Page:Henry Ford's Own Story.djvu/112

 ANOTHER EIGHT YEARS

Ford had been unduly elated over his success in making an automobile the years that followed that night ride in the rain would have been one succession of heart-breaking disappointments.

Men with money enough to build a factory were not seeking business ventures in the nineties. Money was scarce, and growing more so. The few financiers who might have taken up Ford's invention, floated a big issue of common stock, and sold the cars at a profit of two or three hundred per cent, saw no advantage in furnishing the capital to start a small plant on Ford's plan.

He himself was close pressed for money. Payments on the little house, with their interest, the cost of his wife's illness and of providing for the new baby, his own living expenses, took the greater part of his salary. The situation would have been disheartening to most men. Ford set his teeth and kept on working.

The one-cylinder engine bothered him. It did not give him the power he wanted. After he had worked with it for a time he took it down, cut