Abroad At Home Part 8

Apropos of that, it occurs to me that there is one point of similarity between Mr. Ford and myself: neither of us has a valet just at present.

Still, on thinking it over, we aren't so very much alike, after all, for there is one of us--I shan't say which--who hopes to have a valet some day.

Mr. Ford's office is a room somewhat smaller than the machine shop. It is situated in one corner of the administration building, and I am told that there is a private entrance, making it unnecessary for Mr. Ford to run the gantlet of the main doorway and waiting room, where there are almost always persons waiting to ask him for a present of a million or so in money; or, if not that, for four or five thousand dollars' worth of time--for if Mr. Ford makes what they say, and doesn't work overtime, his hour is worth about four thousand five hundred dollars.

He wasn't in the office when we entered. That gave us time to look about. There was a large flat-top desk. The floor was covered with an enormous, costly Oriental rug. At one end of the room, in a gla.s.s case, was a tiny and very perfect model of a Ford car. On the walls were four photographs: one of Mr. James Couzens, vice-president and treasurer of the Ford Company; another, a life-size head of "_Your friend, John Wanamaker_," and two of Thomas A. Edison. Under one of the latter, in the handwriting of the inventor--handwriting which, oddly enough, resembles nothing so much as neatly bent wire--was this inscription:

_To Henry Ford, one of a group of men who have helped to make U. S.

A. the most progressive nation in the world._

_Thomas A. Edison._

Presently Mr. Ford came in--a lean man, of good height, wearing a rather shabby brown suit. Without being powerfully built, Mr. Ford looks sinewy, wiry. His gait is loose-jointed--almost boyish. His manner, too, has something boyish about it. I got the feeling that he was a little bit embarra.s.sed at being interviewed. That made me sorry for him--I had been interviewed, myself, the day before. When he sat he hunched down in his chair, resting on the small of his back, with his legs crossed and propped upon a large wooden waste-basket--the att.i.tude of a lanky boy.

And, despite his gray hair and the netted wrinkles about his eyes, his face is comparatively youthful, too. His mouth is wide and determined, and it is capable of an exceedingly dry grin, in which the eyes collaborate. They are fine, keen eyes, set high under the brows, wide apart, and they seem to express shrewdness, kindliness, humor, and a distinct wistfulness. Also, like every other item in Mr. Ford's physical make-up, they indicate a high degree of honesty. There never was a man more genuine than Mr. Ford. He hasn't the faintest sign of that veneer so common to distinguished men, which is most eloquently described by the slang term "front." Nor is he, on the other hand, one of those men who (like so many politicians) try to simulate a simple manner. He is just exactly Henry Ford, no more, no less; take it or leave it. If you are any judge at all of character, you know immediately that Henry Ford is a man whom you can trust. I would trust him with anything. He didn't ask me to, but I would. I would trust him with all my money. And, considering that I say that, I think he ought to be willing, in common courtesy, to reciprocate.

He told us about the Ford business. "We've done two hundred and five millions of business to date," he said. "Our profits have amounted to about fifty-nine millions. About twenty-five per cent. has been put back into the business--into the plant and the branches. All the actual cash that was ever put in was twenty-eight thousand dollars. The rest has been built up out of profits. Yes--it has happened in a pretty short time; the big growth has come in the last six years."

I asked if the rapid increase had surprised him.

"Oh, in a way," he said. "Of course we couldn't be just sure what she was going to do. But we figured we had the right idea."

"What is the idea?" I questioned.

Then with deep sincerity, with the conviction of a man who states the very foundation of all that he believes, Mr. Ford told us his idea. His statement did not have the awful majesty of an utterance by Mr. Freer.

He did not flame, although his eyes did seem to glow with his conviction.

"It is _one model_!" he said. "That's the secret of the whole doggone thing!" (That is exactly what he said. I noted it immediately for "character.")

Having revealed the "secret," Mr. Ford directed our attention to the little toy Ford in the gla.s.s case.

"There she is," he said. "She's always the same. I tell everybody that's the way to make a success. Every manufacturer ought to do it. The thing is to find out something that everybody is after and then make that one thing and nothing else. Shoemakers ought to do it. They ought to get one kind of shoe that will suit everybody, instead of making all kinds.

Stove men ought to do it, too. I told a stove man that just the other day."

That, I believe, is, briefly, the business philosophy of Henry Ford.

"It just amounts to specializing," he continued. "I like a good specialist. I like Harry Lauder--he's a great specialist. So is Edison.

