MAKING A FARM EFFICIENT
The young couple went first to the Fords' place, where the big roomy
house easily spared rooms for them, and Margaret and her father gave
them a hearty welcome. Clara, having brought her belongings from her old
home, put on her big work-apron and helped Margaret in the kitchen and
dairy.
Henry was out in the fields early, working hard to get the crops
planted. Driving the plowshare deep into the rich, black loam, holding
it steady while the furrow rolled back under his feet, he whistled to
himself.
He was contented. The farm work was well in hand; his forty would bring
in an ample income from the first year; in the house his rosy little
wife was busy making the best butter in the whole neighborhood. He
revolved in his mind vague plans for making a better plow than the one
he was handling; he remembered noticing in his latest English magazine
an article covering the very principle he would use.
In the evening, after the last of the chores was done, he settled
himself at the table in the sitting-room, moved the big lamp nearer and
opened the magazine. But Clara was busy correcting the plans for the new
house; she must have the lamp light, too. Henry moved the lamp back.
"Would you have the kitchen here, or here? This way I could have windows
on three sides, but the other way I'd have a larger pantry," said Clara,
stopping to chew her pencil.
"Fix it exactly to suit yourself. It's your house, and I'll build it
just as you say," Henry replied, turning a page.
"But I want your advice--and I can't see how to get this back porch in
without making the bedrooms too small," Clara complained. "I want this
house just so--and if I put the chimney where I want it to come in the
kitchen, it will be in the wrong end of the sitting-room, best I can do.
Oh, let those horrid papers alone, and help me out!"
Henry let the horrid papers alone and bent his head over the problems of
porch and pantry and fireplace.
When the pressure of spring work was over, he set to work a gang of men,
cutting down selected trees in the timber lot and hauling them down to
the little sawmill which belonged to his father. There he sawed them
into boards of the lengths and sizes he needed and stocked them in neat
piles to season and dry. From the shorter pieces of timber he split
"shakes," or homemade shingles, and stacked them, log-cabin fashion. He
was preparing to build his first house.
It rose little by little through that summer. Henry built it himself,
helped by one of the hired men. It was a good, substantial,
Middle-Western home, 32 × 32 feet and containing seven rooms and a roomy
attic. In the evenings, after supper, dishwashing and the chores at the
barn were finished, he and Clara strolled over in the twilight to
inspect the day's progress.
They climbed together over the loose boards which made temporary floors,
looked at the skeleton partitions of studding, planned where the stoves
should be set and what kind of paper should be chosen for the walls.
Then they walked around the outside, imagined with pride how well the
house would look when the siding was on and painted white, and planned
where the flower beds should be in the front yard.
"Let's be getting on back," said Henry. "I saw an article in that French
magazine that came to-day about a Frenchman who invented some kind of a
carriage that runs by itself, without horses--sort of a steam engine to
pull it."
"Did you?" said Clara. "How interesting! Oh, look! The moon's coming
up."
They loitered back through the clover fields, sweet smelling in the dew,
climbed over the stile into the apple orchard, where the leaves were
silver and black in the moonlight, and so came slowly home. Margaret had
cut a watermelon, cooled in a basket in the well, and all the family sat
on the back porch eating it.
Long after midnight, when every one else was sound asleep, the lamp was
burning in the sitting-room, and Henry was reading that article about
the horseless carriage. The idea fascinated him.
The new house was finished late in the fall. Clara had made a trip to
Detroit to purchase furniture, and all summer she had been working on
patchwork quilts and crocheted tidies. When everything was ready, the
sitting-room bright with new carpet and shining varnished furniture, the
new range installed in the kitchen, the cellar stocked with apples,
vegetables, canned fruits, Henry and Clara moved into their own home.
They were proud of it.
"It's a fine place yet, as good as anybody could want," Henry Ford says
now. "We still have it, and we like to go down there in the summers and
stay awhile. All the furniture is there, exactly as it was then. I
wouldn't ask any better place to live."
It must have been a happy time for both of them. They had a comfortable
home, plenty to eat and wear, they were surrounded by friends. There was
a simple neighborly spirit, a true democracy, in that little country
community. There were no very poor families there; no very rich ones;
every one had plenty, and wanted no more.
Henry's hired men ate at the table with him, slept under the same roof,
called him "Hen" as a matter of course, just as he called them "Hi" and
"Dave." They worked together to plant, care for and harvest the crops.
Their interests were the same, and if at the end of the year Henry had a
more improved farm to show for the year's work, it was the only
difference between them. He had lived no better, spent no more, than the
others.
It was in those years that he laid the foundation for his philosophy of
life.
He found that the work of the farm progressed faster and produced more
when every one worked together with a good will, each doing his own
share and doing it well. He found that men, like horses, did their best
when they were well fed, contented and not overworked. He saw that one
unruly horse, or one surly, lazy man, delayed the work of the whole
farm, hindered all the others.
"The only plan that will work out well in the long run is a plan that is
best for every one concerned," he decided. "Hurting the other fellow is
bound to hurt me sooner or later."
He was a good farmer. His mechanical, orderly mind arranged the work so
that it was done smoothly, and on time, without overworking any one or
leaving any one idle. His thrifty instincts saved labor and time just as
they saved the barn manure to spread on the fields, or planned for the
turning in of the last crop of clover to enrich the soil.
His granaries were well filled in the fall, his stock was sleek and fat,
fetching top prices. Clara kept the house running smoothly, the pantry
filled with good, simple food, the cellar shelves stocked with preserves
and jams for winter.
In the evenings Henry got out his mechanics' journals and pored over
them, while Clara sewed or mended. He found now and then a mention of
the horseless carriage.
"That looks to me like a good idea. If I was in Detroit now, where I
could get a good machine shop, I believe I could do something along that
line myself," he said.
"Probably you could," his wife replied, rocking comfortably. "But what's
the use? We've got everything here we need."
"Yes; but I'd just like to try what I could do," Henry said restlessly.
A few days later he inspected his farm shop and announced that he was
going up to Detroit for a day to get some materials.