My Life and Work

e possible to organize the exact kind of corporation that I wanted-one in which doing the work well and suiting the public would be controlling factors-it b

ll not know; they will leave it to you. Fifteen will think that they must say something, while five will really have preferences and reasons. The ninety-five, made up of those who do not know and admit it and the fifteen who do not know but do not admit it, constitute the real market for any product. The five who want something special may or may not be able to pay the price for special work. If they have the price, they can get the work, but they constitute a special and limited market. Of the ninety-five perhaps ten or fifteen wil

ce more-and before he knows it his markets are overflowing with goods which will not sell. These goods would sell if the manufacturer would take a lower price for them. There is always buying power present-but that buying power will not always respond to reductions in price. If an article has been sold at too high a price and then, because of stagnant business, the price is suddenly cut, the response is sometimes most disappointing. And for a very good reason. The public is wary. It thinks that the price-cut is a fake and it sits around waiting for a real cut. We saw much of that last year. If, on the contrary, the economies of making ar

ly for years, first on something which will best suit the public and then on how it should be made. The exact processes of manufacturing will develop of themselves

y to an extent been overcome. All the large and successful retail stores in this country are on the one-price basis. The only further step required is to throw overboard the idea of pricing on what the traffic will bear and instead go to the common-sense basis of pricing on what it costs to manufacture and then reducing the cost of manufacture. If the design of the product has been sufficiently studied, then changes in it wi

ys was that a first-class car ought to be a racer. I never really thought much of racing, but following the bicycle idea, the manufacturers had the notio

80 H.P.-which up to that time had been unheard of. The roar of those cylinders alone was enough to half kill a man. There was only one seat. One life to a car was enough. I tried out the cars. Cooper tried out the cars. We let them out at full speed. I cannot quite describe the sensation. Going over Niagara Falls would have been but a pastime after a ride in one of them. I did

had tillers. On this one I put a two-handed tiller, for holding the car in line required all the strength of a strong man. The race for which we were working was at three miles on the Grosse Point track. We kept our cars as a dark horse. We left the predictions to the others. The tracks then were not scientifically banked.

off on the curves. He simply let that car go-and go it did. He wa

s the only money that the company has ever received for the capital fund from other than operations. In the beginning I thought that it was possible, notwithstanding my former experience, to go forward with a company in which I owned less than the controlling share. I very shortly found I had to have control and therefore in 1906, with funds that I had earned in the company, I bought enough stock to bring my holdings up to 51

e could be certain that all of the various parts would be made on the manufacturing plan that I have above outlined. The most economical manufacturing of the future will be that in which the whole of an article is not made under one roof-unless, of course, it be a very simple article. The modern-or better, the future-method is to have each part made where it may best be made and then assemble the parts into a complete unit at the points of consumption. That is the method we are now following and expect to extend

with this. The old ox-cart weighed a ton-and it had so much weight that it was weak! To carry a few tons of humanity from New York to Chicago, the railroad builds a train that weighs many hundred tons, and the result is an absolute loss of real strength and the extravagant waste of untold millions in the form of power. The law of diminishing returns begins to operate at the point where strength becomes weight. Weight may be desirable in a steam roller but nowhere else. Strength has nothing to do with weight. The mentality of

. This model had a two-cylinder opposed motor developing eight horsepower. It had a chain drive, a seventy-two inch wheel base-which was su

dmund Jacobs living near Ramona in the heart of the mountains. He drove it for several years in the roughest kind of work. Then he bought a new Ford and sold his old one. By 1915 No. 420 had passed into the hands of a man named Cantello who took out th

t advertise

person without acquiring any of those breakneck velocities which are so universally condemned; a machine which will be admired by man, woman, and child alike for its compactness, its simplicity, its safety, its all

the points w

mat

t that time required consider

en

furnished by two sets o

omatic

control of the transmission,

orkma

ver have. In its first advertising we show

money"-and yet how few business and professiona

delay sometimes means the loss of many dollars-will yet depend on the haphazard, uncomfortable, and limited means of transportation afforded by street cars, etc., when the investment of an exc

