Henry Ford's Own Story. Rose Wilder Lane

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СКАЧАТЬ in any imaginable way. When the engine was finished Henry mounted it on an improvised chassis which he had cut down from an old farm wagon, attached it by a direct drive to a wheel on one side, something like a locomotive connecting-rod, and capped the whole with a whistle which could be heard for miles.

      When he had completed the job he looked at the result with some natural pride. Sitting at the throttle, tooting the ear-splitting whistle, he charged up and down the meadow lot at nearly ten miles an hour, frightening every cow on the place. But after all his work, for some reason the engine did not please him long. Possibly the lack of enthusiasm with which it was received disappointed him.

      In the technical journals which he read eagerly during his sixteenth winter, he learned about the big iron works of Detroit, saw pictures of machines he longed to handle.

      Early the next spring, when the snow had melted, and every breeze that blew across the fields was an invitation to begin something new, Henry started to school as usual one morning, and did not return.

      Detroit is only a few miles from Greenfield. Henry made the journey on the train that morning, and while his family supposed him at school and the teacher was marking a matter-of-fact “absent” after his name, he had already set about his independent career.

      He had made several trips to Detroit in the past, but this time the city looked very different to him. It had worn a holiday appearance before, but now it seemed stern and busy—a little too busy, perhaps, to waste much attention on a country boy of sixteen looking for a job.

      Nevertheless, he whistled cheerfully enough to himself, and started briskly through the crowds. He knew what he wanted, and he was going straight for it.

      “I always knew I would get what I went after,” he says. “I don’t recall having any very great doubts or fears.”

      At that time the shop of James Flower and Company, manufacturers of steam engines and steam engine appliances, was one of Detroit’s largest factories. Over one hundred men were employed there, and their output was one to be pointed to with pride by boastful citizens.

      Henry Ford’s nerves, healthy and steady as they were, tingled with excitement when he entered the place. He had read of it, and had even seen a picture of it, but now he beheld for himself its size and the great number of machines and men. This was something big, he said to himself.

      After a moment he asked a man working near where he could find the foreman.

      “Over there—the big fellow in the red shirt,” the man replied. Henry hurried over and asked for a job.

      The foreman looked at him and saw a slight, wiry country boy who wanted work. There was nothing remarkable about him, one supposes. The foreman did not perceive immediately, after one look into his steady eye, that this was no ordinary lad, as foremen so frequently do in fiction. Instead, he looked Henry over, asked him a question or two, remembered that a big order had just come in and he was short of hands.

      “Well, come to work to-morrow. I’ll see what you can do,” he said. “Pay you two and a half a week.”

      “All right, sir,” Henry responded promptly, but the foreman had already turned his back and forgotten him. Henry, almost doubtful of his good fortune, hurried away before the foreman should change his mind.

      Outside in the sunshine he pushed his cap on the back of his head, thrust his hands deep into his pockets, jingling the silver in one of them, and walked down the street, whistling. The world looked like a good place to him. No more farming for Henry Ford. He was a machinist now, with a job in the James Flower shops.

      Before him there unrolled a bright future. He was ambitious; he did not intend always to remain a mechanic. One day when he had learned all there was to know about the making of steam engines, he intended to drive one himself. He would be a locomotive engineer, nothing less.

      Meantime there were practical questions of food and shelter to consider immediately and he was not the boy to waste time in speculations for the future when there was anything to be done. He counted his money. Almost four dollars, and a prospect of two and a half every week. Then he set out to find a boarding house.

      Two dollars and a half a week, not a large living income, even in 1878. Henry walked a long time looking for a landlady who would consent to board a healthy sixteen-year-old mechanic for that sum. It was late that afternoon before he found one who, after some hesitation, agreed to do it. Then he looked at the small, dirty room she showed him, at her untidy, slatternly person, and decided that he would not live there. He came out into the street again.

      Henry was facing the big problem. How was he to live on an income too small? Apparently his mind went, with the precision of a machine, directly to the answer.

      “When your reasonable expenses exceed your income, increase your income.” Simple. He knew that after he had finished his day’s work at the shops there would be a margin of several hours a day left to him. He would have to turn them into money. That was all.

      He returned to a clean boarding house he had visited earlier in the day, paid three dollars and a half in advance for one week’s board, and ate a hearty supper. Then he went to bed.

CHAPTER IV

       AN EXACTING ROUTINE

       Table of Contents

      Meantime back in Greenfield there was a flurry of excitement and not a little worry. Henry did not return from school in time to help with the chores. When supper time came and went without his appearing Margaret was sure some terrible accident had occurred.

      A hired man was sent to make inquiries. He returned with the news that Henry had not been in school. Then William Ford himself hitched up and drove about the neighborhood looking for the boy. With characteristic reserve and independence Henry had taken no one into his confidence, but late that night his father returned with information that he had been seen taking the train for Detroit.

      William Ford knew his son. When he found that Henry had left of his own accord he told Margaret dryly that the boy could take care of himself and there was nothing to worry about. However, after two days had gone by without any word from Henry his father went up to Detroit to look for him.

      Those two days had been full of interest for Henry. He found that his hours in the machine shop were from seven in the morning to six at night, with no idle moments in any of them. He helped at the forges, made castings, assembled parts. He was happy. There were no chores or school to interrupt his absorption in machinery. Every hour he learned something new about steam engines. When the closing whistle blew and the men dropped their tools he was sorry to quit.

      Still, there was that extra dollar a week to be made somehow. As soon as he had finished supper the first night he hurried out to look for an evening job. It never occurred to him to work at anything other than machinery. He was a machine “fan,” just as some boys are baseball fans; he liked mechanical problems. A batting average never interested him, but “making things go”—there was real fun in that.

      Machine shops were not open at night, but he recalled his experiments with the luckless family clock. He hunted up a jeweler and asked him for night work. Then he hunted up another, and another. None of them needed an assistant. When the jewelers’ shops closed that night he went back to his boarding-house.

      He spent another day at work in the James Flower shops. He spent СКАЧАТЬ