ANOTHER EIGHT YEARS
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 disappointments.
Men with money enough to build a factory were not seeking business
ventures in the nineties. 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 furnishing the Capital to start a small
plant on Ford's plan.
He himself was close pressed for money. Payments 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
machine. 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 standpoint 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 a 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,
working 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 cultivating 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 backing 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 continued 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.
Meantime Ford took a few days' leave from the Edison plant now and then
and personally made efforts 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."