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In order to view this proof accurately, the Overprint Preview Option must be checked in Acrobat Professional or Adobe Reader. Please contact your Customer Service Representative if you have questions about ἀnding the option. Job Name: -- /330792t ( VI. OLD NO. 345 ) The little high-speed, qUick-steaming thing made him nervous. .. I was frightened myself. -HENRY FORD Remember that Michigan was wood country: wood was the available fuel, and coal was a costly import by rail from southern Ohio, Pennsylvania , and Kentucky. And the wonderful ancient forests of Michigan were going down at a great rate. Little portable steam-engines were beginning to go about the country threshing and sawing timber. "The men in charge of those machines," Henry said later, "seemed to me of great importance, entrusted with vast responsibility, and fortunate to have chosen fascinating careers." One of the good neighbors of the Fords in Dearborn was John Gleason, and one day in 1882 Farmer Gleason bought such a portable steam-engine, from Westinghouse in Schenectady , and he hired a man to run it. Henry Ford told about that day: I shall never forget the first time I ran that engine. . . . The man knew little of it . . . and he found himself in trouble. As a matter of fact, I have an idea he was afraid of his machine. The little high-speed, quick-steaming thing made him nervous and he did little work with it that first day. She differed from the accustomed farm engines, having many of the characteristics of a fire engine. He practically threw up his job.... Gleason was in a quandary. One of the neighbors knew I knew a good deal about engines and suggested me to take the man's place. At six o'clock the following morning this neighbor, worried that Gleason without an engineer would be unable to finish the work on his place, came to see my father. I was 33 about as proud as I have ever been when he asked if I might run the engine while it was on his place. My father consented reluctantly. He was afraid, I am sure, to let me have anything to do with an engine that had proved too much for a professional engineer. I was rather slight for my age. . . . He asked me if I felt certain of my ability and his tone showed that he doubted. To tell the truth, I was frightened myself. . .. But I was unwilling to be beaten by an engine, and I solemnly assured my father and the farmer that I was sure. They finally decided to let me try. I went to work around that little engine. It was not long before my doubts entirely disappeared , and getting a grip on the engine, so to speak, I got a grip on myself. At the end of that first day I was as weary as I had been nervous at its beginning, but I had run the engine steadily, indUCing it to stand up nicely to its work, and I forgot my griminess and weariness in the consciousness I had actually accomplished what I had started out to do. There are few more comforting feelings. I was paid three dollars a day and had eighty-three days of steady work. I traveled from fann to farm, and I threshed our own and the neighbors' clover, hauled loads, cut corn-stalks, ground feed, sawed wood. It was hard work. I had to fire [it] myself and the fuel most generally was old fence-rails, though it would burn coal the few times coal was to be had. I became immensely fond of that machine ... and [its] complete and expert master. I have never been better satisfied with myself than I was when I guided it over the rough country roads of the time. In 1913 Henry Ford began searching for that little steam-engine. All he knew was its number, 345. After a long hunt, with the help of Westinghouse , it was found on a farm in Pennsylvania, rusty with disuse. The number plate was found in the farmhouse kitchen, used as a patch on an old cookstove. The farmer wanted ten dollars for the worthless thresher. Ford paid it and gave him a new Model T as a bonus; and he In order to view this proof accurately, the Overprint Preview Option must be checked in Acrobat Professional or Adobe Reader. Please contact your Customer Service Representative if you have questions about ἀnding the option...

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