eady, al

you time and c

e you want to go and brin

punctuality; to keep your customer

ess or pleasure

of half decent roads, to refresh your brain with the luxury of much "out-doo

rough shady avenues or you can press down on the foot-lever until all the scenery looks

that, from the beginning, we were looking to provid

single model but I had not settled the designs nor had we the money to build and equip the proper kind of plant for manufacturing. I had not the money to discover the very best and lightest m

t to in their clothing and hats. That is not service-it seeks only to provide something new, not something better. It is extraordinary how firmly rooted is the notion that business-continuous selling-depends not on satisfying the customer once and for all, but on first getting his money for one article and then persuading him he ought to buy a new and different one. The plan which I then had in the back of my head but to which we were not then su

odel C," which was a slightly improved "Model A" and sold at fifty dollars more than the former price; and "Model F," a touring car which sold for a tho

e seemed smooth enough, so smooth that if I had called off the trial we should have secured an immense amount of the wrong kind of advertising, but instead of being smooth, that ice was seamed with fissures which I knew were going to mean trouble the moment I got up speed. But there was nothing to do but go through with the trial, and I let the old "Arrow" out. At every fissure the car le

Piquette and Beaubien streets-which for the first time gave us real manufacturing facilities. We began to make and to assemble quite a number of the parts, although still we were principally an asse

d materially from the other in manufacturing process or in component parts, but were somewhat different in appearance. The big thing was that the cheapest car sold for $600 and the most expensive for only $750, and right there came the complete demonstration of what price meant. We sold 8,423 cars-nearly five times as many as in our biggest previous ye

ar-fifty horsepower, six cylinder-that would burn up the roads. We continued making our small cars

he first year we have practically always had plenty of money. We sold for cash, we did not borrow money, and we sold directly to the purchaser. We had no bad debts and we kept within ourselves on every move. I have always kept wel

eventually appointed agents, selecting the very best men we could find, and then paying to them a salary larger than they could possibly earn in business for themselves. In the beginning we had not paid much in the way of salaries. We wer

ate man keenly alive to th

f business clean and d

prompt replacements and keep in active

which has in it the right machinery for

ly familiar with the construct

stantly apparent what is the financial status of the various departments of his business,

ry department. There must be no unwashe

table dis

ensure absolutely square dealing and t

eneral instructio

thought. He should then personally solicit by visitation if possible-by correspondence at the least-every man on that list and then making necessary memo

e principle that there was only a limited market for automobiles and that a monopoly of that market was essential. This was the famous Selden Patent suit. At times the support of our defense

on was kept alive in the Patent Office, by methods which are perfectly legal, until 1895, when the patent was granted. In 1879, when the application was filed, the automobile was practically unknown to the general public, but by the time the patent was issued everybody was familiar with self-propelled veh

e application was filed. The Patent Office allowed a combination and issued a so-called "combination patent" deciding that the combination (a) of a ca

ct Court finding against us. Immediately that Licensed Association began to advertise, warning prospective purchasers against our cars. They had done the same thing in 1903 at the start of the suit, when it was thought that we could be put out of business. I had implicit confidence that eventually we should win our suit. I simply knew that we were right, but it was a considerable blow to get the first decision against us, for we believed that many buyers-even though no injunction was issued against us-would be frightened away from buying because of the

the protection of the Ford Motor Company with its some $6,000,000.00 of assets, an individual bond backed by a Company of more than $6,000,000.00 more of assets, so that each and ev

urself to be sold inferior cars at extravagant price

Motor Company without the advice and counsel of

They did not. We sold more than eighteen thousand cars-nearly double the output of the pr

, but nevertheless it was a sword hanging over our heads that we could as well do without. Prosecuting that suit was probably one of the most shortsighted acts that any group of American business men has ever combined to commit. Taken in all its sidelights, it forms the best possible example of joining unwittingly to kill a tr