Question

"No one questions the use of the auto for transporting groceries, getting to one’s place of work or to the golf course, or in place of the porch for "cooling off after supper" on a hot summer evening; however much the activities concerned with getting a living may be altered by t the fact that a factory can draw from workmen within a radius of forty-five miles…these things are hardly major issues. But when auto riding tends to replace the traditional call in the evening parlor as a way of approach between the unmarried, "the home is endangered," and all-day Sunday motor trips are a "threat against the church"; it is in the activities concerned with the home and religion that the automobile occasions the greatest emotional conflicts…"

Robert S. and Helen Merrell Lynd, The Automobile and Family Life (1929)

1. What concern(s) did many people have about the increased use of the automobile?
2. What was the automobile challenging?

Answer 1

1. The usage of automobiles, individuals within the early twentieth century were involved that it terminate the values and norms that the Americans had at that point. A number of their considerations were that currently vehicle riding might substitute ancient calls to the sunset parlor among widowed men and girls and so the development of outdated relations and therefore the old-style plan of a family would be vulnerable. Individuals conjointly dreaded that families would substitute their weekly appointment to the religious on Sunday with daytime long visits in cars.

2. Challenges that automobiles were faced are the traditional activities involved with the family house and faith. They were same to supply a good deal of responsive conflict.