“I always knew I would get what I went after,” he says. “I don’t recall having any very great doubts or fears.”
At that time the shop of James Flower and Company, manufacturers of steam engines and steam engine appliances, was one of Detroit’s largest factories. Over one hundred men were employed there, and their output was one to be pointed to with pride by boastful citizens.
Henry Ford’s nerves, healthy and steady as they were, tingled with excitement when he entered the place. He had read of it, and had even seen a picture of it, but now he beheld for himself its size and the great number of machines and men. This was something big, he said to himself.
After a moment he asked a man working near where he could find the foreman.
“Over there—the big fellow in the red shirt,” the man replied. Henry hurried over and asked for a job.
The foreman looked at him and saw a slight, wiry country boy who wanted work. There was nothing remarkable about him, one supposes. The foreman did not perceive immediately, after one look into his steady eye, that this was no ordinary lad, as foremen so frequently do in fiction. Instead, he looked Henry over, asked him a question or two, remembered that a big order had just come in and he was short of hands.
“Well, come to work to-morrow. I’ll see what you can do,” he said. “Pay you two and a half a week.”
“All right, sir,” Henry responded promptly, but the foreman had already turned his back and forgotten him. Henry, almost doubtful of his good fortune, hurried away before the foreman should change his mind.
Outside in the sunshine he pushed his cap on the back of his head, thrust his hands deep into his pockets, jingling the silver in one of them, and walked down the street, whistling. The world looked like a good place to him. No more farming for Henry Ford. He was a machinist now, with a job in the James Flower shops.
Before him there unrolled a bright future. He was ambitious; he did not intend always to remain a mechanic. One day when he had learned all there was to know about the making of steam engines, he intended to drive one himself. He would be a locomotive engineer, nothing less.