but as we carried him back I noticed he was trying to speak, and stooping, I caught the words: "Ought never to have left the farm, ought we? Hey, buddy?"

That was the last time I ever heard Pete speak. That was the last time I ever saw him alive.

Two o'clock in the morning. Sitting at the little desk where I found Pete that night poring over his arithmetic, I have been writing down my early experiences in the open hearth. Here comes Yakabowski with a test. I know exactly what he will say: "Had I better give her a dose of ore?" Two o'clock in the morning! The small man at the gate was right: Night-work is no good!

I was mistaken; Yakabowski doesn't ask his customary question. He looks at me curiously. "You don't look good, boss," he says. “You sick, maybe?"

Yes, I'm sick - I always am at two o'clock in the morning, when I'm on the night shift. I stretch, I yawn, I shudder.

"Ought never to have left the farm, ought we? Hey, Yakabowski?" I say to the big Pole.

CLASS ACTIVITIES

1. Describe the action in the passage you selected (p. 184) as it would appear if thrown on the screen. Point out the different scenes which would be pictured if the entire story were made into a motion-picture.

2. Give the reasons of the author for thinking that work in a steel-mill is more severe than work on a farm. Do you agree with him?

3. Tell what you like most about Pete. Find two passages which show the ability and the modesty of the teller of the story.

4. Volunteer problem: If 2,000 pounds of manganese are to be used on a 150,000-pound charge, how much more manganese should be put in if the charge is 165,000 pounds?

ADDITIONAL READINGS.

1. "The Steel Worker," B. Braley, in Songs of a Workaday World. 17-18. 2. "Pioneers of the Machine Shop," H. Thompson, Age of Invention, 175-193. 3. “The Epic of Steel," B. J. Hendrick, Age of Big Business, 58-85. 4. "Vulcan," J. Husband, America at Work, 20–31.

4. MANUFACTURING AUTOMOBILES

BURTON JESSE HENDRICK

When you finish this selection, be able to explain and illustrate what is meant by standardization in industry.

A few years ago an English manufacturer, seeking the explanation of America's ability to produce an excellent automobile so cheaply, made an interesting experiment. He obtained three American cars, all of the same "standardized" make, and gave them a long and racking tour over English highways. Workmen then took apart the three cars and threw the disjointed remains into a heap. Every bolt, bar, gas-tank, motor, wheel, and tire was taken from its accustomed place and piled up, a mass of rubbish. Workmen then painstakingly put together three cars from these disordered elements. Three chauffeurs jumped on these cars, immediately started them down the road, and made a long journey just as acceptably as before. The Englishman had learned the secret of American success with automobiles. The one word "standardization" explained the mystery.

Probably American industry contains no finer story than that of the American workman who played the chief rôle in standardizing the making of automobiles. From the beginning it seemed inevitable that Henry Ford should play this part in the world. Born on a Michigan farm in 1863, he had always shown an interest in things far removed from the farm. Only mechanical devices interested him. He enjoyed getting in the crops, because McCormick harvesters did most of the work; in the dairy, likewise, it was the machinery that held him enthralled.

He developed destructive tendencies as a boy; he had to take everything to pieces. He horrified a rich playmate by taking his new watch apart — and promptly quieted him by putting it together again. "Every clock in the house shuddered when it saw me coming," he recently said. He constructed a small working forge in his school-yard, and built a small steam-engine that could make ten miles an hour. He spent his winter evenings reading mechanical and scientific journals. Machinery in any form fascinated him.

Some boys run away from the farm to join the circus or to go to sea; Henry Ford at the age of sixteen ran away to get a job in a machine-shop. Here one fact immediately impressed him. No two machines were made exactly alike; each was regarded as a separate job. With his savings from his weekly wage of $2.50, young Ford purchased a three-dollar watch, and immediately dissected it. If several thousand of these watches could be made, each one exactly alike, they would cost only thirty-seven cents apiece. "Then," said Ford to himself, "everybody could have one." He had fairly made his plans to start a factory on this basis when his father's illness called him back home.

This was about 1880. Ford's next conspicuous appearance in Detroit was about 1892. This appearance was not only conspicuous, but it was exceedingly noisy. Detroit now knew him as the pilot of a queer affair that whirled and lurched through her streets, making as much disturbance as a freight-train. In reading technical journals Ford had met many descriptions of horseless carriages; in consequence he had again broken away from the farm, taken a job at $45 a month in a Detroit machine-shop, and devoted his evenings to the making of a gasoline engine. His young wife was exceedingly concerned about his health; the neighbors' judgment was that he was insane.

