The "Devil Wagon," Class Antagonisms, and a 1902 Editorial in a Xenia, Ohio, Newspaper

A contribution from Ed. Note also the reference to class conflict in this editorial --- 

I love the part where a Baptist minister is quoted as saying that if you kill someone while driving your automobile, you ought to die in the electric chair.  

1902 front page Editorial in the Xenia Evening Journal

PREJUDICE ARISING AGAINST AUTOMOBILES

That there is a widespread prejudice against the automobile is true.  That the automobiles are mainly if not wholly responsible for this prejudice is also true.  The public here in Greene County has come quite generally to look upon the horseless vehicle as a dangerous racing machine only and not as a means of legitimate transportation and travel.  And in this the public is measurably justified by the reckless use to which the owners of these conveyances put them.

The principal purpose to which the automobile has thus far been utilized is the making of speed records. If the racing were confined to private tracks, the public would have no reason to complain.

When, however, the automobile drivers take possession of suburban streets and county roads and in brazen defiance of law and decency recklessly drive their various colored "devils" and "demons" at breakneck speed, utterly regardless of the rights of the legitimate users of the streets and highways, the public has a right to complain.  The Rev. Dr. Lorimer, an eminent Baptist clergyman, puts the case rather strongly:  "The men who run down people in automobiles are generally rich men.  They are likely to be persons of cultivation and are doubtless amiable enough, but when it is a matter of interfering with their amusements the life of a poor man counts for nothing with them.  Every life that is sacrificed ought to be paid for in the electric chair."

Dr. Lorimer's words illustrate something of the intensity of public indignation which the automobilists are bringing upon themselves.  Scarcely a day passes that the news dispatches do not bring reports of fatal and serious accidents directly caused by the speeding of automobiles beyond the limit set by the municipals and townships here in southwestern Ohio.  

The automobilists ought in interests of themselves and their sport to have sense enough check their reckless speed.  If not, the law should be made to deal with them with the utmost severity and promptness.