 CHAPTER XIV. Ford was now a man of nearly thirty, an insignificant, unimportant unit in the business world of Detroit, merely one of the subordinate managers in the Edison plant. Seeing him on his way home from work, a slender, stooping, poorly dressed man, the firm set of his lips hidden by the sandy moustache he wore then, and his blue eyes already surrounded by a network of tired wrinkles, men probably looked at him half pityingly and said, There's a man who will never get anywhere. He had his farm, unprofitable since he had left it, a small home partly paid for, and the little gas engine to show for fourteen years of hard work. Probably he received more than one letter from his father and brothers in Greenfield, urging him to come back to the farm, where he and his wife might live comfortably among their old friends, and he need not work so hard. It would have seemed a wise move. But with the completion of the little one-cylinder high-speed engine, Ford was more than ever possessed by his idea. He brought one or two of the men from the Edison shop to see it. They watched it whirring away on its pedestal of blocks. They examined its large cylinder, its short-stroke piston, noted its power, and looked at Ford with some increased respect. But most of them were nevertheless doubtful of the success of the automobile. The idea of a horseless carriage in general use still seemed to them fantastic. Well, looks like you could make it go, they conceded. But it's going to be pretty expensive to run. Not many people will want to buy it. And where will you get the capital to manufacture it? I'm making it cheap. I'm going to make it cheap enough so every man in this country can have one before I'm through, Ford said. Already his belief that a thing isn't any good unless it's good for everybody was taking form. He did not intend to make a few high-priced toys for wealthy men. He planned to make something useful for thousands of men like himself, who were wasting money in keeping idle horses as he had done on the farm. He still meant to make a farm tractor as soon as he had worked out the principle of a self-propelling machine. As to the capital, he believed that question would take care of itself when the time came. His job was to make the machine, and he did not waste time telling himself that there was no chance for a poor man. The problem of transmitting the power of the engine to the wheels now engrossed his attention. He brought home materials for a light buggy frame and built it. Four old bicycle wheels were repaired, fitted with heavy rims and large pneumatic tires and placed on the axles. The question then was how to attach the engine. To us, familiar with automobiles, it seemed simple enough, but when Ford stood in the old shed looking at the buggy frame and then at the little engine, he was attempting a feat that had never been accomplished. Years before, carriages had been pulled. Naturally enough, his first thought was to apply the power of the engine to the front wheels. Then how should he steer? What mechanism should he use, powerful enough to turn the hind wheels against the pull of the engine and flexible enough to respond quickly and make a sharp turn? Then there was the problem of the throttle and the gears. The machine must be able to go more slowly or to pick up speed again without shutting off the power. The driver must be able, when necessary, to throw off the power entirely and to apply it quickly again without stopping the engine. All these vexing questions and many minor ones were to be solved, and always there was the big question of simplicity. The machine must be cheap. I'm building this thing so it will be useful. Ford said once while he was in the thick of his perplexities, there isn't any object in working at it unless it will be useful, and it won't be useful unless it's cheap enough so common people can have it and do their work with it. The essential democracy of the man spoke, then. It is the distinctly American viewpoint of the man who for years had fought sun and wind and weather, tearing his food and shelter from the stubborn grasp of the soil and who now struggles with mechanical obstacles, determined in spite of them to make something for practical use. His standards of value were not beauty or ease of luxury. He wanted to make a machine that would do the greatest possible quantity of good, hard work. His third winter in the house on Edison Avenue arrived, and still the automobile was not completed. When he went out to work in the old shed after supper he lighted a fire in the rusty heating stove set up in a corner, and often Mrs. Ford came out and sat on a box, watching while he fitted parts together or tried different transmission devices. He had settled finally on a leather belt passing over the flywheel and connecting with the rear axle. A pulley arrangement, controlled by a lever, tightened or loosened this belt, thus increasing or decreasing the speed of the automobile. That broad strip of leather enclosed, running from the engine on the rear axle to the pulley under the front seat, was the parent of the planetary system of transmission. Ford worked on it all winter. It was a lonely time for Mrs. Ford, for the general attitude of the neighborhood toward her husband had roused her good country temper, and she refused to have anything to do with people who talked like that. She knew Henry was perfectly sane, a better husband than most of them had, too, and anyhow it was none of their business how Henry spent his time, and that they didn't like it, they could lump it. Nevertheless as the winter days followed each other in an apparently endless procession she grew moody. The baby was coming, and she was homesick for Greenfield, and the big comfortable country home, with friends running in and out, and the sound of sleigh bells jingling past on the road outside. She put the little house to rights in the morning, and faced a long lonely day. She sewed awhile, wandered about the rooms, looking out on the dreary little street with its scattered houses and dirty trampled snow, yawned, and counted the hours till her husband would come home for supper. When he came she had the house warm and bright, the table set, hot biscuits browning in the oven. She dished up the food, poured the tea, brought the hot plates. They sat down to eat and talk, and the minutes seemed to fly. Before she had said half she had stored up through the day, before Henry had more than begun to talk, he pushed back his plate, drank his tea, and said, Well, I must be getting to work. Then he went out to the shed and forgot her in the absorbing interest of the automobile. Oh, when is it going to be finished? She said one night after she had been sitting for a long time in silence, watching him at work on it. She began the sentence cheerfully, but she caught her breath at the end and began to cry. I can't help it. I'm sorry. I want to go home to Greenfield, she said. Ford was testing the steering-gear. He dropped his tools in surprise and went over to comfort her. There, there, he said, I suppose patting her back clumsily in the awkward way of a man on a custom to quieting a sobbing woman. It's done now. It's practically done now. It just needs a little more. She interrupted him. She said his horrid old engine was always just needing a little more. She said she wanted him to take her back to Greenfield. Wouldn't he please, just for a little while, take her home to Greenfield? CHAPTER XV Tears, almost hysterics, from the woman who for seven years had been the quiet, cheerful little wife humming to herself while she did the housework. It was more than startling. It was terrifying. Ford realized then, probably for the first time, how much the making of the automobile had cost her. He quieted her as well as he could and promised that he would take her back to Greenfield. He would give up his job at the Edison plant and move to the farm to live, since she cared so much about it, he said. His work on the machine could wait. He took her into the house and made her a cup of hot tea. When she was sitting comfortably warming her feet at the heating stove and sipping the tea, he said he would just run out and fasten the shed door for the night. The machine was almost finished. A few more screws, a tightening of the leather belt, the placing of the steering lever, and it would be complete. He had spent four years of hard work and harder thought on its building, delayed first by his poverty, then by the building of the house, and always held back for twelve hours out of every day by his work at the Edison plant. Now he would have to put it aside again to spend precious days and weeks disposing of his equity in the house, moving, settling in Greenfield, struggling with new hired men, beginning again the grind of managing a farm. It was only another delay, he said doggedly to himself, he would make the machine run yet. In the meantime he could not resist taking up his tools and working on it, just a minute or so. The engine was in place, the gears adjusted. He tightened the leather belt and tested the pulley again. Then he set the rear axle on blocks of wood, lifting the wheels from the ground and started the engine. The cough of the cylinder quickened into a staccato bark. The flywheel blurred with speed. Then Ford tightened the pulley. The broad leather belt took hold. The rear wheels spun. She was running. It remained only to test the machine and actual going on the ground. Ford went to work on the steering gear. He had thought it all out before. He had made all the parts. Now he must put them together, fit them into place and test them. He forgot about his wife waiting in the house. He did not notice that the fire in the stove was getting low and the hour was growing late. He bent every thought and energy to placing the steering gear. At midnight he was still working. At one o'clock he had the front wheels blocked up and was testing the steering lever. It needed some changes. At two o'clock they were finished. He started the engine again and it missed fire. Something was wrong with the spark. At three o'clock grimy, hollow, cheeked, absorbed, he was hard at work when he felt a hand on his arm and heard his wife say, Henry! My dear, what's the matter? I'm coming in right away. Why, you're all wet! He exclaimed, seeing her dripping shawl. It's raining hard. Didn't you know it? She said. You shouldn't have come out. I thought you were going right to bed. He answered. Well, I couldn't sleep very well. I got to thinking. Henry, we mustn't go back to the farm. It was just a notion of mine. I guess I was tired or something. I've changed my mind. We'd better stay right here till you get the machine finished. He laughed. Well, little woman, I guess that won't be so very long. It's finished right now, he said. You wait a minute and you'll see me running it. She stood and watched, more excited than he, while he started the engine again, nailed a couple of old boards together for a seat and opened wide the shed doors. The rain was falling in torrents and underfoot the light snow had turned a thin slush on the frozen ground. It was very dark. He pushed the machine into the yard and hung a lantern over the dashboard for a headlight. Inside the shed Mrs. Ford, and a voice shaking with excitement, begged him to wait until morning, but he did not listen. The engine and steering gear were protected from the rain, and no discomfort could have equaled for him the disappointment of another delay. The time had come when he could prove his theories. He would not waste one minute of it. The engine was already running. He stepped into the car, sat down, and slowly, carefully, tightened the pulley. Then, in the first Ford automobile, he rode away from the old shed. When he felt the machine moving under him, he tightened his grasp on the steering lever. Suddenly the light of the lantern showed him a dozen things he had never noticed in the yard before. The clothes pole loomed menacingly before him. A pile of flower pots seemed to grow out of all proportion to his ordinary size. The machine wobbled unsteadily while he desperately struggled to drive it in a straight line. He turned it from the flower pots, jerked it back in time to avoid running into the fence, and headed