FIGURE illustration: Putting the horse in the horseless carriage.

Transcription

1 FIGURE illustration: Putting the horse in the horseless carriage. Source. Life, January 19, 1905, 68. Note. Caption reads A COMPROMISE. By a lover of horses. FIGURE jeepney: Putting the horse in modern Philippine transport. Source. Michael Chua, Michael Agricultural Supply, July Note. Horse chrome encircled.

2 INTRODUCTION Why would a 2005 form of mass transit in the Philippines carry equine symbolism similar to that depicted in a 1905 American cartoon illustration? What links the symbolic expression of a horse from a hundred years ago with a Philippine vehicle of the present? One does not really think of the horse when driving an automobile. Yet there was a time, in many places for many people, when such was the case. This book revisits that moment when this connection was immediate and palpable. At the turn of the century, the idea of a machine with a horselike quality the ability to be self-propelling seemed preposterous. What seems absurd to us today is the idea of the automobile s dependence on the antiquated horse for acceptance and even survival. We, having largely forgotten our past and, with our early-twentieth-century predecessors, looking ahead to an unknown future, share a similar sense of puzzlement: how could the motorcar be even remotely interchangeable with the horse? Today, the horse may appear at special events but is seen rarely in everyday life. The horse may be bred for sports and entertainment polo

3 2 THE EVOLUTION FROM HORSE TO AUTOMOBILE matches, horse racing and betting, rodeos, riding schools but is not commonly used for everyday work and errands. Most people today do not even know how to ride a horse. Just as we today have trouble envisioning the modern world running on muscle power, people a hundred years ago could not envision a world of horseless carriages: what could possibly substitute for a form of transport that comes home on its own? At the turn of the twentieth century, the introduction of the motorcar 1 to public roads frequented by horse-drawn carriages caused great public alarm, not only in rural 2 but also in urban areas. This new contraption a horseless carriage, no less looked deviant and dangerous. 3 The sight caused such public disturbance that one motorcar owner was arrested for driving to the entrance of Central Park. 4 One study explains that people often do not know what to do with a new technological artifact. 5 Despite price reductions and performance improvements, the motorcar remained suspect to the early-twentieth-century mind. Why did people reject for so long, at times passionately, what is now considered a sensible option, a panacea for filthy streets and myriad diseases, and a form of transport that ceased to consume when not in motion? A U.S. Army colonel emphatically declared in 1940, A machine has no life; horses have that is the radical difference. 6 Indeed, years before the arrival of the Ford Model T, many motorcars were already being advertised to be cheaper than horses; yet this economical alternative failed to spur immediate demand. Charles E. Duryea, the automotive pioneer who built the first American car in 1893, observed that people decry rather than ask for 7 innovations. Yet the standard explanation for automotive ubiquity considers only rational behavior: cars replaced horses because they were much more affordable, more efficient, and cleaner. Is it then simply common sense, albeit following on the heels of initial shock and hysteria, that ultimately accounts for motorization? This study examines the conversion of users. To understand the motivating factors in mass adoption, I focus on perceptions and practices associated with horses and motorcars in three different settings during three different periods. All three cases begin with the motorcar in the

4 Introduction 3 periphery: all three end with it achieving ubiquity. This multiple-case design is used for the purpose of theoretical replication. 8 Results in all three cases show that a contrived likeness to its competitor the horse contributed to the motorcar s success. The motorcar absorbed the technical, material, structural, and conceptual resources of the technology it displaced. ORGANIZATION OF THE BOOK In chapter one, I review the dominant literature in technology studies and the history of technology related to automobiling. I identify some gaps in the current use of artifacts, social groups, gender, and price as explanatory devices for technological diffusion. I suggest practices routines used to carry out work and social obligations as a potential unit of analysis to bridge some of these gaps. Chapter two covers the first case of this three-part study. I closely examine the marginal use of the motorcar in the United States during the first decade of the twentieth century and discuss strategies used to transfer practices from muscle to motor power. For primary sources, I use physical artifacts and print media, which include commentaries, editorial cartoons, and advertisements. Advertising of this time arguably serves as a mouthpiece for automotive manufacturers 9 and hence provides evidence of the persuasive measures used to generate demand and respond to consumer concerns. Manufacturers manuals and printed publications are included to show the physical translations of these persuasive measures. Chapter three, the second case study, focuses on how automobiling was achieved in a highly resistant environment the U.S. Cavalry after World War I. Here again the motorcar was peripheral, but unlike in the first case, superficial likeness with the horse was insufficient to effect change in the cavalry world. The demise of the horse tradition constituted a fatal blow to the cavalry s identity and core principles as expressed in the 1914 Cavalry Service Regulations 10 and the 1916 Cavalry Drill Regulations. 11 The Cavalry Journal, an internal military publication, provides evidence

5 4 THE EVOLUTION FROM HORSE TO AUTOMOBILE of the various coping mechanisms employed to keep the horse, which, ironically, led to the conceptualization of its replacement the jeep. Chapter four, the final case study, shows how the persistence of local equine practices permeated the form and functionality of the jeep in the Philippines after World War II. Motorization represented the effort of the Filipino people to practically ingest a technology whose resemblance to its foreign origins became a mere suggestion. Evidence includes historical accounts, the Philippine Commission Report of , 12 physical artifacts such as decorative motifs and symbolic icons, phone interviews conducted in the Ilocano and the Tagalog (Filipino) dialects, and contemporary accounts and reflections of local literary scholars. This study suggests that technological change, particularly that surrounded by controversy, sometimes involves the counterintuitive measure of keeping certain elements, concepts, practices, and forms unchanged. A nascent controversial device may benefit from the goodwill and popularity earned by its predecessor by assuming some of its functionality, physical representation, and work routines.

6 Introduction 5 ENDNOTES 1. According to the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary, 11th edition, the word motorcar, meaning automobile, dates from about For discussions on the anti-car crusade, see Ronald R. Kline, Consumers in the Country: Technology and Social Change in Rural America (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), esp. chapter 2. Also, Ronald R. Kline and Trevor Pinch, Users as Agents of Technological Change: The Social Construction of the Automobile in the Rural United States, Technology and Culture 37, no. 4 (1996): Charles E. Duryea, As It Was in the Beginning, The Automobile, January 7, 1909, R. H. Thurston, The Automobile or Horseless Carriage, Collier s, April 28, 1900, George Basalla, The Evolution of Technology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), Colonel H. S. Stewart, Mechanization and Motorization: The Final Chapter Has Not Been Written, The Cavalry Journal 49, no. 217 (January February 1940): Duryea, As It Was in the Beginning, Robert K. Yin, Case Study Research: Design and Methods (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1994), Pamela Walker Laird, The Car Without a Single Weakness: Early Automobile Advertising, Technology and Culture 37, no. 4 (1996): United States, War Department, Office of the Chief of Staff, Cavalry Service Regulations, United States Army (experimental), 1914 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1914). 11. United States, War Department, Office of the Chief of Staff, Cavalry Drill Regulations, 1916, War Department Document No. 340 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1917). 12. United States, Philippine Commission, , Jacob Gould Schurman, George Dewey, Elwell Stephen Otis, Charles Denby, and Dean C. Worcester, Report of the Philippine Commission to the President, January 31, 1900[ December 20, 1900], 4 vols. (Washington, DC: GPO, 1900, 1901).