Page:Henry Ford's Own Story.djvu/134

 his needs; apparently he waved that subject aside as of little importance. At last, he thought, he had an opportunity to put into practice his plans for manufacturing, to build up an organization which was to be as much a Ford factor as his car was a Ford car.

The machine idea was to be its basis. The old idea for the fifty-cent watch factory, altered and improved by years of consideration, was at last to be carried out. He planned a system of smooth, economical efficiency, producing enormous numbers of cheap, standardized cars, and he began work on it with all the enthusiasm he had felt when he first began building his car.

But almost immediately there was friction between him and the men who furnished the capital. They insisted on his designing not cheaper cars, but more luxurious ones. They demanded that his saving in reduced costs of production should be added to their profits, not deducted from the price of the car. They were shrewd, successful business men, and they intended to run their factory on business lines.

"I prefer not to talk about that year," Ford says to-day. "Those men were right, according to their lights. I suppose, anyway, some of them are still building a fairly successful car in the $3,000 to $4,000 class, and I don't want to criticize other men in the automobile field.

"The trouble was that they couldn't see things my way. They could not understand that the