Ragtime - E.L. Doctorow [46]
of mansions. Frank the Cash Boy kept his eyes open for a runaway horse carrying the daughter of a Wall Street broker. All across the continent merchants pressed the large round keys of their registers. The value of the duplicable event was everywhere perceived. Every town had its ice-cream soda fountain of Belgian marble. Painless Parker the Dentist everywhere offered to remove your toothache. At Highland Park, Michigan, the first Model T automobile built on a moving assembly line lurched down a ramp and came to rest in the grass under a clear sky. It was black and ungainly and stood high off the ground. Its inventor regarded it from a distance. His derby was tilted back on his head. He chewed on a piece of straw. In his left hand he held a pocket watch. The employer of many men, a good number of them foreign-born, he had long believed that most human beings were too dumb to make a good living. He’d conceived the idea of breaking down the work operations in the assembly of an automobile to their simplest steps, so that any fool could perform them. Instead of having one man learn the hundreds of tasks in the building of one motorcar, walking him hither and yon to pick out the parts from a general inventory, why not stand him in his place, have him do just one task over and over, and let the parts come past him on moving belts. Thus the worker’s mental capacity would not be taxed. The man who puts in a bolt does not put on the nut, the inventor said to his associates. The man who puts on the nut does not tighten it. He had a way with words. He had gotten his inspiration from a visit to a beef-packing concern where the cows were swung through the plant hanging in slings from overhead cables. With his tongue he moved the straw from one corner of his mouth to the other. He looked at his watch again. Part of his genius consisted of seeming to his executives and competitors not as quick-witted as they. He brushed the grass with the tip of his shoe. Exactly six minutes after the car had rolled down the ramp an identical car appeared at the top of the ramp, stood for a moment pointed at the cold early morning sun, then rolled down and crashed into the rear of the first one. Henry Ford had once been an ordinary automobile manufacturer. Now he experienced an ecstasy greater and more intense than that vouchsafed to any American before him, not excepting Thomas Jefferson. He had caused a machine to replicate itself endlessly. His executives and managers and assistants crowded around him to shake his hand. Tears were in their eyes. He allotted sixty seconds on his pocket watch for a display of sentiment. Then he sent everyone back to work. He knew there were refinements to be made and he was right. By controlling the speed of the moving belts he could control the workers’ rate of production. He did not want a worker to stoop over or to take more than one step from his work site. The worker must have every second necessary for his job but not a single unnecessary second. From these principles Ford established the final proposition of the theory of industrial manufacture—not only that the parts of the finished product be interchangeable, but that the men who build the products be themselves interchangeable parts. Soon he was producing three thousand cars a month and selling them to the multitudes. He was to live a long and active life. He loved birds and animals and counted among his friends John Burroughs, an old naturalist who studied the humble creatures of the woodland—chipmunk and raccoon, junko, wren and chickadee.
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But Ford’s achievement did not put him at the top of the business pyramid. Only one man occupied that lofty place.
The offices of the J. P. Morgan Company were at 23 Wall Street. The great financier came to work one morning dressed in a dark blue suit, a black overcoat with a collar of lamb’s wool and a top hat. He affected fashions slightly out of date. When he stepped out of his limousine the car robe fell around his feet. One of the several bank officers who had rushed out to meet him disentangled the robe