Page:Henry Ford's Own Story.djvu/106

 ENTER COFFEE JIM

the disposition to rest on our laurels is more than anything else responsible for the mediocrity of the individual and the slow progress of the race. Having accomplished something, most of us spend some time in admiring it and ourselves. It is characteristic of big men that past achievements do not hold their interest; they are concerned only with their efforts to accomplish still more in the future.

Henry Ford had built an automobile. His four years' work had been successful, and that little machine, scarcely larger than a bicycle, with its pulley-clutch, puffing little one-cylinder engine, and crude steering apparatus, stood for an epoch in human progress.

He might be pardoned if he had spent a month or two in self-congratulation, in driving the car up and down Detroit's streets and enjoying the comments of the men who had laughed at him so long.

But apparently it did not occur to him. He saw already a number of possible improvements in the little machine. He was as indifferent to