Automobile Party?

Remember, now, that in 1932, the automobile was the iPhone, the MacBook, the whatever-widget that everyone had to have. And like our Macs, our PCs, even our Commodores and Ataris and Tandys and Texas Instruments, just about everyone was getting in on the business of making cars, just as everyone got into the business of making computers or social networks these days.

Autos were important status symbols in 1932.

Just out of curiosity, I thought I’d research a bit and find out the number of American-made autos one could choose from in 1932. The list is not short. And remember, these are car companies listed here, not brands held under the umbrella of only a few companies, as we have (OK, as we had) today:

Packard
Auburn
Studebaker
Albatross
Alma Steam
New Era
Pierce-Arrow
Peerless
American Austin
American Bantam
Brewster
Continental
Cord
Crosley
Powell
Rauch & Lang
Rockne
Stout Scarab
Cunningham
Detroit Electric
deVaux Continental
Dymaxion
Essex
Stutz
Terraplane
Willys
Deusenberg
Franklin
Graham
Holtom
Jaeger
Littlemac
Marmon
Martin

Remember still these are only the car companies operating in 1932 that are now defunct. Some were bought out by others. The odd one may survive as a brand sold by a completely different car company today. And there were hundreds – really, hundreds – more that did not survive through the 1910s and 1920s to see the light of day in 1932.

Americans were thus overwhelmed by the variety of choice in an automobile. Nevertheless, many chose to buy and defended vociferously their choices.

Sinclair Lewis used the automobile as a central character in many of his novels of the era.

In Main Street, Lewis uses the automobile to represent the new preferred leisure of the middle class, much as computers and the Internet are today:

Her liveliest activity now was organizing outdoor sports in the motor-paralyzed
town.

The automobile and bridge-whist had not only made more evident the social divisions in Gopher Prairie but they had also enfeebled the love of activity. It was so rich-looking to sit and drive--and so easy. Skiing and sliding were "stupid" and "old-fashioned." In fact, the village longed for the elegance of city recreations almost as much as the cities longed for village sports; and Gopher Prairie took as much pride in neglecting coasting as St. Paul--or New York--in going coasting. Carol did inspire a successful skating-party in mid- November. Plover Lake glistened in clear sweeps of gray- green ice, ringing to the skates. On shore the ice-tipped reeds clattered in the wind, and oak twigs with stubborn last leaves hung against a milky sky. Harry Haydock did figure-eights, and Carol was certain that she had found the perfect life. But when snow had ended the skating and she tried to get up a moonlight sliding party, the matrons hesitated to stir away from their radiators and their daily bridge-whist imitations of the city. She had to nag them. They scooted down a long hill on a bob-sled, they upset and got snow down their necks they shrieked that they would do it again immediately--and they did not do it again at all.

In The Job, Lewis again mentions the automobile as a goal attainable by many through application of their skills in efficient work – and lays the groundwork for work that is accomplished not for the sense of accomplishment or fulfillment but for the acquisition of material goods and the maintenance of the lifestyle those goods bear with them:

A vast, competent, largely useless cosmos of offices [he writes, in describing the city]. It spends much energy in causing advertisements of beer and chewing-gum and union suits and pot-cleansers to spread over the whole landscape. It marches out ponderous battalions to sell a brass pin. It evokes shoes that are uncomfortable, hideous, and perishable, and touchingly hopes that all women will aid the cause of good business by wearing them. It turns noble valleys into fields for pickles. It compels men whom it has never seen to toil in distant factories and produce useless wares, which arenever actually brought into the office, but which it nevertheless sells to the heathen in the Solomon Islands in exchange for commodities whose very names it does not know; and in order to perform this miracle of transmutation it keeps stenographers so busy that they change from dewy girls into tight-lipped spinsters before they discover life. The reason for it all, nobody who is actually engaged in it can tell you, except the bosses, who believe that these sacred rites of composing dull letters and solemnly filing them away are observed in order that they may buy the large automobiles in which they do not have time to take the air. Efficiency of production they have learned; efficiency of life they still consider an effeminate hobby.

And finally in Babbitt, Lewis paints the auto as we recognize it today: As a status symbol:

“I don’t mean to say we’re perfect,” {Babbitt says]. We’ve got a lot to do in the way of extending paving of motor boulevards, for, believe me, it’s the fellow with four to ten thousand a year, say, and an automobile and a nice little family in a bungalow on the edge of town, that makes the wheels of progress go round!”

“That’s the type of fellow that’s ruling America to-day; in fact, it’s the ideal type to which the entire world must tend, if there’s to be a decent, well-balanced, Christian, go-ahead future for this little old planet! Once in a while I just naturally sit back and size up this Solid American Citizen, with a whale of a lot of satisfaction.”

Babbitt, ironically, laments at the end of his novel that his son does not aspire to become a Solid American Citizen, but rather longs to become a mechanic to work on automobile engines. The Solid American Citizen, obviously, is meant to drive and own and consume the products of commerce, not be involved in their production or maintenance, unless through supervision. That sounds altogether too familiar. Plus ca change, you know.

The Automobile Party, which we will examine Sunday, epitomizes the era and its fascination with acquiring the newly mass-produced goods the nation has to offer. Laugh at them if you will. Then look around your own home or apartment, and gaze in wonder at the junk you've accumulated. Then laugh at yourself.