a buyer won the race with the bill from the foundry by a margin of hours. Often on pay day Ford faced the prospect of being unable to pay the men until he should have sold a shipment of cars not yet built.
But the cars sold. Their simplicity of construction, their power, above all their cheapness, in a day when automobiles almost without exception sold for $2,500 to $4,000, brought buyers. In a few weeks orders came from Cleveland for them; shortly afterward a dealer in Chicago wrote for an agency there.
Still the success of the venture depended from week to week on a thousand chances. Ford, with his genius for factory management, reduced the waste of material or labor to the smallest minimum. He worked on new designs for simpler, cheaper motors. He figured orders for material. His own living expenses were cut to the bone—every cent of profit on sales went into the factory.
Nearly a thousand cars were sold that year, but with the beginning of winter sales decreased, almost stopped. The factory must be kept running, in order to have cars for the spring trade. Close figuring would enable them to keep it open, but an early, brisk market would be necessary to save the company in the spring.
In this emergency Ford recalled the great advertising value of racing. He had designed a four-cylinder car to be put on the market the following year. If he could make a spectacular
