The Birmingham age-herald., 1922-01-22

Roger ". Babson was visiting Henry Ford's research laboratories in Detroit the other day.
 What will be the next develop ment in automobiles?p asked MT. Babson.
 Tt may be making the bodies of formaldehyde. glue and cotton" re- piled Ford.
 Ford srinned thinly. laconically. And so the auto wizard again awakes the world. Again, he jerks us up in our seats, makes us gasp, and stuns us with wonder.
 The hour will come" he says, when our children will go to the museum to see the ponderous linn cuisine of today. The hour will come when the steel railway coach will be found in junk heaps and old picture books"
 For Henry Ford is to make autos out of cotton
 "Boshr says MT Has-been, "a rhrase from a poet"
 And so it is. MT. Ford is a poet.
 So was Fulton, so was Bell. so were the Wright brothers. And their phrases were dream phrases: Ships without sails. men that fly, wires that talk. They all come true, Mr. Has, been.
 Calls an Great Mechanic
 This is 8 composite interview with Mir. Ford and MT. Babson Mir. Ford is absent, but MT. Babson speaks for him. When the great statistician Is in Detroit, he makes call on the great mechanic. They swap ideas and critical suggestions.
 fn xyir r.1, says Babson. T like to look down on that mechanical masterpiece, see the great steamers dumping their load of ore, coal. and lime, see the great steam derricks dump the loads again Into the mighty furnaces, see the 20 vast acres of land where the coke furnaces blaze away, see the magical auto grow from the rough ore, part on part, as each man adds his bit un- til 1t is rolled out a shining accom- plishment and the last man adjusts the headlights
 And l like to visit Mir. Ford. He Is something of an autocrat. Men like him are. But he is Americass s greatest mechanic and he has visions, dreams, ideas, He is not a states man, not a philosopher. He is like one of his own locomotives. When it is on the track 1t is supreme N 'COnSlQer ms lQedS. He wants to make a lighter and cheaper machine and he goes to cotton. He plans a mixture that will make cottonoid-a : durable. tough, serviceable material s out of which his vehicles may be made. Fe Fr -Hss of he succeeds, he will be able te stamp out his auto parts the way the cook stamps doughnuts out of dough. His idea, he believes, will revolutions ize the auto industry.
 He Is a pioneer in the manufacture of the light cars. sees day of even lighter cars. And he is sure that the day of the heavy carsis over. Tomor- row it will be an interesting reiiquary of early years.
 'IHe believes that the day of the steel coach is nearly done; that it too, is doomed to take its place among antiquities.
 "He is convinced that steel coaches would have disappeared by now ex- cept for the power the steel manufac- tvf CTS hold over the railroads.
 z do not agree with him on that point We have steel coaches the way we wear neckties."
 "SIaves to Conventfono
 MT. Babson, standing framed in the -dazzled window of his Wellesley office. pulled at the dark blue scarf beneath his beard.
 Somebody once thought that it would be good. to wear neckties--in- stead, say of the much more comfort sble low necked, collarless shirt Forty thousand people today are busily making neckties. And 40,- 100000 slaves to convention-even as you and I--waste an incredible