River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1921-09-01

| they were finished. This plant was
| cleared of materials. Every depart
| ment closed down. But we have 35
branches scattered over the country,
| at % 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
January, to our finished cars. That
was why during January, there was
! Ford car famine in Detroit and to fill
local orders we were driving cars here
from Chicago and Columbus, 0.
His First Move.
sour first move was to sell some OF
our cars on hand. In our contracts
with dealers, they agree to take GER
tain quota each year, each according
to his district. We shipped to each
dealer enough cars to take care of ap-
proximately 25 days sales. During
January we sold nearly 10000 cars,
which showed US what we could do
when we tried and, from then on,
sales steadily mounted above produc-
ton. Assembling went on at all the
branches and, on Jan. %, we reopened
the Highland Park plant and began
building un production there, but still
sales kept ahead of production. Be-
tween Jan. and April we turned
| $24, 100000 worth of stock into cash
put that down.
sThen we looked over our foreign
accounts and found our agents at for
eign ports owed US $3,000,000 which
we collected. We had also sold by
products for which we Rad accounts
receivable of $4,000 more, which we
got in-put down those two items.
On top of that, we sold $7,900,000
worth of Liberty Bonds. If you total
those you'll find they come to $50 900
00O-more than enough to meet our
impending obligations. But we did
not stop there.
"The War had led us into many ex-
travagences of administration and ac-
counting. We went through the plant,
offices and shops, and made economies
which I'll detail later, eliminating
everything non productive. Then, we
had acquired the Detroit, Toledo and
Ironton Railroad. We saw possibilit-
les of reducing the vast amount which
we had formerly kept tied up, invested
ir goods in transit. We found ways
to cut the time our goods are in tram
! sit By that one move we released
/ S28 900, 900, took it from funds invest
| ed in stock in transit and put it to 9TH
| er uses. Thus. when April / came
round we had $s7, 300, 900 to meet $685.
GOO,00 in obligations. We paid them
all weeks in advance.
Mr.. Ford leaned back in his chair
and laughed.
''And all the WHILE" he said, "these
| New York bankers were fussing
around here trying to get US to take
a loan"
"But how could you create such i'm
mense sums of ready cash by mere
economies ?" | asked.
Call This Mere"
"Mere economies" Mr.. Ford repeat
ed, with emphasis on the mere"
"There's nothing mere about our
conomies-they're the big thing,
Take that item of $28,O0O,OO0 releas-
ed from investment in goods in tran
sit. We were able to do that by corn
bination of things. By using our rail
road we were able to speed up move
ment of raw materials to the factory,
movement of finished cars from the
factory to the dealers and better
methods in the factory cut the time
needed to manufacture the material
into machines. Then we stopped car
rying immense reserve supplies of !
raw materials. The first economy |
made the second possible. Here's the |
way it worked out.
Before we got control of the d. |
T. & L., it required an average of %
days to haul raw material to the fac
tories, make it into cars and get them
to the dealers. We had TO buy three
weeks in advance of need and, with no
way of knowing future conditions, we
had to keep immense reserves on hand.
This money tied up in these and the
goods moving stood continuously at
about $SS,GO0.000.
Another Angle To 1t.
"But there's another angle to that