New York (1926) — In yet another blow to the declining transportation industry, the Carriage Builders’ National Association met for the last time, signaling the automobile’s final triumph over the horse-drawn carriage and the loss of thousands of related jobs, from craftsmen to barn keepers. Pessimism reigned at the Metropolitan Hotel, where attendees recalled that just ten years ago, carriages and wagons were still a common sight on every Main Street in America.
From the previous century until now, carriage-building had been one of the largest and most dynamic industries in the country. As recently as 1880, the legendary Studebaker Brothers Manufacturing Company produced a hundred wagons a day — one every six minutes. Across the country, smaller factories fashioned vast quantities of buggies, farm wagons, and luxury carriages. Sociologists mourn the loss of the proud US-based approach to production that flourished for decades. Skilled workers face the continuing trend of industrial development in which hand tools, small firms, and individual craftsmanship simply give way to mechanized factories
Our children may think of the carriage and wagon as merely foreshadowing the automobile industry, but the loss of this industry is just one of the many losses brought on by the advent of the automobile. Not only carriage makers, but horse trainers, manure scoopers, and buggy whip makers have all suffered from this economic transition, which many see as evidence of the continuing dehumanization of technology.
Not only is the automobile a job-killer, but for many interviewed on the street, the prospect of traveling at speeds up to a mile a minute is simply unnatural, as summarized in the commonly repeated phrase, “If God had meant for us to fly, He would have given us wings.”
With apologies for barely-disguised plagiarism, this piece of historical not-quite-fiction is inspired by the book summary found here: The Carriage Trade: Making Horse-Drawn Vehicles in America (Studies in Industry and Society)
Mobilize 
That’s a great piece of Rhetoric, but it doesn’t match the situation we find ourselves in today. For instance, what is the transition we are facing today? Automobiles being phased out in favor of electric cars? Houses being phased out for a more efficient mode of living, say apartments? These alternatives are not more appealing to people as the advent of the automobile was. Did the demise of the Carriage makers bring on the great depression? It seems rather to predate the depression. A lot of the current economic changes seem to line up with the great depression, bank failings, stock market crash, high commodity prices, government restrictions, but a retooling industry is not one of them as far as I can see.
We’re actually in the exact same cycle of history now as in the 1920s and 30s (and the time leading up to the Civil War before that and the time leading up to the American Revolution before that). That’s the cyclical portion.
But the bigger transition in play is a global economic shift — this time not from agricultural to industrial but industrial to information age. See the top two books I have listed on the right hand of my home page at http://www.mobilize.net for a thorough analysis.