Henry Ford's Own Story

ted; sitting by the red-covered table in his own dining and sitting room some evening after Clara had cleared away the supper dishes

almost finished. They had given him his viewpoint on human relations, they had saved his character, in the formative period, from the distorting pressur

le of sowing, tilling, harvesting. He thought he was accomplishing nothing. A little more money in the bank, a few

for Clara, and caught the early train to Detroit that morning with a feel

ng people, did not hold his attention for a moment, but when he came into the noisy, dirty turmoil of the machine shop he was in his element again. He took

of the men who had worked beside

eartily. "What're you doing these da

eplied. "Just thought I'd dro

nging, pounding uproar, pointed out here and there a new device, an improved valve, a different g

ter he had a sudden expansive impulse whi

little one, to use on the farm. I figure I can work som

was a man who proposed to take a locomotive into his cornfield and set it to plowing! The wild impossibility of the plan woul

be a machine to give milk, and you'll have the farm c

ally shaping itself in his mind, in part a revival of his boyish plan for that first steam engine he had buil

extra animals were necessarily idle, wasting food and barn space, and waste of any kind was an irritation to his methodical mind. It see

probably ridiculous to other people, did not deter

"Every generation has its own problem; it ought to find its own solutions. Th

achine-ideas improved on the farming methods of Greenfield; it crystallized into

is way to the station to take the train home when he remembered the shopping list Mrs. Ford

ed back to make those purchases. Aided by a sympathetic clerk at the ribbon counter, he completed them satisfactorily, and came out of t

he stack. Detroit's citizens crowded the sidewalks to view it as it went by. Henry Ford, gripping his bundles, stood on th

w quaint!" A huge round boiler, standing high in the back, supplied fully half its bulk. Ford

out of sight. Then he resumed his way home. On the train he sat in deep

he says. "What an awful waste of power! The weight