AMERICA “MAKING GOOD.”

Hero let me say that Mr. Ford, a man of peace by instinct and training, and better known to the world for his famous Peace Ship and his automobiles – Tin Lizzies, as we call them here – is typical, not only of his 35,000 workmen, by whom ho is beloved, but of his countrymen generally. The war to him, and to them, is a most distasteful business, but gradually as the war developed, and Germany’s sinister ambition, illustrated by atrocity unimaginable, became revealed, the conviction grew in the United States that the only way to end the war is to become stronger than Germany. And a trip, such as I made recently, to some American centres of war activity, of which Hog Island is the chief sample in shipbuilding, and Ford’s works at Detroit the best illustration of general war activity in many lines, will convince anyone of its actual and potential strength, defying competition, now that the production in quantity for which the American machine for war against the German machine is specially constructed, has actually commenced. The concentration of labour, the organisation of factories, and the speed I have seen in some places, defies one’s efforts to give an adequate description to European readers, and the amazing output of war material today is partly the result, I believe, of knowledge of the widespread disappointment arising from the unfulfilled promises at the time when America was new to the war-game and its problems, and a most genuine desire to “make good” at the earliest moment possible. From “Tin Lizzies” to warships Mr. Ford turned his mechanical genius as easily as a duck takes to water. It was only in February last that Mr. Secretary Daniels, suggested that he might make Eagle boats for the navy, deliveries to begin this summer, and the entire fleet to be ready within twelve months. Mr. Ford had never built any ships – his maritime experience was largely confined to his Peace Ship – but he built 4,000 automobiles daily, and has absolutely no sense of limitations to the ability of his organisation to do anything he wants it to do. “I’ll do it,” Mr. Ford replied to Mr. Daniels, and he is doing it with such will and efficiency that the entire nation marvels. The first thing was to construct a complete new factory, buildings, machinery, and all, from the ground up: inventing ways to fabricate and assemble the parts of the new boats much in the same way as he fabricates and assembles his motor-cars by an endless chain, designing and constructing special tools to do the job on a scale making it possible to turn out a ship a day after the plant has got into operation. Most manufacturers would have wanted a year to get ready; many looked at the plans, shook their heads, and walked sadly away. Mr. Ford took a trifle less than four months to construct the new works, and to-day, when the whole idea of the Eagle boats is only six months old, he is building them as regularly and as quickly as any other machine he undertakes.