In the production of the automobile, America did comparatively little in the fundamentals of invention which are now found in the modern perfected car.

Selden invented the three-cylinder gasoline engine, by which the rapid revolution of the crankshaft of his day was converted into slower but higher powered motion of drive wheels.

White invented a generator for steam cars.

Haynes was responsible for a discovery that caused alloy and specially heat-treated steel to be introduced, and Knight produced a superior motor.

But these were discoveries, inventions or improvements that were supplemental and perfecting, not elemental.

It was chiefly the English, the French and the Germans, with the exception of Evans of Philadelphia, who first conceived the idea of the horseless carriage, and helped it to its final development by a series of successive inventions. The names of Cugnot, Trevithick, James, Pecqueur, Hancock, Gurney, Lenoir, Bollee, Benz, Daimler, Levassor and Serpollet should form the nomenclative setting of commemorative friezes on the walls of the grateful motor clubs of the future, as those of Liszt, Beethoven, Wagner, Gounod, Handel, Massenet, Bach, Mendelssohn, Grieg and Chopin take honored place in the shrines of Music, the “heavenly maid.”

Even in the production of automobiles in any quantity for use—the commercializing of the idea they represent—the United States did not lead at first. This honor belongs to France, as does the original conception by Cugnot of the horseless vehicle.

The first steam cars manufactured in the United States, on any basis entitling their manufacture to the dignity of a business, were made after 1894, and the names of Riker, White and Stanley are the prominent ones in the steam automobile field. Electric carriages were sold as commercial commodities in comparatively small quantities, beginning with 1897, and the first American gasoline car sold in the United States was made and sold by Alexander Winton in 1898.

Beginning prior to 1892, the French were selling automobiles by the hundred, while manufacturers in America were selling them by the dozen. Panhard and Peugeot were selling gasoline cars, and DeDion-Bouton was putting the steam automobile on the world’s market.

But the race is not always to the swiftest. While France started bravely on its commercialization of the automobile, and had in its favor what were then good roads of an old and well settled country to run them over, and perhaps the thriftiest people of any nation to buy them, there were causes existing in the United States destined to make of it the greatest automobile producing country in the world, and its people the largest users of the new invention, while at the same time operating to cause the United States to sell more cars outside its confines, to Europe and elsewhere, than are sold by any other country.

And inasmuch as these underlying causes, while explaining the supremacy of this country to this date in the manufacture and sale of automobiles, also explain the reason for believing that the future of the automobile business will dwarf the proportions it has up to this time reached, they will bear analysis.

In the first place, European manufacturers of automobiles, as well as of other products generally, with the possible exception in a degree, of the Germans, are bound hand and foot, and therefore handicapped, by tradition and convention. They make the automobile, especially the French and English, so solidly, with such fidelity to tradition and with such conscientious care as to detail, elaboration and finish, that the price to the buyer, when it is put beside that of a similar American made product, will not meet competition.

The American has a knack of turning out an article which is mechanically correct, has the wearing qualities, but is simpler in detail, and hence can be sold at a lower cost. Simplicity is the American manufacturer’s keynote.

Back of this is business organization system, standardization of parts used in the automobile, and that high order of constructive and executive talent that gives the American business man the distinctive reputation he enjoys and enables him successfully to compete in price and quality with the rest of the world. There has been a rare combination of inventive and business abilities in American automobile manufacturers.

American mechanical genius has been given great credit, but wherein is it any greater than that of the German, French or English? In one particular—its simplicity. The Europeans are elaborate—the Americans plain and simple.

It is possible that no European manufacturer would have conceived an automobile embodying the essentials of small size, simplicity and speed represented by a Ford car. His tradition and training would have impelled him to elaboration in size and finish. In this, he is, of course, moulded by European needs and tastes which differ, in many respects, from those of the people of this country.

He does not possess the American’s practical vision in successful salesmanship. Ford made his car with an eye to quantity. He was not only an inventor, but a salesman. As he worked on his motor, he worked on the problems of sales—producing a car that would sell to the largest number. The larger the number sold, the smaller the price could be made.

“Large sales and small profits” has been a principle which has made many American fortunes. Note how this same idea of Ford has been followed by Willys in the Overland, Olds in the Reo, the makers of the Maxwell, and half a score of other manufacturers in varying degrees, causing the gamut of prices of the most popular cars to run from $360 to $1,200 each.

This is one reason why the American car could invade England and her dominions beyond the seas, why Ford has factories in the British Isles and Canada, and why our yearly exports of automobiles have increased in the last five years over $100,000,000 in value.

Other reasons that make us an exporting country of automobiles through their low prices are our natural resources of iron, steel, lumber, coal and alloys, enabling us, by their plentifulness and accessibility, to manufacture at cheap cost, thus offsetting the higher price we pay for labor in this country than the European manufacturers pay.

But the biggest factor in the lead which the United States has taken in the production of automobiles, both for export and consumption within her own borders, is the universal method of standardizing in manufacture, adopted by the automobile producers of the nation.

The manufacturers of this country shine in the field of cost production, in the economies of purchase of raw materials, in the method of manufacture, and in marketing their product.