straight for the clothes pole. It seemed to jump at him. At the last minute he thought of the pulley. He loosened the leather belt, the engine spun wildly, the car stopped. Henry Ford got out, breathing hard, and pushed the machine around the clothes pole. You see, I not only had to make the machine, but I had to get into it and learn how to steer it while it was running, he says. It occurred to him that he would like a good wide space for the job. After he had rescued the machine from the clothes pole, he turned it toward the street. Chug chugging away, he passed the house, drove over the gravel sidewalk, and turned down Edison Avenue. The scattered houses were dark and silent. Everyone was asleep. The little machine, rattling and coughing, proceeded through the thin slush and jerks and jumps, doing valiantly with its one cylinder. Perched on the rough board seat, Henry Ford battled with the steering lever, while on the sidewalk Mrs. Ford, wrapped in her shawl, anxiously kept pace with them. It was not difficult to do, for the car was not breaking any future speed limits. At the end of the first block, Ford turned the car successfully and rode down the side street, zig-zagging widely from side to side in his effort to drive straight ahead. Fortunately, Detroit's streets are wide. When he had passed the second block, he began to wonder how to turn and drive back. At the end of the third block, he solved the difficulty. He stopped the car, jumped out, lifted it around, and headed it for home. By this time the engine was missing again, but it continued gallantly to jerk and push the light car forward until Ford had reached his own yard. Then he stopped it, pushed the machine into the shed, and turned to Mrs. Ford. "'Well, it runs all right. Guess I'll have some breakfast and go to bed,' he said. And Mrs. Ford hurried in to make coffee. "'How did I feel?' "'Why, I felt tired,' he explains now. I went to bed and slept all next day. I knew my real work with the car had just begun. I had to get capital somehow, start a factory, get people interested—everything. Besides, I saw a chance for a lot of improvements in that car." CHAPTER XVI. Probably the disposition to rest on our laurels is more than anything else responsible for the mediocrity of the individual and the slow progress of the race. Having accomplished something most of us spend some time in admiring it and ourselves, it is characteristic of big men that passed achievements to not hold their interest. They are concerned only with their efforts to accomplish still more in the future. Henry Ford had built an automobile. His four years' work had been successful, and that little machine, scarcely larger than a bicycle, with its pulley clutch, puffing little one-cylinder engine, and crude steering apparatus, stood for an epoch in human progress. He might be pardoned if he had spent a month or two in self-congratulation in driving the car up and down Detroit streets and enjoying the comments of the men who had laughed at him so long. But apparently it did not occur to him. He saw already a number of possible improvements in the little machine. He was as indifferent to the praise of other men as he had been to their ridicule. After that one day of rest he resumed almost the old routine. When a few men at the Edison plant laughingly inquired how he was getting along with the great invention, he remarked quietly that the machine was running. He had been writing in it already. Then at six o'clock he hurried home and out to the shed for the usual evening's work. He was trying to plan an engine which would give more power. Incidentally, in his odd moments he was working to improve the steering apparatus. One imagines the incredulity, the amazement, that followed his quiet statement that the thing was actually running. The men at the plant began to drop around at the Ford place to look at it. They came doubtfully, prepared either to laugh or to be convinced. After they had examined the engine and looked over the transmission and steering gear, they went away still hesitating between two conclusions. It works all right, they said. There's no question the blamed thing runs. How do you suppose he ever happened to stumble onto the idea? But where is he going to get the capital to manufacture it? After all, there won't be much of a market. A few rich fellows will buy it probably for the novelty. After all, you can't make a machine that will do the work of horses to any great extent. Some of them took a different view. They became enthusiastic. My Lord Ford, there's millions in this thing. Millions, they said. You ought to get out and organize a company, a big company, incorporate and sell stock and make a clean up right away, and then build a machine like a Phaeton with big leather cushions and carriage lamps and a lot of enamel finish. Why, there are hundreds of men that could afford to pay two or three thousand dollars for one of them. You could make a hundred percent profit, two hundred percent. Ford listened to all of them and said little. He was busy improving the machine. It did not suit him yet. He felt he could make it much more powerful and efficient with a little more work. Meantime he revolved in his mind plans for putting it on the market. Those plans included always one fundamental point. He was resolved to make the automobile cheap. I've got a machine here that saves time and work and money, he said. The more people who have it the more it will save. There's no object in building it so only a few rich men can own one. It isn't the rich men who need it. It's the common folks like me. News of the amazing machine to be seen in the old shed behind the little house on Edison Street spread rapidly. About this time news dispatches carried word of two other automobiles built in this country. A man named Durie of Springfield, Illinois and another named Haynes in Kokomo, Indiana had been working on the same idea. A reporter found Ford at work on his engine, interviewed him and wrote a story for a Detroit paper. One or two wealthy men hunted Ford up and talked about furnishing the capital to manufacture the machine. They saw, as some of Ford's friends had done, an opportunity to float a big company, sell stock, and build a high priced car. Ford considered these offers for a time. Building an automobile had been only half his idea. Building it cheap had been the other half, and he would not abandon it. He figured it out in dollars and cents. Two hundred percent on a small quantity of cars or a smaller profit on a larger quantity. He showed that the most sound basis for the company was the manufacture of a large number of machines, at a profit sufficient merely to keep enlarging the plant and building more machines. The idea did not appeal to the men who were eager for large immediate profits for themselves. In the end the men with money dropped the matter. Ford was obstinate, but he was a small man with no capital, merely a crank who had hit by accident on a good idea. He would come around all right in time, they concluded. Ford continued to work at the Edison plant and spend his evenings trying to improve his machine. He had taken Mrs. Ford to Greenfield, where she would stay with her mother until the baby was born. After that one hysterical outburst on the night the automobile was finished, she had returned to her cheerful acceptance of his interest in the car. Indeed she herself had become enthusiastic about its possibilities. You stay right here and keep your job with the Edison people, she said. I'll be perfectly all right with mother, and maybe by the time I come back you'll have a company organized and a whole factory going. Who knows? Only mind you don't work too late at night and promise you'll eat your meals regular. Ford promised, but when he returned to the dark little house at night and faced the task of building a fire and cooking supper for himself it seemed to him a bigger job than building the automobile had been. He heated some coffee on the gasoline stove, burned some bread into a semblance of toast, and scrambled a few eggs. Then he spread a newspaper on the kitchen table, set the frying pan on it, and managed to make a meal. Naturally about midnight he grew hungry. He came into the kitchen, looked at the cold, greasy frying pan, still setting on the kitchen table, remembered that he was out of bread and thought of an all night lunch wagon that stood near substation A, where sometimes he bought a cup of coffee when he was working there. The automobile stood waiting in the shed. He told himself that he wanted to test the steering gear again anyway. He went out, started the engine, climbed in, and chugged away through the silent deserted streets to the lunch wagon. Coffee jim, loafing among his pans and mounds of hamburger steak, was astonished to see the queer little machine jerking and coughing its way toward him. He remembered Ford, and while he sliced the onions and cut the bread for Ford's midnight luncheon they talked about the automobile. Afterward Coffee jim examined it in detail and marveled. When Ford took him for a little ride in it he became enthusiastic. Soon it was part of Ford's routine to drive the little car to the lunch wagon at midnight, have a cup of coffee and a hot sandwich, and a chat with Coffee jim. They became friends. It was one of those accidental relationships which have great consequences. A hundred thousand Ford automobiles today owe their existence largely to that chance friendship between Ford and Coffee jim. CHAPTER XVI. If Ford had been unduly elated over his success in making an automobile, the years that followed that night right in the train would have been one succession of heartbreaking disappointments. Men with money enough to build a factory were not seeking business ventures in the nineties, money was scarce and growing more so. The few financiers who might have taken up Ford's invention floated a big issue of common stock and sold the cars that a profit of two or three hundred percent saw no advantage in furnishing the capital to start a small plant on Ford's plan. He himself was close pressed for money. Payments on the little house, with their interest, the cost of his wife's illness and of providing for the new baby, his own living expenses, took the greater part of his salary. The situation would have been disheartening to most men. Ford said his teeth and kept on working. The one-cylinder engine bothered him. It did not give him the power he wanted. After he had worked with it for a time, he took it down, cut another section from the piece of pipe and made another cylinder. The two-cylinder result was somewhat better, but still the little car jerked along over the ground and did not satisfy him. He fell back into the old routine, twelve hours at the Edison plant, home to supper and out to the shed to work the evening through on the machine. Mrs. Ford was in charge of the house again, busy keeping it neat and bright, nursing the baby, making his little dresses, washing and ironing, keeping down the grocer's bills. Meantime other men, with machines no better than Ford's, were starting factories and manufacturing automobiles. Once in a while, on his way home from work, Ford saw one on the street, a horseless carriage, shining with black enamel, upholstered with deep leather cushions, ornamented with elaborate brass carriage lamps. Usually they were driven by steam engines. They were a curiosity in Detroit's streets, a luxury which only the very rich might afford. Crowds gathered to look at them. Ford must have seen them with some bitterness, but apparently he was not greatly discouraged. I didn't worry much. I knew I could put my idea through somehow, he says. I tell you, no matter how things may look, any project that's found that on the idea of the greatest good for the greatest number will win in the end. It's bound to. He went home, ate the supper Mrs. Ford had waiting, and doggedly resumed work in the old shed. The chronicle of those years from the standpoint of an onlooker would be merely a wearisome record of the machine shop, a detailed record of pistons, number of revolutions per minute, experiments in spark timing. Only the knowledge of their result, or Ford's own story of his hopes, disappointments, mental struggles