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 his harvester, so it was Ford's determination that every family should have an automobile.

He was apparently the only man in those times who saw that this new machine was not primarily a luxury but a convenience.

Yet all manufacturers, here and in Europe, laughed at his idea.