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Over the hills and far away like birds we skim a-long-

The hum of the gear is music to hear and life is a joyous song.

You do not need a million-to like a Croesus feel

One owns the whole creation with an au-to-mo-bil-lie-beel.

 

To lead up to the celebration of the university's centennial in October 1998, Northeastern University Alumni Magazine will publish excerpts from a forthcoming book of commemorative essays in each issue over the coming year.

 

By Joan Krizack

Commissioned by Frank Palmer Speare, and copyrighted by him in 1905, "The Auto-mo-billie-beel: A Song of the Motor Car" was a unique advertising gimmick for an innovative educational program. The spirited song, with words and music composed by Clifford Berkeley, celebrates the democratic pleasures of motoring through the countryside, "where the sparkling air, like nectar rare, sweeps cobwebs from the mind." As carefree gentry speed by, however, and we are left with Willie Muttonhead and his girl, the ditty turns cautionary. Poor Willie hadn't learned how to fix his car, and so, in a driving rain as they slog through mud, his ladylove throws him over. If only he'd known, Willie could have avoided his fate by signing up for classes at the Automobile School, inaugurated in 1903 (the same year Ford Motor Company was established) under the auspices of the Evening Institute of the Boston Young Men's Christian Association.

Educational director of the Boston Y and in 1917 named first president of its spin-off, Northeastern University, Speare had remarkable foresight. Although historian John B. Rae tells us that the automobile age was launched in the United States in the fall of 1893, "when a motor carriage . . . chugged noisily along the streets of Springfield, Massachusetts," the era was not under full swing until 1908. That year Ford began mass-producing his Model T, and General Motors entered the market as a competitor.

Perhaps in 1903 Speare was more anticipating than, as he declared in that year's "Catalog for the Evening Institute," meeting "the great demand for competent draughtsmen and operators of steam, electric and gasolene carriages" with his new educational venture, but he well understood how quickly and broadly his market would expand. By 1923, when it appears that a new impression of "Auto-mo-billie-beel" was released, its back page outlined a rationale for attending Northeastern Automotive School (as it was renamed circa 1919).

"Do you know," the advertisement asked, that:

1. In 1899 there were only 3700 Automobiles in America.

2. In 1922 there were 12,000,000 Automobiles in America.

3. There are nearly 2,000,000 manufactured

each year at a cost of approximately $2,000,000,000.00.

4. These 12,000,000 cars burn 4,516,000 gallons of gasolene and wear out 27,000,000 tires each year.

"To take care of all this business," the advertisement concluded, "there are only 13,452 dealers, 43,582 garages, 57,397 repair shops, 4,248 battery stations."

Surely the statistics spoke for themselves: abundant opportunities awaited the enterprising young man once he availed himself of an education at "the oldest automobile school in America . . . backed by 20 years of successful experience and over 20,000 graduates." The boast could have been extended: by 1921 the Boston experience had spawned about seventy-five additional YMCA-affiliated auto schools throughout the country.

The car that had sputtered through Springfield in 1893 was the creation of two brothers, Charles E. and J. Frank Duryea. In the Boston area, the Duryeas encountered competition in 1896 from George E. Whitney and in 1898 from the Stanley twins, Francis and Freelan, who manufactured the Stanley Steamer, one of which was purchased by the Boston Police Department in 1902. Boston was also home of the Glidden reliability tours, held annually from 1905 through 1913 and sponsored by Boston millionaire Charles J. Glidden to promote the private use of automobiles. In 1900, the commonwealth's Automobile Club was chartered in Boston, and on New Year's Day 1902, it opened the nation's first automobile association clubhouse, on Boylston Street.

The first lectures for the nation's first Automobile School also took place on Boylston Street, at Association Hall, the YMCA building at number 458. In a 1926 report to the Y's board of directors, Speare revealed just how premature the school's initial efforts were. The lecturer appeared before his pupils "in evening clothes and without a particle of apparatus. He did, however, show lantern slides which were interesting and he presented the technique of the electric, steam and gasoline automobile and at that time it was sort of [a] toss up as to which would be the coming power."

Even in its first year, however, the school attracted 300 students to its course in automobile engineering. From thence it grew rapidly. According to the "Report of the Educational Committee for the Month of November, 1910," the Automobile School enrolled so many students that the lecture room partitions had to be torn out to make room for them.

 

Classes were taught by appointment during the day and in the evening, and over the first few years the curriculum was constantly revised to accommodate technical shifts and emerging consumer needs. In 1903 the program was divided into three sections: a lecture series, a shop course, and a drafting course.

In its second year, the school's offerings were "strengthened and broadened" to include driving lessons, and drafting was replaced with automobile engineering. By the third year, the curriculum was expanded to address "a great demand for experience in making repairs."

Automobile engineering was "a special course" directed toward "foremen, superintendents and leading draughtsmen" who had demonstrated a prior understanding of mechanical engineering. Handed a set of specifications, they worked in teams of three to design their own automobiles.

Although it is unlikely that Willie Muttonhead knew anything about mechanical engineering, he would certainly have saved embarrassment-and kept his girl-if he'd enrolled in the Automobile School's repair course. In a flash he would have been able to disassemble, repair, and reassemble his engine, whether steam- or gasoline-powered. Depending on when he studied and what he needed to know, he would have worked on a Stanley or a 10-horsepower White Steam Car, or he might have tinkered with the gasoline-powered Runabout and 16-horsepower, 2-cylinder Peerless. By 1907 he could have taken tools to an even more impressive array of vehicles, including 3 White touring cars; a 2-cylinder Rambler touring car; a 4-cylinder, 40-horsepower Columbia touring car; a 4-cylinder Autocar; and a 2,500-pound commercial truck.