Only two other Americans, Charles B. Duryea and Elwood Haynes, were attempting to construct an automobile at that time. Long before Ford was ready with his machine, others had begun to appear. Duryea turned out his first one in 1892; and foreign makes began to appear in considerable numbers.

But the Detroit mechanic had a greater inspiration. He was not working to make one of the finely upholstered and beautifully painted vehicles that came from overseas. "Anything that isn't good for everybody is no good at all," he said. Precisely as it was Vail's ambition to make every American a user of the telephone and McCormick's to make every farmer a user of the harvester, Ford's determination was that every family should have an automobile. He was apparently the only man who saw that the new machine was not primarily a luxury but a convenience. Yet all manufacturers, here and in Europe, laughed at his idea. Why not give every man a Fifth Avenue home? Frenchmen

and Englishmen scouted the idea that any one could make a cheap automobile. Its machinery was particularly refined and called for the highest grade of steel; clever Americans might use labor-saving devices on many products, but only skillful hand work could turn out a motor-car. European manufacturers regarded each car as a separate problem; they individualized its manufacture almost as carefully as a painter paints a portrait or a poet writes a poem. The result was that only a man with several thousand dollars could purchase a car. But Ford had a different idea.

Ford's earliest banker was the proprietor of a quick-lunch wagon at which the inventor used to eat his midnight meal after his hard evening's work in the shed. "Coffee Jim," to whom Ford confided his hopes on these occasions, was the only man with cash who had any faith in his ideas. With money advanced by "Coffee Jim," Ford built a machine which he entered in the Grosse Pointe races. It was a hideous-looking affair, but it ran like the wind and outdistanced all competitors. From that day Ford's career has been a triumph. But he rejected the earliest offers of capital because the millionaires would not agree to his terms. They were looking for high prices and quick profits, while Ford's plans were for low prices, large sales, and the use of profits to extend the business and reduce the cost of his machine.

When Ford first talked of turning out 10,000 automobiles a year, his associates asked him where he was going to sell them. His answer was that that was no problem at all; the machines would sell themselves. He said that there were millions of people in this country whose incomes exceeded $1,800 a year; all in that class would be prospective purchasers of a low-priced automobile. There were 6,000,000 farmers alone; what better market could one ask? The only problem was how to produce his machine in sufficient quantities.

The bicycle business in this country had passed through a similar experience. When first placed on the market bicycles were expensive; it took $100 or $150 to buy one. In a few years, however, an excellent machine was selling for $25 or $30. What explained this drop in price? The answer is that the manufacturers had learned to standardize their product. Bicycle factories

became not so much places where the articles were manufactured as assembling rooms for putting them together. The several parts were made in different places, each establishment specializing in a particular part; the parts were then shipped to centers where they were made into complete machines. The result was that the United States, despite the high wages paid here, led the world in bicycle making and flooded all countries with this article.

Thus Henry Ford did not invent standardization; he merely applied this great American idea to a product to which it seemed at first unadapted. He soon found that it was cheaper to ship the parts of ten cars to a central point than to ship ten completed cars. There would therefore be large savings in making his parts in particular factories and shipping them to assembling establishments. In this way the completed cars would always be near their markets.

It was necessary to plan the making of every part to the minutest detail, to have each part machined to its exact size, and to have every screw, bolt, and bar precisely interchangeable. About the year 1907 the Ford factory was systematized on this basis. In that twelve-month it produced 10,000 machines, each one the absolute counterpart of the other 9,999. American manufacturers until then had been content to make a few hundred cars a year!

and we can see the

A glimpse of a Ford assembling room same process in other American factories makes clear the reasons for this success. In these rooms no fitting is done; the fragments of automobiles come in automatically and are simply bolted together. First of all, the units are assembled in their several departments. The rear axles, the front axles, the frames, the radiators, and the motors are all put together with the same precision and exactness that marks the operation of the completed

car.

Thus the wheels come from one part of the factory and are rolled on an inclined plane to a particular spot. The tires are propelled by some mysterious force to the same spot; as the two meet, workmen quickly put them together. In a long room the bodies are slowly advanced on moving platforms at the rate of about a foot a minute. At the side stand groups of men, each