Henry Ford’s Own Story |
|---|
|
IF Ford had been unduly elated over his success in making an automobile the years that followed that night ride in the rain would have been one succession of heart-breaking disappoint ments.
Men with money enough to build a factory were not seeking business ventures in the nine ties. 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 at a profit of two or three hundred per cent, saw no advantage in furnish ing the capital to start a small plant on Ford s plan.
He himself was close pressed for money. Pay ments 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 set 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 ma chine. 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 founded 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 stand point 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 says quietly. Eight years!
Some time during them he saw what was needed. Heretofore the crank shaft had made Q) 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, work ing 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 star-lit spring night. The lights in near-by houses had gone out long before; in 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 cul tivating 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 back ing 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 for getting it; when he left Coffee Jim at his lunch wagon and rode slowly home he con tinued 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. Every one in Detroit heard more or less about it in the months that followed. Mean time Ford took a few days leave from the Edi son plant now and then and personally made ef forts 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. 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."
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU Free Documentation License".
Source: Wikisource