Naturally, we couldn't build a noisy manufacturing plant in a high-class residential area, so Dad and I built the factory near Uncle Bill's foundry at the docks south of Wall Street. Although land prices in this area were a bit high, the logistics were good, so there was no location better than this. It was about 4km from home, taking some time by carriage, but now that we could go by car, about 10 minutes was enough.
Of course, since I couldn't commute from home to the factory alone as a child, I commuted with Jimmy. Jimmy initially came to our house as a simple lathe operator, but his skills improved while making cars with me, and now he was managing the overall manufacturing process practically like a factory manager.
The lessons I received from my tutor, Professor Thomas Hanson, stopped as he quit, saying he had nothing more to teach me as I established the company and built the factory.
Since I was still a 7-year-old kid, well within the range of a minor legally, Dad took on the role of establishing the company and being its representative. While Dad served as the representative, he made sure all ownership was in my name to prevent any ownership issues in the future.
Although Dad was the company representative, it was Jimmy and I who practically ran the company. The fact that I was a genius boy was somewhat rumored in this neighborhood, so giving orders to employees wasn't that difficult.
Even for such a company, the workload increased significantly, so we had to recruit more employees.
Jimmy asked,
"How many more employees do you plan to hire?"
"Right now, including me and you, there are ten of us, so we need to hire 20 more."
Jimmy is 12 years older than me, but like an American, he likes conversing comfortably, so I speak comfortably too.
"How much salary are you going to give per person?"
"We need to give $40 to gather decent people."
Jimmy received $30 at first, but that was because he had a handicap, and in reality, we had to give $40 to hire proper people. In Jimmy's case, since a new company was created and his role expanded, his salary also increased, and he now receives $80.
"Is there really a need for that? Unless we're hiring skilled workers, we're hiring simple assemblers. If we hire kids looking for their first job, $25 is enough. Anyway, all casting will be outsourced to Uncle Bill, and we have enough lathe technicians for now."
Jimmy's words aren't entirely wrong. Although Jimmy had a handicap, he was a technician with lathe skills, and what we need now are simple assemblers.
But my thoughts were a little different.
"I want to build our own foundry at this opportunity."
"Do you think the workload will increase enough that we need to build a separate foundry? I think you're being too greedy."
"It's not that, I want to install an electric furnace."
"Electric furnace, what is that?"
"It means using electricity instead of coal to melt molten iron."
"Such a thing existed?"
"It exists, but the ones available now have insufficient performance, so we have to make it from scratch."
"Seeing you insist, it seems there is something, but does iron melted with coal differ from iron melted with electricity?"
"We can make various types of iron. Right now we only use carbon steel, but if we make an electric furnace, we can make and use various types of iron, making the car harder and longer-lasting."
"I'm ignorant so I don't know well, so discuss that with the boss. And to make that electric furnace or whatever, it will take several months, right? But the cars we have to make right now are the Ford Model A and the cars ordered by the Morgan family. So for now, just recruit simple assemblers as I said; that's what we need most right now. The rest can be taught at the factory."
Certainly, Jimmy was right. What was needed right now was recruiting simple assemblers, but I was rushing too much. Since a proper electric furnace hadn't been invented yet, I was aiming for that invention too, so it seemed I was rushing.
"Okay, then as Jimmy said, let's recruit 20 simple assemblers. The salary is $25."
Even if Manhattan was the richest county in the US, the truly rich lived gathered in wealthy villages, and there were many poor people in this port area, and they willingly gathered even for a monthly salary of $25. Jimmy picked kids who were reasonably young and strong among the gathered applicants.
The manufacturing method of the Ford Model A was more similar to making carriages than making automobiles. Even by the 1910s, cars would adopt a frame structure, attaching the engine, suspension, tires, etc., onto a frame made of steel first and then overlaying the car body, but that's not the method now.
We carve wood, mount the engine and steering system, attach leaf springs used in carriages below, attach tires to that, attach the drive system to the rear wheels, and the steering system to the front wheels. Then, on top of the wooden box, we place a cushioned seat similar to a drawing-room sofa used in carriages.
After that, it's the same as a carriage. The 2-seater runabout model just needs one connected seat placed, and the 4-seater touring model just needs one more rear sofa placed behind. There are no doors, so no need to struggle to attach doors, and since there are no doors, naturally there are no windows. There isn't even a windshield in front of the driver's seat right now, so what doors and windows?
Carriage sofas and carriage leaf springs can be supplied as they are from companies that used to supply carriage factories. Manhattan might be wealthy only in certain areas, but it is a wealthy region, so there are many people riding carriages, sales of carriages are high, and there are many factories supplying goods consumed there.
Like this, seats or springs end with receiving supply from existing carriage factories, but tires are a bit different. In fact, we could have brought carriage wheels as they were for tires too.
I heard that Karl Benz's Motorwagen, the world's first internal combustion engine car, used bicycle tires, and the Duryea brothers' car, the first internal combustion engine car manufactured in the US, also used carriage wheels as they were. There was no problem using carriage wheels as they were for a car at the end of the 19th century, not even the 20th century.