would make them interesting. That part of his story Ford will not dwell upon. I kept on working another eight years, he said quietly. Eight years. Sometime during them he saw what was needed. Here to fore the crankshaft had made a complete revolution on a single power impulse. Ford perceived that two impulses, properly placed, would increase both the power and the smoothness of the running. The result of that quiet eight years work was the first practical two-cylinder opposed engine mounted on a motor car. In the little shed working alone through the long evenings, while his neighbors rested and visited on their front porches, and his wife sang the baby to sleep in the house, he built the four-cycle engine that made the gasoline automobile a possibility. In the spring of 1901 he finished it, mounted it on the old car, which he had made nine years before of discarded bicycle wheels and rough boards, and drove it out of the shed. It was nearly midnight of a quiet starlit spring night. The lights and nearby houses had gone out long before, and his own home Mrs. Ford and the boy were sleeping soundly. Ford turned the car down Edison Avenue and put on full power. The engine responded beautifully. The car raced down the avenue, under the branches of the trees whose buds were swelling with spring sap, while the wind lifted Ford's hair and blew hard against his face. It was pleasant after the long hours in the shed. The steady throb of the motor, the car's even progress, were delightful. By George, I'll just ride down and show this to Coffee Jim, said Ford. His circle of acquaintances in Detroit was small. His long hours of work prevented his cultivating them. At the Edison plant his pleasant but rather retiring manner had won only a casual friendliness from the men. This friendliness that had grown since his success with the motor had replaced their derision with respect, but still it was far from intimate companionship. He knew no one with money. He was still a poor man working for wages with only his brain and hands for equipment. Nearly thirteen years of hard work had produced his motor car, but he had very little money and no financial backing for its manufacture. His closest friend was Coffee Jim. Coffee Jim examined the car with interest that night. He left his lunch wagon and took a short ride in it. He listened while Ford explained its mechanical principle. You've got a winner there all right, he said heartily. All you need is capital. Ford agreed with him. He had been revolving in his mind plans forgetting it. When he left Coffee Jim at his lunch wagon and rode slowly home he continued to think about it. That morning he drove to the Edison plant in the car, and on his way home at night he made a detour through Detroit's principal streets. He wanted people to talk about the car, and they did. Everyone in Detroit heard more or less about it in the months that followed. Meantime Ford took a few days' leave from the Edison plant now and then and personally made efforts to interest financiers in its manufacture. He interviewed his banker and most of the big businessmen of the city, outlined his plan for a factory, demonstrated the car. Everyone showed some interest, but Ford did not get the money. Late that fall he discussed a situation with Coffee Jim one night. I've got the car and I've got the right idea, he said. It's bound to win in time. The trouble is these men can't get an idea until they see it worked out with their own eyes. What I need is some spectacular exhibition of the car. If I could enter her in the races next year she'd stand a chance to win over anything there'll be in the field. Then these men would fall over themselves to back me. Well, can't you do it? Coffee Jim inquired. Ford shook his head. Cost too much, he said. I've laid off work a lot this summer trying to get capital and the boy's been sick. I'd have to buy a new car for the racing. I might rake up money enough for material, but I couldn't make the car in time, working evenings, and I can't afford to give up my job and spend my whole time on it. Chapter 17. Chapter 18 of Henry Ford's own story. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Leanne Howlett. Henry Ford's own story by Rose Wilder Lane. Chapter 18. Winning a race. Coffee Jim pondered the situation. He knew Ford thoroughly. He believed in the car. To win the gross point races would give Ford his chance, a chance he was missing for lack of money. Coffee Jim thought of his own bank account, which had been growing for years, nickel by nickel, dime by dime, from the profits on fried ham sandwiches and hamburger and onions. See here, Ford, he said suddenly. I'll take a chance. I'll back you. You go on, quit your job, build that car and race her. I'll put up the money. Ford accepted the offer without hesitation. He believed in the car. Coffee Jim waved aside Ford's suggestion of securing the loan by his personal note or by a mortgage on the little house. Take the money. That's all right. Pay it back when you can. Your words good enough for me, he said. He believed in Ford. It was a demonstration of the practical value of friendship, a pure sentiment which had come unexpectedly to the rescue when all material means had failed. Hard work, real ability, business sagacity had been unable to give Ford the start which his friendship with the owner of the little lunch wagon had brought him. It was one of those experiences which helped to form Ford's business philosophy, that philosophy which sounds so impractical and has proved so successful. Any man who considers everything from the standpoint of the most good to the most people will never want for anything, he says. No, I don't mean mental influence or psychic attraction or anything like that. I mean plain common sense. That's the attitude that makes friends. All kinds of friends, everywhere, some that you never even hear about, and friends bring all the rest. He took Coffee Jim's money, gave up his job at the Edison plant, and went to work on the little racer. It seemed pretty good to be able to work all day on the car as well as the evenings, he says. He took down the engine and entirely rebuilt it, substituting the best of material for the makeshift he had been obliged to use. He spent long hours designing a racing body, figuring out problems of air resistance and weight. Eight months of careful thought and work went into that car. At last, in the early summer of 1902, it was finished. At four o'clock one morning, business being over at the lunch wagon, he and Coffee Jim took it out for a trial. It ran like the wind. Down the quiet vacant streets of Detroit and the gray chill of early morning, they raced at a speed that made the houses on either side blur into a gray haze. Coffee Jim clung breathlessly to the mechanic's seat, while Ford bent over the steering lever and gave her more power and still more power. Holy Moses, she sure does run, Coffee Jim gasped when the car slowed down smoothly and stopped. You'll win that race sure as shooting. Yes, she's a good little car, Ford said, looking at over critically. She's a pretty good little car. He stood looking at it his hands in his pockets. I've had an idea for a four-cylinder motor that will beat her, though, he said. It's too late to build it now. We'll have to put this one in the race. But I'll make a car yet that'll beat this as much as this beats a bicycle. It was not a boast. It was a simple statement of fact. The little racer was finished, thoroughly well done. He spent no more thought on it. Already his mind was reaching ahead, planning a better one. It may be imagined with what anxiety the Fords awaited the day of the races. Ford was to be his own driver, and Mrs. Ford's dread of losing the race was mixed with fear for his safety if there should be an accident. She had seen the car in the tryout, and its speed terrified her, though Ford assured her, with masculine clumsiness, that even greater speed had been made in previous races. Alexander Winton of Cleveland, then the track champion of the country, had beaten it more than once. On the racetrack, Ford said he was confident he could do better. Later there was a quiet tryout on the racetrack that showed Ford he was right, though he kept secret the exact time he had made. On the day of the races enormous crowds gathered at the gross point tracks. It was the first automobile track meeting ever held in Michigan, and excitement ran high. Alexander Winton was there, confident and smiling in his car, which had broken so many records. The crowds cheered him wildly. Ford, quiet and perhaps a little white with the tension, drove his car out on the tracks, was greeted with a few uncertain cheers. Who's that? People said. Oh, that's a Detroit man. Let's see what is his name. Ford never heard of him before. Funny little car, isn't it? Maybe he's been put in to fill out. He's the only man against Winton in the free-for-all. They couldn't get a real car to race Winton. Hi, there's Cooper. Cooper, raw. The crowd got to its feet and cheered Tom Cooper, the bicycle champion, who strolled onto the field and chatted with Winton. Ford was outside at all. He had been too busy working on his car, had had too little money to be on intimate terms with the big men of the automobile business or to become friendly with champions. One supposed he wasted no regrets on the situation. He had his car, the concrete form of his mechanical ideas. The time had come to test their value. If they were right he would win the race. If they were wrong he would go back to his shed and work out better ones. He examined the car again, looked to the gasoline and oil, and was ready. Coffee Jim, slapping him on the shoulder, said, All right, Ford go to it and hurried up to his seat in the grandstand where Mrs. Ford and the boy were already sitting, tense with excitement and apprehension. Winton waved his cap in a last response to the roar from the crowd, pulled it down tight and settled back into his seat. The signal came. Ford, bending over his steering lever, threw on the power and felt the car jump forward. The race was on. It happened 13 years ago, but there are still people in Detroit who talk of that race. They described the start, the enthusiasm for Winton, the surprise of the crowd when the little car driven by nobody knew whom hung on grimly just behind the champion to the end of the first stretch, through the second stretch, well on to the third. Winton's car shot ahead then. The crowd cheered him madly. Then the roar died down in amazement. The little car with the burst of speed overtook the champion, and the two cars shot past the grandstand side by side and sped into the second lap. Into the silence came a yell from Coffee Jim. Ford, yeah, Ford, go it, go it, go it. Ford. The crowd went crazy. No one knew clearly what was happening. Ford, Ford, Winton, he's ahead. Go it, go it. Winton, come on, come on. Look at him, look at him. Ford, they yelled. Then the two cars swept into the final stretch of breast. The crowd, wild with excitement, horse disheveled, was standing on the seats roaring. Come on, come on, come on, Ford, Ford. Every detail of that race must still be distinct in Ford's mind. But he sums them all in one concise sentence. It was some race. I want it. End of chapter 18, chapter 19 of Henry Ford's own story. