"My Lord, Ford, there's millions in this thing. Millions!" they said. "You ought to get out and organize a company--a big company. Incorporate and sell stock and make a clean-up right away. And then build a machine like a phaeton, with big leather cushions and carriage lamps and a lot of enamel finish--why, there are hundreds of men that could afford to pay two or three thousand dollars for one of 'em. You could make a hundred per cent profit--two hundred per cent." Ford listened to all of them and said little. He was busy improving the machine; it did not suit him yet; he felt he could make it much more powerful and efficient with a little more work. Meantime he revolved in his mind plans for putting it on the market. Those plans included always one fundamental point. He was resolved to make the automobile cheap. "I've got a machine here that saves time and work and money," he said. "The more people who have it the more it will save. There's no object in building it so only a few rich men can own one. It isn't the rich men who need it; it's the common folks like me." News of the amazing machine to be seen in the old shed behind the little house on Edison street spread rapidly. About this time news dispatches carried word of two other automobiles built in this country. A man named Duryea of Springfield, Ill., and another named Haynes, in Kokomo, Ind., had been working on the same idea. A reporter found Ford at work on his engine, interviewed him and wrote a story for a Detroit paper. One or two wealthy men hunted Ford up and talked about furnishing the capital to manufacture the machine. They saw, as some of Ford's friends had done, an opportunity to float a big company, sell stock, and build a high-priced car. Ford considered these offers for a time. Building an automobile had been only half of his idea; building it cheap had been the other half, and he would not abandon it. He figured it out in dollars and cents; two hundred per cent on a small quantity of cars, or a smaller profit on a larger quantity. He showed that the most sound basis for the company was the manufacture of a large number of machines, at a profit sufficient merely to keep enlarging the plant and building more machines. The idea did not appeal to the men who were eager for large immediate profits for themselves. In the end the men with money dropped the matter. Ford was obstinate, but he was a small man with no capital, merely a crank who had hit by accident on a good idea; he would come around all right in time, they concluded. Ford continued to work at the Edison plant and spend his evenings trying to improve his machine. He had taken Mrs. Ford to Greenfield, where she would stay with her mother until the baby was born. After that one hysterical outburst on the night the automobile was finished, she had returned to her cheerful acceptance of his interest in the car. Indeed, she herself had become enthusiastic about its possibilities.