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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 (XVTHE~EATRACE) Well, of all things to win, a cut glass punch bowl! Where will we ever put it? -CLARA FORD The century has turned. This is 1900. Ahead of mankind, say the editorials, lie such vistas of peace and progress and prosperity as have never been dreamed. Science, they say, has become the handmaiden of the arts of living. War, at last, will be abolished; although it must be admitted the Chinese are being more than troublesome, the Russians and Japanese are looking hard at each other in Korea, President Roosevelt has his big stick out over Venezuela , Kaiser Wilhelm II has been rattling his sword, and the Boers are giving the British a steady beating. In Paris Dr. Roentgen has been perfecting his mysterious ray which will actually photograph through flesh: a picture in Leslie's Weekly has plainly shown the bones of a human hand, and the editors insist the picture has not been retouched. (The ray had no name at first, and, in a sense, it never did get a name, coming down as simply "X-ray.") News about the possibilities of flight in "aeroplanes " is occasionally noted, but comment about this activity is usually handled facetiously by lightweight editors. One such editor seriously suggested that aeroplanes would mean the end of war, because they could carry bombs and no army general in the rear would risk being bombed himself. Horseless carriages are much in the news, although the term "automobile" is in favor because of its elegant French sound. Automobile news has many phases: It is the highest of society news, since the great of Newport and Tuxedo and Fifth Avenue-the Vanderbilts, Whitneys, Belmonts-have made the automobile very distinguished. It is business news, because 125 of the rush to get aboard-fifty-seven automobile companies are announcing brave plans. And it is the most exciting sports news, because fresh auto speed records are being set almost weekly for every distance from the half-mile to twentyfive miles. The great racers of the day are Henri Fournier , a mustachioed French daredevil in a French-built Mors racer; William K. Vanderbilt , who buys cars the way other millionaires buy caviar-he is discarding his Daimler now for a Mors racer; it cost him $15,000 plus $7,000 customs duty, but he calls it the "Red Devil," and wins with it; and the genial, steel-nerved Alexander Winton, a youngish Scots immigrant who has pioneered his own powerful cars out of a Cleveland bicycle shop. All three are trying hard to be the first man in history to go a mile in a minute. The record is creeping lower, toward one minute and ten seconds. In Detroit Henry Ford seems a bit out of the automotive main stream, which is clearly racing. He has been defeated in his first venture at manufacturing automobiles. But Henry still had the confidence of some of his original backers. Black, Bowen, Hopkins, White and the patient Murphy yet believed Ford was on the right track. Sometime in the late fall of 1900 they dumped the Detroit Automobile Company, filing formal notice of dissolution in January 1901, with this to take effect on February 7, 1901. This little group purchased the assets at a receivers sale and immediately engaged Henry to carryon in reduced quarters at the same address: 1343 Cass Avenue. His assignment was to continue working in the experimental shop until he announced he was finally ready. Henry must have reasoned that part of his failure was due to his inability to assemble a really first-grade team, from deSigners to assemblers . It must be remembered that there were no proper automobile men in those days; they were even scarcer than working parts. Henry's first act was to bring in Ed Huff. Then he got the part-time services of a new friend, a commercial artist named Childe Harold Wills, who had also been an apprentice toolmaker, and a draftsman for the Detroit Lubricator Com- 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 Young Henry Ford pany. Henry could not afford...

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