Category: Automobility

• The "Automobile" as a "Rural Purge"

  This theory claimed that the spread of the automobile was not simply a technological change, but a city-driven campaign against the countryside. In its stronger forms, farmers argued that urban motorists, road lobbies, and machine interests were effectively purging rural life by frightening horses, crushing livestock, damaging roads, and imposing new economic burdens on farming communities. The theory grew out of real rural hostility to early motoring, documented anti-automobile associations, and repeated conflicts between farmers and drivers over roads, safety, and property.