A Motorized State
Do you own a motor car? Perhaps not, but you will before many months. Everybody has a car or is planning to get one. At the rate we are buying them today there will be a motor car for every family in the state in three more years! Does it sound impossible? Perhaps so, but listen.
In 1915 North Carolina had one motor car for every 140 inhabitants. In that year there were 10 counites that had a grand total of 18 motor cars, and three counties had none. In 1919 the state had one motor car for every 23 inhabitants. In 1922 she had one motor car for every 17.2 inhabitants. On January 20, 1923, there was a motor car for every 14 inhabitants in the state, and on April 13 we had a motor car for every 13 inhabitants. The number of inhabitants per motor car is being reduced by three each year, so that in 1924 there will be one car for every 10 inhabitants, in 1925 there will be one car for every seven habitants, and in 1926, at our present rate of purchase, there will be a motor car for every family, white and black, town and country, in North Carolina. You may not own a car in 1926, but your neighbor will have two or maybe three or four. In many families today each member has his or her private car.
Gaining Momentum
We are buying automobiles in this and every other state faster than ever before. In 1915 North Carolina had a grand total of 16,410 motor cars, or one for every 140 inhabitants. Many wise ones agreed that we were on our way to bankruptcy with $8 million invested in motor cars! In 1919 we had 109,000 motor cars for one for every 23 inhabitants, representing an investment of nearly $90 million. In March 1922 we had 150,312 automobiles, or one for every 17.2 inhabitants, representing an investment of $120 million. On April 13, 1923, we had 204,500 motor cars, or one for every 13 inhabitants in the state, representing an investment, at $800 per car, of $163,000,000; and we are not broke yet. Inf act we are gaining momentum.
On January 20 we had 187,880 cars. On April 13 we had 204,500, a gain of 16,620 in less than three winter months. We have bought more cars in 11 weeks than the state possessed in 1915. During the last year, from March 1922 to April 1923, we purchased 54,188 motor cars, or at a rate of 4,500 automobiles a month. At the present rate of purchase there will be around 260,000 motor cars in North Carolina by the Christmas holidays. They are being bought at a rate of 200 a day. Where They Are
Where do the people live who own all these? Mainly in the central part of the state, from Edgecombe to Catawba country, and not in the mountain nor tidewater areas. There is not a single county in either of these vast areas in which there are as few as 12 people per motor car, and only seven of the 57 counties in these two areas are above the state average of one motor car for every 14 inhabitants. The leading counties are located mainly in the great industrial area lying like a reap book from Edgecombe, through Wake, Guilford, Iredell, Catawba and Gaston, along the Southern Railway.
Guilford leads North Carolina in the total number of motor cars with 10,777, and in people per motor car with one car for every 7.9 inhabitants. Guilford will soon have as many automobiles as the entire state possessed eight years ago. There are enough motor cars in Guilford to take the entire population of the county on a joy ride, by crowding in just a bit. By the end of the year there will be room for all to ride comfortably, for Guilford will buy more than 2,500 cars this year. She bought 2,263 last year.
Autos and Roads
Our rapid growth in motor cars is due very largely to our great road construction program. The counties which lead in motor cars are the counties with a large mileage of hard-surfaced and other types of improved roads. The lack of autos in the mountain and eastern counties is due very largely to poor highways. Now that highways are being built in these sparsely settled counties the people are following the example of central counties and are buying cars at an unprecedented rate. Many of these counties purchased more cars last year than they possessed in March 1922. They have a long way to go to catch up with the counties which lead today, but give them good roads, and if good roads come can autos be far behind? –S.H.H., Jr.
From the University of North Carolina News Letter, May 16, 1923. Probably S.H. Hobbs Jr. wrote this article.
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