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Leigh Ann Howlett. Henry Ford's own story by Rose Wilder Lane. Chapter 19, Raising Capital. Ford sat in his little car white, shaken, dusty, the track champion of this country. He was surrounded by a small crowd of automobile enthusiasts, promoters, bicycle champions, all eager to meet and talk with the unknown man who had taken the honors away from Winton. Among them was Tom Cooper. Grasping Ford's hand, he looked with interest at the slightly built, thin-cheeked man who had won the race and said, Bully work, the way you handled her on that last turn, whose car is it? Mine, said Ford. I mean, Cooper looked at the lines of the car. I mean, whose engine did you use? It's my engine. I made it, Ford replied. The deuce you did, Cooper exclaimed. Well, I must say you did a good job. I'd like to look it over sometime. Sure, come out to my house anytime. Glad to show it to you, said Ford cordially. It was the beginning of an association, which was to be highly profitable to both of them. Other men of national prominence in the world of sports greeted Ford enthusiastically as one of themselves, while the crowd in the grandstand still cheered spasmodically. Reporters hurried up with cameramen, and Ford stepped back into the little car and posed somewhat sheepishly for his first newspaper pictures. Men who had formerly passed him on the street with a careless nod, now stopped him, clapped him on the shoulder, and talked like old friends. He was beyond question the hero of the day. He took it all in a matter-of-fact manner. His car had done no more than he had expected all along, and it was the car, not himself, which filled his mind. He hoped that the publicity would bring him the necessary capital to start his factory. Within a week he received offers from wealthy men of Detroit. The local papers had printed pictures of Ford, his car, and the old shed where it had been built, with long accounts of his years of work and his efforts to organize a company. Detroit had been awakened to the fact that there was a real opportunity for men with vision and sufficient capital to carry it out. But without exception these men insisted on one thing—absolute control of the company to be organized. From their standpoint that proviso was reasonable enough. If they furnished the money and Ford merely the idea, of course they should keep not only the larger share of the profits, but entire control of the venture as well. Without their money, they argued, his idea was valueless. On the other hand, in spite of his eight years of struggle for lack of capital, Ford still maintained that the idea was the really valuable part of the combination. He insisted on controlling the organization which was to manufacture his cars. While he had been working alone in the little shed at night, he had thought out his plan for a factory, mentally picturing its methods, its organization, the handling of material from the raw iron to the finished cars, fully assembled, rolling away in an endless line. He had figured costs to the fraction of ascent, planned methods of arranging the work, standardizing the product, eliminating waste and friction at every possible point. Now that the car was finished, the factory plan took its place in his mind. He did not intend to abandon it until he had made it a reality. He was going to build that factory as he had built his engine, in spite of any obstacles or opposition. To do it, he must control the company's policies. It was a deadlock. To the man with money it seemed sheer insanity to put control of a business venture into the hands of an obstinate mechanic who had happened to hit on an idea for an automobile engine. Ford would not dispose of his patents on any other condition. In a short time the discussions were dropped, and he was where he had been before the track meeting. That spectacular race, however, had brought him many acquaintances, and many of them developed into close friends. James Cousins, a small hardware merchant of Detroit, was one of them, and C. H. Wills, a mechanical draftsman, was another. With Tom Cooper, the bicycle champion, they spent many evenings in the old shed, or on the front steps of the Ford house, discussing projects for the Ford factory. Cousins, who had a talent for business affairs, formed a plan for interesting a small group of merchants like himself and financing Ford. He brought negotiations to a certain point, and found himself confronted again by their demand for control of the company. We must do something that'll show them that they've got to have you on your own terms. Something big, startling to stir them up, he reported. How about winning another race? Cooper suggested. They're pulling one off in Ohio this fall. Know it must be right here so I can take my men out and let them see it, Cousins objected. It takes a lot to jar any money loose from those fellows. I could enter at the gross point tracks next spring, Ford said, but it wouldn't show them any more than they've already seen if I race the same car. I can't afford to build another one. He was still in debt to Coffee Gym for the cost of his first racer. Coffee Gym, professing himself satisfied with the results of the race, doubtless he had judiciously placed some bets on it, had left Detroit in the meantime, but Ford nevertheless counted the loan among his liabilities. Think you can beat that car? Cooper inquired. I know I can, Ford replied quietly. Then you go to it and build her. I'll back the scheme, Cooper said. It was another debt on Ford's shoulders, but he accepted it and immediately began to work on another racer. With the intention of startling Cousins' group of sedate businessmen, he obeyed Cooper's injunction to build her big, the roof's the limit. The result was certainly startling. Four enormous cylinders gave that engine 80 horsepower. When it was finished and Cooper and Ford took it out one night for a trial, people started from their sleep for blocks about the Ford house. The noise of the engine could be heard miles, flames flashed from the motor, and the massive framework was one seat. Cooper stood thunderstruck while Ford got in and grasped the tiller. Good Lord, how fast do you figure she'll do? he asked. Don't know, Ford replied. He put on the power. There was a mighty roar, a burst of flame, and Cooper stood alone on the curb. Far down the street, he saw the car thundering away. A few minutes later, it came roaring back and stopped. Ford sat in it, white. How far did you go? Cooper asked. Ford told him. Do you mean to say she makes a speed like that? Cooper ejaculated, aghast. She'll make better than that. I didn't dare to give her full power, Ford replied. He climbed out and stood beside Cooper, and the two looked at the car in awe. See here, I hope you don't think I'll drive that thing in the races, Cooper said after a time. I wouldn't do it for a gold mine. You'll have to do it. I should say not, Ford retorted. I won't take the responsibility of driving her at full speed to win every race that was ever run. Cooper, if that car ever gets really started, it will kill somebody sure. End of Chapter 19 Chapter 20 of Henry Ford's Own Story This Libervox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Leanne Howlett. Henry Ford's Own Story By Rose Wilder Lane Chapter 20 Clinging to a Principle Ford and Cooper regarded the juggernaut car for some time in meditative silence. Well, I guess you've built a real racer there, all right, Cooper said admiringly. Yes, it looks as if I had, Ford answered. The question is, what good is it? Is there a man on earth who'd try to drive it? Well, I've got some nerve myself and I don't want to, Cooper admitted. He walked around the car and then looked again at the engine. How fast would the darn thing go, I wonder, he said. Get in and try her, Ford suggested. Cooper climbed in, Ford cranked the engine, and again, sleeping Detroit jumped from its bed. The car leaped and shot down the avenue. When it roared back again, Cooper stopped it in the middle of the street. That settles it for me, he said. She must have made 40 miles an hour and she wasn't half running at that. I won't take a route on the track. They confronted the situation gloomily. Cousins was depending on the success of the car, the races to bring his men in line for the organization of a company. Here was the car, built at the cost of months of work and some hundreds of Cooper's money, and it developed such speed that it was not safe to enter it for the race. Suddenly, Cooper had an idea. See here, I know a man. If there's a man on earth who would take that car out, he's the one, he said. He isn't afraid of anything under the shining sun, a bicycle rider I raced against in Denver. Oldfield's his name, Barney Oldfield. Never heard of him, said Ford. But if you think he would drive this car, let's get hold of him. Where is he? He ought to be in Salt Lake now, Cooper answered. I'll wire him. The message went to Oldfield that night. Cousins was told of the situation and the three men waited anxiously for a telegram from Salt Lake. It came late the next day, asking some further questions about the car and stating that Oldfield had never driven an automobile. Cooper wired again. The track meeting was to be held the next month. Time was short. Oldfield, if he came, would have to learn every detail of handling the machine. Even with an experienced man, the danger of driving that car in the races was great. Cooper and Ford haunted the telegraph offices. At last the final reply came. Oldfield would drive the car. He would arrive on the 1st of June, exactly one week before the date of the race. It was a busy week. Ford and Cooper bent every energy to teaching Oldfield how to drive the car. They crammed his mind with a mass of facts about the motor, the factor of safety and making quick turns, the way to handle the steering lever. On the day before the races, he took the car out on the tracks and made one circuit safely, holding it down to slow speed. I can handle her all right. I'll let her out tomorrow, he reported. The day of the track meeting dawned. Ford and Cooper, tensed with anxiety, went over the car thoroughly and coached Oldfield for the last time. Cousins, hiding his nervousness under a bland, confident manner, gathered his group of businessmen and took them into the grandstand. The free-for-all was called. Half a dozen cars were entered. When they had found their places in the field, Barney Oldfield settled himself in his seat, firmly grasped the two-handed tiller which steered the mighty car and remarked, Well, this chariot may kill me, but they'll say afterward that I was going some when the car went over the bank. Ford cranked the engine and the race was on. Oldfield, his long hair snapping in the wind, shot from the midst of the astounded field like a bullet. He did not dare look around. He merely clung to the tiller and gave that car all the power it had. At the end of the first half mile, he was far in the lead and gaining fast. The crowd, astounded, hysterical with excitement, saw him streak past the grandstand a quarter of a mile ahead of the nearest car following. On the second lap, he still gained. Grasping the tiller, never for a second relaxing that terrific speed, he spun around the course again, driving as if the field was at his heels. He roared in at the finish, a full half mile ahead of the nearest car in a three mile race. News of the feat went around the world and in one day Ford was hailed as a mechanical genius. Cousins brought the group of businessmen down to the track and before Oldfield was out of the car, they had made an appointment to meet Ford next day and form a company. The race had convinced them. Some people can't see a thing unless it is written in letters a mile high and then illustrated with a diagram. Ford says meditatively. During the following week, a company was formed and Ford was made vice president, general manager, superintendent, master mechanic and designer. He held a small block of stock and was paid a salary of one hundred fifty dollars a month, the same amount he had drawn while working for the Edison company. He was satisfied. The salary was plenty for his needs. Apparently he waived that subject aside as of little importance. At last he thought he had an opportunity to put into practice his plans for manufacturing to build up an organization which was to be as much a Ford factor as his car was a Ford car. The machine idea was to be its basis. The old idea for the fifty cent watch factory altered and improved by years of consideration was at last to be carried out. He planned a system of smooth economical efficiency, producing enormous numbers of cheap standardized cars and he began work on it with all the enthusiasm he had felt when he first began building his car. But almost immediately there was friction between him and the men who furnished the capital. They insisted on his designing not cheaper cars but more luxurious ones. They demanded that his saving and reduced costs of production should be added to their profits not deducted from the price of the car. They were shrewd successful business men and they intended to run their factory on business lines. I