Henry Ford's Own Story

r Company nine months his wages were inc

ntages of the iron-works were nearly exhausted. He had had in turn nearly every job in the place, which had been a good education for him, but th

, and did it with no more waste than was customary. Efficiency experts, waste-motion experime

ional fifty cents had been added to his pay envelope he left the James Flower Company. He had got a job w

he was well off. If any of them took the trouble to advise him, they probably said he wo

nd the one thing he was to follow all his life-not machines merely, but the machin

nearly a year of complete absorption in mechanical problems, his natural liking for human companionship began to assert itself. At the d

oop of delight in the outdoor air, jostling each other, playing practical jokes, enjoying a little rough horseplay among themselves. In the evenings they wandered about the streets i

k, experimented with love-making, turned night into day in a joyous carouse now and then. But before long Henry Ford was a leader amon

id not smoke-his tentative attempt with hay-cigarettes in his boyhood had discoura

y life," he says. "I'd as soon t

experimented at least once with the effects of liquor on the human system; probably once would have been sufficient. Besides, about t

ages were raised. Later they were raised again. Then he was getting five dollars a week, more than enough to pay his e

fore him he looked at them and marveled. He had paid three dollars for the w

e, and it weighed a good deal, and it went along all right-nev

f plain parts, made out of cheap metal. I could have made one like it for one dollar, or even less.

h factory had turned out only a few hundred of that design, and then tried something else-alarm clocks, perha

he precision of a machine, turning out watches by the thousands and tens

f a dollar by his plan. He juggled figures of thousands of dollars as though they were pennies. The size of the sums did not stagger h

r evenings became merely so much time to spend up in

y Ford visualized the factory-a factory devoted to one thing, the making of ONE watch-specialized, concentr

put of 2,000 watches daily as the point at which cost of production would be cheapest. They would sell the watch for fifty cent

the selling price; and high prices keep sales down. We will work it the other way; low prices, increased sales, increased output, lower prices. It works in a circle. Listen to this--" He held

nearly a year, holding the enthusiasm of his friends at fever heat all that time. Finally he ma

el at one end, and turning out completed watches at the other-h

t-a fortune!" the young fellows in

s the capital," Fo

ter from his sister Margaret. His father had been injured in an accident; hi