"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.