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The South Before Nascar

Jack Neely recalls the days when Southerners were suspicious of the automobile, with an obligatory reference to Southern Agrarian, Andrew Lytle: Lytle and some other Southern thinkers regarded the automobile as the biggest part of a Northern plot to enslave the South to Yankee interests. Lytle opposed using government money to build roads, the new […]

Jack Neely recalls the days when Southerners were suspicious of the automobile, with an obligatory reference to Southern Agrarian, Andrew Lytle:

Lytle and some other Southern thinkers regarded the automobile as the biggest part of a Northern plot to enslave the South to Yankee interests. Lytle opposed using government money to build roads, the new fashion-oriented materialism driven by automobile advertisements, and the routine despotism of the long-term installment loan, a new concept to many Southerners before the introduction of the automobile.

. . .[H]e had a point. “Good roads brought the motorcar and made of every individual an engineer or conductor, requiring a constant, and in some cases daily, need for cash,” he wrote. The Southerner had once been proud of his independence. The automobile, and other petroleum-fueled engines, made the Southerner dependent as a baby. Worse, he was dependent on the North: Northern automobile manufacturers, Northern banking interests, Northern oil companies, Northern insurance companies. The automobile would play the main role in rendering the South the permanent runt of the American litter, suckling on the nation’s hind tit: hence the catchy title.

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