If the farm was to prosper he must give it his attention every day. The margin of time it allowed for his work on the gasoline engine plans was far too little. By the end of that summer he had made up his mind that he could not spare his time for the farm. He told his wife that he had decided to lease it to his brother and move to Detroit.
“My goodness, Henry, what for? We’re doing well here; I’m sure you’re going ahead faster than any one in the neighborhood,” she said in astonishment.
“I want to get back to work in the machine shops. I can’t do any work on my gasoline engine here. Even if I had the time I haven’t the equipment,” he explained.
“Well, I must say. Here we’ve worked hard, and got a comfortable home, and a fine farm, that pays more every year, and sixteen head of good stock—and you’re going to leave it all for a gasoline engine that isn’t even built. I don’t see what you’re thinking of,” said poor Mrs. Ford, confronted thus suddenly with the prospect of giving up all her accustomed ways, her old friends, her big house with its stock of linens and its cellar filled with good things.
“You can’t begin to make as much in the city as you do here,” she argued reasonably. “And suppose the engine doesn’t work, after all?”
“It’ll work, all right. I’m going to keep at it till it does,” Ford said.
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.