Stuff You Should Know - Why is the U.S. so dependent on cars?

Episode Date: September 1, 2009

Today, automobiles are undoubtedly the dominant form of transportation in the United States, but that wasn't always the case. Join Josh and Chuck as they explore the history of public transportation and automobiles in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Just fill and chill. Available at participating retailers and at epson.com. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me as always is the lovely and effervescent Charles W. Bryant. I'm the Vescent.

I'm not effervescent. You're effervescent whether you like it or not now. How you doing? Great, sir. Do you seem like you're in the best mood today? Yeah, it's Monday morning. Yeah. Compared to Friday afternoons when we usually record, there's a slight change.

Sure. But hey, I'm fired up. You sound like it. Today's the first week of the rest of our lives. Yeah, sadly. I know. Chuck, how did you get to work this morning? I drove to the subway then took the subway to work.

You took the subway? Sure. Terrible. I drove to work. So let's go with me. Good for you. I'm like the vast majority of Atlannans. Driving.

Driving to work. Yeah. I remember there was this huge, this is ultra local, but I'm sure it happens all over the United States. There's this proposed rail line from Lovejoy way down south in the southern suburbs of Atlanta that was going to come up to Atlanta proper, the city, and the people who came out against this came out against it like it was a proposal to murder one of everybody's kids.

The 500 people who live in Lovejoy? No, it wasn't just Lovejoy. People in every county that this rail line was going to go through, I mean there were elected representatives that were coming out against it and everybody was arguing against this public transportation and simultaneously they're throwing their support because there's horrible congestion below the city. It's probably the worst in Atlanta. Worst in Atlanta, do you think?

Yeah. Because they fought the Marta going too far north too. I know and by the way, Marta is our public rail system, our sad public rail system. It forms in Atlanta as one of the major cities in the country. We have a cross. We have a plus sign for a transit system. There's a couple of little lines that spur off of it now but not much. I've never seen them.

But North East and then straight north too. And I should say in my defense, I could drive a guest to Art Center stop or something like that and then hit the rail next to... That's kind of worthless. Right, exactly. No. It is, Chuck. You are well served by our transit system.

But yeah, generally the argument against transit is that the poor will use it to go... Stop living in nature. No, no. They'll use it to go rob houses in the suburbs. Oh, I thought they thought they'd start living along the line. No, the argument I've always heard is that it will increase crime. So can't you just see people laden with flat screen TVs and all sorts of other... They have the burglar mask on and that money sack with the dollar sign on it.

They just came from some wealthy suburbanized house and now they're using public transit to make their getaway. Right? Yeah, I could see it. So yeah, that's one reason that it's stalled. But as I was saying, to solve this congestion problem down south, the proposal is to make 75 by 75, I think from five lanes to 11 lanes in each direction. You know, I wish I had a stat to back this up, but I've always heard that making roads

wider does not do much to ease congestion. No, I've heard that as well. Then cars will fill it. Yeah, it's kind of like... If you build it, they will come. Right. It's like giving condoms to teenagers. They wouldn't have sex if you didn't give them condoms.

But once you do, they're just like rabbits, you know? It's ridiculous. So Chuck, the debate continues, and I'm actually surprised after reading this article we're about to talk about written by our esteemed colleague, John Fuller. Stuff from the B side? Yeah. Yeah, very hip, young, soft-spoken man. That rail is even alive these days.

Yeah. Have you ever taken a train ride on an Amtrak trip? I have, yeah. It's awesome. I think I went... I don't remember where I went. I was kind of young, but it was pretty cool. Yeah, it's really cool.

I wish it were a little more comprehensive and cheaper, kind of expensive. It is. And you also realized it's federally subsidized. Oh, really? Oh, yeah. Amtrak is subsidized by federal money, so you pay for Amtrak, pal. Hmm. Yeah.

I should take... Do I get free tickets or anything? No. Can I cash in on that? No, you can't. But let's talk about it, man. If you look around, we take for granted just how much we rely on the car. Yeah.

When Fuller points out in this article, the very designs of our cities, of our shopping malls and everything is made with the car in mind, right? It's hard to imagine a life without parking lots and what if everything were street cars and subways and trains and things? I can't even conceive of it. What if parking lots were green space? Like you still had your shopping mall, but it was just surrounded by like a park? Yeah.

