AT WORK AND PLAY

Hokitika Guardian, 9 July 1926, Page 4

AT WORK AND PLAY

HENRY FORD’S ENTERPRISES. NEW YORK, April 13. .Mr Henry Ford is engaging in ventures more and more varied. One of his latest enterprises, in addition to the manufacture of 5000 motor-cars a day, is a revival of the old-fashioned waltzes and square dances. Mr Ford not only directed the attention of the country to this hobby by providing special trains to bring to Detroit Trom remote parts of the United States oldtime fiddling champion; he also took advantage of this publicity to arrange for tho broadcasting of his favourite sehottisehes and polkas. He is encouraging dancing teachers ill the large cities to favour the old square dances, in preference to the Charleston and the tango.

At Marlboro, in Massachusetts, with the oldest hostelry in the United States, the wayside inn, as a nucleus, Mr Ford is assembling a village which will resemble one of tlie outposts of an earlier American civilisation. At a cost of 80,000 dollars (£16,000), Mi Ford had a mile of State highway moved 500 feet from the Wayside Inn lost the vibration ol traffic should shake the weather-beaten boards and shingles of the inn to pieces. Among the buildings already brought to Marlboro from other parts of New England are a blacksmith’s shop which Longfellow made famous in “ The Y illage Blacksmith,” a. one-roomed' country sohoolhouse, such as Mr Lord himself attended when lie was a bov in Michigan, and an old mill, the stones of which had guided water over the power wheel before Benjamin I‘iauklin raised his kite to draw' a spark of electricity from lightning flashes. . Other relics of antiquity added to the Ford collections, by which man’s machine-made works of to-day may be compared with his handiwork of yesterday, include a rickety stage-coacli, house furnishings and two crude ploughs, one 225 and the other 160 years old.

REDUCING PRODUCTION COSTS As an industrialist, Air Ford’s genius is being demonstrated in an everincreasing number of ways. Skilful management, be says, can always find methods to increase wage rates by eliminating waste and effecting economies. Efficiency and mass organisation have been applied to the shipment of Ford tractors. To save freight charges to Now York on tractors destined for Europe, the Ford organisation lias its own ships, which carry tractors uncrated by way of the Great Lakes and the , St. Lawrence river. When the Russian Soviet Government purchased 10,000 Fordsons, 50 Russian workers, mechanics and students were invited to take a course of training at the Detroit factory, and a number of Americans went to Russia to explain the best way to operate the tractors.

When the Government of the United States called for bids on the surplus vessels of Hie Shipping Board, Mr Ford put in the lowest bid for the 200 ships, bad them towed to Detroit, and became a dealer in scrap iron. AIRWAYS AND RAILWAYS.

M,r Ford has a contract to carry air mail over the trans-Conti cental route between Chicago, Cleveland and Detroit. In this is enlisted the*Ford Air. Transport Service, which makes its own all-metal aeroplanes, and owns a 1 -100 acre field near Chicago. Ford, engineers are working on plans for tho establishment of a regular freight and passenger service bv air between tlie Atlantic coast and Detroit, with branch lilies tapping the rich intermediate country.

Mr Ford already owns all but two per cent of the Detroit, Toledo and 1 ronton railroad, with 1000 miles of track between Michigan and West Virginia. He is attempting to gain complete control so that be may be better able to make improvements. He intends to electrify tlie entire railway. Air Ford has done much independent financing of bis own projects. TTo tries, ns far as possible, to keep free from what lie regards as the sinister in licence of AVall street. Recently lie lent 5.000.000 dollars (€1,000,0000) to the Costa Rican Government, in Central America, on the condition that all of it was used to build good roads. ANOTHER FORD FACTORY.

Jhe “flivver,” however, is still the main source of the Ford fortune. Economics designed to reduce the cost of the Ford car are still being sought. In 1023 approximately 4,000.000 square yards of material wore needed for upholstery and lining of cars, requiring the wool of 2,500,000 sheep. Formerly Air Ford liad to buy the cloth in the open market. Now lie is erecting a factory costing 3,000,000 dollars (£800,000). near Yipsilanti, in Michigan, to manufacture cloth under liis own supervision. He is also experiVcenting extensively with flax and cotton growing, to overcome what he calls speculative price “ boosting.” There appears to be no limit to Mr Ford’s enterprises.