r Company nine months his wages were inc
ntages of the iron-works were nearly exhausted. He had had in turn nearly every job in the place, which had been a good education for him, but th
, and did it with no more waste than was customary. Efficiency experts, waste-motion experime
ional fifty cents had been added to his pay envelope he left the James Flower Company. He had got a job w
he was well off. If any of them took the trouble to advise him, they probably said he wo
nd the one thing he was to follow all his life-not machines merely, but the machin
nearly a year of complete absorption in mechanical problems, his natural liking for human companionship began to assert itself. At the d
oop of delight in the outdoor air, jostling each other, playing practical jokes, enjoying a little rough horseplay among themselves. In the evenings they wandered about the streets i
k, experimented with love-making, turned night into day in a joyous carouse now and then. But before long Henry Ford was a leader amon
id not smoke-his tentative attempt with hay-cigarettes in his boyhood had discoura
y life," he says. "I'd as soon t
experimented at least once with the effects of liquor on the human system; probably once would have been sufficient. Besides, about t
ages were raised. Later they were raised again. Then he was getting five dollars a week, more than enough to pay his e
fore him he looked at them and marveled. He had paid three dollars for the w
e, and it weighed a good deal, and it went along all right-nev
f plain parts, made out of cheap metal. I could have made one like it for one dollar, or even less.
h factory had turned out only a few hundred of that design, and then tried something else-alarm clocks, perha
he precision of a machine, turning out watches by the thousands and tens
f a dollar by his plan. He juggled figures of thousands of dollars as though they were pennies. The size of the sums did not stagger h
r evenings became merely so much time to spend up in
y Ford visualized the factory-a factory devoted to one thing, the making of ONE watch-specialized, concentr
put of 2,000 watches daily as the point at which cost of production would be cheapest. They would sell the watch for fifty centthe selling price; and high prices keep sales down. We will work it the other way; low prices, increased sales, increased output, lower prices. It works in a circle. Listen to this--" He held
nearly a year, holding the enthusiasm of his friends at fever heat all that time. Finally he ma
el at one end, and turning out completed watches at the other-h
t-a fortune!" the young fellows in
s the capital," Fo
ter from his sister Margaret. His father had been injured in an accident; hi