Work and Progress

Woodrow Wilson once declared that automobiles would ruin America and make socialism inevitable yet history proved him spectacularly wrong. While he feared cars would breed envy and dependence among farmers, the Model T era revealed the opposite: ordinary men could prosper, adapt, and thrive without a “Big Brother” state to plan their lives. In this episode, we explore how Wilson’s elitist assumptions reflect a recurring intellectual error the belief that talk, planning, and central control can replace the biblical wisdom that “in all labour there is profit.” Far from being left behind, farmers became the greatest private owners of automotive equipment, disproving every one of Wilson’s predictions. And in a final twist of irony, the only U.S. president to own a Rolls Royce was Wilson himself.