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 cost might be, was the
most economical. The secret of success was the rapid production of a
serviceable article in large quantities. When Ford first talked of turning
out 10,000 automobiles a year, his associates asked him where he was going
to sell them. Ford's answer was that that was no problem at all; the
machines would sell themselves. He called attention to the fact that there
were millions of people in this country whose incomes exceeded $1800 a
year; all in that class would become prospective purchasers of a low-priced
automobile. There were 6,000,000 farmers; what more receptive market could
one ask? His only problem was the technical one--how to produce his machine
in sufficient quantities.

The bicycle business in this country had passed through a similar
experience. When first placed on the market bicycles were expensive; it
took $100 or $150 to buy one. In a few years, however, an excellent machine
was selling for $25 or $30. What explained this drop in price? The answer
is that the manufacturers learned to standardize their product. Bicycle
factories became not so much places where the articles were manufactured as
assembling rooms for putting them together. The several parts were made in
different places, each establishment specializing in a particular part;
they were then shipped to centers where they were transformed into
completed machines. The result was that the United States, despite the high
wages paid here, led the world in bicycle making and flooded all countries
with this utilitarian article. Our great locomotive factories had developed
on similar lines. Europeans had always marveled that Americans could build
these costly articles so cheaply that they could undersell European makers.
When they obtained a glimpse of an American locomotive factory, the reaso