Speaker's Corner, 1910

[billvon 3,131]

If Speaker's Corner had existed back in 1910:

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Naptha Heads

I put pen to paper today to lament the latest lunacy arising from the liberal progressive elements of our society - the automobile.  Everyone has seen these infernal contraptions by now, driving around cities and making life for ordinary people impossible.

They have been touted as the solution to all our woes over disposal of manure, disease and noise in cities.  But proponents of these demonic machines are either quite literally insane, or they have not thought it through.

For example, take the fuel the dangerous things need.  They can run on peanut oil, but verily we would need the entire country planted with peanuts to ensure a sufficient supply for them.  They can also run on a naptha-like fraction of refined oil, but there are only 22 refineries in the US right now.  Consider going from a family of four needing ten gallons of lamp oil a year to needing thousands of gallons to fuel their foul-smelling machine!  We would need thousands and thousands of refineries and oil wells, an impossible proposition for centuries to come.

Indeed the naptha comes with its own challenges.  A man smelling naptha regularly becomes dizzy and sick, more like a publican in his cups than a useful member of society.  Can the country live with these naptha-heads in all aspects of society, pushing their literally sickening fuel on the streets of America?

And naptha heads do not consider how much road will be needed.  Unlike horses capable of surmounting any rude trail or path, automobiles need paved roads, of a much higher quality than we see today.  By one estimate, to accommodate automobiles we will need FOUR MILLION MILES of these roads in the next 100 years to deal with the traffic caused by these dangerous vehicles!  That means that the US would have to build one hundred miles a DAY of roads, a ludicrous number.  The most ardent road builders in the country, combined, can barely build ten miles of horse-navigable road a day.  The naptha-heads are too dizzy from their own fuels to think clearly.

Then of course there are safety issues.  Old Dobbin will never trample a child if he can help it; a good horse will keep the populace safe and will get their riders home safely.  With an automobile a second's inattention could lead the machine to crush a school full of children, or crash their driver at breakneck speeds into a stone wall.  A horse will get anyone home safely, from the most timid woman to a man in his cups.  Not so for an automobile, that must be managed constantly with an expert man's hand so as not to kill dozens.  Can our society really accept dead children as a welcome price for this "progress?"

And this does not count the risks that automobiles pose to our current reliable transportation.  Backfires from cars have spooked horses who have then spilled their riders, and sent entire teams running from the satanic noise these things produce.  Who will compensate these riders and drivers for their losses?  And of course, unlike horses, these cars with their tanks full of oil or naptha can explode at any moment, raining fire and destruction on the heart of any of our fair cities.

For decades now the US has prospered from reliable canal, rail and horse-drawn transportation.  It would be insanity itself to switch from those to dangerous and unproven naptha-fueled contraptions that will kill thousands, and for which no infrastructure exists.  Perhaps in 100 years we will have solutions to all the intractable problems that automobiles cause, and have the infrastructure to support them.  Until that time, encouraging their use is pure insanity borne of naptha-addled minds.