American Road

[Music] in the old days before the turn of the century this was the American [Music] Road [Applause] [Music] the old road was not only a road it was a wave slow and often [Music] rough if you lived way out in the country 15 or 20 mil away from the railroad station you had to get up before Dawn to catch the 930 train you harnessed up the reliable horse and for the next two hours The Carriage went creaking down the old familiar road while the countryside moved slowly past if you were leaving the farm for good to go to the city you had mixed feelings on that long ride to the station it's not easy to pull up roots and start a new kind of [Music] life you saw the faces of old friends as you passed their house waving goodbye and you fell sad at leaving them but you saw too how old and tired they looked worn out by hard work locked on the land a woman looked 50 before she was 35 with all she had to do in a way you were glad you were leaving you passed the old schoolhouse where you'd gone as a kid you remember the long miles you'd walked morning after morning to get there that final run to get inside before the bells stopped [Music] clanging or perhaps you passed the doctor's buggy drawn up in front of someone's house and you'd remember the terrible night your mother lay upstairs in the bedroom sick and the long hours of waiting for the doctor to come the roads were bad that night when he finally arrived there was nothing he could do anymore more after that you never saw the doctor's buggy without wondering if he'd gotten there in time you passed the church too but you knew you were not leaving God behind he would be with you in the uncertain days that lay ahead still there were good times to remember as well as bad and by the time you reached the station you wondered if you were making a mistake some people might call you a darn fool to leave a f farm and go running off to the city where it was noisy and dirty full of pickpockets and swindlers and women who painted their [Music] faces but there were things you wanted to do that couldn't get done on the farm if you were interested in machinery for instance or wanted to Tinker with engines that ran on gasoline the country was no place for you you you had to go where other men were doing this kind of thing train was late of course you could have slept another half [Music] hour you stood and looked down the empty tracks waiting Somewhere Out There Beyond the Horizon lay the city where your destiny [Music] waited [Music] [Applause] [Music] the people who lived in the city stayed in the city they walked the hard Pavements till their feet ACH if a person were well healed he took a cab if a nickel was all he could afford he took a street car and got there an hour later the fastest thing in town was the fire [Music] engine in the good old summertime the streets got hot as up vegetables and people wilted under the blazing sun and the kids got hardboiled everybody panted and swed and longed to get away from the clanking Thunder of the elevated trains and the clatter of wagon wheels on [Music] Cobblestone far up town lay the ballpark and if you went for a Long Boat ride down the bay you finally arrived at an amusement park where there were roller [Music] coasters shoot the shoots camels to ride and a real beach where a kid could get to swim in the ocean but it took the better part of a day to get there in backed so you settle for the nearest fire hydrant on your block bicycles were all a rage on Sunday afternoons you could pedal out past the city limits and see real trees and grass and hear a bird [Music] sing that was fun as long as your legs held out you could go wherever you wanted right up to the end of the road that is a few miles out of town the p bathing ended and from then on bicycling was no pleasure a lot of people accepted the end of the road and turned back but the bicycle wheels had a greater Destiny in Detroit a man named Henry Ford who had left the farm and come to the city to Tinker with Machinery was making what he called a quadricycle it looked like a buggy only he' had no shaes for a horse to be harnessed to the horsepower was going to come from a gasoline engine he'd made himself he did everything himself working nights and holding down a daytime job with the Detroit Illuminating [Music] Company it took a long while to make this machine but Henry Ford stuck to it and finally it was ready one momentous night he pushed it out for its first trial [Music] run [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] up and down the dark empty streets ran the little Quadra cycle past the sleeping houses ghostlike and unreal sped the shape of things to to come if anybody had wak up and looked out the window he probably would have thought he was still dreaming that night history was made the street was never the same again it didn't happen overnight the going was rough for those early cars on the American Road we should pause to remember and admire not only The Adventurous men who kept on making automobiles but the Reckless few who had courage enough to drive [Music] them some people thought that the sail wagon had a more promising future than the automobile built like an ice booat on Wheels it could hit over 50 m hour if the wheel stayed on the of course it took a landgo sailor to operate it and on a public road it really stopped [Music] traffic while people were still letting the wind blow them in various directions men like Henry Ford were putting their faith in the gasoline engine he built a big one and put it in a racing car called the n 99 it was a huge heavy monster and had spent most of its time in the shop getting tuned up nobody at the time probably realized it but the 999 had a prophetic look this was no Horseless Carriage it was long and low and Powerful Built For Speed in a crude but unmistakable way it forecast the shape of cars to come on October 25th 192 Barney olfield set a world's record in the 999 he drove it a mile a minute and this phrase ushered in a new [Music] era cars now became a more and more frequent site particularly in cities by 193 there were more than a thousand automobile manufacturers in the United States and in that year the Ford motor company was founded the first payroll didn't take much bookkeeping the first car of the new little company was called the model A it had a 2-cylinder 8 horsepower engine and it could go 30 m an hour it sold for $850 a lot of money in those days and its owners were chiefly in the upper brackets it was smart