STRUGGLING WITH THE FIRST CAR
Ford was now a man of nearly 30, an insignificant, unimportant unit in
the business world of Detroit, merely one of the subordinate managers in
the Edison plant. Seeing him on his way home from work, a slender,
stooping, poorly dressed man, the firm set of his lips hidden by the
sandy mustache he wore then, and his blue eyes already surrounded by a
network of tired wrinkles, men probably looked at him half-pityingly,
and said: "There's a man who will never get anywhere."
He had his farm, unprofitable since he had left it, a small home partly
paid for, and the little gas engine, to show for fourteen years of hard
work.
Probably he received more than one letter from his father and brothers
in Greenfield, urging him to come back to the farm, where he and his
wife might live comfortably among their old friends, and he need not
work so hard. It would have seemed a wise move.
But with the completion of the little one-cylinder, high-speed engine,
Ford was more than ever possessed by his idea. He brought one or two of
the men from the Edison shop to see it. They watched it whirring away on
its pedestal of blocks, they examined its large cylinder, its
short-stroke piston, noted its power, and looked at Ford with some
increased respect. But most of them were nevertheless doubtful of the
success of the automobile. The idea of a horseless carriage in general
use still seemed to them fantastic.
"Well, looks like you could make it go," they conceded. "But it's going
to be pretty expensive to run. Not many people'll want to buy it. And
where will you get the capital to manufacture it?"
"I'm making it cheap. I'm going to make it cheap enough so every man in
this country can have one before I'm through," Ford said.
Already his belief that "a thing isn't any good unless it's good for
everybody" was taking form. He did not intend to make a few high-priced
toys for wealthy men; he planned to make something useful for thousands
of men like himself, who were wasting money in keeping idle horses, as
he had done on the farm. He still meant to make a farm tractor, as soon
as he had worked out the principle of a self-propelling machine.
As to the capital, he believed that question would take care of itself
when the time came. His job was to make the machine, and he did not
waste time telling himself that there was no chance for a poor man.
The problem of transmitting the power of the engine to the wheels now
engrossed his attention. He brought home materials for a light buggy
frame and built it. Four old bicycle wheels were repaired, fitted with
heavy rims and large pneumatic tires, and placed on the axles. The
question then was how to attach the engine.
To us, familiar with automobiles, it seems simple enough, but when Ford
stood in the old shed, looking at the buggy frame and then at the little
engine, he was attempting a feat that had never been accomplished.
Always before, carriages had been pulled. Naturally enough his first
thought was to apply the power of the engine to the front wheels. Then
how should he steer? What mechanism should he use, powerful enough to
turn the hind wheels, against the pull of the engine, and flexible
enough to respond quickly and make a sharp turn?
Then there was the problem of the throttle, and the gears. The machine
must be able to go more slowly, or to pick up speed again, without
shutting off the power. The driver must be able, when necessary, to
throw off the power entirely, and to apply it quickly again, without
stopping the engine.
All these vexing questions, and many minor ones, were to be solved, and
always there was the big question of simplicity. The machine must be
cheap.
"I'm building this thing so it will be useful," Ford said once while he
was in the thick of his perplexities. "There isn't any object in working
at it unless it will be useful, and it won't be useful unless it's cheap
enough so common people can have it, and do their work with it."
The essential democracy of the man spoke then. It is the distinctly
American viewpoint of the man who for years had fought sun and wind and
weather, tearing his food and shelter from the stubborn grasp of the
soil, and who now struggles with mechanical obstacles, determined in
spite of them to make something for practical use. His standards of
value were not beauty or ease of luxury. 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. 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." She knew Henry was perfectly sane, a
better husband than most of them had, too, and anyhow it was none of
their business how Henry spent his time, and if they didn't like, they
could lump it.
Nevertheless, as the winter days followed each other in an apparently
endless procession, she grew moody. The baby was coming, and she was
homesick for Greenfield and the big, comfortable country home, with
friends running in and out, and the sound of sleighbells jingling past
on the road outside.
She put the little house to rights in the morning, and faced a long,
lonely day. She sewed a while, wandered about the rooms, looking out on
the dreary little street, with its scattered houses and dirty trampled
snow, yawned, and counted the hours till her husband would come home for
supper.
When he came, she had the house warm and bright, the table set, hot
biscuits browning in the oven. She dished up the food, poured the tea,
brought the hot plates. They sat down to eat and talk, and the minutes
seemed to fly. Before she had said half she had stored up through the
day, before Henry had more than begun to talk, he pushed back his plate,
drank his tea, and said: "Well, I must be getting to work." Then he went
out to the shed and forgot her in the absorbing interest of the
automobile.
"Oh, when is it going to be finished!" she said one night, after she had
been sitting for a long time in silence, watching him at work on it. She
began the sentence cheerfully, but she caught her breath at the end and
began to cry. "I c-can't help it, I'm sorry. I w-want to go home to
Greenfield!" she said.
Ford was testing the steering gear. He dropped his tools in surprise,
and went over to comfort her.
"There, there!" he said, I suppose patting her back clumsily, in the
awkward way of a man unaccustomed to quieting a sobbing woman. "It's
done now. It's practically done now. It just needs a little more----"
She interrupted him. She said his horrid old engine was always "just
needing a little more." She said she wanted him to take her back to
Greenfield. Wouldn't he please, just for a little while, take her home
to Greenfield?