ys brought into court for stealing automobiles
would not have committed some other crime, if automobiles had not been
invented and come into general use, but I feel quite sure that many of
them are victims of the automobile madness alone.

The automobile is one of the latest manias and fashions that
civilization has provided. Almost no one is free from the disease.
Conservative business men must have motor cars; clerks and salaried
people who cannot afford them must get them; mechanics and professional
men who have no need for them, except that others use them, must
contrive to buy them. Automobiles are much more important today than
houses. Men go into debt and struggle for money to buy gasoline so that
they may drive somewhere for the sake of coming back. It has created a
psychology all its own, a psychology of movement, of impatience, of
waste, of futility. Men in Chicago start to drive to Milwaukee without
the slightest reason for going there; they travel the road so fast that
they could get no idea of the scenery even if there were something to
see. They hurry as if going for a doctor. They reach their destination
and then start back home. The specific desire that is satisfied by this
expense and waste is a new one, an emotion of no value in the life
processes and probably of great injury in life development. It is a
craze for movement, for haste, for what seems like change.

The automobile has made its list of criminals, and it is making them
every day. Probably it will continue to make them until the flying
machine is perfected, and then to some extent at least the airplane will
take its place.

The truth is that man is not adapted to the automobile. His reactions
are too simple; his inherent needs are not adjusted to the new life; he
has not been built up with barriers to protect him from this insidious
temptation which is claiming its victims by the hundreds every day.

The boy is perfectly helpless in the presence of this lure. He wants to
do what others do. He is by nature active and venturesome and needs to
keep on the move. The mechanism itself appeals to him. He wants to work
in a garage. He is anxious to be a chauffeur. He cannot resist an
automobile. No such temptation should be placed before a boy. It has
added a great deal to the responsibility of parents and teachers, and so
far they seem not to have been able to meet that responsibility in any
way. Aside from the boys' thefts it has played a great