and fashionably designed with a door in the rear like a pony cart and it cranked from the side a good safety measure designed to prevent the cranker from being knocked flat and run over if the car started [Music] prematurely everybody admired it but only the more daring could be persuaded to ride in any kind of a motorc [Music] car the farmer was a forgotten man during this early period he saw occasional cars go by on the rough roads but these strange mechanical Contraptions seemed out of place in the country country they were for City people not for him he kept on grooming his Old Reliable horse and waited and suddenly one day it appeared it was called the Model T it had a 4-cylinder 20 horsepower engine and a planetary gear that defied the laws of science maybe it didn't look classy but it could take a beating on Rough Country Roads and still get you there it was a farmer's car built by a farmer there was only one thing wrong with it it cost $850 millions of citizens looked at the model te and licked their chops there it was the car of their dreams but they couldn't afford it back in Detroit Henry for wondered how he could bring the price of the Model T down to where everybody could buy it he figured that the more cars he made and sold the cheaper he could sell each one and he went to work on this [Music] idea in those days each car was built from the frame up on stationary wooden horses there was a different crew for each car and the same crew stayed on the car until it was finished that meant duplication of effort and a lot of time [Music] wasted so they tried moving the men from car to car each man had a special job to do and as soon as he finished it he moved on to the next car and did the same thing there that was better but it still took 12 and 1/2 hours to assemble each Model T Henry Ford watched it for a while and he had an inspiration instead of moving the men past the cars why not move the cars past the men so on One Hot August morning they tried it that way a husky young fellow put a rope over his shoulder and Henry Ford called let's [Music] go and at that very moment as the workmen began to fasten the parts onto the slowly moving car the assembly line was born a technique that was to revolutionize mass production all over the world once they found that the idea would work they began to improve it refine it they rolled a chassis down a single line of track pushing it from crew to crew and the more expert they became at this new method the faster the cars came off the assembly line and the price of the model te began to [Music] drop they tried the same idea in all the various parts of the car and created what were called sub assemblies each man on the line became a specialist he did one thing and he did it perfectly and passed the work along to the next man minute by minute production was winning the battle against wasted time and wasted effort parts were fed to the workmen by gravity slide so they wouldn't have to stop and wait for new parts then they put the parts on moving conveyor belts this was a great step forward because now they could regulate the flow of work and keep it moving at a constant rate rate of speed and the conveyor belts grew longer and more complex as they moved the work from place to place in the huge shops they became fantastic masterpieces of planning and Engineering but the battle against wasted time and wasted effort was being [Music] won [Music] the cars began coming off the assembly line at the rate of one every 40 seconds and what Henry Ford had foreseen happened mass production and the assembly line drove the price of the Model T down from $850 to $300 now everybody could have one [Music] what a wonderful feeling it was to own your own car the Sunday afternoon Drive became a national [Music] PassTime [Music] off you went to visit uncle obadia with the car bouncing along like a boat in a choppy sea jolting your teeth out every time it hit a bump [Music] [Applause] mom would keep saying Papa don't drive so [Music] fast and when you suddenly met another car coming the other way on those narrow roads oh boy that was a thrill that stood your hair right up on him [Music] at first just being able to drive a car was enough but pretty soon the novelty wore off and people began to get angry at the bad roads so they started to make the roads better in every state all across the nation men and machines went to [Music] [Applause] [Music] work the rotted mud gave place to smooth ribbon of pavement wide enough for two cars to pass each other and the road became longer they pushed out in every direction and down every road ran the Model T panting and quivering always was eager to go farther and now an interesting thing began to happen people from the cities began riding out into the country and people from the Farms began going to the city and whole sections of the population began to get acquainted with each other for the first time no road maps in those [Music] days if you got lost the kindly natives would give you Direction so complicated you couldn't find your way home with a [Music] compass everything was down the road a piece if you got lost you stayed [Music] lost everywhere you looked you saw the Model T it became a part of the American scene it took the housewife to Market it brought the doctor to his patients in time to save their [Music] lives it saved time and speeded up [Music] business filling stations sprang up by the thousand and a whole new industry in gas and oil was created not only did it save time it gave the average citizen a wonderful new way to spend the time he [Music] saved now for the first time Americans were able to travel inexpensively across their own country and their own cars and see the Grandeur of their inheritance they could visit the great national parks which had been created for the people but which so few people had ever had an opportunity to [Music] see now the whole family could get away from the noise and the Heat of the city people could go camping over a weekend and be back to work Monday morning with Renewed [Music] Energy they could go to the mountains or if they preferred the beach the faithful Tin Lizzy would carry them to the Sea's [Music] Edge there were many new images in in the people's minds now things they had seen along the American Road wonderful things they would never have been able to see at all without the motor [Music] [Applause] car there was a new look in people's faces a look of Discovery and wonderment and pleasure a new world had been