prefer not to talk about that year, Ford says today. Those men were right according to their lights. I suppose anyway some of them are still building a fairly successful car in the three thousand to four thousand dollar class and I don't want to criticize other men in the automobile field. The trouble was that they couldn't see things my way. They could not understand that the thing that is best for the greatest number of people is bound to win in the end. They said I was impractical that notions like that would hurt business. They said ideals were all very well but they wouldn't work. I did not know anything about business they said. There was an immediate profit of two hundred percent in selling a high priced car. Why take the risk of building 40 cheap cars at five percent profit? They said common people would not buy automobiles anyway. I thought the more people who had a good thing the better. My car was going to be cheap so the man that needed it most could afford to buy it. I kept on designing cheaper cars. They objected. Finally it came to a point where I had to give up my idea or get out of the company. Of course I got out. Over 30 years old with a wife and child to support and no capital Henry Ford still maintaining that policy of the greatest good to the greatest number must win in the end left the company which had given him an opportunity to be a rich man and announced that somehow he would manufacture his own car in his own way. End of chapter 20. Chapter 21 of Henry Ford's own story. This Libervox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Leanne Howlett. Henry Ford's own story by Rose Wilder Lane. Chapter 21. Early manufacturing trials. Again Henry Ford's talent for friendliness helped him. Wills who had been working with Ford as a draftsman came with him into the new company. He had a few hundred dollars which he was willing to stake on Ford's ability. Cousins who had helped organize the first company came also and turned his business talents to the task of raising capital to start the new concern. While he was struggling with the problems of organization Henry Ford rented an old shack on Mac Avenue moved his tools from the old shed and with a couple of machinists to help him began building his cheap cars. News of his venture spread in Detroit the cars sold before they were built. Men found their way to the crude shop talked to Ford and his greasy overalls and paid down deposits on cars for future delivery. Often these deposits helped to buy material for the same cars they purchased. Ford was working on a narrow margin. Every dollar which could be squeezed from the week's earnings after expenses were paid went directly into more material for more cars. At first his machinists went home with the end of their regular hours then Ford worked along far into the night building engines before long the men became vitally interested in Ford's success and returned after supper to help him. Meantime a few men had been found who were willing to buy stock in the new company. It was capitalized at one hundred thousand dollars of which fifteen thousand dollars was paid in then Ford set to work in earnest. The force was increased to nearly 40 men and wills became manager of the mechanical department. Car loads of material were ordered on 60 days time. Every pound of iron or inch of wire calculated with the utmost nicety so that each shipment would be sufficient to build a certain number of completed cars without the waste of ten cents worth of material. Then Ford and cousins set out to sell the cars before payment for the material came due. Ford set a price of nine hundred dollars a car an amount which he figured would cover the cost of material, wages and overhead and leave a margin for buying more material. A thousand anxieties now filled his days and nights. Fifteen thousand dollars was very little money for his plant. Wages alone would eat it up in ten weeks. The raw material must be made into cars sold and the money collected before it could be paid for. Many times a check from a buyer won the race with the bill from the foundry by a margin of hours. Often on payday Ford faced a prospect of being unable to pay the men until he should have sold a shipment of cars not yet built. But the cars sold. Their simplicity of construction, their power, above all their cheapness, and a day when automobiles almost without exception sold for twenty five hundred to four thousand dollars brought buyers. In a few weeks orders came from Cleveland for them. Shortly afterward a dealer in Chicago wrote for an agency there. Still the success of the venture depended from week to week on a thousand chances. Ford with his genius for factory management reduced the waste of material or labor to the smallest minimum. He worked on new designs for simpler cheaper motors. He figured orders for material. His own living expenses were cut to the bone. Every cent of profit on sales went into the factory. Nearly a thousand cars were sold that year but with the beginning of winter sales decreased almost stopped. The factory must be kept running in order to have cars for the spring trade. Close figuring would enable them to keep it open but an early brisk market would be necessary to save the company in the spring. In this emergency Ford recalled the great advertising value of racing. He had designed a four cylinder car to be put on the market the following year. If he could make a spectacular demonstration of four cylinder construction as compared with the old motors the success of his spring sales would be assured. Ford announced that in November he would try for the world speed record in a four cylinder car of his own construction. The old machine in which Barney Oldfield had made his debut as an automobile driver was brought out and overhauled. The body was rebuilt so that in form it was much like the racing cars of today. Ford himself remodeled the motor. The test was to be made on the frozen surface of Lake St. Clair. The course was surveyed. On the appointed day with Ford himself as driver the motor car appeared for its second trial. A stiff wind was blowing over the ice. The surface of the lake, apparently smooth, was in reality seemed with slight crevices and roughened with frozen snow. Ford muffled in a fur coat with a fur cap pulled down over his ears, went over it anxiously noting mentally the worst spots. Then he cranked the car, settled himself in the seat and nodded to the starter. The signal came. Ford threw on the power and was off. The car, striking the ice fissure, leaped into the air two wheels at a time. Ford clinging to the tiller was almost thrown from his seat. Zigzagging wildly, bouncing like a ball, the machine shot over the ice. Twice it almost upset. But Ford, struggling to keep the course, never shut down the power. He finished the mile in thirty nine one fifth seconds, beating the world's record by seven seconds. The success of next year's sales was certain. The following day when Ford reached the factory, Wills met him with an anxious face. It was payday and there was no money. We didn't bother you about it last week because you were so busy with the race, Wills said. We thought up to the last minute that the check from Chicago would come. It was due two days ago. We wired yesterday and got no answer. Mr. Cousins left this morning on the early train to find out what is wrong. You know how it is. The men want their money for over Christmas. The blank company wants men and they're offering more money than we can pay. I'm afraid our men will quit. And if they do and we can't get out the Cincinnati order next week. Ford knew that to raise more money from the stockholders would be impossible. They had gone in as deeply as they could. To sacrifice a block of his own stock would be to lose control of the company and besides it would be difficult to sell it. The company was still struggling for existence. It had paid no dividends and other automobile manufacturers were already paying the enormous profits that led in the next few years to wild disastrous expansion in the automobile business. The Ford company had no marketable assets. Nothing but the rented building, the equipment and a few unfilled orders. Well if we pull through the men will have to do it, said Ford. I'll tell them about it. That evening when the day's work was over and the men came to the office to get their pay they found Ford standing in the doorway. He said he had something to tell them. When they had all gathered in a group, nearly a hundred by this time, he stood on a chair so that all of them could hear what he had to say and told them the exact situation. Now men we can pull through all right if you'll help out now. He concluded. You know the kind of car we're selling and the price and you know what the new one did yesterday. We can get through the winter on our unfinished orders if we never get that Chicago check. Next year we'll have a big business. But it all depends on you if you quit now we're done for. What about it? Will you stay? Sure Mr. Ford. You bet we will old man. We're with you don't you forget it. They said. Before they left the plant most of them came up to assure him personally that they would stand by the Ford Company. Next day they all arrived promptly for work and during the week they broke all previous records and the number of cars turned out. War between capital and labor is just like any other kind of war Henry Ford says today. It happens because people do not understand each other. The boss ought to show his books to his employees. Let them see what he's working for. They're just as intelligent as he is. And if he needs help they'll turn in and work twenty four hours a day if they have to to keep the business going. More than that they'll use their heads for him. They'll help him in hundreds of ways he never would think of. The only trouble is that people make a distinction between practical things and spiritual qualities. I tell you loyalty and friendliness and helping the other man along are the only really valuable things in this world and they bring all the practical advantages along with them every time. If every one of us had the courage to believe that and act on it war and waste and misery of all kinds would be wiped out overnight. End of chapter twenty one chapter twenty two of Henry Ford's own story. This Libervox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Leanne Howlett. Henry Ford's own story by Rose Wilder Lane chapter twenty two automobiles for the masses in a short time cousins return from Chicago bringing not only the delayed check but several orders as well which he had obtained largely because of the astounding record made by the Ford car and its race over the ice on Lake St. Clair. The Ford company was not yet firmly established but prospects were bright. America was awaking to the possibilities of the automobile not merely as a machine for spectacular exhibitions of daring and skill at track meetings or as the plaything of wealthy men but as a practical time and labor saver for the average person. The automobile industry rose almost overnight orders poured into the offices of companies already organized new companies were formed by dozens capitalized at millions of dollars. Fly-by-night concerns sprang up like mushrooms, flooded the country with stock-selling schemes, established factories where parts of motor cars bought elsewhere were assembled. Fortunes were made and lost and made again. Almost every day saw new cars on the market. Everyone wanted an automobile. It was a luxury. It appealed to our longing to have something just a little better than our neighbors could afford. At the same time, its obvious usefulness was an argument which overcame economy. The comic supplements, those faithful reflectors of American life in terms of the ridiculous played with every variation of the theme. He mortgaged the home to buy an automobile. Amid this mounting excitement in spite of millions to be made by building a car bigger, finer, more beautiful and luxurious than those of its competitors, Henry Ford still clung firmly to his idea. He seems to have been at that time the only automobile manufacturer who realized that the automobile supplied a real need of the average man and that the average man is a