ars amounts to nearly
Vanderbilt's total fortune at his death; but the piling up of riches
has been by no means his exclusive purpose. He has recognized that
his workmen are his partners and has liberally shared with them his
increasing profits. His money is not the product of speculation; Ford
is a stranger to Wall Street and has built his business independently
of the great banking interest. He has enjoyed no monopoly, as have the
Rockefellers; there are more than three hundred makers of automobiles
in the United States alone. He has spurned all solicitations to join
combinations. Far from asking tariff favors he has entered European
markets and undersold English, French, and German makers on their own
ground. Instead of taking advantage of a great public demand to increase
his prices, Ford has continuously lowered them. Though his idealism may
have led him into an occasional personal absurdity, as a business man
he may be taken as the full flower of American manufacturing genius.
Possibly America, as a consequence of universal war, is advancing to a
higher state of industrial organization; but an economic system is not
entirely evil that produces such an industry as that which has made the
automobile the servant of millions of Americans.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

The materials are abundant for the history of American industry in the
last fifty years. They exist largely in the form of official documents.
Any one ambitious of studying this subject in great detail should
consult, first of all, the catalogs issued by that very valuable
institution, the Government Printing Office. The Bureau of Corporations
has published elaborate reports on such industries as petroleum
(Standard Oil Company), beef, tobacco, steel, and harvesting machinery,
which are indispensable in studying these great basic enterprises. The
American habit of legislative investigation and trust-fighting in the
courts, whatever its public value may have been, has at least had the
result of piling up mountains of material for the historian of American
industry. For one single corporation, the Standard Oil Company, a
great library of such literature exists. The nearly twenty volumes of
testimony, exhibits, and briefs assembled in the course of the Federal
suit which led to its dissolution is the ultimate source of material on
America's greatest trust. As most of our other great corporations--the
Steel Trust, the Harvester Company, the Tobacco Company,