g that would go. By the
time he was twenty-one years of age, he had built a farm locomotive
mounted on cast-iron wheels taken from a mowing machine. It was not
designed for any particular use, but was to serve as a general farm
tractor, and he had great sport running it up and down the meadow
while the cows fled in terror.

From that time his chief interest was in building wagons to be run by
motors. His health was always good, he worked unceasingly, and slept
just as little as possible, and at last, in 1893, he made what people
called then, a wagon driven by gas; today we call it an automobile. It
ran but was not a great success, and the public made fun of the
inventor. This wagon driven by gas was the first Ford automobile and
the man who invented it was Henry Ford. He had married and lived in a
little house in Bagley Street, Detroit, Michigan. He was employed by
the Edison Company, but he had a workshop of his own in his barn.
There he built his first motor car. For material he used nothing but
junk, as he had no money with which to buy costly materials for
experiments.

Henry Ford does not know the word discouragement, so after his first
failure he built another car and in 1898 placed it on the road. It
was better than the first one, but there were still difficulties to be
overcome. People laughed more than ever, and Detroit thought him
mildly insane on the subject of "little buggies driven by gas," as the
newspapers called them. Then one day, when no one was paying any
especial attention to him, Henry Ford made a car that would run on
level ground, would run up and down hill, and go backward and forward.
His problem was solved, and he began to make automobiles. Today he is
the head of the Ford Motor Company which has its largest factory in
Highland Park, a suburb of Detroit, Michigan, not more than fifteen
miles from his birthplace.

At the Highland Park plant, one thousand times a day a newborn car
pushes open a door by itself and goes out into the world. At once
these cars are loaded on trains and sent away, for the plant has no
storage and there are always more orders than can be filled. The Ford
cars are used by many persons, they are all made alike and they are
made in large numbers. Henry Ford's old dream about making watches has
come true, only he makes automobiles instead of timepieces.

In his great factory the most improved machinery is used, and the
business is run on a profit-sharing plan, which me