hardworking, frugal individual used to living without those things he must mortgage his home to get. The automobile of those days was like a steam yacht, Ford says. It was built for only a few people. Now, anything that is good for only a few people is really no good. It's got to be good for everybody or in the end it will not survive. Radical philosophy that you might hear it from a street corner orator one of that dissatisfied multitude which will insist in spite of all the good things we have in this country that merely because those things are not good for them they are not good. There is something of Marx in such a statement, something of George Washington even something of Christianity. No wonder men were astounded by the notion that success could be founded on a theory like that. It's plain common sense, I tell you. Ford insisted and in spite of good advice in spite of sound business reasoning that obstinate man went on in his own way and acted on that belief. The Ford cars were cheap already underpriced nearly a thousand dollars in comparison with other cars. They were to be sold still cheaper. Ford insisted. Every cent he could save in construction and factory management and shrewd buying of material was deducted from the selling price. The cars sold. Orders accumulated faster than they could be filled in the shop on Mack Avenue. The profits went back into the factory. More men were added to the payroll. More machinery was installed and still the orders came and the output could not keep up with them. Mrs. Ford could afford to buy her own hats instead of making them to get a new set of furniture for the parlor to purchase as many gloves and shoes as she wanted. She did these things. She even talked of getting a higher girl to do the cooking. But Ford himself made little change in his way of living. He had always dressed warmly and comfortably, eaten when he was hungry, slept soundly enough on an ordinary bed. He saw no way to increase his comforts by spending more money on himself. More than enough money to keep him comfortable is no use to a man, he says. You can't squander money on yourself without hurting yourself. Money is only a lubricant to keep business going. He continued to work hard, designing simpler, cheaper cars, struggling with business difficulties as they arose, planning a new factory. Most of all, he was interested in the new factory. The success of his four-cylinder car provided money enough to warrant building it at last. A small tract of land on Pequette Avenue was bought, and Ford prepared to move from the rented Mack Avenue place. The watch factory dream was finally to be realized. Henry Ford declared that by a large equipment of special machinery and a sympathetic organization of the work, cars could be produced at a hitherto unheard of price. He planned to the smallest detail to the most minute fraction of space, time, labor, the production of those cars. Every part was to be machined to exact size. No supplementary fitting in the assembling room was to be necessary. From the time the raw iron entered one end of the factory, to the finished car rolled away from the other end, there was not to be a moment's delay, a wasted motion. The various parts, all alike to the fraction of an inch, were to fit together with automatic precision. And Ford announced that he would produce 10,000 cars in a single year. The manufacturing world was stunned by the announcement. Then it laughed. Very few people believed that Ford would go far with such a radical departure from all accepted practice. But the new building was finished. Ford installed his machinery according to his plans. And when the wheels began to turn, the world earned a new lesson in efficiency. Still, Ford's success in the automobile field was not easily won. As a poor, hardworking mechanic, he had fought weariness and poverty and ridicule to build his motor car. As an unknown inventor, still poor, he had struggled for a foothold in the business world and got it. Now he was in for a long, expensive legal battle before he should be able to feel secure in his success. The association of licensed automobile manufacturers, a combination of 73 of the biggest motor car companies brought suit against the Ford company to recover tremendous sums of money because of Ford's alleged violation of the Selden patent. Selden held a basic patent covering the use of the gasoline engine as motive power in self-propelled vehicles. When automobiles began to be put on the market, he claimed his right under that patent to a royalty on all such vehicles. Other automobile manufacturers, almost without exception, acceded to his claim and operated under release from him, adding the royalty to the selling price. Henry Ford balked. He had been running a self-propelled gasoline engine long before Selden and applied for his patent. Furthermore, the royalties interfered with the long-cherished dream of cheapening his cars. He flatly refused to make the payments. The less ease of the Selden rights, perceiving in Ford a dangerous adversary in the automobile field who would become still more dangerous if he succeeded in eliminating the royalty payments from his manufacturing costs, immediately began to fight him with all the millions at their command. End of Chapter 22 Chapter 23 of Henry Ford's own story This Libervox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Leanne Howlett. Henry Ford's own story by Rose Wilder Lane. Chapter 23 Fighting the Selden Patent By sheer force of an idea backed only by hard work, Henry Ford had established a new principle in mechanics. He had created new methods in the manufacturing world, methods substantially those which prevail in manufacturing today. Now he entered the legal field. His fight on the Selden Patent, a fight that lasted nearly ten years, was a sensation not only in the automobile world, but among lawyers everywhere. The intricacies of the case baffled the jurist before whom it was tried. Time and again, decisions adverse to Ford were handed down. Each time Ford came back again, more determined than before, carried the contest to a higher court and fought the battle over again. On one side, the Association of Licensed Automobile Manufacturers was struggling to save patent rights for which they had paid vast sums of money to maintain high prices for automobiles and to protect their combination of manufacturing interests. On the other, Ford was fighting to release the industry from paying tribute to a patent which he believed unsound to smash the combination of manufacturers and to keep down his own factory costs so that he could make a still cheaper car. With the first adverse decision, the ALAM carried the fight into the newspapers. Most of us can recall the days when from coast to coast the newspapers of America blossomed with page advertisements warning people against buying Ford cars, asserting that every owner of a Ford car was liable to prosecution for damages under the seldom patent rights. Those were chaotic years in the industry. The hysteria which followed the huge profit making of the first companies checked only temporarily by the panic of 1907 to 08, mounted again in a rising wave of excitement. Dozens of companies sprang up, sold stock, assembled a few cars and went down in ruin. Buyers of their cars were left stranded with automobiles for which they could not get new parts. It was asserted that the Ford Motor Company unable to pay the enormous sums accruing if the seldom patent was upheld would be one of the companies to fail. Buyers were urged to play safe by purchasing a recognized car, a car made by the licensed manufacturers. Ford, already involved in a business fight against the association and its millions, thus found himself in danger of losing the confidence of the public. The story of those years is one which cannot be adequately told. Ford was working harder than he had ever done while he was building his first car in the old shed. He was one of the first men at the factory every morning and long after Detroit was asleep he was still hard at work, conferring with lawyers, discussing with cousins the latest disaster that threatened, struggling with business problems, meeting emergencies in the selling field, and always planning to better the factory management and to lower the price and increase the efficiency of the car. The car sold. Ford had built it for common men, for the vast body of America's middle class people and it was cheap enough to be within their reach. Ford knew that if he could keep their confidence he could win in the end. He met the attack of the ALAM by printing huge advertisements, guaranteeing purchasers of his car from prosecution under the seldom patents and backed his guarantee by the bond of a New York security company. Then he appealed the patent case and kept on fighting. In 1908, the farmer boy who had started out 20 years before with nothing but his bare hands and an idea found himself at the head of one of America's largest business organizations. That year his factory made and sold 6,398 cars. Every machine sold increased his liabilities in case he lost the patent fight but the business was now on a firm foundation. Agencies had been established in all parts of the world. Orders came pouring in. Profits were rolling up. Ford found his net earnings increasing faster than he could possibly put them back into the business. At the end of that year he and Cousins sat in their offices going over the balance sheets of the company. The size of the bank balance was most satisfactory. The factory was running to the limit of its capacity. Orders were waiting. Prospects were bright for the following season. Ford leaned back in his chair. Well, I guess we're out of the woods all right, he said. He put his hands in his pockets and looked thoughtfully at the ceiling. Remember that time in the Mac Avenue place he began when that Chicago check didn't come in and we couldn't pay the men? I should say I do. And the day we got the first order from Cleveland. Remember how you worked in the shop yourself to get it out? And you hustled out and got material on 60 days time and the boys worked all night and we had to wait till the money came from Cleveland before we could give them their overtime. That was a great bunch of men we had then. They began to talk them over. Most of them were managers of departments now. One was handling the sales force. Another had developed into a driver and won many trophies and broken many records with the Ford car. Wills was superintendent of the factory. I tell you, Cousins, you and I have been at the head of the concern and we've done some big things together but if it hadn't been for the men we'd be a long way from where we are today, Ford said at last. Now we have some money we don't need for the business. We ought to divide with them. Let's do it. I'm with you, Cousins said heartily and reached for his pencil. Eagerly as two boys they sat there for another hour figuring. They began with checks for the men they remembered. Men who had been with them in the first days of the company. Men who had done some special thing which won their notice. Men who were making good records in the shops or on the sales force. But there seemed no place to draw the line. After all, every man who's working for us is helping, Ford decided. Let's give every one of them a Christmas present. Cousins agreed. We'll have the clerical department figure it out. The men who have been with us longest the most and so on down to the last errand boy that's been with us a year. What do you say? Ford said yes with enthusiasm and so it was settled. That year every employee of the company received an extra check in his December pay envelope. Ford had reached a point in his business life where he must stop and consider what he should do with the money his work had brought him and those extra checks were the first result. For twenty years Ford had spent all his energy, all his time and thought in one thing, his work. If he had divided his interests, if he had allowed a liking for amusement, ease, finer clothes, admiration, to hinder his work in the old shed, he would never have built his car. If he had cared more for personal pleasure and applause than he did for his idea, he would have allowed his factory plan to be altered, twisted out of shape and forgotten when he first found capital to manufacture the car. But from the day he left his farm till now he has subordinated everything else to his machine idea. He applied it first to an engine, then to a factory. He fought through innumerable difficulties to make those ideas into realities. He destroyed old conceptions of mechanics and of factory management. He built up a great financial success. Now he found himself with a new problem to face, the problem of a great fortune piling up in his hands. End of chapter twenty-three. Chapter twenty-four of Henry Ford's own story. