keep down his own factory costs so that he could make a still cheaper car.
With the first adverse decision, the A.L.A.M. carried the fight into the newspapers. Most of us can recall the days when from coast to coast the newspapers of America blossomed with page advertisements warning people against buying Ford cars, asserting that every owner of a Ford car was liable to prosecution for damages under the Seldon patent rights.
Those were chaotic years in the industry. The hysteria which followed the huge profit-making of the first companies, checked only temporarily by the panic of 1907-8, mounted again in a rising wave of excitement. Dozens of companies sprang up, sold stock, assembled a few cars, and went down in ruin. Buyers of their cars were left stranded with automobiles for which they could not get new parts.
It was asserted that the Ford Motor Company, unable to pay the enormous sums accruing if the Seldon patent was upheld, would be one of the companies to fail. Buyers were urged to play safe by purchasing a recognized car—a car made by the licensed manufacturers.
Ford, already involved in a business fight against the association and its millions, thus found himself in danger of losing the confidence of the public.
The story of those years is one which cannot be adequately told. Ford was working harder