While lecture and shop courses provided a general knowledge of the automobile, the road course helped drivers avoid accidents. The intent was to improve on the European method-more like an arcade show-in which the neophyte driver was expected to swerve around dummies and dodge barrels rolled across his path.

Northeastern's road course, intended to fulfill the Massachusetts Highway Commission's requirement for 100 hours of driving, began in "the beautiful parkways and country roads near the city" and concluded on some of the busiest streets within it. "The last lesson takes the student down Tremont Street to Scollay Square, up Washington Street, around Dover Street and back to the garage [at 541 Tremont Street]."

By 1908 the Automobile School had reduced its offerings to three core courses: lecture, shop, and road. Together they provided an overview of the automobile, hands-on training in upkeep and repair, and driving experience. The plan, with a few experimental forays, would remain relatively intact until World War I.

Tuition payments must have danced like sugar plums in the mind of Frank Palmer Speare when he thought up the Automobile School. Rarely is an educational administrator presented with such a diverse and wide-ranging clientele as he envisioned for his new venture. Anyone who had any expectation whatsoever of coming anywhere near a car could benefit from the training Northeastern offered. Each and every individual enrolled would surely find that the $30 for the combined lecture and shop courses or the $23 for the road course (both fees including a $5 educational membership in the Y) was a small price to pay for a future on wheels.

The 1914­15 bulletin stressed how much value the student was receiving for his modest expenditure. "There is no occupation in which a small investment is capable of yielding so great a return. To the owner or prospective purchaser it means the saving of hundreds of dollars in repairs and upkeep. To the chauffeur it means a well-

paying and responsible position at wages much in excess of those paid in most lines of work. To the truck driver it means bright prospects in a new and growing industry with unlimited opportunities. To the repair man and garage keeper it means admission to a broad field of activity and a well-paid employment."

In appealing to both those who owned and those who drove or serviced cars, the Automobile School drew its clientele from both the upper and the working classes. Perhaps more surprising for a program originating in a polytechnic school, though, is that from the Automobile School's first days, certain courses were advertised as being "open to ladies."

In those early years, however, it is not likely that Willie Muttonhead's girlfriend would have enrolled in classes; instead, female students were generally interested in "studying the mechanism of their own cars." By 1907, the school boasted that "many of the most accomplished lady automobilists in New England are graduates of this school. We number among our patrons members of the leading families of the Commonwealth." And in 1917 the Cauldron declared the Automobile School "the only School of its kind in this city fitted for the instruction of ladies."

During the 1916­17 academic year, enrollment in the Automobile School increased significantly, from 743 students in the previous year to 1,025. The explosion was due in large measure to an influx of 380 women from the Young Women's Christian Association who were preparing for service in World War I. Recognizing its obligations to the national effort, the Automobile School expanded its offerings "to train both men and women for war service." Future specialists learned to master the complexities of "ignition, motors, rear axle repairs and field and machine shop practice, [and] acetylene welding."

While a number of the courses developed in the war years survived into the next decade, women's interest in them did not. As men returned home and recaptured their hold on the trade, most women wiped the grime from their hands and retreated to the passenger's seat. Some, though, still preferred the driver's seat. In 1923, 131 determined women enrolled in the Automotive School. Although the 1922­23 "Automotive School Catalog" displays a photograph in which a woman is examining the intricacies of a carburetor among a group of male colleagues, in fact only eight of the 131 women at the school that year were taking courses in auto repair; the rest were devoting their energies to the the difficulties of the road course.

Before winding down, the Automobile School heated up. By 1921 the three basic courses-lecture, shop, and road-had been doubled to six: an owner's course, an operator's, road skills, repair, welding, and a course on auto painting and finishing. Within two years, courses in ignition, battery, and auto upholstery joined the list.

As offerings multiplied, though, enrollments shrank. The 1,098 students attending the Automobile School in 1923­24 dropped to 527 in 1924­25. By 1926, the school served only 270 students, fewer than the number who had attended in its first year. On June 30 of that year, Northeastern Automotive School closed its doors. Like the Model T Ford that would be discontinued the next year, the school had outlived its usefulness.

The school's demise was reported in the Northeastern News. The space the Automotive School had occupied would be devoted to other purposes more in demand, and so it was characterized as a "beneficent parent." The needs of his "young and ambitious son" were now paramount, and so the father had willed "the old homestead with its loving memories and associations, in order that the children may be comfortably housed and gain an opportunity to live useful and constructive lives." The sentimental language merely dressed, it did not alter, the tough-minded agenda.

Like a mechanic tinkering with an engine, Speare had constantly tuned and adjusted the Automobile School's program to meet the ever-changing needs of its students. Once repairs would no longer suffice, however, he quickly saw the need to retool. Other opportunities now presented themselves. Under his expert guidance, the university characteristically prepared to move on, to provide "those types of instruction which the young men of today seem to demand."

Joan Krizack is the archivist and head of special collections at the university libraries. This article is excerpted from a book of essays celebrating Northeastern's centennial, edited by Linda Smith Rhoads. The book will be available in the fall of 1998 and may be ordered by calling 617-373-1998.

 

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