Henry Ford’s Own Story/Chapter 11
CHAPTER XI
BACK TO DETROIT
Mrs. Ford's opinion was now shared by the whole Greenfield neighborhood as soon as it learned Ford's intention of leaving his fine, paying farm and moving to Detroit to work in a machine shop.
"You had this notion once before, you know, when you were a youngster," his father reminded him. "I thought you'd made up your mind to stay here, where you can make a good living and have some peace and comfort."
He listened to his son's explanation of the possibilities in a self-propelling gasoline engine and he shook his head.
"I guess you can build it if anybody can, but you can't ever tell about these inventions. Looks to me you'd better stick to a good farm, where you're your own boss, and there's always plenty in the cupboard whatever happens, instead of going off to a city job. You may build that contrivance of yours and then again you may not, and look how you'll be living in the meantime."
But Henry was firm, with a determination which is called obstinacy when it goes with failure and great will power when it is coupled with success. He was going to the city. That settled it.
After her first protest Mrs. Ford accepted the situation and set herself with what philosophy she might to packing her linen and wrapping the furniture. She had no great interest in the gasoline engine—machinery in general was to her merely something greasy and whirring, to hold her skirts away from—but if Henry was going to Detroit, of course she was going, too, and she might as well be cheerful about it.
The rosy, teasing country girl who had kept Henry Ford from his beloved machines nearly five years before by her laughing refusal to choose between her suitors, had developed into a cheerful, capable little housewife—the kind of woman whose place is in the home because there she does her best work.
She could never invent a gasoline engine, but she was an ideal person to take care of Henry Ford while he did it, to keep the house clean and comfortable, cook good meals, cheer him a bit when he was depressed and never have "nerves." She went briskly to work and in no time she had packed away the thousand articles that meant home to her and they stood wrapped, crated, labeled, ready to move to Detroit.
Meantime Ford had arranged for the lease of the farm and for the storage of the furniture until he should have found a house in the city. Mrs. Ford was going there with him, and they would live in a boarding house until he got a job. On the last morning when he picked up the telescope bags, ready to start to the station, his wife went over to the house for the last time to see that everything was snug and safe to leave.
Then she came into the parlor where he was waiting and looked around the bare room stripped of its bright Brussels carpets, lace curtains and shiny furniture.
"Well, we'll come back some day, won't we," she said, "when the gasoline engine is built?"
She had spoken for the first time a phrase they were to repeat frequently, with every accent of expectation, hope, discouragement and irony, during the next ten years, "When the gasoline engine is built!"
A crowd of their friends gathered at the station to say good-by. With an intention of being tactful, they avoided any mention of Henry's purpose in leaving Greenfield.
"Sorry to lose you, Ford. Hope you'll be coming back before long," they said, and he knew the neighborhood had learned of his intention to invent something and thought him suddenly become a fool.
As soon as they reached Detroit and found a boarding house where he could leave his wife he started out to get a job. He wanted one where he could learn something about electricity. So far his knowledge of it was purely theoretical, gained from reading and thinking. Electric lights had come to Detroit since he left it; the Edison Electric Lighting and Power Company had established three power stations there. He asked nothing better than a chance to work in one of them.
Charles Gilbert, manager of the plants, was having a hard time that morning. By one of those freaks of Fate which must be left out of any fiction plot because they are too improbable, two of his engines had chosen that day to break down simultaneously. One of the engineers who had been responsible had been summarily discharged; the others were working on the engine in the main plant, and one of the sub-stations was entirely out of commission, with no prospect of getting to work on it until the next day.
Into this situation Henry Ford walked, and asked for a job.
"He looked to me like any tramp engineer," Charles Gilbert says to-day. "A young fellow, not very husky-looking more of a slight, wiry build. You wouldn't have noticed him at all in a crowd. He talked like a steady, capable fellow, but if he had come in on any other day I'd have said we couldn't use him. As it was, I thought I might as well give him a chance."
He listened to Ford looked him over.
"Know anything about steam engines?" he asked him. Ford said he did.
"Well, the engine at sub-station A quit this morning. I got a couple of mechanics working on it, but they don t seem to be doing much. Get out there and see what you can do, and let me know."
"All right, sir," Ford replied, and went. It was then about ten in the morning. Gilbert, busy with the troubles in the main plant, heard no more from sub-station A until 6 o'clock that evening. Then a small boy arrived with a message: "Engine running O.K.—Ford."
Gilbert went out to the sub-station. The engine, in perfect order, was roaring in the basement. On the first floor the dynamos were going at full speed. His worries with sub-station A were over. He went down to the engine and found Ford busy with an oil can.
"Want the job of night engineer here?" Gilbert asked him. "Pays forty-five a month."
"Go to work right now if you say so," Ford assured him.
"All right. I'll have another man here to relieve you at six in the morning. Come down to the office some time to-morrow and I'll put your name on the payroll."
In one day Ford had got the very opportunity he wanted—a job where he could study electricity at first hand.
An hour later Mrs. Ford, who had spent the day drearily unpacking trunks and putting the telescope bags under the bed in a hopeless attempt to make a boarding-house bedroom homelike, received an enthusiastic note.
"Got fine job already. Working all night. Go to bed and don't worry. Everything is settled splendidly. Henry."
He had forgotten to mention that his wages were forty-five dollars a month.