Already his belief that “a thing isn’t any good unless it’s good for everybody” was taking form. He did not intend to make a few high-priced toys for wealthy men; he planned to make something useful for thousands of men like himself, who were wasting money in keeping idle horses, as he had done on the farm. He still meant to make a farm tractor, as soon as he had worked out the principle of a self-propelling machine.
As to the capital, he believed that question would take care of itself when the time came. His job was to make the machine, and he did not waste time telling himself that there was no chance for a poor man.
The problem of transmitting the power of the engine to the wheels now engrossed his attention. He brought home materials for a light buggy frame and built it. Four old bicycle wheels were repaired, fitted with heavy rims and large pneumatic tires, and placed on the axles. The question then was how to attach the engine.
To us, familiar with automobiles, it seems simple enough, but when Ford stood in the old shed, looking at the buggy frame and then at the little engine, he was attempting a feat that had never been accomplished.
Always before, carriages had been pulled. Naturally enough his first thought was to apply the power of the engine to the front wheels. Then how should he steer? What mechanism should he use, powerful enough to turn the hind wheels, against the pull of the engine, and flexible enough to respond quickly and make a sharp turn?
Then there was the problem of the throttle, and the gears. The machine must be able to go more slowly, or to pick up speed again, without shutting off the power. The driver must be able, when necessary, to throw off the power entirely, and to apply it quickly again, without stopping the engine.
All these vexing questions, and many minor ones, were to be solved, and always there was the big question of simplicity. The machine must be cheap.
“I’m building this thing so it will be useful,” Ford said once while he was in the thick of his perplexities. “There isn’t any object in working at it unless it will be useful, and it won’t be useful unless it’s cheap enough so common people can have it, and do their work with it.”
The essential democracy of the man spoke then. It is the distinctly American viewpoint of the man who for years had fought sun and wind and weather, tearing his food and shelter from the stubborn grasp of the soil, and who now struggles with mechanical obstacles, determined in spite of them to make something for practical use. His standards of value were not beauty or ease of luxury. He wanted to make a machine that would do the greatest possible quantity of good, hard work.
His third winter in the house on Edison avenue arrived, and still the automobile was not completed. When he went out to work in the old shed after supper he lighted a fire in the rusty heating stove, set up in a corner, and often Mrs. Ford came out and sat on a box, watching while he fitted parts together or tried different transmission devices.