The Flivver King: A Story of Ford-America

Ford has also been sued by the Dodge brothers, who had made 650 engines for use in the first Ford cars in exchange for Ford stock but have never received any dividends.

Ford does not believe in “paying rent for the use of money [or] letting people get money which they hadn’t earned by useful labour” (94), so he uses the Ford Company’s profits to invest in capital. The Dodge brothers win their suit and Ford is ordered to pay dividends to his stockholders.

In response, Ford spreads a rumor that he intends to start a new company with his son to make cars that will retail for $250. The minority stockholders are alarmed and sell their stock for “a small part of the market value”; still, they make “a thousand times what they had invested in the business” (95).

Abner and his father calculate how much money their family had had in savings back when Ford was inventing his first car, and how much they would have today if they had invested the money in the Ford Company. Everyone else who had known Ford in the early days makes the same calculation, and “the fact that such prizes were being drawn lent a thrill to being alive” (96).