Automobile industry

“ But since the beginning of this century, when the automobile industry began growing, many of our people have, among many other things, built the great automobile industry into what it is, and made money. Not only this, but they will build it still greater, and make still more money.
Before we get through with this little analysis we will see that the automobile industry has not been more than half built thus far, and that the really big profits in it are yet to come, because so far much of the profits have been used in building the industry. ”

“ There will come a time when the automobile industry will reach its height in production, but that time has not yet arrived, nor is it within calculable distance.
Statisticians show us that there are over 5,000,000 rich people in this country. Many of these have, and more of them will want, each several cars, each of a different type and for a different purpose. ”

“ The automobile industry illustrates graphically that when an enterprise develops to the point where it is well grounded and has reached a period of age and steady earning capacity, it is not new investors who may come in and gather the richest plums, but the old ones, those who helped to give it its start, who stood by it when the future was obscure, and the ultimate outcome not certain. ”

“ There can be no question that the automobile industry had, in the era in which fate decreed it should make its debut, favorable conditions. Not only did this era happen to be the era of a better understanding of the science and value of advertising, but also the era in which a better understanding has been gained of the principle and value of co-operation. ”

“ Although challenged in recent decades by strong foreign competition, the American automobile industry has made a dramatic comeback, improving quality and variety as it adjusts to the changing demands of the marketplace. ”

“ A comprehensive survey of the automobile industry will include the industries that the automobile has created, as manufacturing tires and accessories, and not to forget the enlarged market for gasoline and oil. ”

“ The making and marketing of automobiles that would run had but fairly begun when their popularity became so manifest that even an average person could see that the automobile industry was bound to become great and profitable. ”

“ A satisfied customer, the best advertisement, finds expression in the loyal recommendation an owner gives his own make of car; enthusiasm of maker, of salesman, of owner—it runs along the line, and if advertising is the gasoline which makes the car go, enthusiasm is the oil which keeps the bearings of the industry lubricated.
The year 1898 saw the first real attempts of manufacturers in the United States, either of gasoline, electric or steam cars, to make them in any quantity. ”

“ This would indicate that, while the population is gaining slowly and consistently, the production of automobiles has taken a decided jump, and a natural inference is that, even with so remarkable an industry as the motor group, it is beginning to prove food for speculation as to whether or not manufacturers, at the present increasing ratio of production and distribution, will bring a more or less complete saturation of the public, able to buy and support pleasure automobiles. ”

“ But for the manufacturers’ quick recognition that the future of the automobile did not rest with the rich, that to be a great money-making industry, they must make automobiles for the mass and not for the class, the business would probably today be no further advanced than it was fifteen years ago. ”

“ Thence on, the automobile industry had a clear course, if not in all cases easy sailing, and it has traversed it on a straight line, with a current of popular demand running strong in the direction it has been headed. ”

“ The keenest financial and commercial experts of the United States have learned to keep the motor car industry constantly under surveillance—not that they mistrust the manufacturers, but that they have found the industrial situation is so firmly linked to the dollars and cents program of the country’s economy that nothing may successfully act to deprecate the importance of the auto industry. ”

“ When the full effect of the work of good roads advocates is felt in this country, and regular appropriations are to be available in a regularly scheduled manner in most of the states, the biggest thing the automobile industry ever had to help it will have taken up its task in earnest. ”

“ The extent to which economic methods of purchase of raw materials—getting the price down—economic standardization of manufacture, inventing short cuts as it were—affects production cost, is shown in the fact that the automobile industry ranks almost at the top in the manufactures of the United States in the per cent of value added by manufacture to the cost of material. ”

“ To the thinker, one of the most interesting features of the automobile industry is this example it has given to the world of efficiency and co-operation. We are not surprised at efficiency in the steel business or the oil business, because they are industries conducted practically by one man power ”

“ This is a fundamental principle in the science of investment.
When the saturation point is reached manufacturing automobiles will settle into an industry153 to supply a daily necessity. There will be keener competition, the price of cars will be lowered, and the profit on each will be correspondingly less. The industry will be similar to those of making hats, plows and shoes. It will carry a substantial profit, but not a spectacular one as now and for many years to come. ”

“ He is best known as an inventor in connection with the automobile industry. Among his inventions are a shaft drive and a beveled gear drive which are now universally used. He originated the idea of placing the operating lever on the steering post and made the first moderate priced automobile in France. He is now the engineer and manager of one of the biggest factories in the world. ”

“ The seventeen years in which the industry made its record, saw the rise and the fall of the steamer type of car, the wresting of an Old Man108 of the Sea, in the form of a discouraging patent holder from the shoulders of the manufacturers, the electric car largely depopularized and the gasoline car established in wellnigh universal favor. ”

“ The Automobile.—He does not, in progressive countries, depend on the muscle of the man, or on the sinews of animals. These are too weak and too slow for his needs. Look at the changes brought about by the automobile industry within the past ten years. What will the next century bring forth? ”

“ Moreover, the automobile illustrates more completely than any other industry the technical qualities that so largely explain our industrial progress. Above all, American manufacturing has developed three characteristics. These are quantity production, standardization, and the use of labor-saving machinery. It is because Ford and other manufacturers adapted these principles to making the automobile that the American motor industry has reached such gigantic proportions. ”

