The other day I found myself in a Ford car, like that in which I
remember riding over Palestine, and in which, (I suppose)
Mr. Ford would enjoy riding over Palestinians. Anyhow, it reminded
me of Mr. Ford, and that reminded me of Mr. Penty and his views
upon equality and mechanical civilization. The Ford car (if I
may venture on one of those new ideas urged upon us in newspapers)
is a typical product of the age. The best thing about it is the thing
for which it is despised; that it is small. The worst thing about
it is the thing for which it is praised; that it is standardized.
Its smallness is, of course, the subject of endless American jokes,
about a man catching a Ford like a fly or possibly a flea.
But nobody seems to notice how this popularization of motoring
(however wrong in motive or in method) really is a complete contradiction
to the fatalistic talk about inevitable combination and concentration.
The railway is fading before our eyes–birds nesting, as it were,
in the railway signals, and wolves howling, so to speak,
in the waiting-room. And the railway really was a communal and
concentrated mode of travel like that in a Utopia of the Socialists.
The free and solitary traveller is returning before our very eyes;
not always (it is true) equipped with scrip or scallop, but having
recovered to some extent the freedom of the King’s highway
in the manner of Merry England. Nor is this the only ancient
thing such travel has revived. While Mugby Junction neglected
its refreshment-rooms, Hugby-in-the-Hole has revived its inns.
To that limited extent the Ford motor is already a reversion
to the free man. If he has not three acres and a cow, he has
the very inadequate substitute of three hundred miles and a car.
-G.K. Chesterton, The Outline of Sanity.Â
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