However, I couldn't do that. Carriage wheels and automobile tires are not identical. Carriage wheels are much larger than automobile tires. Carriages are pulled by horses and horses change direction, so it's fine, but cars steered by people must be much smaller than carriage wheels.
I know well that the cars I make now will be treated as classic cars 50 or 100 years later. At that time, people will ride these cars I made now and have meetings in classic car clubs or, if not that, hold classic car races.
So I wanted to make something that would run even 100 or 200 years later if managed well. So regardless of other things, I wanted to attach tires suitable for a car for the tires at least, and actually, for tires, we are attaching ones born from completely new designs.
As it is an era where car bodies are made of wood, the tires of our cars are also made of wood. Since there was no place to make and supply these parts separately, we had to make them all ourselves at our factory.
So the part with the most workload in the factory is the wood carving process. Equipped with over 10 wood lathes, when we carve wood according to necessary dimensions to make parts there, fit them into pre-made jigs to assemble, and fit the engine and drive unit made of separately made metal parts, one car is completed.
The part with the most workload is carving wood with lathes, but the part that takes the most time is cutting iron with lathes. Although many parts are supplied from Uncle Bill's foundry, they must undergo grinding work again to become proper parts, so lathe work cutting iron is absolutely necessary and is the most time-consuming work in our factory.
Our factory has a total of 5 steel cutting lathes, which receive power from one 4-cylinder engine via belts instead of connecting separate engines. This makes the lathes move a bit smoother than receiving power from one 1-cylinder engine.
The reason I was confident I could make a 4-cylinder car for the John Pierpont Morgan father and son within 3 months is also because I had already made a 4-cylinder engine like this.
This part is made by Jimmy directing the lathe operators himself, but since it's before high-speed steel was created, it takes more time to cool the lathe's working blade than to cut the iron with the lathe.
Watching that tedious process, I once again felt the necessity of an electric furnace keenly.
Three months later, at the end of February 1897, I created a 4-cylinder car called the Ford Continental as promised to the Morgan father and son. This time, it didn't end with simply placing carriage seats on a wooden frame.
If I received $10,000, I should make an item worth that much, so I specially hired a welder to make a car body frame and invited a famous coachbuilder to make the car body.
A coachbuilder refers to a technician who creates the exterior of high-end carriages. These people mainly create carriages for royalty or nobility, but since there are no royalty or nobility in the US, they were mainly creating carriages for tycoons in the US.
People commonly call this era the Gilded Age. This is commonly translated as "Gold-Plated Age," but while "gold-plated" in Korean has a strong nuance of only mimicking gold on the surface, the English meaning is painting gold everywhere, so translating it as "Gold-Painted Age" suits the nuance a bit better.
Anyway, the representative runner of industrial aristocrats of this Gilded Age is John Pierpont Morgan, so a car suitable for him needed to have the most luxurious appearance, and we paid quite a large sum to invite a renowned coachbuilder to make the car.
American taste, then and now, and even in the future 21st century, is European-oriented. So we also made the car as European-type as possible. That's why the name is Continental.
With a 4-cylinder 20-horsepower engine and a top speed of 30 miles per hour, the driver's seat and the rear seat are completely separated, made to transport rear-seat passengers as comfortably as possible.
So it's like taking the horses out of a top-class carriage and attaching a car engine, and the exterior is just as magnificent. While the Ford Model A with a 1-cylinder engine shines in gold with brass decorations, the newly made 4-cylinder car has silver-shining decorations attached everywhere.
And these silver-shining parts aren't painted with chrome or anything like that but covered with real platinum.
Fortunately, Mr. Morgan ordered a 4-cylinder car from me not because he intended to dip his toes into or intervene in the automobile industry, but because he knew the fact that the speed was vastly faster than a carriage and wanted a fast car suitable for himself.
I sighed in relief when I learned that fact. Having almost had to fight a terrifying opponent called the Financial Emperor, it was natural, if one could say so, that a sigh of relief burst out.
When I delivered the platinum-decorated 4-cylinder cars to Mr. Morgan and Uncle Jack Morgan, both were truly happy.
Uncle Jack Morgan compared the two cars and asked,
"Why is there a difference in color?"
"Well, Grandfather painted it black suitable for his age, but since Uncle is still young, we painted it a color suitable for that age. The coachbuilder heard Uncle's age and said black looks too old, so he changed it to this brighter color."
"Then, what are the eagle and the lady attached in front here? Is this lady a goddess?"
"Well, since Grandfather is the Emperor of a financial empire, we attached an eagle decoration suitable for an emperor, and for Uncle, we attached a lady statue with the motif of Nike, the Goddess of Victory. Instead of Nike's wings, we expressed a dress fluttering in the wind, and I decided to call this the Spirit of Ecstasy. Isn't it really cool?"
Sorry Rolls-Royce. I'll use the Spirit of Ecstasy first.
Uncle Jack seemed to really like my explanation. Although he didn't say anything specifically, a happy expression was revealed all over his face.
"But following Model A, why is it Continental and not Model B?"
"I plan to attach that name to our Ford Motor Company's top-class cars in the future. It's a top-class car completely deviated from regular models, so I can't attach an unsuitable name like Model B. Ford Continental, isn't it a very European name?"