ENTER COFFEE JIM
Probably the disposition to rest on our laurels is more than anything
else responsible for the mediocrity of the individual and the slow
progress of the race. Having accomplished something, most of us spend
some time in admiring it and ourselves. It is characteristic of big men
that past achievements do not hold their interest; they are concerned
only with their efforts to accomplish still more in the future.
Henry Ford had built an automobile. His four years' work had been
successful, and that little machine, scarcely larger than a bicycle,
with its pulley-clutch, puffing little one-cylinder engine, and crude
steering apparatus, stood for an epoch in human progress.
He might be pardoned if he had spent a month or two in
self-congratulation, in driving the car up and down Detroit's streets
and enjoying the comments of the men who had laughed at him so long.
But apparently it did not occur to him. He saw already a number of
possible improvements in the little machine. He was as indifferent to
the praise of other men as he had been to their ridicule.
After that one day of rest he resumed almost the old routine. When a few
men at the Edison plant laughingly inquired how he was getting along
with the great invention he remarked quietly that the machine was
running; he had been riding in it already. Then at 6 o'clock he hurried
home and out to the shed for the usual evening's work. He was trying to
plan an engine which would give more power; incidentally in his odd
moments he was working to improve the steering apparatus.
One imagines the incredulity, the amazement, that followed his quiet
statement that the thing was actually running. The men at the plant
began to drop around at the Ford place to look at it. They came
doubtfully, prepared either to laugh or to be convinced. After they had
examined the engine and looked over the transmission and steering gear
they went away still hesitating between two conclusions.
"It works, all right," they said. "There's no question the blamed thing
runs. How do you suppose he ever happened to stumble onto the idea? But
where's he going to get the capital to manufacture it? After all, there
won't be much of a market--a few rich fellows'll buy it, probably, for
the novelty. After all, you can't make a machine that will do the work
of horses to any great extent."
Some of them took a different view. They became enthusiastic.
"My Lord, Ford, there's millions in this thing. Millions!" they said.
"You ought to get out and organize a company--a big company. Incorporate
and sell stock and make a clean-up right away. And then build a machine
like a phaeton, with big leather cushions and carriage lamps and a lot
of enamel finish--why, there are hundreds of men that could afford to
pay two or three thousand dollars for one of 'em. You could make a
hundred per cent profit--two hundred per cent."
Ford listened to all of them and said little. He was busy improving the
machine; it did not suit him yet; he felt he could make it much more
powerful and efficient with a little more work. Meantime he revolved in
his mind plans for putting it on the market. Those plans included always
one fundamental point. He was resolved to make the automobile cheap.
"I've got a machine here that saves time and work and money," he said.
"The more people who have it the more it will save. There's no object in
building it so only a few rich men can own one. It isn't the rich men
who need it; it's the common folks like me."
News of the amazing machine to be seen in the old shed behind the little
house on Edison street spread rapidly. About this time news dispatches
carried word of two other automobiles built in this country. A man named
Duryea of Springfield, Ill., and another named Haynes, in Kokomo, Ind.,
had been working on the same idea. A reporter found Ford at work on his
engine, interviewed him and wrote a story for a Detroit paper.
One or two wealthy men hunted Ford up and talked about furnishing the
capital to manufacture the machine. They saw, as some of Ford's friends
had done, an opportunity to float a big company, sell stock, and build a
high-priced car.
Ford considered these offers for a time. Building an automobile had been
only half of his idea; building it cheap had been the other half, and he
would not abandon it.
He figured it out in dollars and cents; two hundred per cent on a small
quantity of cars, or a smaller profit on a larger quantity. He showed
that the most sound basis for the company was the manufacture of a large
number of machines, at a profit sufficient merely to keep enlarging the
plant and building more machines. The idea did not appeal to the men who
were eager for large immediate profits for themselves.
In the end the men with money dropped the matter. Ford was obstinate,
but he was a small man with no capital, merely a crank who had hit by
accident on a good idea; he would come around all right in time, they
concluded.
Ford continued to work at the Edison plant and spend his evenings trying
to improve his machine. He had taken Mrs. Ford to Greenfield, where she
would stay with her mother until the baby was born. After that one
hysterical outburst on the night the automobile was finished, she had
returned to her cheerful acceptance of his interest in the car. Indeed,
she herself had become enthusiastic about its possibilities.
"You stay right here and keep your job with the Edison people," she
said. "I'll be perfectly all right with mother, and maybe by the time I
come back you'll have a company organized and a whole factory going, who
knows? Only, mind you don't work too late at night, and promise you'll
eat your meals regular."
Ford promised, but when he returned to the dark little house at night
and faced the task of building a fire and cooking supper for himself it
seemed to him a bigger job than building the automobile had been. He
heated some coffee on the gasoline stove, burned some bread into a
semblance of toast, and scrambled a few eggs. Then he spread a newspaper
on the kitchen table, set the frying-pan on it, and managed to make a
meal.
Naturally about midnight he grew hungry. He came into the kitchen,
looked at the cold, greasy frying-pan, still setting on the kitchen
table, remembered that he was out of bread, and thought of an all-night
lunch wagon that stood near substation A, where sometimes he bought a
cup of coffee when he was working there.
The automobile stood waiting in the shed; he told himself that he wanted
to test the steering gear again, anyway. He went out, started the
engine, climbed in and chug-chugged away through the silent, deserted
streets to the lunch wagon.
Coffee Jim, loafing among his pans and mounds of hamburg steak, was
astonished to see the queer little machine, jerking and coughing its way
toward him. He remembered Ford, and while he sliced the onions and cut
the bread for Ford's midnight luncheon they talked about the automobile.
Afterward Coffee Jim examined it in detail and marveled. When Ford took
him for a little ride in it he became enthusiastic.
Soon it was part of Ford's routine to drive the little car to the lunch
wagon at midnight, have a cup of coffee and a hot sandwich and a chat
with Coffee Jim. They became friends.
It was one of those accidental relationships which have great
consequences. A hundred thousand Ford automobiles to-day owe their
existence largely to that chance friendship between Ford and Coffee Jim.