for the enormous number of buildings needed in manufacturing, repairing, selling, and housing motors has been omitted, it seems likely that the American motor-car industry employs from 3,500,000 to 4,000,000 workers. It follows that the British problem of unemployment would be solved if this country had an industry corresponding to that of America. Unfortunately for every single motor-car produced in this country the United States produce about a hundred.

The complaint about the inadequacy of our foreign trade is general; and for that we have largely ourselves to blame. The world asks for cheap and handy motorcars, but Great Britain insists on offering to purchasers everywhere expensive and luxurious cars for which they have little use. In 1922, the United States exported 66,791 motor-cars and 11,443 motor-trucks, a much larger number than all the motor vehicles produced in this country, but imported practically none, and, in addition to the number given, exported tens of thousands of cars in the form of parts to be assembled abroad, as well as manufactured vast numbers outside the Republic. The British Empire absorbs more than half of the American motor-car exports. In the British Dominions American cars are chiefly used. Canada imported, in 1922, 10,649 cars from the United States, and only 51 from the United Kingdom. She took 862 motor-trucks from the Republic and 23 from this country. Other Dominions and Colonies have a similarly humiliating record.

The cheap and useful motor-car made by the Ford Company and other makers is the creation of a man of extraordinary genius-Mr Henry Ford. Mr Ford, like so many eminent American politicians, statesmen, scientists, and business men, was the son of a small farmer. His father wished him to go into agriculture also, but the son was interested in mechanical things. He rigged up a primitive workshop, bought a few tools, and started experimenting. Mechanical things of all kinds appealed to him. He took watches and clocks to pieces and put them together again. From sheer love of the thing he repaired the timepieces and the machinery of neighbours, spending often the whole night in travelling to and fro and in doing the work. After having tried his hand in various lowly mechanical employments, undertaken

chiefly with the object of gaining experience, and having spent a great deal of time in study and various experiments, he concentrated on the construction of a horseless carriage. His first idea was not a motor-car but a tractor for agricultural purposes.

While he was experimenting on a horseless vehicle in his own way, other inventors were tackling the same problem in other ways. During the bicycle craze inventors and manufacturers were almost exclusively interested in speed. Records were established and broken. When the primitive motor-cars began to appear, speed was once more the principal factor considered. Manufacturers imagined that the motor-car would be a rich man's toy. So they concentrated upon the production of fast luxury cars and became interested in motor racing.

Mr Ford's idea from the beginning was, however, very different from the ideas which dominated the early makers of motor-cars. He wished to construct a cheap car, a car for the million. To him speed was a minor consideration. As, however, the world seemed desirous of possessing cars capable of breaking the established speed records, Mr Ford reluctantly built a racing car and, running it himself, won a number of prizes and attracted the attention of capitalists and others to whom otherwise he would have remained unknown. Not satisfied with turning out a racer, he continued to experiment with a view to evolving a cheap and reliable utility car. It took him twelve years to perfect the type. Naturally, his life was a very hard struggle. Undaunted by lack of means, by sneers and doubts; undaunted by the competition and hostility of other inventors and makers, he went on, splendidly supported during the long period of struggle by a devoted wife with the utmost faith in her husband whom most people thought crazy.

When Mr Ford began to feel firm ground under his feet, he thought the time had arrived to raise some money for the production of motor-cars on a commercial basis. He had practically no means himself. Hence he founded a small company with a nominal capital of $100,000.

Of this slender amount only $28,000 was paid up in actual cash. Mr Ford was credited with $2500 for

putting into the company the car he had invented. From the trifling investment of $28,000, or 5600l., grew the largest manufacturing concern in the world. The original shareholders died or sold out, and the Ford Company now has only three shareholders, Mr Ford, Mrs Ford, and their son. The gigantic size to which the Ford Company has grown may be seen by comparing the present financial position of the company with that of the original. Some months ago the Ford Company filed with the Massachusetts Government the following statement relating to 1923, and it will be interesting to compare it with that of the previous year:

ASSETS OF THE FORD COMPANY.

