This book, the “Story of the Automobile,” shows the struggle of man for one hundred and fifty years to devise a means of propelling a vehicle without animal power.
It describes the various stages of the evolution of the idea of motive force other than animal power, in France, England, Germany and the United States, and its triumphant culmination in a successful horseless vehicle. And it makes clear how, when the automobile became of practical use, its successful commercialization became most profitable in the shortest period of time of that of any product of man’s ingenuity supplying an article to meet human wants.
But if this were all that could be recorded of the story of the automobile, this book would not have been written. The automobile’s success demonstrates all this, and something more—something that would not ordinarily occur to a person unless his attention was called to it.
The astonishing history of the automobile’s success affords one of the most convincing and the best modern instance of the opportunities that are being constantly presented for investing for profit.
It is a signal example kept in our hearing every day by the Niagara-like roar of the cars along our boulevards, of the fact that this is the age of golden opportunities for making money make money—of opportunities that disclose themselves, sometimes unexpectedly, and, when embraced, are apt to respond with a veritable avalanche of profits.
For was it not an avalanche of profits that overwhelmed the man who in thirteen years made $200,000,000 and was offered another $200,000,000 for only a small part of his business? And this great fortune made by Henry Ford did not exhaust the Ford automobile’s possibilities, for millions are still being taken out of the business, one investor of $2,000 having received over half a million dollars out of it lately.
When men who are not 40 years old today came out of high school they either did not know what an automobile was or, if they had seen one of the very earliest samples, they had no vision of what it would develop into—no conception of what the future had in store for the wabbly horseless vehicle, zig-zagging down the street, as a potential money-maker.
And in the early days of the automobile’s struggles for recognition as a promising investment, no banker or other moneyed man could be brought to believe that it held out any reasonable hopes of great gain. No one could foresee, not even the inventors of the automobile, that in less than two decades the business done through its comparative perfection would rank fourth in order of the industries of the United States. And still less was there anybody so foresighted in the possibilities that lie in money to make more money, as to vision the billions of dollars of profits to be paid out by this one idea of a horseless vehicle.
We can find few instances which so forcefully show, as the automobile industry shows, the chances for profitable investment in a short time which may come from sources supplying the needs or pleasures of the great mass of the people.
The chapters of the “Story of the Automobile” devoted to its commercialization make clear that its greatest success has been due to the production of automobiles at a price within reach of people of ordinary means. For this the one man most responsible is Henry Ford. He has demonstrated in a manner of many millions that the most money is to be made out of things used by the greatest number of people—things that become common needs.