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Childe Harold Wills
- Wayne State University Press
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Childe Harold Wills 1878-1940 "Two partnerships were to shape the history of the Ford Motor Company in its first dazzling rise: the partnership of Ford and Couzens, and the partnership of Ford and Wills. The first was a union of opposites, attended by no real liking; the second was a union of men of generally congenial tastes and ambitions who instinctively understood each other." —Allan Nevins * C Harold Wills was working for Henry Ford before the • Ford Motor Company was organized. A brilliant draftsman and designer, Wills was indispensable to Ford, who could barely read a blueprint, let alone draw one. Wills was able to decipher Ford's crude pencil sketches, produce a well-designed mechanical drawing, and direct the method of fabrication whether it be a cotter pin or chassis. Childe Harold Wills was born on June 1, 1878, at Fort Wayne, Indiana , the third and youngest child of John Carnegie Wills and Angelina Swindell Wills. Two older children, Mary E. and John C. Wills, Jr., had died in 1875. Grandfather Wills had migrated from Scotland to Canada in 1832. John C. Wills, the father, was a master mechanic, and his wife, Angelina, must have had an appreciation of Byron's poetry to have named her son "Childe Harold." By 1885, the Wills family had moved to Detroit and was living at 220 Twelfth Street. From his father, Wills received a very early perception of the mechanical arts. The boy's early interests seem to have been divided between commercial art, such as cartooning, and mechanical engineering . In the Detroit City Directory for 1895, young Wills, at age seventeen, is listed as an artist boarding at home, 1993 Trumbull Street. The previous year, he had been listed merely as a student. The need to make a living, however, drove him toward training as a machinist . After public schooling in Detroit, Wills worked for four years, from 1896 to 1899, for the Detroit Lubricator Company (where his fa- * From Allan Nevins, Ford: The Times, the Man, the Company (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1954), p. 227. 289 Henry's Lieutenants ther also worked), as an apprentice toolmaker receiving seven dollars and fifty cents per week until he became a finished toolmaker with pay raised to ten dollars. During this period, Wills studied chemistry and metallurgy at night school. Wills next got a job in the engineering department of the Boyer Machine Company (forerunner of Burroughs Adding Machine Company) at eighteen dollars a week; within a few months, he became superintendent at fifty dollars. However, Wills was strongly attracted to automobiles , and especially to Henry Ford's endeavors at 81 Park Place in Detroit . In 1899, Wills approached Ford to work as his assistant on a part-time basis, sharing Ford's $125-per-month salary. Wills worked with Ford early mornings and late evenings in the small, unheated shop where they are said to have donned boxing gloves to spar every few minutes to keep warm. In 1900, the Detroit City Directory lists Wills as a draftsman for the Detroit Automobile Company, of which Ford was superintendent. In 1901, the Detroit Automobile Company was reorganized as the Henry Ford Company, with Ford as chief engineer to capitalize on his racing prowess. Wills helped Ford build the famous "999" and "Arrow" racers from which Ford gained considerable prestige in racing circles. By August 1902, Wills had obtained a written contract to work for Ford, presumably full-time. By then, Ford was obtaining considerable financial aid from Alexander Malcolmson, a prominent coal dealer in Detroit. Ford operations moved to the much larger Mack Avenue plant in April 1903, and on June 16, the Ford Motor Company was incorporated. Wills was perhaps too poor to become a stockholder, but Ford offered to share some of his own dividends, about 10 percent in the early years. It was Wills, the artist, who designed the 1906 Ford script that has adorned the many millions of Ford cars throughout the world. Within Ford Motor Company, Wills functioned as chief designer and engineer as well as metallurgist. Ford and Wills worked so closely together that their contributions are said to have been indistinguishable. Wills was perhaps as responsible as Ford for the building of models A, C, F, and B during the first few years of the company. Ford, of course, was undoubtedly the boss, exercising close supervision of Wills. In 1905, the Ford Manufacturing Company was formed to produce auto parts. Stockholders in this...