The public read with a strange feeling, the record of the great litigation against the “basic patent.” It seemed like a battle of Titans, and ordinary folk thought it might result in danger to the industry. But only the lawyers were strenuously engaged. They argued and submitted briefs for more than two years, the national organization of the makers who accepted the license of the “Selden patent,” honoring their national organization by paying to the treasury their pro rata on the amount of cars made. An enormous fund grew. But the man who wanted to make from 200,000 to 750,000 cars a year was determined. He won in the Federal court and almost immediately the “licensed association” began to break up. The contributions of license fees ceased and soon the association was a thing of history. It was succeeded by the National Chamber of Commerce which has become the senate, house of congress—the parliament, if you please—of the automobile industry in the United States. Some, there were, who had a very poorly defined idea of the actual mission of the “licensed association,” believing that it was a “trust,” called its function destructive. They thought that the officers of the association would lay an embargo upon certain manufacturers and allot a more liberal figure on annual output to the larger and stronger firms in the organization. FORD, A “WIZARD” AND “GENIUS.” Unfortunately at that time, the licensed association had not the grasp on patent protective measures, engineering work, standardization, etc., that obtains in the present national organization, and the real mission of the licensed association never became wholly evident to the public. But the organization did its part in laying the foundations of the industry. It made the handwriting on the wall for popular price so large, that every man who subsequently invested a dollar in automobile making read, pondered and agreed. It placed popular price and standardization of mechanism in the same category—linked them so that the words of the Detroit automobile manufacturing wizard became axioms. The Detroit genius had proved that the depth and capacity of the automobile market was exactly in ratio to the possible price reduction. Amazing but true, the big men said, was the field that the lower priced car opened to the thoughtful maker of cars. Manufacturers began to talk of some day building and selling as high as a million automobiles in one year. Others calmly declared that when the motor car sales in cities began to “slow up,” there would be still more than 5,000,000 prospects in the agricultural districts. Others drew diagrams intended to show that there would be a market for any priced cars that were built in this country, the few persons with large incomes assimilating all the high priced cars, and the many with average incomes absorbing the quantity production at popular prices. All allowances were made for the increase in the cost of labor, materials such as steels and other