That'd be awesome. It would be awesome. But it's too late. Not necessarily. There's a movement for mixed use development in walkable cities. True. Atlanta, we have our own thing going. Yeah.

With the... Yeah, the Beltline proposal. Yes. Which I got really excited about when I first started hearing it and then I read the finer points. It is great, but it's going to be finished when I'm like 70. Yeah. So it's like, cool.

Maybe I can have kids and grandkids will enjoy it. Hopefully it'll be wheelchair accessible for you. Yes. Yeah. So, well, let's do... Let's give a little background, right? Okay. It's 1832, New York is the first...

Go back in time. Okay, let's do it. We're in New York. All right. It's in the 1830s. There's Newsy's everywhere. Yeah. Extra.

The Irish are fighting one another. Right. It's crazy. So let's not spend too much time here. It's 1832 and New York has just installed the first street rail line and it's horse drawn. Right. So we see the little horsey right there.

Uh-huh. I smell it. Can you hear it? Uh-huh. It smells like a thing of the Aloysus coming after us. Yeah. With the meat cleaver. Okay.

So now, my friend, we're in New Orleans. Right. Only slightly less dangerous. I'm slightly drunk. 1835. Uh-huh. What do you mean slightly? Well, sure.

And New Orleans has just opened its first street rail line and, Chuck, if you want to go ahead and flash forward with me to 2009, take my hand. Okay. All right. Here we are. Wow. This same rail line is still in use. In New Orleans?

And it's just as dangerous here. Wow. Let's go back to the studio. Okay. So rail lines have been around a little while. Oh, yeah. A long while, actually, and longer than the car. Apparently there was a, what is it called, zeitgeist when a bunch of people come up with

the same idea at the same time? Yeah. That happened with the automobile. Uh-huh. Germans mainly. Well, yeah. And a guy named Gottlieb Daimler was the first, he is widely viewed as the first to come up with the real functioning automobile.

Right. That could get you from point A to point B. And he named the car after his daughter. Right. Named Mercedes. Yeah. You may sound familiar. He hooked up with a guy named Carl, Carl Benz. And hold on.

I've got to say, Chuck, hats off to you for your extra dedication to throwing that little German ax on it. Right. What was that, Bavarian? Carl. Yes. I thought it was interesting to think of it would end up being called the Daimler Benz, instead of the Mercedes Benz.

Good name. Yeah. But certainly not. Now it's the iconic Mercedes Benz. Yep. So, they were the first ones, like you said, to come up with the working car. In 1884, right? Uh-huh.

And years later, they looked to America because we kind of perfected that scene and started building highways. So they looked at us and they're, how to build an autobahn superhighway. Yeah. And there was a guy who, again, by historians, is widely considered the man who did perfect that scene, as you put it. Yes, sir. A guy named Henry Ford, industrialist, fascist, eugenicist, well, the very least supporter

of eugenics. Dentist? Why not? Probably in a spare time. He was something of a renaissance man. Right. And the reason he's credited as perfecting the automobiles, because he applied the principle of the assembly line.

Right. And he did that term, actually. He did. He didn't come up with the assembly line itself. He did coin the term. Right. But he applied that to car manufacturing, and all of a sudden, you know, making one car by hand by one person, which took forever.

They just popped it on a line and each person had their own job. And he cranked out, I think, 14 million cars. Yeah. Between 1913 and 1927, they built 14 million model Ts, which is a huge jump because just in 1915, there were only two million cars. Right. And that was when there were about 100 million people in the United States. Yeah.

That's a lot of cars. Yeah. Especially for it having been considered kind of like a plaything of the rich. Yeah. It was almost like a toy. It's like a personal submarine is today. Sure. Yeah.

Maybe so. And they weren't even that well liked it first because they were clunky and they smell bad. They said that one of the early names, nicknames for a car was a stink chariot, which I thought was pretty funny. Yeah. It couldn't stink worse than horse manure. Or could it?

It could. I guess it's a different kind of stink. I kind of like the smell of horse manure. Yeah. But what if it was coming at it like that was the emissions of the time? I'd be in heaven. Really? Sure.

