CHAPTER VIII
MAKING A FARM EFFICIENT
The young couple went first to the Fords' place, where the big roomy house easily spared rooms for them, and Margaret and her father gave them a hearty welcome. Clara, having brought her belongings from her old home, put on her big work-apron and helped Margaret in the kitchen and dairy.
Henry was out in the fields early, working hard to get the crops planted. Driving the plowshare deep into the rich, black loam, holding it steady while the furrow rolled back under his feet, he whistled to himself.
He was contented. The farm work was well in hand; his forty would bring in an ample income from the first year; in the house his rosy little wife was busy making the best butter in the whole neighborhood. He revolved in his mind vague plans for making a better plow than the one he was handling; he remembered noticing in his latest English magazine an article covering the very principle he would use.
In the evening, after the last of the chores was done, he settled himself at the table in the sitting-room, moved the big lamp nearer and opened the magazine. But Clara was busy correcting the plans for the new house; she must have the lamp light, too. Henry moved the lamp back.
"Would you have the kitchen here, or here? This way I could have windows on three sides, but the other way I'd have a larger pantry," said Clara, stopping to chew her pencil.
"Fix it exactly to suit yourself. It's your house, and I'll build it just as you say," Henry replied, turning a page.
"But I want your advice—and I can't see how to get this back porch in without making the bedrooms too small," Clara complained. "I want this house just so—and if I put the chimney where I want it to come in the kitchen, it will be in the wrong end of the sitting-room, best I can do. Oh, let those horrid papers alone, and help me out!"
Henry let the horrid papers alone and bent his head over the problems of porch and pantry and fireplace.
When the pressure of spring work was over, he set to work a gang of men, cutting down selected trees in the timber lot and hauling them down to the little sawmill which belonged to his father. There he sawed them into boards of the lengths and sizes he needed and stocked them in neat piles to season and dry. From the shorter pieces of timber he split "shakes," or homemade shingles, and stacked them, log-cabin fashion. He was preparing to build his first house.
It rose little by little through that summer. Henry built it himself, helped by one of the hired men. It was a good, substantial, Middle—Western home, 32 x 32 feet and containing seven rooms and a roomy attic. In the evenings, after supper, dishwashing and the chores at the barn were finished, he and Clara strolled over in the twilight to inspect the day's progress.
They climbed together over the loose boards which made temporary floors, looked at the skeleton partitions of studding, planned where the stoves should be set and what kind of paper should be chosen for the walls. Then they walked around the outside, imagined with pride how well the house would look when the siding was on and painted white, and planned where the flower beds should be in the front yard.
"Let's be getting on back," said Henry. "I saw an article in that French magazine that came to-day about a Frenchman who invented some kind of a carriage that runs by itself, without horses sort of a steam engine to pull it."
"Did you?" said Clara. "How interesting! Oh, look! The moon's coming up."
They loitered back through the clover fields, sweet smelling in the dew, climbed over the stile into the apple orchard, where the leaves were silver and black in the moonlight, and so came slowly home. Margaret had cut a watermelon, cooled in a basket in the well, and all the family sat on the back porch eating it.
Long after midnight, when every one else was sound asleep, the lamp was burning in the sitting-room, and Henry was reading that article about the horseless carriage. The idea fascinated him.
The new house was finished late in the fall. Clara had made a trip to Detroit to purchase furniture, and all summer she had been working on patchwork quilts and crocheted tidies. When everything was ready, the sitting-room bright with new carpet and shining varnished furniture, the new range installed in the kitchen, the cellar stocked with apples, vegetables, canned fruits, Henry and Clara moved into their own home. They were proud of it.
"It's a fine place yet, as good as anybody could want," Henry Ford says now. "We still have it, and we like to go down there in the summers and stay awhile. All the furniture is there, exactly as it was then. I wouldn't ask any better place to live."
It must have been a happy time for both of them. They had a comfortable home, plenty to eat and wear, they were surrounded by friends. There was a simple neighborly spirit, a true democracy, in that little country community. There were no very poor families there; no very rich ones; every one had plenty, and wanted no more.
Henry's hired men ate at the table with him, slept under the same roof, called him "Hen" as a matter of course, just as he called them "Hi" and "Dave." They worked together to plant, care for and harvest the crops. Their interests were the same, and if at the end of the year Henry had a more improved farm to show for the year's work, it was the only difference between them. He had lived no better, spent no more, than the others.
It was in those years that he laid the foundation for his philosophy of life.
He found that the work of the farm progressed faster and produced more when every one worked together with a good will, each doing his own share and doing it well. He found that men, like horses, did their best when they were well fed, contented and not overworked. He saw that one unruly horse, or one surly, lazy man, delayed the work of the whole farm, hindered all the others.
"The only plan that will work out well in the long run is a plan that is best for every one concerned," he decided. "Hurting the other fellow is bound to hurt me sooner or later."
He was a good farmer. His mechanical, orderly mind arranged the work so that it was done smoothly, and on time, without overworking any one or leaving any one idle. His thrifty instincts saved labor and time just as they saved the barn manure to spread on the fields, or planned for the turning in of the last crop of clover to enrich the soil.
His granaries were well filled in the fall, his stock was sleek and fat, fetching top prices. Clara kept the house running smoothly, the pantry filled with good, simple food, the cellar shelves stocked with preserves and jams for winter.
In the evenings Henry got out his mechanics' journals and pored over them, while Clara sewed or mended. He found now and then a mention of the horseless carriage.
"That looks to me like a good idea. If I was in Detroit now, where I could get a good machine shop, I believe I could do something along that line myself," he said.
"Probably you could," his wife replied, rocking comfortably. "But what's the use? We've got everything here we need."
"Yes; but I'd just like to try what I could do," Henry said restlessly.
A few days later he inspected his farm shop and announced that he was going up to Detroit for a day to get some materials.