Henry Ford

“ Eager young fellows, grasping at life with both hands, wanting all of it, and wanting it right then—naturally enough they smoked, drank, experimented with love-making, turned night into day in a joyous carouse now and then. But before long Henry Ford was a leader among them, as he had been among the boys in the Greenfield school, and again he diverted the energy of his followers into his own channels. ”

“ This, then, was Henry Ford at 52. A slender, slightly stooped man, with hollow cheeks, thin, firm, humorous lips, gray hair; a man with sixty odd millions of dollars; used to hard work all his life, and liking it. A man who on a single idea had built up a tremendous organization, so systematized that it ran by itself, requiring little supervision. ”

“ But, oh, wouldn’t he ever get that horrid engine finished so they could live like other people?
It all hurt. No man was ever friendlier, or enjoyed more the feeling of comradeship with other men than Ford. But it was a choice between that and his automobile. He went on with his routine of work, fourteen or sixteen hours of it every day, and he drew more into himself, became more reserved with every month that passed.
If any man ever followed Emerson’s doctrine of self-reliance, giving up friends and family in his devotion to his own work, that man was Henry Ford in those days. ”

“ She had no great interest in the gasoline engine—machinery in general was to her merely something greasy and whirring, to hold her skirts away from—but if Henry was going to Detroit, of course she was going, too, and she might as well be cheerful about it.
The rosy, teasing country girl who had kept Henry Ford from his beloved machines nearly five years before by her laughing refusal to choose between her suitors, had developed into a cheerful, capable little housewife—the kind of woman whose place is in the home because there she does her best work. ”

“ For a pacifist, Henry Ford is about the greatest fighter the American industrial ranks have ever produced. His history has been a succession of fights—fights to make a motor that would go inside a hat box, fights to get anybody to believe in him and invest money with him, fights to convince people that nearly everybody would buy an automobile if the price was low enough, and finally the fiercest and most prolonged fight of all—the fight to break the Selden patent monopoly and free the industry from serfdom, give it free rein and relieve it of the incubus of tribute. ”

“ It is not strange, with this belief of millions of persons that the men who have been at the head of our great business development are greater than ordinary men, that most of them believe it themselves and act on that assumption. Henry Ford does not. His greatness lies in that.
With millions piling upon millions in our hands, most of us would lose our viewpoint. He has kept his—a plain mechanic’s outlook on life and human relations. He sees men all as parts of a great machine, in which every waste motion, every broken or inefficient part means a loss to the whole. ”

“ Over thirty 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. ”

“ Also, like every other item in Mr. Ford's physical make-up, they indicate a high degree of honesty. There never was a man more genuine than Mr. Ford. He hasn't the faintest sign of that veneer so common to distinguished men, which is most eloquently described by the slang term "front." Nor is he, on the other hand, one of those men who (like so many politicians) try to simulate a simple manner. He is just exactly Henry Ford, no more, no less; take it or leave it. If you are any judge at all of character, you know immediately that Henry Ford is a man whom you can trust. ”

“ Henry Ford might well have remained on the farm and followed in his father’s footsteps. The soil around Dearborn was fertile, and the products of the land found a good market in nearby Detroit, a busy lake port. Although farming meant hard work and long hours, it was an honorable trade. William Ford was not rich, but neither was he poor. ”

“ Amid this mounting excitement, in spite of millions to be made by building a car bigger, finer, more beautiful and luxurious than those of his 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 hard working, frugal individual, used to living with out those things he must mortgage his home to get. ”

“ Forty-five dollars a month and a twelve-hour-a-day job—for these Henry Ford had traded his big, pleasant home, with its assured comfort and plenty, and his place as one of the most prosperous and respected men in Greenfield. The change would have been a calamity to most men. ”

“ The little machine, rattling and coughing, proceeded through the thin slush in 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. ”

