least one car and nearly one out of three will own two or more. The United States is truly a nation on wheels, producing, selling, and driving four times as many cars as her closest competitor. But in 1971, there are continuing signs of changing times. At automobile shows, there still remains sleek cars to suit every taste, including luxurious models priced at $23,800. [Music] But unlike past years, styling is little changed as the automakers seek to stabilize prices by holding down on their annual costs of retooling. [Applause] [Music] Experimental cars at high prices are more for show than sale. It is the foreignade lowpriced cars that continue to compete for the American car buyers dollar. [Music] [Applause] Today is then a time of challenge for the automobile in the United States. The industry is at a crossroads, searching for the path to follow, the way to go. Problems of environment and production must be met and overcome if America is to continue as it has been, a nation on wheels. [Music] This film has been presented to you by O'Neal's, the largest department store in downtown Akran. With 13 department stores at your service in the greater Akran area and other northeastern Ohio communities, [Music]