Page:How Henry Ford is regarded in Brazil (1926).djvu/7

 victory. Stuff your brain with the dead lore of books and you will never be able to see, as you should, the life-current in human things. He looked through his own eyes, thought with his own brain, fashioned with his own hands.

While still a boy his spirit rebelled against primitive methods of agriculture, the traditional routine way of doing everything by dint of muscle, human or bovine. And he conceived the idea of transferring to steel the heavy task that burdened flesh. This thought was ever present in his mind but before working out its development he was led by circumstances to make a digression. He stored away inside his brain the idea of the machine that was to set agriculture free from the shackles of ancient custom and gave himself up body and soul to the intermediate industry of a runabout car for universal use.

Years and years were spent in the work of creating the type of car that corresponded to his idea, until one day he had it as he had pictured it. Only then, with the article actually completed, did he set about manufacturing it.

In 1896 he organized his company on a very modest basis, starting with only $28,000 cash. Ford directed it in his own way – the fruit of a wide range of observation – never copying what he saw being done round and about him. 5