“On the Automobile”

Monolgue by Senator Ford

Recorded 29 June 1923

Brunswick – 2468-A

SENATOR FORD: Now, for three minutes, I am going to touch lightly on the automobile, which is better than having the automobile touch lightly on me. The human race is divided into two classes: motorists and pedestrians. The hunters and the hunted. Instead of a gun, the motorist equips himself with a gasoline mowing machine and goes forth to make the innocent pedestrian imitate the started fawn leaping from crag to crag, hearing the hunter’s horn. It may become necessary to have game laws to protect foot-ramblers. Should have a closed season on them, the same as on fish. We should have strict enforcement of such laws as: a motorist on the public highway who hits a jaywalker between May first and a traffic policemen shall apologize to the local game warden, and there should also be law compelling autoers to run down people in a more quiet and dignified manner. The average driver scares his victim to death with a forty-horsepower horn before hitting him, and the smaller the car, the louder the horn. Same as politicians. The smaller they are, the louder they blow. You cross the street and hear a blast that sounds like Gabriel’s trumpet, and turn to see a ten-horsepower can and a twenty-mulepower driver. Seems to have been a regular epidemic of husband-shooting lately. Wives have been using their husbands for targets, but there are more men killed by autos than by wives, which proves that it’s safer to get married than to cross the street. Some men are born foolish, and others buy secondhand cars. Did you ever go into one of those palatial secondhand gyp joints, and listen to the salesman spill his line of chatter to a prospective victim? It sounds something like this: Now, Mr. Whosis, I can see that you are an intelligent man and would recognize a good buy when you hear it. Now, sir, here’s a sweet little but. This gondola will run twenty miles by just letting it look at a filling station. It is equipped with non-skid pavements and traffic-law observers, and let me call your attention to the wire wheels. They’re so much cooler in summer. And please note that we have installed an entirely new set of plumbing. No, sir. That radiator is not leaking. This car was built by a millionaire and he wanted that little stream of water trickling down there to create the atmosphere of the tiny rivulet as it ripples down the mountainside to the… Say, just let me start this motor for you. [motor sounds] How’s that? Noisy? No, sir. I’m telling you this millionaire had this motor built as a special feature. It was made to imitate a trap drummer in a jazz band. And so Mr. Whois becomes the sole owner of a portable boiler factory. For some unknown reason, the car runs till he gets home. When he looks into the toolbox, he finds a pair of easy walking shoes . For a week, the car runs great -- in the garage. Well, a friend who knew all about cars came around and bound the cylinders up with adhesive tape and the proud owner took the family for a ride. He got exactly four blocks when a miscellaneous assortment of junk fell out from under the hood. Next day at the office somebody who heard about him buying the secondhand car tried to sell him Niagara Falls.