Success comes to those who become success conscious. Failure comes to those who indifferently allow themselves to become failure conscious.
Who seek it learn the art of changing their Minds from failure consciousness to success consciousness.
Millions of people look at the achievements of Henry ford and envy him his good fortune, or luck or genius or whatever it is they credit for ford’s fortune.
Perhaps one person in every hundred thousand knows the secret of ford’s success, and those who do know are too modest, or too reluctant, to speak of it, because of its simplicity.
When ford decided to produce his now famous V-8 motor.
He chose to build an engine with the eight cylinder cast in one block, and instructed his engineers to produce a design for the engine.
The design was placed on paper, but the engineers believe it was simply impossible to cast an eight cylinder gas engine block in one piece.
Ford commanded, and stay on the job until you succeed, no matter how much time is required.
Early life
Henry Ford was one of eight children of William and Mary Ford. He was born on the family farm near Dearborn, Michigan, then a town eight miles west of Detroit.
Abraham Lincoln was president of the 24 states of the Union, and Jefferson Davis was president of the 11 states of the Confederacy.
Ford attended a one-room school for eight years when he was not helping his father with the harvest.
At age 16 he walked to Detroit to find work in its machine shops.
After three years, during which he came in contact with the internal-combustion engine for the first time, he returned to the farm.
where he worked part-time for the Westinghouse Engine Company and in spare moments tinkered in a little machine shop he set up.
The engineers went ahead there was no other option if they were to remain on the Ford staff.
Six months went by and nothing happened. Another six months passed, and still nothing happened.
The engineers tried every conceivable plan to carry out the orders, but the thing seemed out of the question impossible.
At the end of the year Ford checked with his engineers, and again they informed him they had found no way to carry out his orders.
He built a small farm locomotive
Eventually he built a small “farm locomotive,” a tractor that used an old mowing machine for its chassis and a homemade steam engine for power.
I will build a motor car for the great multitude, Ford proclaimed in announcing the birth of the Model T in October 1908.
In the 19 years of the Model T’s existence, he sold 15,500,000 of the cars in the United States.
Almost 1,000,000 more in Canada, and 250,000 in Great Britain, a production total amounting to half the auto output of the world.
Ford’s vision
The motor age arrived owing mostly to Ford’s vision of the car as the ordinary man’s utility rather than as the rich man’s luxury.
Once only the rich had travelled freely around the country; now millions could go wherever they pleased.
The Model T was the chief instrument of one of the greatest and most rapid changes in the lives of the common people in history, and it effected this change in less than two decades.
Farmers were no isolated on remote farms.
The horse disappeared so rapidly that the transfer of acreage from hay to other crops caused an agricultural revolution.
The automobile became the main prop of the American economy and a stimulant to urbanization—cities spread outward.
Creating suburbs and housing developments—and to the building of the finest highway system in the world.
The remarkable birth rate of Model T’s
Model T’s was made possible by the most advanced production technology yet conceived.
After much experimentation by Ford and his engineers, the system that had evolved by 1913–14 in Ford’s new plant in Highland Park.
Michigan, was able to deliver parts, subassemblies, and assemblies (themselves built on subsidiary assembly lines) with precise timing to a constantly moving main assembly line,
where a complete chassis was turned out every 93 minutes, an enormous improvement over the 728 minutes formerly required.
The minute subdivision of labour and the coordination of a multitude of operations produced huge gains in productivity.
Go right ahead, said ford, I want it, and I will have it.
The ford determination
They went ahead, and then, as if by a stroke of Magic, the secret of discovered. The ford determination had won once more.
This story may not be described with minute accuracy, but the sum and substance of it is correct.
Deduce from it, you who wish to think and grow rich, the secret of the ford millions, if you can. You will not have to look very for.
Henry Ford is a success because he understands and applies the principle of success. One of these is Desire knowing what one wants.
Remember this ford story as you read and pick out the line in which the secret of his stupendous achievement has been described.
Control of the company
During its first five years the Ford Motor Company produced eight different models, and by 1908 its output was 100 cars a day.
The stockholders were ecstatic; Ford was dissatisfied and looked toward turning out 1,000 a day.
The stockholders seriously considered court action to stop him from using profits to expand.
In 1909 Ford, who owned 58 percent of the stock, announced that he was only going to make one car in the future, the Model T.
The planning of a huge new plant at River Rouge, Michigan, had been one of the specific causes of the Dodge suit.
What Ford dreamed of was not merely increased capacity but complete self-sufficiency.
World War I, with its shortages and price increases, demonstrated for him the need to control raw materials.
Slow-moving suppliers convinced him that he should make his own parts.
Wheels, tires, upholstery, and various accessories were purchased from other companies around Detroit.
As Ford production increased, these smaller operations had to speed their output; most of them had to install their own assembly lines.
It became impossible to coordinate production and shipment so that each product would arrive at the right place and at the right time.
Later years of Henry Ford
The unprecedented scale of that success, together with Ford’s personal success in gaining absolute control of the firm and driving out subordinates with contrary opinions.
Trusting in what he believed was an unerring instinct for the market.
Ford refused to follow other automobile manufacturers in offering such innovative features as conventional gearshifts.
He held out for his own planetary gear transmission hydraulic brakes rather than mechanical ones.
six- and eight-cylinder engines (the Model T had a four), and choice of colour (from 1914 every Model T was painted black).
When he was finally convinced that the marketplace had changed and was demanding more than a purely utilitarian vehicle.
He shut down his plants for five months to retool.
In December 1927 he introduced the Model A. The new model enjoyed solid but not spectacular success.
Ford’s stubbornness had cost him his leadership position in the industry.
The Model A was outsold by General Motors’ Chevrolet and Chrysler’s Plymouth and was discontinued in 1931.
Despite the introduction of the Ford V-8 in 1932, by 1936 Ford Motor Company was third in sales in the industry.
Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.
Competition is the keen cutting edge of business, always shaving away at costs.
Money is like an arm or leg — use it or lose it.