America in Transition - 1909

This editorial cartoon from 1909 appeared on the front page of the Indianapolis News. Taken out of its historical context it may be a little confusing.
 
Like today, the world was in massive disruption as the industrial age was in full force. People of older generations, who matured from childhood without the advances of machinery powered by engines, were struggling to maintain their position and pride in society.
 
This is relevant to the development of the automobile, certainly. Tractors and other motor-driven equipment were even invading the farm. Farmers who embraced new advances gained a competitive advantage with increases in productivity enabling expansion. Those who did not suffered hardship that many times led to anger and frustration.
 
In the meantime corporations, urban areas, and a new culture or sensibility expanded as well. Together they overwhelmed a simpler, more labor intensive life. The advent of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway five miles west of the downtown sector of the Hoosier capital is a perfect example.
 
The Speedway was a necessary outgrowth of an age when the nascent American auto industry recognized the early pressures of global competition. The vastly superior products of Europe, especially France, Germany, and Italy threatened to brush aside the hardscrabble stateside upstarts.
 
With an inferior roadway infrastructure, the country needed someone to short circuit the process of providing a place to test cars - stock or purpose-built racers. An arguing government at the federal and state level simply wasn't going to move fast enough. The Speedway founders acquired (should we say, from the agrarian perspective, "gobbled up" 320 acres farmland to build a facility of appropriate scale?) the space to build the right kind of facility.
 
The flip side of that story is that the speed plant was symptomatic of a kind of demotion those locked in the ways of the past faced. There was an appeal from less developed states for farmers to bring their talents and contribute to the economies of less industrialized regions.
 
Still, as this sketch suggests, there were Hoosier farmers who said they would stick it out. That probably wasn't a bad choice. Indiana's economy still derives a lot of its juice from those who till the soil and contribute to the breadbasket that not only feeds the country but the world as well. Yeah, food is important.
 
The farmers of the age learned to apply modern technology to their profession and prosper. There is probably a lesson in there for people grappling with the challenges of today's technological disruptions. In coming years we expect to see more disruption, not less, especially with the expansion of artificial intelligence that will change our relationship with just about everything, including the automobile. You know, that contraption first introduced just over 100 years ago.
 
Always alarmists predict a bleak future. Always the alert light a candle. Yes, they fight. They fight for themselves, their rights, their families. They're winners.
 
You know, a study of history can illuminate paths. Those who came before us are not irrelevant, just dead.
 
Look forward, and remember there are lessons in history...you'll find a few on First Super Speedway. We hope to entertain you in the process.