How do you control those emissions, I wonder? With the corks. Right. Yeah. Or like, don't do like Kramer did in Seinfeld when he only fed the horse ravioli or something. Deferoni. Deferoni. Yeah.

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They actually opened up the country. Back before then, John Candy was in a covered wagon and that's how you really got around. You ended up devolving into cannibalism. Sure. It was nothing but hardship. There were no roads, really. Basically, you had to have a murder app on your back east to take a covered wagon out west.

Right. Well, there were no interstates and freeways. There were no local roads. You were literally a trailblazer, which is why Portland has that name, Trailblazer. Interesting. Yeah. Well, that's an assumption of mine. You're full of facts.

So the railways opened this up and actually they're wildly successful. They actually are considered to have created the modern industrial state of the United States that we view it today. Totally. Right? They opened up the continent and I think 1.2 billion people were using rail lines every year by 1920. And that was at its peak.

Yeah. Peaked in 1920. Yeah. And that's about 106 million people living in the United States then carrying 1.2 billion. So it's pretty clear that every American was probably traveling by rail several times a year. Yeah. Or maybe several times a week or day.

Who knows? And it also opened up the rest of the country to ordinary everyday people. Before it was pretty much horse-drawn carriage, maybe a Model T, but with the absence of roads in between towns generally. Not very comfortable. No. And they were bumpy. People just kind of stuck around their town.

Yeah. The rail line you could go. Some people didn't even leave where they were born their entire life. There are people who do that still today. That's just weird. Yeah. I remember when I took my grandmother who lived to be 101 and passed away a couple years ago when we took her to the ocean for the first time, dude, she was like in her 70s.

Yeah. What did you think of it? She walked out. I forget. It was like 12. She walked out to the ocean and stood there and went, well, it's big. I swear to God. That's all she said.

Granny Bryant's famous quote. We actually called her Granny Bryant. That's funny. Did you? And she pretty much turned around and was like, all right, let's go home. That was it. Go back to Tennessee. Okay.

Yeah. And once you've seen one ocean, you've seen them all pretty much. Yeah. Sure. Yeah. So rail lines are really making a huge impact, but they kind of fell to the wayside even though cities like New York and Boston started offering commuter stops. Right.

Yeah. It was still, it was a train. It wasn't all that convenient. It was really good for long distances. Sure. But with some refinement of the automobile and some huge marketing campaigns and lobbying and some unholy alliances. Yeah.

We'll get into that. The automobile started to take on more, play more and more and more of a role. Yeah. Streamline into the manufacturing, of course, like any manufacturing process, it got a little cheaper too. That's huge. For the consumer. Yeah.

So prices start to come up. Ultimately, no matter how played upon your brain is by PR firms, no matter how little of a choice you're given by huge monopolies, ultimately it comes down to the consumer's choice. It's something that's really easily forgotten. Yeah. We talked about that in our econ audio book. Yeah.

Definitely. And when consumers are given a choice, they almost invariably choose the cheaper option. Yes. And when cars started to become competitive price-wise with maybe rail service, that kind of thing, people started buying more and more cars. Sure. And you didn't have to depend on the rail services schedule, of course. All of a sudden, you were in control of when you went somewhere and how far you traveled

and you didn't have to worry about what the rail line said about it. Yeah. Which is still a criticism today of public transit. Right. Cars offer freedom. It's as simple as that. They also offer more privacy, too, which I think a lot of people value. Right.

And an ability to engage in road rage, a national pastime here in the United States. Which is a little more removed than subway rage. If you remember, what was that girl's name? Soldier Girl. Yeah. Who went off again on Marta, our beloved Marta. Yeah. You can find that on YouTube still, I'm sure.

What would they type in, Chuck? Soldier Girl. I think S-O-U-L-J-A. If you want to watch a nice subway rant. Yeah. There's no road rage, though. No. So rail lines is kind of fading into the background as far as public transportation goes and taking on more and more of a role as good transportation.

Yes. Commodities transportation. Right. Right. But there's also those street rail lines that we were talking about. Yes. Actually, most cities, whether huge or not, had public transportation in the form of trolleys.

Yeah. I had one of the biggest trolleys in streetcar lines, the red cars and the yellow cars, what they were called. Yeah. And man, they connected, and this was way back then, they connected like five counties. Wow. And it was really vast, and they were pretty much squashed. That's what we're getting to now.