In English money, the assets of the Ford Company amounted to 107,000,000l., while cash alone came to the prodigious sum of 32,000,0007., ten times as large as the share capital. However, many items, particularly goodwill, which is put down at a mere 4,000,000l., are greatly understated. It is worth drawing attention to the fact

that between 1922 and 1923 the profit and loss surplus was increased by 24,000,000l. During the present year the net profit of the Ford works should come to considerably more than 20,000,000l. It may, therefore, safely be said that the capital value of the Ford works is between 300,000,000l. and 400,000,000l., and if the shares of the company were not held privately but were dealt in on the Stock Exchange, they would probably be valued at about that sum. Out of an original investment of a few thousand pounds, the greatest manufacturing organisation in the world has been created. It has been built up out of profits. The Ford example gives an invaluable lesson showing the necessity and benefit of large manufacturers' profits. But for the gigantic profits made, the vast Ford works could never have been created.

Some of the original shareholders got out of their holdings prematurely. Others held on and made large fortunes. In the list of shareholders James Couzens figures with $2400. He, as well as Mr Ford, was a poor man, and had saved $400. He tried to borrow $200 from his sister, but, owing to her father's warning, she lent him only $100. In addition he got some money from Mr Malcomson, the rich man of the company. He subscribed nominally $2400 of the shares, but his actual cash investment came only to $900. Out of this slender sum he obtained $39,500,000 in dividends.

The early struggles and the views of Henry Ford were expressed by himself in his Autobiography.

'I had no personal funds. What money was left over from living was all used in experimenting. But my wife agreed that the automobile could not be given up-that we had to make or break. There was no "demand” for automobiles-there never is for a new article. They were accepted in much the fashion as was more recently the airplane. At first thé "horseless carriage" was considered merely a freak notion, and many wise people exclaimed with particularity why it could never be more than a toy. No man of money even thought of it as a commercial possibility.

...

'In the beginning there was hardly any one who sensed that the automobile could be a large factor in industry. The most optimistic hoped only for a development akin to that of the bicycle. When it was found that an automobile really could go, and several makers started to put out cars, the

immediate query was as to which would go fastest. It was a curious but natural development—that racing idea. I never thought anything of racing, but the public refused to consider the automobile in any light other than as a fast toy. Therefore later we had to race. The industry was held back by this initial racing slant, for the attention of the makers was diverted to making fast rather than good cars. It was a business for speculators. . . .

The most surprising feature of business as it was conducted was the large attention given to finance and the small attention to service. That seemed to me to be reversing the natural process which is that the money should come as the result of work, and not before the work. The second feature was the general indifference to better methods of manufacture as long as whatever was done got by and took the money. In other words, an article apparently was not built with reference to how greatly it would serve the public but with reference solely to how much money could be had for it—and that without any particular care whether the customer was satisfied. To sell him was enough.

'The plan at that time most in favour was to start off with the largest possible capitalisation, and then sell all the stock and all the bonds that could be sold. Whatever money happened to be left over after all the stock and bond-selling expenses and promoters' charges and all that, went grudgingly into the foundation of the business. I determined absolutely that never would I join a company in which finance came before the work, or in which bankers or financiers had a part. And further that, if there were no way to get started in the kind of business that I thought could be managed in the interest of the public, then I simply would not get started at all.

'I spent twelve years before I had a Model T-which is what is known to-day as the Ford Car-that suited me. We did not attempt to go into real production until we had a real product. That product has not been essentially changed.'

From the beginning and ever since, Henry Ford has followed unswervingly his own ideas, disregarding the methods, the criticisms, and the dismal prophecies of other men. Other makers of motor-cars worked on the principle of making a few cars and selling them at the highest price possible. Ford was determined to sell the largest number of cars at the lowest possible price. Other makers wished to cater for every purse and for every taste. They made big, medium, and small sized