This is the warmly human story of one of America's great industrial pioneers whose genius revolutionized transportation, industry and world economics. His development of the gasoline engine and his successful ability to manufacture an inexpensive car within reach of limited pocketbooks brought happiness, comfort and wider horizons to millions.

When Henry was still a small boy on his father's farm he evinced a strong interest in mechanics. His first experiment at the age of twelve—damming a nearby stream to provide power for a water wheel—brought down the wrath of the community on his small head. The water wheel worked and the dam held so well that the potato fields of a neighboring farmer were flooded. Henry had to dismantle the dam and abandon the whole project.

He next became interested in small portable engines then used for sawing wood, running threshing machines and pumping water. Long before he left the Dearborn farm for a job in a Detroit machine shop, young Ford was known for miles around for his ability to repair every kind of small engine. He also had a side line—repairing clocks and watches, and he could repair any make, replacing and mending the tiniest parts.

Henry Ford worked hard all his life. As soon as he was old enough, he had to help with the farm chores. When he took his first job in Detroit at two dollars and fifty cents a week he worked a twelve-hour day and more, because, in order to supplement his meager income, he took a job from six to eleven at night repairing watches for one dollar a week.

Years later when he became chief engineer of the local electric company at a hundred and twenty-five dollars a month, he still worked a twelve-hour day and then went home at night to work for hours on his experiments with the gasoline engine. Everyone then believed that electricity was the coming thing. His neighbors and his employers thought him crazy. Probably the only people who encouraged the young inventor were Edison who didn't feel too sure of the electric automobile and Henry's wife who believed in him implicitly.

Then Henry had to take his choice between the gasoline engine and his job. He chose the former and spent every available hour working on automatic combustion. He completed and tested his first car in 1892. It was made of old bicycle wheels, pieces of gas pipe and cylinders from an old steam engine. Several years later he sold it to build his second Ford. Then, because he needed money he went in for racing and won the championship.

Not until 1903, when Henry Ford was over forty did he start the Ford Motor Car Company with less than a hundred thousand dollars capital. 

From this small beginning he built an industrial empire estimated to be worth over three quarters of a billion dollars.

Henry Ford's interests were many and varied—he became interested in airplanes when over sixty. He harnessed the power of the River Rouge. His plants turned out rapidly and efficiently Liberty Bombers, jeeps and other necessary war equipment that helped turn the tide of World War II. He was interested in peace and world unity. He was the first to establish a basic working hour and basic pay for factory workers. He developed and successfully demonstrated the production line method of manufacture. He worked with and helped George Washington Carver in the development of the soy bean and built a model school and community at Tuskegee.

Henry Ford amassed a huge personal fortune, but he also benefited the world at large. Perhaps more than any one individual whose name is associated with the industrial revolution, he changed the course of world industry and economics.

From the book