This is arguably the death blow of public transportation. National city lines? National city lines. This is where I think it really comes down to. Let's go ahead and say that we found in our research two views of this. Yeah. I read an article by a guy who says that the scandal is a myth. Right.

Right. So not everybody is on board that this actually happened the way that it said. Right. But we do have some facts. Let's do it, Chuck. National city lines. Yes. National city lines was a group that formed made up of, I think it was about eight companies,

but that included General Motors, Firestone, Standard Oil of California, Phillips Petroleum, so clearly the big hitters in what would be the burgeoning auto business. And they basically, what they wanted to do was buy up the streetcar systems and replace them with buses. They did. And they did it quietly. What they did was, it wasn't just buses, but like all the tires on these buses were Firestone.

Sure. So basically, gas put into these buses was Standard Oil, and all the buses were manufactured by GM. Yes. So basically, all of a sudden, auto mobiles, whether it was a bus or a Model T's, that was the way to get around. Yeah. The Charlie line was dead.

And it's called, it's referred to as the Great American Streetcar Scandal. Right. And also, if that sounds vaguely familiar, you may have seen Who Framed Roger Rabbit. I was going to mention that. That informs one of the subplots, right? Loosely massed, but definitely based on that whole scene. So back in 1947, there was a guy who was actually a trolley enthusiast, I guess. He was a wealthy, he was from a wealthy family.

His name was E.J. Quinby. He was a naval officer. He sounds wealthy. He was. But he bucked the family trend of just being wealthy and took a job managing trolley lines in New Jersey. Cool.

He was there as his first job after college, right? Nice. I guess then he went into the Navy after the war, or during the war. And he noticed what national city lines was doing, because he was right there. He'd been there while they were buying up all these trolley services. So he figured out what was going on. And he wrote this letter with all this detailed evidence to every person he could think of. Really?

There's nothing to do with federal, state, municipal, elected officials, and transportation. Anybody who had any kind of say in it got a letter from this guy across the country. So he started this whole thing for people to start paying attention to this? Yeah. Really? I didn't know that. Yeah. A lot of people say that he may not have ever been noticed that he not brought it to

everyone's attention. And he did so thoroughly. He killed shortly. No, he wasn't. Remember, he was from a wealthy family. True. And he did such a thorough job that national city lines was indicted by the federal government, or the Justice Department, for breaking antitrust laws.

Yeah, the Sherman Antitrust Act. Right. So, okay. Now, in 1947, we've got them by the Short and Curly's, obviously, national city lines is going to go under. These people are going to all be taken out behind the woodshed and shot in the back of the head for trying to, one of the charges was monopolized ground transportation in the United States, which is pretty huge.

Oh, yeah. Very huge. They were actually acquitted of that charge. Yes, they were. And they were found guilty of a lesser charge of guilty of monopolizing the sale of buses. Which, I mean, come on. Yeah. They were found guilty.

And what happened, Chuck? They were fined $5,000. The whole thing. As a whole. National city lines, which is owned by GM, all those fire stones, and standard oil. Yeah. Was fined $5,000. Yes.

Which, in 1947, even wasn't that much for a corporation. No. Not for all these corporations at all. But the executives surely had to pay, right, Chuck? They did, dude. How much? $1.00. $1.00 piece.

A symbolic fine of $1.00. And from an outsider looking in, you would see this lesser charge, quote, unquote, is pretty much the charge. And they just, I don't know how they got around it. I don't know if there was some nefarious bribes or anything like that. I know that some conspiracy folks think so, but it still hasn't been found out, really. So the fact that that case was, you know, tried and convicted in 1947, still, it didn't catch the public eye all that much.

It was actually a district attorney or federal attorney, I think, named Bradford Snell, who in 1974 testified before the Senate and really drummed up public ire about this occurrence that had happened, you know, a couple decades before. So it wasn't really considered a scandal or a huge nefarious plot until Bradford Snell came about, right? And again, still, not everybody's on the same page about whether this was a nefarious plot. No one actually disputes that GM and national city lines were trying to sell buses across

the country, but they're saying monopolize ground transportation, prove it. You can't really prove motivation like that, or clearly the federal prosecutors couldn't. But as one guy pointed out in a Mountain Express, which is a paper out of Asheville, I read a cool article in there about this, the result was still the same, the death of the trolley car. Absolutely. So whether that was the intent or not, that was still the result. That was the intent.

