752 THE PRINCIPLES OF SELF-CREATION
If you have followed Henry Ford's record, even slightly, you will
undoubtedly have observed that concentrated effort has been one of
the outstanding features of his career. Nearly thirty years ago he
adopted a policy of standardization as to the general type of auto-
mobile he would build, and he consistently maintained that policy
until the change in public demand forced him, in 1927, to change it.
COMMENTARY
Henry Ford's consistency extended also to the color of the Model T, fifteen million
of which, in nineteen years of production from 1908 to 1927, were made only in
black and with little change in the design.
A few years after its introduction, Napoleon Hill met with Ford to talk about
the principles of success. According to Hill, in Michael Ritt's A Lifetime of Riches,
Henry Ford was "cold, indifferent, unenthusiastic, and spoke only when forced to. "
Early on, few people other than Carnegie could foresee the success Ford would
achieve, which Hill, as he says here, attributed in large part to Ford's concentrated
effort. At Hill's first meeting with him in 1911, the only thing Ford was interested
in talking about was his Model T. After Ford took him for a "spin around the
factory, " Hill bought one for $680.When I met the former chief engineer of the Ford plant a few
years ago, he told me of an incident that happened during the early
stages of Mr. Ford's automobile experience which very clearly points
to concentrated effort as being one of his prominent fundamentals of
economic philosophy.
On this occasion the engineers of the Ford plant had gathered in
the engineering office to discuss a proposed change in the design of
the rear axle construction of the Ford automobile. Mr. Ford stood
around and listened to the discussion until each man had had his say,
then he walked over to the table, tapped the drawing of the proposed
axle with his finger, and said, "Now listen! The axle we are using does