“ Many of our major industries, such as steel, glass, rubber, and textiles, rely on the auto industry to buy a significant percentage of their output. It is estimated that at least one in five jobs in the United States depends, directly or indirectly, on the automobile industry. ”

“ Until we reach that point the automobile industry will be in the formative period, in the creative state. It will be growing larger and larger, and will be earning more and more from152 year to year. But some of the earnings will have to be kept in the business to acquire additional equipment and as a greater working capital. But earnings used in this way will become additional assets back of automobile securities to enhance their values—to create accretive values. ”

“ Then again a man may have two or three pleasure cars, but in his business he may have use for two or three hundred commercial cars.
The business world is just beginning to realize the value of the commercial car. Not only does it cost less by the ton or trip to haul in a motor car than with horses, but more can be accomplished in the same time. The teamster may require six hours to make a trip that the motor car driver can make in less than an hour. Business men, great and small, will soon learn this, and the commercial car industry will grow accordingly. ”

“ This industry is, therefore, a fertile field for scientific investment. Many companies that are quite well established need more capital to enlarge their activities, and there are comparatively new companies, and there will be more, having very good propositions in which the prudent investor can find excellent openings for putting a little money at work under advantageous conditions.
Dealers Put Up Their Own Money.
In speaking of the early financiering of the automobile industry, it would be unjust not to144 mention the aid that automobile dealers gave it. ”

“ No industry in our times has shown such phenomenal growth and in no country has its development been so marked or reached such proportions as in our own.
In the earliest stage of the industry, the automobile was accepted as a fad, and it has been stated that the American people took hold of the fad as an intoxicant, paying as high as from $6,000 to $12,000 for a car, and reveled in all the natural resultant vices of extravagance, snobbishness, excess and carelessness. ”

“ Co-operation contributed to the general adoption by the motor industry of the automatic machining of parts. What that meant in economic production was the saving of millions in cost of construction, which in turn got the automobile down to the level of the common people’s price. ”

“ The abuses which were co-existent with one of the eras of the automobile’s development caused the industry to be regarded by a class of the people as a luxurious outlaw and a menace to the well-being of the country. ”

“ Names of automobile manufacturers who are prominent today were familiar names in the earlier stages of the industry, and more of the original automobile makers have survived than have fallen by the wayside.
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Removing Obstacles to Automobile Production.
One objection the old philosopher has to the automobile is an objection that is strengthened by the fact that he does not own one. It is that the automobile contributes toward making the age one in which a really short time appears to be and is generally regarded as a long time. It destroys proportions as it annihilates space. ”

“ The medium priced car of today stands as the best exemplification of the approval of the Society of Automobile Engineers. This is an organization that has done so much for the manufacturer that most of the makers of cars are members. They point to the self-starter and the electric lighted car as the triumph of the Society of Automobile Engineers. And certainly from the original starter and the45 early lighting effects, enormous strides have been made in the industry. Fully equipped cars predominate now, where only a few years ago even tops were not provided with the car as sold on the floor. ”

“ The 250 pages tell a concise story of the mechanical and commercial evolution of the automobile, its popularity and its democratization by Henry Ford. What will particularly interest makers and dealers is the analysis of the industry from a financial and investment standpoint, contributed by the Business Bourse International, Inc. ”

“ The volume of business is so large, and the interests concerned so wide, that the manufacturers have their own organization, called the Motor and Accessory Manufacturers. It includes one hundred and eighty makers, whose capitalization is three hundred millions, and whose investment is more than half a billion dollars.
There still remain to be discussed two phases of the automobile which have tremendous significance for the future of the industry—its commercial adaptability and its relation with the farmer and the farm. ”

“ The automobile, first looked upon as a freak, then “a rich man’s plaything, [482] ” has in a few years come to be recognized as a necessity, and literally millions of people are employed in its production and dependent on the industry for support. ”

“ Seventeen years is not long for a commercial industry to take the place which the automobile business now occupies in a country as great as this. It is a short time in which to build up a business representing the figures of two billion on the mark of the American dollar. ”

“ Busy are the cities where automobile manufacturing forms an important industry, and busy they are likely to continue for years to come, for as a commercial industry the business of making and selling automobiles has not yet even approached high water mark, in the opinion of those best qualified to judge. ”

“ For automobile enterprises that took the wrong road and got mired in the mud of mechanical and management difficulties and financial complications were, most of them, lifted out of the slough by men who knew the right road and were better drivers. Had the automobile developed mechanically to near-perfection a score of years before it did, not only would the people as a mass not have been ready for it, but it is doubtful if business at that period had developed to the point of efficiency where it could recognize the possibilities latent in the motor car as a money-making machine. ”

“ And in the early days of the automobile’s struggles for recognition as a promising investment, no banker or other moneyed man could be brought to believe that it held out any reasonable hopes of great gain. No one could foresee, not even the inventors of the automobile, that in less than two decades the business done through its comparative perfection would rank fourth in order of the industries of the United States. ”