“ Henry Ford was happy. The new job gave him a chance to work with machinery, an opportunity to learn all about electricity. His contentment, as he went whistling about his work after Gilbert left, would have seemed pure insanity to the average person. Forty-five dollars a month!
“You see, I never did bother much about money,” he says. “My wages were enough for food and shelter, and that was all I wanted. Money matters always seemed to sort of take care of themselves, some way. It’s always that way. ”

“ William Ford worked with the others, doing a good day’s task with the best of them, and proud of it. He was the owner, and they were the hired men, but on a Michigan farm the measure of a man is the part he takes in man’s work. In the cities, where men work against men, let them build up artificial distinctions; on the farm the fight is against nature, and men stand shoulder to shoulder in it. A dark cloud was coming up in the northwest, and every man’s muscles leaped to the need for getting in the hay. ”

“ He read these in his room after returning from the jeweler's.
Few boys of sixteen could endure a routine so exacting in its demands on strength and endurance without destroying their health, but Henry Ford had the one trait common to all men of achievement—an apparently inexhaustible energy. His active, out-of-door boyhood had stored up physical reserves of it; his one direct interest gave him his mental supply. He wanted to learn about machines ”

“ 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, in 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. ”

“ 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 turbans, 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. ”

“ Innumerable 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. Business men 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. ”

“ 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 in the number of cars turned out.
"War between capital and labor is just like any other kind of war," Henry Ford says to-day. "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. ”

“ At that time the shop of James Flower and Company, manufacturers of steam engines and steam engine appliances, was one of Detroit's largest factories. Over one hundred men were employed there, and their output was one to be pointed to with pride by boastful citizens.
Henry Ford's nerves, healthy and steady as they were, tingled with excitement when he entered the place. ”

“ The production of Ford cars rose to gigantic proportions. In 1914, the year that Henry Ford and his engineers began to plan for the plant on the Rouge, over two hundred thousand automobiles were produced. But in the year 1923, over two million model T’s rolled off the assembly lines. In 1925, nearly ten thousand Fords were completed in a single day in Ford plants. The world had never before seen such an industrial giant as the one Henry Ford and his son Edsel had created. ”

“ 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." ”

“ In order to do this, the Rouge plant was silenced until a “new” Ford could be designed and put into production. Machine tools had to be replaced, and new dies and fixtures made. To accomplish this in the largest factory in the world was a herculean task. Industrial leaders all over the nation watched with eager eyes for news from Henry Ford at Dearborn. Finally, in December, 1927, the new model A was shown to the public. ”

“ The lessees of the Seldon 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.
CHAPTER XXIII
FIGHTING THE SELDON PATENT By sheer force of an idea, backed only by hard work, Henry Ford had established a new principle in mechanics ”

“ 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. ”

“ She could never invent a gasoline engine, but she was an ideal person to take care of Henry Ford while he did it, to keep the house clean and comfortable, cook good meals, cheer him a bit when he was depressed and never have "nerves." ”

“ When Henry Ford became manager of the mechanical department the workmen in the Edison plants were working twelve-hour shifts as a matter of course. In those days the theory of practically all employers was that men, like the rest of their equipment, should be worked to the limit of their strength. ”

“ I am for the kind of democracy that gives to each an equal chance according to his ability. I think if we give more attention to serving our fellows we shall have less concern with the empty forms of government and more concern with the things to be done. Thinking of service, we shall not bother about good feeling in industry or life; we shall not bother about masses and classes, or closed and open shops, and such matters as have nothing at all to do with the real business of living. ”

“ No one ever thought of "capital" and "labour" as hostile interests. No one ever dreamed that the very fact of success would bring insidious dangers with it. And yet with growth every imperfection latent in the system came out. A man's business grew to such proportions that he had to have more helpers than he knew by their first names; but that fact was not regretted; it was rather hailed with joy. And yet it has since led to an impersonal system wherein the workman has become something less than a person—a mere part of the system. ”

“ 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 business men of the city, outlined his plan for a factory, demonstrated the car. Every one showed some interest, but Ford did not get the money.
Late that fall he discussed the 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. ”