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Authors: John Dos Passos
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mechanical buggy, sitting there at the lever
jauntily dressed in a tightbuttoned jacket and a high collar and a derby hat, back and forth over the level illpaved streets of Detroit,
scaring the big brewery horses and the skinny trotting horses and the sleekrumped pacers with the motorâs loud explosions,
looking for men scatterbrained enough to invest money in a factory for building automobiles.
He was the eldest son of an Irish immigrant who during the Civil War had married the daughter of a prosperous Pennsylvania Dutch farmer and settled down to farming near Dearborn in Wayne County, Michigan;
like plenty of other Americans, young Henry grew up hating the endless sogging through the mud about the chores, the hauling and pitching manure, the kerosene lamps to clean, the irk and sweat and solitude of the farm.
Â
He was a slender, active youngster, a good skater, clever with his hands; what he liked was to tend the machinery and let the others do the heavy work. His mother had told him not to drink, smoke, gamble or go into debt, and he never did.
When he was in his early twenties his father tried to get him back from Detroit, where he was working as mechanic and repairman for the Drydock Engine Company that built engines for steamboats, by giving him forty acres of land.
Young Henry built himself an uptodate square white dwellinghouse with a false mansard roof and married and settled down on the farm,
but he let the hired men do the farming;
he bought himself a buzzsaw and rented a stationary engine and cut the timber off the woodlots.
He was a thrifty young man who never drank or smoked or gambled or coveted his neighborâs wife, but he couldnât stand living on the farm.
He moved to Detroit, and in the brick barn behind his house tinkered for years in his spare time with a mechanical buggy that would be light enough to run over the clayey wagonroads of Wayne County, Michigan.
By 1900 he had a practicable car to promote.
Â
He was forty years old before the Ford Motor Company was started and production began to move.
Speed was the first thing the early automobile manufacturers went after. Races advertised the makes of cars.
Henry Ford himself hung up several records at the track at Grosse Pointe and on the ice on Lake St. Clair. In his 999 he did the mile in thirtynine and fourfifths seconds.
But it had always been his custom to hire others to do the heavy work. The speed he was busy with was speed in production, the records records in efficient output. He hired Barney Oldfield, a stunt bicyclerider from Salt Lake City, to do the racing for him.
Â
Henry Ford had ideas about other things than the designing of motors, carburetors, magnetos, jigs and fixtures, punches and dies; he had ideas about sales,
that the big money was in economical quantity production, quick turnover, cheap interchangeable easilyreplaced standardized parts;
it wasnât until 1909, after years of arguing with his partners, that Ford put out the first Model T.
Â
Henry Ford was right.
That season he sold more than ten thousand tin lizzies, ten years later he was selling almost a million a year.
In these years the Taylor Plan was stirring up plantmanagers and manufacturers all over the country. Efficiency was the word. The same ingenuity that went into improving the performance of a machine could go into improving the performance of the workmen producing the machine.
In 1913 they established the assemblyline at Fordâs. That season the profits were something like twentyfive million dollars, but they had trouble in keeping the men on the job, machinists didnât seem to like it at Fordâs.
Â
Henry Ford had ideas about other things than production.
He was the largest automobile manufacturer in the world; he paid high wages; maybe if the steady workers thought they were getting a cut (a very small cut) in the profits, it would give trained men an inducement to stick to their jobs,
wellpaid
jauntily dressed in a tightbuttoned jacket and a high collar and a derby hat, back and forth over the level illpaved streets of Detroit,
scaring the big brewery horses and the skinny trotting horses and the sleekrumped pacers with the motorâs loud explosions,
looking for men scatterbrained enough to invest money in a factory for building automobiles.
He was the eldest son of an Irish immigrant who during the Civil War had married the daughter of a prosperous Pennsylvania Dutch farmer and settled down to farming near Dearborn in Wayne County, Michigan;
like plenty of other Americans, young Henry grew up hating the endless sogging through the mud about the chores, the hauling and pitching manure, the kerosene lamps to clean, the irk and sweat and solitude of the farm.
Â
He was a slender, active youngster, a good skater, clever with his hands; what he liked was to tend the machinery and let the others do the heavy work. His mother had told him not to drink, smoke, gamble or go into debt, and he never did.
When he was in his early twenties his father tried to get him back from Detroit, where he was working as mechanic and repairman for the Drydock Engine Company that built engines for steamboats, by giving him forty acres of land.
Young Henry built himself an uptodate square white dwellinghouse with a false mansard roof and married and settled down on the farm,
but he let the hired men do the farming;
he bought himself a buzzsaw and rented a stationary engine and cut the timber off the woodlots.
He was a thrifty young man who never drank or smoked or gambled or coveted his neighborâs wife, but he couldnât stand living on the farm.
He moved to Detroit, and in the brick barn behind his house tinkered for years in his spare time with a mechanical buggy that would be light enough to run over the clayey wagonroads of Wayne County, Michigan.
By 1900 he had a practicable car to promote.
Â
He was forty years old before the Ford Motor Company was started and production began to move.
Speed was the first thing the early automobile manufacturers went after. Races advertised the makes of cars.
Henry Ford himself hung up several records at the track at Grosse Pointe and on the ice on Lake St. Clair. In his 999 he did the mile in thirtynine and fourfifths seconds.
But it had always been his custom to hire others to do the heavy work. The speed he was busy with was speed in production, the records records in efficient output. He hired Barney Oldfield, a stunt bicyclerider from Salt Lake City, to do the racing for him.
Â
Henry Ford had ideas about other things than the designing of motors, carburetors, magnetos, jigs and fixtures, punches and dies; he had ideas about sales,
that the big money was in economical quantity production, quick turnover, cheap interchangeable easilyreplaced standardized parts;
it wasnât until 1909, after years of arguing with his partners, that Ford put out the first Model T.
Â
Henry Ford was right.
That season he sold more than ten thousand tin lizzies, ten years later he was selling almost a million a year.
In these years the Taylor Plan was stirring up plantmanagers and manufacturers all over the country. Efficiency was the word. The same ingenuity that went into improving the performance of a machine could go into improving the performance of the workmen producing the machine.
In 1913 they established the assemblyline at Fordâs. That season the profits were something like twentyfive million dollars, but they had trouble in keeping the men on the job, machinists didnât seem to like it at Fordâs.
Â
Henry Ford had ideas about other things than production.
He was the largest automobile manufacturer in the world; he paid high wages; maybe if the steady workers thought they were getting a cut (a very small cut) in the profits, it would give trained men an inducement to stick to their jobs,
wellpaid
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