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Leanne Howlett. Henry Ford's own story by Rose Wilder Lane. Chapter twenty-four. The greatest good to the greatest number. The response to that first Christmas gift from the Ford Company to its employees was another proof of Ford's theory that friendliness pays. In the following month, the production of cars broke all January records. Salesmen, with a new feeling of loyalty to the firm, increased their efforts, worked with greater enthusiasm, and their orders jumped. The fight with the association still raged in the courts and in the newspapers, but the factory wheels were turning faster than ever before. More cars were pouring out, more people were buying. That year the Ford organization made and sold 10,607 cars. Ford had made good his prophecy that the new factory would produce 10,000 cars in one year. The phenomenal growth of his business had begun. His own fortune was doubling and doubling again. America had produced another self-made millionaire. Ford himself believes that anyone who will pay the price he has paid can make a financial success as great. Poverty doesn't hold a man down, he says. Money doesn't amount to anything. It has no real value, whatever. Any young man who has a good idea and works hard enough will succeed. Money will come to him. What do I mean by a good idea? I mean an idea that will work out for the best interests of everyone. An idea for something that will benefit the world. That's the kind of an idea the world wants. This country has produced hundreds of men whose lives proved this statement. Men who have built railroads, telephones, telegraph systems, great merchandising organizations. These men have subordinated every personal pleasure to their work. They have exhausted their minds and bodies, driven themselves mercilessly, used every ounce of energy and ability, and won. The tragedy for them and for our country is that in winning the fight, most of them have lost their perspective on it. They themselves have become absorbed by the machine they have built up. The money they have amassed usually means very little to them, but business is their passion. With millions upon millions piling up to their credit, they continue to hold down wages to protect their profits, to keep the business running as it has always run. That business has been built only because fundamentally it was for the greatest good to the greatest number. But in the long fight, they have lost sight of that fact. Let a new project arise which is for the general good and it will hurt business, they cry an alarm. Ford kept his viewpoint. Partly because of his years on the farm, where he worked shoulder to shoulder with other men, and learned essential democracy. Partly because most of his work had been in mechanics rather than in business, but most of all because he is a simple, straight thinking man. The tremendous Ford organization did not absorb him. He had applied his machine idea first to an engine, then to a factory. In time, he was to apply it to society as a whole. That Christmas present of ours is paying better dividends than any money we ever spent. He said to cousins with a grin. First thing we know, the men will be paying us back more than we gave them. Look here. He spread on cousins' desk a double handful of letters from the men. They like it, he said soberly. Some of them say they were worrying about Christmas bills and so on. Those checks took a load off their minds and they're pitching in and working hard to show they appreciate it. I guess in the long run anything that is good for the men is good for the company. In the months that followed he continued to turn over in his mind various ideas which occurred to him based on that principle. The Ford employees and agents now numbered tens of thousands. They were scattered all over the earth, from Bombay to Nova Scotia, Switzerland, Peru, Bermuda, Africa, Alaska, India. Everywhere were workers helping Ford. Black men in turbines, yellow men in embroidered robes, men of all races and languages, speaking, thinking, living in ways incomprehensible to that quiet man who sat in his office in Detroit were part of the vast machine out of which his millions poured. He thought it over, that great machine. He knew machines. He knew that the smallest part of one was as necessary as the largest, that every nut and screw was indispensable to the success of the whole. And while he brooded over the mighty machine his genius had created, the thought slowly formed itself in his mind that those multiplying millions of his were the weak spot in the organization. Those millions represented energy and through him they were draining out of the machine, accumulating in a useless idle store. Some way they must be put back. Everybody helps me, he said. If I'm going to do my part, I must help everybody. A new problem filled his mind. How should he put his money back into that smooth, efficient organization in such a way as to help all parts of it without disorganizing it? It was now a part of the business system of the world, founded on financial and social principles which underlie all society. It was no small matter to alter it. Meantime there were immediate practical necessities to be met. His business had far outgrown the Pequette Avenue plant. A new factory must be built. He bought a tract of 276 acres in the northern part of Detroit and began to plan the construction of his present factory, a number of huge buildings covering more than 47 acres. In this mammoth plant, Ford had at last the opportunity, unhampered by any want of capital, to put into operation his old ideas of factory management. Here, 1,800 men were to work, quickly, efficiently, without the loss of a moment or emotion, all of them integral parts of one great machine. Each department makes one part of the Ford car complete from raw material to the finished product, and every part is carried swiftly and directly by gravity to the assembling room. But Ford's new idea also began to express itself here. He meant to consider not only the efficiency, but the happiness and comfort of his men. The walls were made of plate glass, so that every part of the workrooms were light and well ventilated. One whole department, employing 500 men, was established to do nothing but sweep floors, wash windows, look after sanitary conditions generally. The floors were scrubbed every week with hot water and alkali. Twenty-five men are employed constantly in painting the walls and ceilings, keeping everything fresh and clean. That winter the Christmas checks went again to all the employees. Ford was still working out a real plan by which his millions could help. Meantime he divided his profits in this makeshift fashion. The following year the company moved to its new quarters, and that atmosphere of light and comfort the men worked better than ever before. Production broke another record. Thirty-eight thousand five hundred twenty-eight cars in one year were made and sold. And the automobile world is waiting to hear the next announcement from Henry Ford, said a trade journal at that time. Whether or not he has another sensation in store is the livest topic of discussion in Detroit manufacturing circles, nay, even throughout the world. Henry Ford was preparing another sensation, but this time it was to be in a larger field. He had startled the world first with a motor car, next with a factory. Now he was thinking of broad economic problems. End of Chapter Twenty-Four Chapter Twenty-Five of Henry Ford's Own Story This Libervox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Leanne Howlett. Henry Ford's Own Story by Rose Wilder Lane Chapter Twenty-Five. Five dollars a day minimum. The Selden Patent Fight had continued through all the early years of Ford's struggle to establish himself in business. At last it was settled. Ford won it. The whole industry was freed from an oppressive tax and his long fight was over. Immediately, of course, other cars came into the low-priced field. Other manufacturers, tardily following Ford, began the downward pressure in prices, which now makes it possible for thousands of persons with only moderate means to own automobiles. For the first time, Ford faced competition in his own price class. Enumerable business problems confronted the farmer mechanic. From the time he opened his office doors in the early morning, until the last workman had left the plant and only his light was burning. Businessmen came, financiers, salesmen, lawyers, designers. Every day for two hours, he conferred with his superintendents and foremen in the main factory. Every detail of the business was under his supervision. A smaller man, or a less simple one, would have been absorbed by the sheer mass of work. Ford settled every problem by his own simple rule. Do what is fundamentally best for everybody. It will work out for our interests in the end. And always he was pondering the big problem of putting back into active use the millions that were accumulating to his credit. Every year the price was lowered on his cars, following his original policy of making the automobile cheap. Still the sales increased by leaps and bounds, and his margin of profit on each car mounted into a greater total. The whole system is wrong, he says. People have the wrong idea of money. They think it is valuable in itself. They try to get all they can, and they've built up a system where one man has too much and another not enough. As long as that system is working, there does not seem any way to even things up. But I made up my mind to do what I could. Money valuable? I tell you, gold is the least valuable metal in the world. Edison says it is no good at all. It is too soft to make a single useful article. Suppose there was only one loaf of bread in the world, would all the money on earth buy it from the man who had it? Money itself is nothing, absolutely nothing. It is only valuable as a transmitter, a method of handling things that are valuable. The minute one man gets more of it than he can use to buy the real things he needs, the surplus is sheer waste. It is stored up energy that is no good to anybody. Every bit of energy that is wasted that way hurts the whole world, and in the end it hurts the man who has it as much as it hurts anybody. Look here. You make a machine to do something useful, don't you? Well then, if it is built so that it keeps wasting energy, doesn't the whole machine wear itself out without doing half as much as it should? Isn't that last energy bad for every part of the machine? Well, that is the way the world is running now. The whole system is wrong. A very little thought brings almost any of us to that conclusion, especially if the thinker is one who surplus money is all in the other man's bank account. But Ford held to that thought, as few of us would, with the surplus millions in his own hands. Furthermore, he proposed not merely to think, but to act on that thought. He is not a man to act hastily. Before he made his engine, he worked out the drawings. Before he distributed his money, he selected two hundred men from the workers in his shop and sent them out to learn all they could of the living conditions of the other thousands. They worked for a year, and at the end of that time, Ford, going carefully over their reports, saw plainly where his surplus money should go. Over four thousand of the eighteen thousand men working in the Ford plant were living in dire poverty and unspeakable home conditions. Families were huddled into tenements, wherein wet weather water stood on the floor. Wives were ill, uncared for, babies were dressed in rags, another five thousand men in