For was it not an avalanche of profits that overwhelmed the man who in thirteen years made $200,000,000 and was offered another $200,000,000 for only a small part of his business? And this great fortune made by Henry Ford did not exhaust the Ford automobile’s possibilities, for millions are still being taken out of the business, one investor of $2,000 having received over half a million dollars out of it lately. When men who are not 40 years old today came out of high school they either did not know what an automobile was or, if they had seen one of the very earliest samples, they had no vision of what it would develop into—no conception of what the future had in store for the wabbly horseless vehicle, zig-zagging down the street, as a potential money-maker. And in the early days of the automobile’s struggles for recognition as a promising investment, no banker or other moneyed man could be brought to believe that it held out any reasonable hopes of great gain. No one could foresee, not even the inventors of the automobile, that in less than two decades the business done through its comparative perfection would rank fourth in order of the industries of the United States. And still less was there anybody so foresighted in the possibilities that lie in money to make more money, as to vision the billions of dollars of profits to be paid out by this one idea of a horseless vehicle. We can find few instances which so forcefully show, as the automobile industry shows, the chances for profitable investment in a short time which may come from sources supplying the needs or pleasures of the great mass of the people. The chapters of the “Story of the Automobile” devoted to its commercialization make clear that its greatest success has been due to the production of automobiles at a price within reach of people of ordinary means. For this the one man most responsible is Henry Ford. He has demonstrated in a manner of many millions that the most money is to be made out of things used by the greatest number of people—things that become common needs. The enduring truth of the profitableness of Philip D. Armour’s apothegm, “Make and sell things that are ‘et’ up,” is not discredited by the automobile industry, for the use of the automobile “eats” up steel, brass, wood, rubber, leather, gasoline and many other natural resources. The automobile wears out and has to be replaced, so it properly comes in the category of things “et” up. This truth, that the greatest profits lie in products that can be given general distribution, with a consequent large sale, which is one I have maintained in my book, “Making Money Make Money,” in my magazine, “Investing for Profit,” and in all my teachings on the science of investing, finds a splendid exemplification in the automobile industry’s success as a phenomenally profitable form of investment, and the circumstances of this success are but cumulative evidence of the soundness of my doctrine.