They began to talk them over. Most of them were managers of departments now; one was handling the sales force, another had developed into a driver and won many trophies and broken many records with the Ford car; Wills was superintendent of the factory.
“I tell you, Couzens, you and I have been at the head of the concern, and we’ve done some big things together, but if it hadn’t been for the men we’d be a long way from where we are to-day,” Ford said at last.
“Now we have some money we don’t need for the business, we ought to divide with them. Let’s do it.”
“I’m with you!” Couzens said heartily, and reached for his pencil. Eagerly as two boys, they sat there for another hour figuring. They began with checks for the men they remembered, men who had been with them in the first days of the company, men who had done some special thing which won their notice, men who were making good records in the shops or on the sales force. But there seemed no place to draw the line.
“After all, every man who’s working for us is helping,” Ford decided.
“Let’s give every one of them a Christmas present.” Couzens agreed. “We’ll have the clerical department figure it out. The men who have been with us longest the most, and so on down to the last errand boy that’s been with us a year. What do you say?”
Ford said yes with enthusiasm, and so it was settled. That year every employee of the company received an extra check in his December pay envelope. Ford had reached a point in his business life where he must stop and consider what he should do with the money his work had brought him, and those extra checks were the first result.
For twenty years Ford had spent all his energy, all his time and thought in one thing—his work. If he had divided his interests, if he had allowed a liking for amusement, ease, finer clothes, admiration, to hinder his work in the old shed, he would never have built his car. If he had cared more for personal pleasure and applause than he did for his idea, he would have allowed his factory plan to be altered, twisted out of shape and forgotten when he first found capital to manufacture the car. But from the day he left his farm till now he has subordinated everything else to his machine idea.
He applied it first to an engine, then to a factory. He fought through innumerable difficulties to make those ideas into realities. He destroyed old conceptions of mechanics and of factory management. He built up a great financial success.
Now he found himself with a new problem to face—the problem of a great fortune piling up in his hands.