opened up for them [Applause] the nation took the Model T to its heart people called it a fliver made jokes about it loved it they said it could go anywhere except in [Music] society [Music] Hollywood comedians had a field day with [Music] it [Music] the Model T was more than a motorc car it was the symbol of an industrial revolution for mass production and the assembly line were now able to bring the price down on all sorts of products put them within everyone's reach mass production also created thousands of new skills new jobs at higher wages and under this powerful stimulus the nation economy expanded enormously what about the man who was chiefly responsible for all this what was he [Music] like let's take a look at the family [Music] album here he is at his home Fair Lane walking with his wife Clara through the [Music] Garden laughing with a friend over a cartoon of himself on the ice covered pond with his grandchildren here he is back on the land tinkering with one of the old steam engines he was always wondering how he could take the burden of work from the back of the farmer and put it onto the machine maybe it was at times like this that the idea of a tractor came to him the tractor was the realization of one of his oldest [Music] dreams here he is in his office having a conference the man whose $5 day startled the industrial world this is a family scene his son edel starting out with some friends on a transcontinental trip getting a big send off a drive like this was quite an adventure in those days he liked to dance country dances a grandchild Henry Ford II showing his grandchild a baby bird with Mrs edel Ford [Music] watching still the farmer teaching his grandchildren Henry II and Benson Ford to love the [Music] soil on anniversaries another state occasions he'd get out the old quadricycle and drive it around Fair Lane with his wife Clara what Memories it must have brought [Music] back sometimes he liked to go camping with some of his old friends the bearded man is John burrow the naturalist on the right is Harvey [Music] Firestone he still knew how to swing an [Music] axe had his own ideas about cooking too that's Edison in the background around vigorous men with vigorous minds and healthy appetites they used to have a saying you can take the boy out of the country but you can't take the country out of the boy whatever he did Henry Ford always kept a certain rustic Simplicity a rugged quality that nothing could alter or [Music] soften burrow had always looked down his beard at the Model T called it a noisy device that frightened the birds but finally even Burrows overcame his [Music] [Applause] prejudices The Man Behind The Legend these are men whose ideas changed our way of life and made it better father and son they walk side by side reviewing the past planning the future [Music] [Applause] together how quickly it all had happened in less than 25 years Henry Ford he personified the American Credo of individualism and freedom of Enterprise he will long be [Music] remembered as the American Road became better the cars that drove along it began to change they became larger heavier lower and longer the highway had become an extension of the city street and people began to demand Boulevard comfort and luxury in their transportation balloon tires and shock absorbers took the roughness out of driving Interiors were the rits some even had a crystal vas to hold a single elegant [Music] flower Henry Ford saw the trend and began making the Lincoln one of the finest and most luxurious cars in the world along side of such Grandeur the old model te began to look more and more like a country cousin [Music] the times had changed and the car that had changed them was no longer needed Henry Ford decided to stop producing it in May 1927 the 15 millionth model tea came out of the plant and the assembly line closed down Forever on the world's most famous car from then on the old fliver began to disappear from the road as old cars were turned in they were taken back to the [Music] plant there they were scrapped their steel was salvaged for use in the new [Music] models [Music] once in a while a car would barl at the mouth of the fness as though in a last effort to save itself the Model T died hard although the Model T began to fade from the American scene the impetus and the New Direction it gave to our way of of Life did not stop there it gathered momentum that carried us through the gay [Music] 20s even the Grim depression of the 30s could not stop the powerful forces that had been set in [Music] motion [Music] the lessons learned from the assembly line and mass production helped us to win a long and terrible [Music] War [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] C [Music] nothing has been able to stop us we have kept on building and today this is how the American Road looks the whole nation has become Swift and mobile flowing along over a great network of Highways more than 3 million miles long and constantly growing the American Road Has Lifted itself high above the muddy ruts of 50 years [Music] ago the road has bridged the gulf between City and Country their ways of life have mingled and both share the fruits of progress equally machines have taken the burden of work from the back of the farmer no longer do the women on the farms grow old before their time and the people of the cities have been able to move out into quiet communities full of sun and fresh air that seem almost like living in the country the old country Schoolhouse has vanished and the energy of the children is no longer wasted in walking miles to get there the worker of today no longer has to live close to the plant that employs him his home is in Pleasant surroundings and he drives to work every car on the American road every new building that Towers against the sky is a sign of our progress towards a better way of life but perhaps the most wonderful thing about the American road is the freedom it gives us you've only to get in your car and start driving to feel it the American Road what magnificent vists open up before us as we travel along it we have come a long way since the quadricycle and the Model T in this short years our whole way of life has changed we have accomplished much but the achievements to come will dwarf own the American Road stretches ahead of us always towards a New Horizon we are all traveling along that road all moving forward towards an even better [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] tomorrow [Music] all