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In the rich storehouse of Americana at Fair Lane were the love letters of Ford to his wife, Clara, a paper boy's receipt for 45¢ that Ford paid him in 1894, a receipted bill for four pounds of trout (price 72¢) delivered in 1906, the bill for the gasoline for his first car, letters from Presidents and crowned heads, and thousands of letters that Ford did not even bother to open—some containing thousands of dollars. There were the first rough sketches of cars and of assembly plants, hundreds of "jotbooks" into which Ford noted everything that interested him —new ideas, new words (garrulous, adulation, ambrosia), and the sly maxims he coined ("A bore is a fellow who opens his mouth and puts his feats in it" and "He took misfortune like a man—blamed it on his wife").
"One in Every Family." In his lifetime. Henry Ford was damned from time to time as a Communist (for his $5-a-day wage), an anarchist, an anti-Semite, a Fascist; he was praised as the greatest living American, whose diverse interests (e.g., planes, rubber growing, synthetics, early American furniture) made him seem a kind of machine-age Leonardo. Now the archives reveal for the first time what manner of man he really was.
_ In one of his dog-eared jotbooks was his first notation of his single-minded philosophy of production, which put the world on wheels: "A car for the masses . . . One in every family . . . Nothing will do as much to make good roads as a car in every family." But instead of a car for the masses, his first two companies, formed in 1899 and 1901, made expensive racing cars. In one of them, Ford became the first man to travel 90 m.p.h., and won such fame as a racer that he wrote, optimistically, to his wife's brother: "There is a barrel of money in this business." There wasn't: both companies went bankrupt.
In 1903, aged 40, he raised $28,000 and started again, this time to make his "car for the masses." Nevertheless, his Ford Motor Co. at one point was only $223.65 short of bankruptcy again. It was saved only by the arrival of an $850 check from a Dr. Pfenning of Chicago, who bought the company's first car. In two years the company was so successful it could proudly mail out a 100% dividend.
Through the Courthouse. Early dealers had their problems. One Ohio dealer worriedly asked Ford if he should bet a competitor $500 that the model S Ford could beat a rival car to Columbus and back. Wrote back confident Mr. Ford: "Is it any credit for the U.S. to whip Venezuela? Take a bet like that with any car." To make a sale, a Kentucky dealer had to drive a Ford up the courthouse steps to prove that the car was as sturdy as a horse. For others who also raised this point, Ford had a brochure: "Autos do the work of three horses, and there is always the possibility that the horse may die ... while the automobile can always be repaired at a nominal cost."