Well-conducted business enterprise cannot fail to return a profit, but
profit must and inevitably will come as a reward for good service. It
cannot be the basis--it must be the result of service.

4. Manufacturing is not buying low and selling high. It is the process
of buying materials fairly and, with the smallest possible addition of
cost, transforming those materials into a consumable product and giving
it to the consumer. Gambling, speculating, and sharp dealing, tend only
to clog this progression.

How all of this arose, how it has worked out, and how it applies
generally are the subjects of these chapters.




CHAPTER I

THE BEGINNING OF BUSINESS


On May 31, 1921, the Ford Motor Company turned out Car No. 5,000,000. It
is out in my museum along with the gasoline buggy that I began work on
thirty years before and which first ran satisfactorily along in the
spring of 1893. I was running it when the bobolinks came to Dearborn and
they always come on April 2nd. There is all the difference in the world
in the appearance of the two vehicles and almost as much difference in
construction and materials, but in fundamentals the two are curiously
alike--except that the old buggy has on it a few wrinkles that we have
not yet quite adopted in our modern car. For that first car or buggy,