And I think one of the reasons why this became such a point or source of irritation among the public when Snell came out was that it was 1974, which was kind of right in the middle of the energy crisis, wasn't it? Well, that was part of it, but also it was around the birth of the environmental protection movement. Oh, right. Sure. We have like the nascent EPA, and people are starting to think about that kind of thing.

Yeah. And I think also faith in corporations had been lost time and time again. Yeah. People were kind of getting fed up with it, right? Yeah, it's a good point. You're ready to travel in 2023 and since 1981, Gate One Travel has been providing more of the world for less. Let Gate One handle the planning for you with affordable escorted tours in European

River Cruises. And right now, through January 30th, use promo code HEART20 to receive 20% off your tour. That's promo code HEART20 through January 30th. Visit gateonetravel.com for more information or to book your tour. That's gate the number one travel.com. Once again, use promo code HEART20 through January 30th to receive 20% off your 2023 trip. If you look for it, every day has cause for celebration.

Celebrate a friend for their promotion baby wedding life thing. Celebrate yourself for keeping the couch warm. It's no easy feat, especially if it's a big couch. Or maybe you just want to celebrate living in 2023 where you can get beer, wine, and spirits delivered from Drizly in under 60 minutes without leaving said couch. So download the Drizly app or go to drizly.com. It's drizly.com and get your favorite drinks delivered today. So Chuck, we were talking about public transportation and cars being in a horse race to see who

was going to serve or which was going to serve the United States, right? There's also another sub race going on between what exactly would fuel those cars. Yeah, oil or gasoline or ethanol. Right. Henry Ford designed the Model T to run on either one. I know, which is pretty interesting to think back. This country could have gone in a whole different direction, man. It totally could have.

Ford was actually a huge proponent of ethanol. He called it the fuel of the future, which was kind of weird because it had been around for several decades already. It used to power all sorts of equipment. I think Ford also said that one year's yield of an acre of potatoes can be used to fuel the machinery to cultivate that acre for the next century. But we went with gas. We did go with gas.

Do you know why? I'm not sure. I know that gas was just kind of a dirty byproduct at the time of oil crude oil production. Yeah, they were looking for kerosene because they wanted kerosene to light things. And no one really had any use for gas, right? Right, at the time. But once some oil fields opened up, you ever heard of a little movie called There Will Be Blood?

Yes. Oil fields opened up in Texas around that time. Oil suddenly became cheaper. Gas became cheaper, advances in the refining process became cheaper, and ethanol was more expensive. It was as simple as that. And Daniel Day-Lewis, once again, drinks our milkshake. Yes.

Which we've mentioned before. It's like a long time ago. I will eat your ice cream. Yeah, that was a long time ago. Yeah, it was. Chuck, I guess with the National City Line scandal going on, there was one real last nail in the coffin. Right.

That came from a president, right? Yeah, that was, you know, the cars were in full swing, people were digging it. And what we needed now was major interstates to connect everyone together. And in 1956, President Dwight Eisenhower, he signed the Interstate Highway Act, which created about 42,000 miles of highway from coast to coast. And the rest is history, literally. History. Also, that one act really changed the American economy a lot, too.

Yeah, the way we spend our money. Not just that. I mean, think about fast food as one. Sure. Roadside attractions. Drive through food. Yeah. Billboards.

John was talking about billboards in the article, which I thought was pretty cool. Yeah. One of the classes studied by these two guys named Shapiro and Hassett, and they reckon, I guess you could put it, that every year, cars in the highway system, just automobile use, generates $314.7 billion for businesses in the United States. That's direct. Like you drive up to a McDonald's. Oh, okay.

Yeah. You drive to, you know, the mall. The fact that automobiles exist generates that. Right. You know what else happened to help this along? They started, new zoning laws were created, and when businesses were built, and for the first time, parking spaces were required. And a certain amount of parking spaces per business, which still exists today.

And what happened was, some cities abandoned sidewalks altogether at this point, and they pushed businesses back further from the road in favor of parking lots, obviously, and places that were pretty easily accessible by foot or by whatever, you know, bicycle. All of a sudden, they were a little further away and they weren't as accessible, and the only way he'd get there was by your car. So thanks a lot for that, too. Yeah. It looks like, I don't know, public transit, does it have a choice, chance?

