The Rise of the Automobile

Image Number Neg 79. 729 PP8, Hughes Studio Photograph Collection,

Courtesy of the Prints and Photography Division, Maryland Historical Society

United was able to withstand competition from the jitney; however, their main competition was the automobile. Automobiles allowed people to move around the city independently, and were very popular in Maryland. From 1920-1940, automobiles in Maryland increased from 100,000 to 300,000. The automobile industry attracted customers around the country by creating less expensive and better quality vehicles. They used clever advertising to attract customers as shown within this Oldsmobile advertisement. Automobile companies capitalized on new technology to create a product that would last, insuring that they would remain in competition with mass transit. Automobiles were viewed by society as a permanent invention unlike the jitney, and people responded by altering aspects of society to accommodate the change.

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Accession Number P75-54-N1013g, Hughes Company Glass Negatives Collection,

Courtesy of the Photography Collections, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

Although streetcars were a major success during World War II, they could not maintain this popularity once the war ended. After World War II, it appeared the BTC would be able to sustain its renewed popularity, but this was not the case. The Baltimore Transit Company once again lost customers as their old equipment could not hold up and the cars were once again considered unreliable. The streetcar industry in addition, could not support the increasing number of families moving outside of the city’s interior into suburbs they could not reach, causing automobiles to become a necessity.