Driving Ambitions: Charles Roswell Henry and the Changing Status of the Early Automobile Consumer

THE MICHIGAN HISTORICAL REVIEW 37:2 (Fall 2011): 79-98©2011 by Central Michigan University. ISSN 0890-1686 All Rights Reserved. Driving Ambitions: Charles Roswell Henry and the Changing Status of the Early Automobile Consumer by Robert Buerglener “Easiest controlled car in existence! Can be run by a youth after one hour‟s coaching. . . . Does its own work infallibly without „tinkering‟ or adjusting.”1 Thus announced a 1905 advertisement for the Winton Model C automobile. Charles Roswell Henry, a prosperous lawyer who lived in Alpena, Michigan, purchased a Winton Model C in April of that year. Yet his experiences becoming a driver were not nearly as trouble free as the ad promised. When he bought a car, Henry acquired one of the most important consumer goods of the era.2 Joining the newly emerging group of drivers permitted Henry to reinforce his role as a prominent local citizen. His automobile allowed him to socialize with people in a novel way, and he could visibly show his financial success. This was true, however, only if he deployed his car successfully. Embarrassing breakdowns, excessive noise, spots on the paint—all these problems bedeviled Henry in his first year of driving. For Henry, the stakes were clearly high when it came to car ownership. Becoming a driver, however, brought Henry unexpected challenges beyond just learning to use expensive and unfamiliar machinery. The rise of the automobile complicates traditional models of consumerism by Aspects of this work have been presented at several conferences, and I greatly appreciate feedback from everyone on earlier versions. For this article, I would like to thank David Macleod and Jennifer R. Green, editors of The Michigan Historical Review while this article was in preparation, and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions. I also would like to thank Chris Stacey and Jeanne Whitney for useful insights on various drafts of this article, Robin Burke for a valuable discussion on the subject of early adopters, and especially Paul B. Jaskot for reading and discussing several drafts. 1 Winton Motor Carriage Company advertisement, “Winton Model C Price $1800,” Chicago Daily Tribune, February 6, 1905, 4. 2 Clay McShane, Down the Asphalt Path: The Automobile and the American City (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 125-48. 80 The Michigan Historical Review The Winton 24-horse power side entrance Tonneau with 4-cylinder vertical engine (Source: “Typical American Touring Cars for 1905,” Scientific American, January 28,1905, 58.) Early Automobile Consumers 81 showing the contingent nature of early driver identity.3 Automobiles often involved new national markets based on cash and impersonal contracts, not local importance or personal ties. Buyers gained in some ways, but lost in others. Alpena resident Henry offers a case in point: by becoming a motorist, his role as a consumer subtly shifted. Although owning a car bestowed a higher social standing on Henry in some respects, ironically enough, more than for any of the other things he bought, he lost a measure of the power he had accrued over time in local, face-to-face transactions. Henry had already joined national markets to some extent, including ordering items by mail from distant merchants.4 In contrast to his new Winton, however, these less complex purchases did not involve problems like the ones Henry encountered in trying to keep his new car running. Through the use of his car—a mass-produced yet culturally significant commodity—Henry engaged in direct negotiations about value, meaning, and his own role in society. In the process, he experienced some of the contradictions and restrictions inherent in the creation of the social category of the automobile driver in the early decades of the twentieth century in the United States. Along with other drivers, Henry faced many frustrations while learning to use his new car, including mechanical problems, and others that were tangible and visible. On a more abstract level, Henry had to navigate the experience of joining national markets in the early twentieth century. The issues that he encountered and his responses to them illustrate the ways individuals managed much larger transformations in the economy and culture of the United States as the country moved from a producer-centered economy to one...