ng wife was
exceedingly concerned about his health; the neighbors' snap judgment was
that he was insane. Only two other Americans, Charles B. Duryea and Ellwood
Haynes, were attempting to construct an automobile at that time. Long
before Ford was ready with his machine, others had begun to appear. Duryea
turned out his first one in 1892; and foreign makes began to appear in
considerable numbers. But the Detroit mechanic had a more comprehensive
inspiration. He was not working to make one of the finely upholstered and
beautifully painted vehicles that came from overseas. "Anything that isn't
good for everybody is no good at all," he said. Precisely as 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