Well, it's making a comeback now, obviously, because gas prices are so high now. And the car production has reached, I think, a 10-year low. Last year, John said. Yeah. Yeah, 18% at last June. Yeah, but that was because gas was five bucks a gallon, and everybody, you remember, Marta ridership went up through the roof at, like, double or triple. That was awesome.

And then gas goes back down, and everybody's like, what the heck's Marta? Yeah, but I think people are starting to realize a little more, a couple with the environmental impact and public transport is coming back a little bit, but it'll never overtake cars. Consider this, though, the Cash for Clunkers program. Right. In and of itself, supports automobiles. The recently defunct. Yeah.

That's what I think of today, I think, actually. Oh, it ended? Uh-huh. Did they go through all $3 billion already? I don't know. It was a hugely successful project. I know they sold an estimated quarter of a million cars with just the first $1 billion. That's a lot of cars.

It is. And, I mean, yeah, you save four miles per gallon, I think, was the requisite. Was it? Yeah. Weird. But, yeah. So the American obsession with cars continues, and to answer this question, why are we so dependent on it, how did it become the dominant form of transportation, because it was cheaper

at the right time? Yeah. Yeah. And that's what consumers want. So if you want to know more about this, there's all sorts of cool links on the LMI page on this article. Type in automobile dominant form of transportation in the handysearchbar at HowStuffWorks.com. And Chuck, let's plug real quick, dude.

What are we plugging this time? Plug the blogs in the webcast. Josh and I have a shared blog called Stuff You Should Know. Yeah. You can access it on the right side of the home page of our website. Yes. And we write about interesting things and newsy items, and people getting a little scrappy debate.

It's good. Well, I do, then. Yeah. And it's social media, my friend. Yeah. And the Friday blog recap is getting a lot of traffic now. People, we welcome you if you want to say something about the show to log on on Fridays. And tell us what you think.

Yeah. And the webcast is live at 1 p.m. Eastern Time every Wednesday. Video. Yeah. You can find that on your blog post that day. It's also on Ustream and Facebook. Right. So there's the plugging.

Plugging is over, which means it's time for Listener Mail. Listener Mail, Josh. I'm just going to call this, We Shall Use Our Powers for Good. We have a regular kind of an email buddy, Christopher, that writes in a lot, and he's a really cool guy. And he wrote in and asks us to give a little shout out to bloodplatelet donation. He is a, he and his family have been donating platelets for years. And he says beginning at the end of August, it's a very critical time when blood and platelets

are needed the most. And people know a lot about blood donations and how important that is, but few people know about platelet donation and other forms of donation that the Red Cross and state blood services take and what they're used for. Platelets, for example, are used for chemotherapy and leukemia patients. These treatments destroy platelets, which are essential for the clotting of blood, which is a very big deal. Sure.

And patients frequently require platelet transfusions to allow their blood to clot if they get injured. Platelets are needed all the time, especially with the increase of cancer and leukemia cases in recent years. Blood services also accepts red blood cells and plasma to help other patients and people in need. So his family has a freakishly high platelet count and when they donate, one single donation goes to help three or four people in need.

Cool. Pretty cool. Most people's single donation goes to help at least two patients. So he said it takes a little longer, about an hour and 45 minutes, which is one reason why they don't get as many donations. And that's just the process, though, and they really need it. So we just want to encourage folks to, he actually wanted us to podcast about it, so maybe we'll do that one day.

But go give blood platelets, people. Did you know that my girlfriend's blood saves infants? Really? She lacks the type of herpes that most people get by age five. Really? So, but you're not supposed to get it before age five, so very few people are without this type of herpes. She's one of them.

So her blood is used directly to save infants. How crazy is that? Did you know that a gaze from my wife saves baby puppies? All over the world? That's awesome. She looks upon them. That's very cool. She should exercise that.

So beat that, Yumi. Okay. Yeah, Yumi. I want to see a Yumi and Emily saved down. Right, let's do that. So donate blood platelets in blood and plasma and it's very important. Josh and I, and puppies and Josh and I are going to do that today. All right.

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