it was Vail's
ambition to make every American a user of the telephone and McCormick's
to make every farmer a user of his harvester, so it was Ford's
determination that every family should have an automobile. He was
apparently the only man in those times who saw that this new machine was
not primarily a luxury but a convenience. Yet all manufacturers, here
and in Europe, laughed at his idea. Why not give every poor man a Fifth
Avenue house? Frenchmen and Englishmen scouted the idea that any one
could make a cheap automobile. Its machinery was particularly refined
and called for the highest grade of steel; the clever Americans might
use their labor-saving devices on many products, but only skillful hand
work could turn out a motor car. European manufacturers regarded each
car as a separate problem; they individualized its manufacture almost as
scrupulously as a painter paints his portrait or a poet writes his
poem. The result was that only a man with several thousand dollars could
purchase one. But Henry Ford--and afterward other American makers--had
quite a different conception.

Henry Ford's earliest banker was the proprietor of a quick-lunch wagon
at which the inventor used to eat his midnight meal after his hard
evening's work in the shed. "Coffee Jim," to whom Ford confided
his hopes and aspirations on these occasions, was the only man
with available cash who had any faith in his ideas. Capital in more
substantial form, however, came in about 1902. With money advanced by
"Coffee Jim," Ford had built a machine which he entered in the Grosse
Point races that year. It was a hideous-looking affair, but it ran like
the wind and outdistanced all competitors. From that day Ford's career
has been an uninterrupted triumph. But he rejected the earliest offers
of capital because the millionaires would not agree to his terms. They
were looking for high prices and quick profits, while Ford's plans were
for low prices, large sales, and use of profits to extend the business
and reduce the cost of his machine. Henry Ford's greatness as a
manufacturer consists in the tenacity with which he has clung to this
conception. Contrary to general belief in the automobile industry he
maintained that a high sale price was not necessary for large profits;
indeed he declared that the lower the price, the larger the net earnings
would be. Nor did he believe that low wages meant prosperity. The most
efficient labor, no matter what the nominal cos