his employ were living in conditions which could only be called fair. Only three hundred sixty-four out of eighteen thousand owned their own homes. Yet the employees in the Ford shops were above the average of factory working men. They were paid the regular scale of wages, not overworked, and their surroundings at the plant were sanitary and pleasant. In those terrible figures, Ford was seeing merely the ordinary, accustomed result of the wasted energy represented in those idle millions of dollars. He went over them thoroughly, noting that the scale of living grew steadily better as the salaries increased, observing that the most wretched class was mainly composed of foreign workmen, ignorant, unskilled labor, most of them unable to speak English. He figured, thought, drew his own conclusions. He had been studying relief plans, methods of factory management in Germany, welfare work of all kinds. When he had finished his consideration of those reports, he threw overboard all the plans other people had made and announced his own. Every man who works for me is going to get enough for a comfortable living, he said. If an able-bodied man can't earn that, he's either lazy or ignorant. If he's lazy, he's sick. We'll have a hospital. If he's ignorant, he wants to learn. We'll have a school. Meantime, figure out in the accounting bureau a scale of profit sharing that will make every man's earnings at least $5 a day. The man that gets the smallest wages gets the biggest share of the profits. He needs it most. On January 12, 1914, Ford more than satisfied the expectant manufacturers of the world. He launched into the industrial world a most startling bombshell. $5 a day for every workman in the Ford factory. He's crazy, other manufacturers said aghast. Why those dirty, ignorant foreigners don't earn half that. You can't run a business that way. That man Ford will upset the whole industrial situation. What is he trying to do, anyhow? They demanded whenever Detroit factory workman grew restless. The news spread rapidly. Everywhere workers dropped their tools and hurried to the Ford factory. $5 a day. When Ford reached the factory in the morning of the second day after his announcement, he found Woodward Avenue crowded with men waiting to get a job in the shops. An hour later the crowds jammed into a mob, which massed outside the buildings and spread far into adjoining streets, pushing, struggling, fighting to get closer to the doors. It was not safe to open them. That mass of humanity pushed from behind would have wrecked the offices. The manager of the employment department opened a window and shouted to the frantic crowd that there were no jobs, but the sound of his voice was lost in the roar that greeted him. He shut the window and telephoned the police department for reserves. Still the crowds increased every moment by new groups of men, wildly eager to get a job, which would pay them a comfortable living. Ford looked down at them from his window. Can't you make them understand we haven't any jobs? He asked the employment manager. The man, disheveled, breathing hard, and hoarse with his efforts to make his voice heard, shook his head. The police are coming, he said. Then there will be somebody hurt, Ford predicted. We can't have that. Get the fire hose and turn it on the crowd. That will do the business. A moment later a solid two inch stream of water shot from the doors of the Ford factory. It swept the struggling men half off their feet, knocked the breath from their bodies, left them gasping, startled, dripping. They scattered. In a few moments the white stream from the hose was sweeping back and forth over a widening space bare of men. When the police arrived the crowd was so dispersed that the men in uniform marched easily through it without using their clubs. For a week a special force of policemen guarded the Ford factory, turning back heart sick men, disappointed in their hope of a comfortable living wage. It was a graphic illustration of the harm done the whole machine by the loss of energy stored in money, held idle in the hands of a few men. When I saw thousands of men in Detroit alone fighting like wild animals for a chance that a decent living wage, it brought home to me the tremendous economic waste in our system of doing business, Ford said. Every man in those crowds must go back to a job, if he found one at all, that did not give him a chance to do his best work because it did not pay him enough to keep him healthy and happy. I made up my mind to put my project through, to prove to the men who are running big industries that my plan pays. I wanted employers to see that when every man has all the money he needs for comfort and happiness, it will be better for everybody. I wanted to prove that the policy of trying to get everything good for yourself really hurts you in the end. He paused and smiled his slow whimsical smile. Well, I guess I proved it, he said. Six weeks after the plan went into effect in his factory, a comparison was made between the production for January 1914 and January 1913. In 1913, with 16,000 men working on the actual production of cars for 10 hours a day, 16,000 cars were made and shipped. Under the new plan, 15,800 men working eight hours a day made and shipped 26,000 cars. Again, Ford had shown the value of that intangible and practical thing, a spirit of friendliness and goodwill. On the ebb tide of the enthusiasm which had stirred this country at the announcement of his profit-sharing plan, a thousand skeptical opinions arose. Oh, he's doing it just for the advertising. He knew right enough that he would make more money in the end by this scheme. He's no philanthropist. Ford wanted his new plan known. He wanted employers everywhere to see what he was doing, how he did it, and what the effects would be. He did expect the factory to run better, to produce more cars. If it had not done so, his plan would have been a failure. Do the thing that is best for everybody and it will be best for you in the end. That was his creed. He hoped to prove its truth so that no one would doubt it. Nor is Ford a philanthropist with the ordinary implications that follow that word. He is a hard-headed practical man who has made a success in invention, in organization, and the building of a great business. His contribution to the world is a practical contribution. His message is a practical message. This whole world is like a machine. Every part is as important as every other part. We should all work together, not against each other. Anything that is good for all the parts of the machine is good for each one of them. Or look at it as a human body. The welfare of one part is dependent on all the other parts. Once in a while, a little group of cells get together and takes to growing on its own account, not paying any attention to the rest. That is a cancer. In the end, what it takes from the rest of the body causes the death of the whole organism. What do those independent selfish cells get out of it? I tell you, selfishness, trying to get ahead of the other fellow, trying to take away from other people is the worst policy a man can follow. It is not a practical viewpoint on life. Any man who has a success is a success because his work has helped other men, whether he realizes it or not. The more he helps other men, the more successful everyone will be, and he will get his share. Putting his profit sharing plan into effect was not a simple matter of writing the checks. He had to educate not only other employers, but his own men as well. They must be taught the proper way to use money, so that it would not be a detriment to themselves or a menace to society in general. On the other hand, Ford did not believe in the factory systems in use abroad. He did not mean to give each of his workmen a model cottage with a model flower garden in front and a model laundry in the rear and say to them, Look at the flowers, but do not pick them. It will spoil my landscape effect. Look at the lawn, but do not cut it. I have workmen for that. He meant to place no restraints on the personal liberty of the men. He believed that every man, if given the opportunity, would make himself a good substantial citizen, industrious, thrifty, and helpful to others. He meant his plan to prove that theory also. It has been rumored that the extra share of profits was given with a string to it. That is not so. There was no single thing a man must have to do to entitle him to his share. He need not own a home, start a bank account, support a family, or even measure up to a standard of work in the shops. Manhood and thrift were the only requisites, and the company stood ready to help any man attain those. The first obstacle was the fact that fifty-five percent of the men did not speak English. Investigators visiting their miserable homes were obliged to speak through interpreters. A school was started where they might learn English, and the response was touching. More than a thousand men enrolled immediately, and when the plan was discussed in the shops, two hundred American workmen volunteered to help in teaching, so thoroughly had the Ford spirit of helpfulness pervaded the factory. The paid teachers were dismissed, and now those two hundred men on their own time are helping their fellow employees to learn the language of their new country. Shortly after the newspapers had carried far and wide the news of Ford's revolutionary theories, a man knocked late one night at the door of the manager's home. "'Will you give me a job?' he asked. "'Why, I don't know who you are,' the manager replied. "'I'm the worst man in Detroit,' said the caller defiantly. "'I'm fifty-four years old, and I've done thirty-two years in Jackson Prison. I'm a bad actor, and everybody knows it. I can't get a job. The only person that ever played me true is my wife, and I ain't going to have her taking in washing to support me. "'If you want to give me a job, all right. If you don't, I'm going back to Jackson Prison for good. There's one man yet I want to get, and I'll get him.' Somewhat nonplussed by the situation, the manager invited the man in, talked to him a bit, and called up Ford. "'Sure, give him a chance,' Ford's voice came over the wire. "'He's a man, isn't he? He's entitled to as good a chance as any other man.' The ex-convict was given a job in the shops. For a couple of months his work was poor. The foreman reported it to the manager. The manager wrote a letter, telling the man to brace up. There was plenty of good stuff in him, if he would take an interest in the work and do his best. The next morning he came into the manager's office with his wife. So broken up, he could hardly hold his voice steady. That letter is the finest thing outside of what my wife has done that I've ever had happened to me, he said. I want to stick here. I'll do the best I know how. I'll work my hands off. Show me how to do my work better.' A couple of months later he came into the office and took a small roll of bills out of his pocket. "'Say,' he said, shifting from one foot to the other, and running his fingers around the brim of the hat in his hands. I wonder if you'd tell me how to get into a bank and leave this, and what bank? I'm wise about how to get in and take it out, but I ain't up to putting it in without some advice.' Today that man is living in his own home, which he is paying for on the installment plan, and he is one of the best workers in Detroit, a good, steady man. His chance appearance resulted in Ford's policy of employing convicts wherever his investigators come across them. Nearly a hundred ex-criminals, many of them on parole, are working in his shops today, and he considers them among his best men. No policy is any good if it cannot go into a community and take everyone in it—young, old, good, bad, sick, well, and make them all happier, more useful, and more prosperous, he says. Every human being that lives is part of the big machine, and you can't draw any lines between parts of a machine. They're all important. You can't make a good machine by making only one part of it good. This belief led to his establishing a unique labor clearinghouse in his administration building—a department that makes it next to impossible for any man employed in the organization to lose his job.