n
became plain. In Europe each locomotive was a separate problem; no two,
even in the same shop, were exactly alike. But here locomotives are built
in parts, all duplicates of one another; the parts are then sent by
machinery to assembling rooms and rapidly put together. American harvesting
machines are built in the same way; whenever a farmer loses a part, he can
go to the country store and buy its duplicate, for the parts of the same
machine do not vary to the thousandth of an inch. The same principle
applies to hundreds of other articles.

Thus Henry Ford did not invent standardization; he merely applied this
great American idea to a product to which, because of the delicate labor
required, it seemed at first unadapted. He soon found that it was cheaper
to ship the parts of ten cars to a central point than to ship ten completed
cars. There would therefore be large savings in making his parts in
particular factories and shipping them to assembling establishments. In
this way the completed cars would always be near their markets. Large
production would mean that he could purchase his raw materials at very low
prices; high wages meant that he could get the efficient labor which was
demanded by his rapid fire method of campaign. It was necessary to plan the
making of every part to the minutest detail, to have each part machined to
its exact size, and to have every screw, bolt, and bar precisely
interchangeable. About the year 1907 the Ford factory was systematized on
this basis. In that twelve-month it produced 10,000 machines, each one the
absolute counterpart of the other 9,999. American manufacturers until then
had been content with a few hundred a year! From that date the Ford
production has rapidly increased; until, in 1916, there were nearly
4,000,000 automobiles in the United States--more than in all the rest of
the world put together--of which one-sixth were the output of the Ford
factories. Many other American manufacturers followed the Ford plan, with
the result that American automobiles are duplicating the story of American
bicycles; because of their cheapness and serviceability, they are rapidly
dominating the markets of the world. In the Great War American machines
have surpassed all in the work done under particularly exacting
circumstances.

A glimpse of a Ford assembling room--and we can see the same process in
other American factories--makes clear the reasons for this success. In
these rooms no fitting