The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1921-07-23

peace times it would be a dead weight the war over, we knew that as the country settled back to peace condl, tions some stern readjustments Woulo be necessary: It must come ana we were on the lookout for it's beginning
 sSThe first indications came early III 1920-here and there a business or manufacturing failure
 Soon failures became for general That meant something to us. It rals- ed a question-when will the country curtail or cease buying staple com m odities? When will they cease buy ing Ford cars2
 Eve did not have long to wait. By June sales were falling off at a great rate. Everything began to slow down yet in the face of that, do you thlnk the slIppliers of raw materials Wouiu cut their price or that labor would give more for unparalleled wages? Not for a second. Material men demand ed more and labor seemed to give less and less Cost of manufacturing went soaring.
 ''It was up to us to do something. | So, in September, we cut the price of the car. On the face of things the cut was not Justified. We still had large supplies Of stock bought at high prices. The Gut brought the price be- | low the cost of manufacture. All
 over the country we were condemned- | Other manufa cturers said we were crazy. But Enc whole country was on an inflated distorted basis, and we 1 felt that if we cut the price of the car we could demand that nate1a! supp1iers cut their prices to us- That orgy, other prices would slump oH | and the readjustment would come with a minimum discomfort to every l body.
 desired result Sales took a bound 1 A few other manufacturers cut But soon sales fell off again, and, as whole, the artificial conditions contln- ued- We soon saw that more dras- tic treatment was needed
 1 I've made up our minds that our | next step toward lowering prices must | be more powerful and decisive. Dur l the country over had been closing l down. and as Winter set in cessation l of industry became general But we kept right on, full tilt Sales did not kept on making 9O,000 to 10000 cars | a month because, when the halt came ! we wished to have as much as possi- ble of our stock manufactured Into cars We wanted the next bump, when it came, to be one that no one l selling up supplies could fail to un- | derstand.
 | tfNow. to see what happened, you 1 must understand our | buys in tremendous quantities Right now we are buying S5o,ooG, 900 worth of materials a month There are hundreds of concerns from Wnfcn we | take the major part of their outpuL I Back of them are other firms, who sell the greater part of their output to ! the supp1ters from whom we buy 50 when we pull the switches Tn the Ford plant and stop the machlnery- the same thing happens in thousands ] of smaller plants the country over. l we saw that if the lowering pro cess was to hastened at all we must do something dastic. So, late Tn De- | cenber, we closed down, resolved not | to resume production until we could | buy materials at peace-tine prices, | and in the meantime to have thor
 ough housekeeping. We thought 1t
 would require but two weeks; as It | turned out, it required six:
 | The Financial Problem ''Now, all this time a financial in 1919 we had borrowed s7O, 900, 900 on notes with which to buy out all other interests. Of this we had paid ] back $37,000,00U, leaving $SS,0O0, 900 ! still to pay and falling due April 1S- | Then, because of adjustments pend | ing, we still had the final insta1ment of the 1920 Federal income tax to pay, which, with the instalmeHt due Arn 16 made ao ge iGtenea a1e the te pay our men their usual bonus on last years work, wRich would amount to s7,0o0,0oo more. So. all in all, between Jan, 1. and April IS. we had to meet obligations totalfng $5s, 900, 900.
 '"What did we have to meet this7" asked the manufacturer of himself as he sat up and leaned forward. his eyes a-twtnkle-
 S.At the tirne," he went on, e-we had only S2o, 900, ,000 in cash. That, I think, Is where the Wall Street bank
 
 where we could get $40, ,0o0, ,00O more to meet our obligations It was their best bet that we could not. They didn't know our men here or the spirit behind our organization.
 'FWalI Street was all stirred up over the nnisinformation that we had to make a loan,' MT. Ford continued. '"I'he fact was, we didn't need O nic- keL That's where the faith comes in- Spread over the country we had i'm mense quantities of raw materials, parts and finished cars and I had faith. I knew that our organization enough cash to meet our needs
 "I'II show you what we did,' said MT. Ford turning to the desk and pushing across pencil and paper. ''Put down, cash on hand S20, ,0o0,- OO0.'
 ''We wished as usual to pay a bonus to our men on last years work. This would take approximately $7,ooo, 900. Jan. as clerks could make out the checks. That was our only imme- diate outlay-we had almost enough cash to pay 1t three times over.
 Then we turned our attention to Iiuuidation. When we closed down we had on hand approximately 93,o00 finished cars. At Highland Park we had been shipping out cars and parts to dealers and branches as fast as they were finished. This plant was cleared of materials. Every depart ment closed down.
 ''But we have tf1frty-fiye branches scattered over the country at twenty two of which we both manufacture parts and assemble. At these the manufacturing of parts stopped, but the assembling of finished parts went on adding week after week through