Ford automobile

“ Twelve years ago half a dozen men in Detroit were actually driving the Ford automobile about the streets. Ford had started a small factory, with a dozen mechanics, and was buying material. It was freely predicted that the venture would never come to much.
Last year—January, 1914—America was startled by an announcement from the Ford factory that ten million dollars would be divided among the eighteen thousand employees as their share of the company’s profits. Henry Ford was a multimillionaire, and America regarded him with awe.
Mankind must have its hero. ”

“ There are even those to-day who shake their heads and talk about the luxury of the automobile and only grudgingly admit that perhaps the motor truck is of some use. But in the beginning there was hardly any one who sensed that the automobile could be a large factor in industry. The most optimistic hoped only for a development akin to that of the bicycle. When it was found that an automobile really could go and several makers started to put out cars, the immediate query was as to which would go fastest. It was a curious but natural development—that racing idea. ”

“ 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 learned a new lesson in efficiency.
Still Ford's success in the automobile field was not easily won. As a poor, hard-working mechanic, he had fought weariness and poverty and ridicule, to build his motor car ”

“ His health was always good, he worked unceasingly, and slept just as little as possible, and at last, in 1893, he made what people called then, a wagon driven by gas; today we call it an automobile. It ran but was not a great success, and the public made fun of the inventor. This wagon driven by gas was the first Ford automobile and the man who invented it was Henry Ford. He had married and lived in a little house in Bagley Street, Detroit, Michigan. He was employed by the Edison Company, but he had a workshop of his own in his barn. There he built his first motor car. ”

“ Ford announced that in November he would try for the world’s 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 to-day. Ford himself remodeled the motor. ”

“ Soon after the success of the model T was assured, Henry Ford was asked about the secret of his ability to produce automobiles. He divulged his “secret” in these terms: have a simple design, use the latest machinery, standardize the parts, make the entire automobile yourself, and always have a good supply of materials on hand. Throughout the rest of his life, he held to these principles.
By 1911, Ford cars were manufactured by the hundreds of thousands. The process of assembling automobiles received more and more attention, and by 1914, a Ford car could be put together in an hour and a half. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Ford answered, "I and my family already have all the money we can possibly use. We don't need any more. And I think an automobile is a good thing. I think every man should be able to own one. I want to keep lowering the price until my car is within the reach of every one in America. ”

“ 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, inclosed, 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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ Having accomplished something, most of us spend some time in admiring it and ourselves. It is characteristic of big men that past achievements do 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. ”

“ In those days reliability runs were more popular in England than motor races. Perhaps there was no inkling that after all an automobile was not merely a toy. The Scottish Trials was over eight hundred miles of hilly, heavy roads. The Ford came through with only one involuntary stop against it. That started the Ford sales in England. In that same year Ford taxicabs were placed in London for the first time. In the next several years the sales began to pick up. The cars went into every endurance and reliability test and won every one of them. ”

“ The increasing number of automobiles also brought death on the highways and city streets to hundreds of Americans each year.
As the years went by, automobile manufacturers changed too. At first, there were dozens of makers of automobiles whose names are all but forgotten now. As the number of manufacturers decreased, the number of cars made annually by the remaining companies grew larger and larger. Eventually people talked about the “big three” of the automobile industry.
Competition between rival makers and Henry Ford brought the days of the model T to an end. ”

“ When we began to make our present motor car the country had few good roads, gasoline was scarce, and the idea was firmly implanted in the public mind that an automobile was at the best a rich man's toy. Our only advantage was lack of precedent.
We began to manufacture according to a creed—a creed which was at that time unknown in business. The new is always thought odd, and some of us are so constituted that we can never get over thinking that anything which is new must be odd and probably queer. The mechanical working out of our creed is constantly changing. ”

“ At the present time about 2000 cars are daily turned out in this fashion. The nation demands them at a more rapid rate than they can be made.
Herein we have what is probably America's greatest manufacturing exploit. And this democratization of the automobile comprises more than the acme of efficiency in the manufacturing art. The career of Henry Ford has a symbolic significance as well. It may be taken as signalizing the new ideals that have gained the upper hand in American industry. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ The price came down to $625 and then in 1922 with the River Rouge plant functioning we were able to cut to $395. All of which shows what getting into scientific production will do to a price. Just as I have no idea how cheaply the Ford automobile can eventually be made, I have no idea how cheaply the tractor can eventually be made.
It is important that it shall be cheap. Otherwise power will not go to all the farms. And they must all of them have power. Within a few years a farm depending solely on horse and hand power will be as much of a curiosity as a factory run by a treadmill. ”

“ It is impossible to put real value into an Automobile of the type of the Model "K" built in "Ford quantities" and charge more than $2,500.00 without charging too much.
The fact that a manufacturer of small quantities does a lot of fussing? ??? and sling? and has to charge that waste time up on every car, does not make his car any better and on the contrary is not to be compared with the accurate machine which produces a thousand parts, every one exactly alike and perfect. ”

“ Precisely as it was Vail's ambition to make every American a user of the telephone and McCormick's to make every farmer a user of his harvester, so it was Ford's determination that every family should have an automobile. He was apparently the only man in those times who saw that this new machine was not primarily a luxury but a convenience. Yet all manufacturers, here and in Europe, laughed at his idea. Why not give every poor man a Fifth Avenue house? Frenchmen and Englishmen scouted the idea that any one could make a cheap automobile. ”

“ 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 to-day. “Those men were right, according to their lights. I suppose, anyway, some of them are still building a fairly successful car in the $3,000 to $4,000 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. ”

“ An early American automobile built around 1898.
By thus redesigning the vehicle and standardizing the production process, Ford was able to increase production from 1,599 units in 1905 to 8,729 units in 1906 and 14,887 units in 1907, at the same time reducing prices. These lower prices, in turn, opened the door to a huge mass market. As sales increased, Ford was able to realize further economies of scale in manufacturing, and still further reductions in cost, until by 1917 he was selling cars for less than $600 apiece. [7]
A 1907 Columbia built by the Electric Vehicle Co. ”

“ The general comment was:
"If Ford does that he will be out of business in six months."
The impression was that a good car could not be built at a low price, and that, anyhow, there was no use in building a low-priced car because only wealthy people were in the market for cars. The 1908-1909 sales of more than ten thousand cars had convinced me that we needed a new factory. We already had a big modern factory--the Piquette Street plant. It was as good as, perhaps a little better than, any automobile factory in the country. ”

“ At last he could leave the Illuminating Company and devote all of 6 his time to automobiles. It was a bold move for a man with a family to give up a good job. Some of his friends and relatives told each other that he should have stayed where he was.
The original investment of Murphy and his friends was not enough. Improvements and changes in the model were made. Even though $68,000 was invested in the company, the hoped for production of many cars never materialized, and in January, 1901, Henry Ford left the Detroit Automobile Company. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Ford’s associates in his first company were not believers in this principle, evidently, because when they fell out with Ford about it, and Ford got out of the company to start the one he now controls, they went ahead making cars that sell today for from $2,300 to $3,900. But though they have made fair profits, they have not made the fabulous sums that Ford has, and one can only wonder how they feel about it, and if they realize the error of their views. They are probably wiser if not richer. ”