Edison has done more for people than any other living man. You can't look anywhere without seeing something he has invented. Edison doesn't care anything about money. I don't either. You've got to have money to use, that's all. I haven't got any job here, you know. I just go around and keep the fellows lined up."

I don't know how I came by the idea, but I was conscious of the thought that Mr. Ford's money worried him. He looks somehow as though it did.

And it must, coming in such a deluge and so suddenly. I asked if wealth had not compelled material changes in his mode of life.

"Do you mean the way we live at home?" he asked.

"Yes; that kind of thing."

"Oh, that hasn't changed to any great extent," he said. "I've got a little house over here a ways. It's nothing very much--just comfortable.

It's all we need. You can have the man drive you around there on your way back if you want. You'll see." (Later I did see; it is a very pleasant, very simple type of brick suburban residence.)

"Do you get up early?" I ventured, having, as I have already intimated, my own ideas as to what I should do if I were a Henry Ford.

"Well, I was up at quarter of seven this morning," he declared. "I went for a long ride in my car. I usually get down to the plant around eight-thirty or nine o'clock."

Then I asked if the change had not forced him to do a deal of entertaining.

"No," he said. "We know the same people we knew twenty years ago. They are our friends to-day. They come to our house. The main difference is that Mrs. Ford used to do the cooking. Lately we've kept a cook. Cooks try to give me fancy food, but I won't stand for it. They can't cook as well as Mrs. Ford either--none of them can."

I wish you could have heard him say that! It was one of his deep convictions, like the "one model" idea.

"What are your hobbies outside your business?" I asked him.

It seemed to me that Mr. Ford looked a little doubtful about that.

Certainly his manner, in replying, lacked that animation which you expect of a golfer or a yachtsman or an art collector--or, for the matter of that, a postage-stamp collector.

"Oh, I have my farm out at Dearborn--the place where I was born," he replied. "I'm building a house out there--not as much of a house as they try to make out, though. And I'm interested in birds, too."

Then, thinking of Mr. Freer, I inquired: "Do you care for art?"

The answer, like all the rest, was definite enough.

"I wouldn't give five cents for all the art in the world," said Mr. Ford without a moment's hesitation.

I admired him enormously for saying that. So many people feel as he does in their hearts, yet would not dare to say so. So many people have the air of posturing before a work of art, trying to look intelligent, trying to "say the right thing" before the right painting--the right painting as prescribed by Baedeker. True, I think the man who declares he would not give five cents for all the art in the world thereby declares himself a barbarian of sorts. But a good, honest, openhearted barbarian is a fine creature. For one thing, there is nothing false about him. And there is nothing soft about him either. It is the poseur who is soft--soft at the very top, where Henry Ford is hard.

I saw from his manner that he was becoming restless. Perhaps we had stayed too long. Or perhaps he was bored because I spoke about an abstract thing like art.

I asked but one more question.

"Mr. Ford," I said, "I should think that when a man is very rich he might hardly know, sometimes, whether people are really his friends or whether they are cultivating him because of his money. Isn't that so?"

Mr. Ford's dry grin spread across his face. He replied with a question:

"When people come after _you_ because they want to get something out of you, don't you get their number?"

"I think I do," I answered.

"Well, so do I," said Mr. Ford.

CHAPTER VIII

THE CURIOUS CITY OF BATTLE CREEK

It was on a chilly morning, not much after eight o'clock, that we left Detroit. I recall that, driving trainward, I closed the window of the taxicab; that the marble waiting room of the new station looked uncomfortably half awake, like a sleeper who has kicked the bedclothes off, and that the concrete platform outside was a playground for cold, boisterous gusts of wind.

Our train had come from somewhere else. Entering the Pullman car, we found it in its night-time aspect. The narrow aisle, made narrower by its shroud of long green curtains, and by shoes and suit cases standing beside the berths, looked cavernous and gloomy, reminding me of a great rock fissure, the entrance to a cave I had once seen. Like a cave, too, it was cold with a musty and oppressive cold; a cold which embalmed the mingling smells of sleep and sleeping car--an odor as of Russia leather and banana peel ground into a damp pulp.

Silently, gloomily, without removing our overcoats or gloves, we seated ourselves, gingerly, upon the bright green plush of the section nearest to the door, and tried to read our morning papers. Presently the train started. A thin, sick-looking Pullman conductor came and took our tickets, saying as few words as possible. A porter, in his sooty canvas coat, sagged miserably down the aisle. Also a waiter from the dining car, announcing breakfast in a cheerless tone. Breakfast! Who could think of breakfast in a place like that? For a long time, we sat in somber silence, without interest in each other or in life.