SOURCE: "The Wheel of Fortune: Henry Ford," in The Quick and The Dead, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1931, pp. 115-48.

In the following essay, Bradford presents a generally positive overview of Ford's life and career.

I

On the whole it may be said that the United States of America has always been a country of work. During the last three hundred years, with the developing means of transportation, repeated shocks of energy have come to this country, a flood of wanderers, representing the pushing, eager, active, restless elements of a score of European peoples, has pressed over, determined to make its way and its fortune, sometimes by illegitimate means, but more often by earnest, indefatigable, incessant toil. No doubt of late years the habit of work has somewhat faded, not owing to indolence, but to increasing luxury and distraction. Yet it may be safely said that it is work that...