other
industry the technical qualities that so largely explain our industrial
progress. Above all, American manufacturing has developed three
characteristics. These are quantity production, standardization, and
the use of labor-saving machinery. It is because Ford and other
manufacturers adapted these principles to making the automobile that the
American motor industry has reached such gigantic proportions.

A few years ago an English manufacturer, seeking the explanation of
America's ability to produce an excellent car so cheaply, made an
interesting experiment. He obtained three American automobiles, all of
the same "standardized" make, and gave them a long and racking tour over
English highways. Workmen then took apart the three cars and threw the
disjointed remains into a promiscuous heap. Every bolt, bar, gas tank,
motor, wheel, and tire was taken from its accustomed place and piled up,
a hideous mass of rubbish. Workmen then painstakingly put together three
cars from these disordered elements. Three chauffeurs jumped on these
cars, and they immediately started down the road and made a long journey
just as acceptably as before. The Englishman had learned the secret
of American success with automobiles. The one word "standardization"
explained the mystery.

Yet when, a few years before, the English referred to the American
automobile as a "glorified perambulator," the characterization was not
unjust. This new method of transportation was slow in finding favor
on our side of the Atlantic. America was sentimentally and practically
devoted to the horse as the motive power for vehicles; and the fact that
we had so few good roads also worked against the introduction of the
automobile. Yet here, as in Europe, the mechanically propelled wagon
made its appearance in early times. This vehicle, like the bicycle, is
not essentially a modern invention; the reason any one can manufacture
it is that practically all the basic ideas antedate 1840. Indeed,
the automobile is really older than the railroad. In the twenties and
thirties, steam stage coaches made regular trips between certain cities
in England and occasionally a much resounding power-driven carriage
would come careering through New York and Philadelphia, scaring all the
horses and precipitating the intervention of the authorities. The hardy
spirits who devised these engines, all of whose names are recorded in
the encyclopedias, deservedly rank as the "fathers" of the a