Car ownership tripled from seven to twenty-three million families in four years

Evidence

And along with time the new technology brought a means by which the time could be used to conquer space. In 1909, after sixteen years of experimentation with gasoline-driven vehicles, Ford had announced the invention of the Model T, which could be mass-produced, and, with the unrolling of the unparalleled prosperity of the Twenties, which gave the average American money to spend on luxuries, America beat a path to Ford’s door and to the doors of his imitators. The number of automobile-owning families in the country in 1919 was less than seven million; by 1923, it would be twenty-three million. — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 632

Categorization

• XREF: Groundwork for the automobile-centric parkway system Moses builds — ties to the larger arc of car culture reshaping American cities, as in urban-planning histories.