Page:Henry Ford's Own Story.djvu/108

 Some of them took a different view. They became enthusiastic.

"My Lord, Ford, there's millions in this thing. Millions!" they said. "You ought to get out and organize a company a big company. Incorporate and sell stock and make a clean-up right away. And then build a machine like a phaeton, with big leather cushions and carriage lamps and a lot of enamel finish—why, there are hundreds of men that could afford to pay two or three thousand dollars for one of 'em. You could make a hundred per cent profit—two hundred per cent."

Ford listened to all of them and said little. He was busy improving the machine; it did not suit him yet; he felt he could make it much more powerful and efficient with a little more work. Meantime he revolved in his mind plans for putting it on the market. Those plans included always one fundamental point. He was resolved to make the automobile cheap.

"I've got a machine here that saves time and work and money," he said. "The more people who have it the more it will save. There's no object in building it so only a few rich men can own one. It isn't the rich men who need it; it s the common folks like me."

News of the amazing machine to be seen in the old shed behind the little house on Edison street spread rapidly. About this time news dispatches carried word of two other automobiles