"I care nothing for money as such. It is merely the driving shaft of our industry. I want to build more factories so that more and more people can get a chance to work for a living wage and work out their own salvation. That's what I am going to do with my money. I am going to put it back into the industry in order to give more people a chance for independence and hope."

Mr. Ford is a professed Christian. He likes to hear a sermon. He says: "I like to hear anybody preach. It always helps me. I need it."

He believes in the Bible. He has one in every room in his home. He reads it. He once took a pledge with President Wilson to read the Bible every day and I believe that he still does it.

He believes that the Bible ought to be put back into the public schools and that it ought to be read there every day. He says: "All of the sense of justice and right that I have, I got out of the Bible, as it was being read in the schools when I was a boy."

He believes in the church and all that the church. stands for. He believes in God and Christ, and says that the Sermon on the Mount is the covenant of his business.

He said to me one day: "Take the Sermon on the Mount and you can set it down in industry any place

and it will work. You don't have to lead up to it. It will work at once."'

Mr. Ford is a member of the Episcopal Church although he does not attend regularly. He is a member of the Masonic Lodge and his name is enrolled and his dues kept paid in the Palestine Lodge, in Detroit, which is the largest Masonic Lodge in the world.

One day when I had taken Mr. Edwin Markham to see Mr. Ford and we had spent the day with the great industrial leader Mr. Ford sent for Markham's poems and the poet read all afternoon as Mr. Ford listened with a great deal of genuine interest. He knew Mr. Markham's poems and he knew where to find them. Those who think that Mr. Ford is illiterate or that he does not read are simply mistaken; that is all.

He reads constantly and he has, in addition to his library, his own favorite little reading table whereon he keeps books that he is in the process of reading; and not a day goes by that he does not read something.

Emerson is his favorite writer and you cannot talk with him very long that you do not hear talk of Emer son; and that you do not hear the ring of that valiant soul re-echoed in the spirit of Mr. Ford.

"Trust thyself! Every heart vibrates to that iron string," is one of his favorite Emerson quotations. Like Lincoln, he is a man of few books; and those good ones.

After we had spent the day visiting with Mr. Ford and were driving away from the Dearborn office I said to Mr. Markham: "Well, Mr. Markham, now that you have studied Mr. Ford at close range what do you think of him?"

"He is the nearest like Lincoln of any man that we now have in American public life."

Mr. Ford loves his home and his son Edsel, and his grandchildren more than anything on earth. He seldom spends an evening away from his home. Although the richest man on earth and the richest man who ever was on earth he has never had any of the scandals of the average rich to spot his white record of personal decency and purity. Possibly once a week he is away from his Dearborn home in the evening. He seldom attends the theatre and his chief recreation is that of having his neighbors in for an evening's play.

He enjoys the radio and has built himself one of the best in America. He also has a great sending station, and only recently he himself was heard in Eng land when he talked over his own radio.

Mr. Ford walks regularly for exercise and seems to be immune to the ordinary ills of mankind. In bitterly cold weather, when I was bundled up to the hilt with overshoes, heavy coat, and hat Mr. Ford walked from his office to the little Round Table Lunch

Room across from the Dearborn office without hat, overcoat or overshoes. He steps lightly and has a stride like a panther when he comes into a room. He

glides rather than walks. He has a twinkle in his eyes most of the time but when he is thinking about some problem or when he is worried his face sets in an inscrutable mask; like the face of a gambler. Then his face is unlighted. But generally it is animated and lighted. He is good to look at when his eyes twinkle.

He loves wild things and has built all over his farm bird houses. He watches the birds come back each Spring and knows birds as well as his old friend John Burroughs used to know them. One Spring he told me from time to time what birds had come back from the south. He has hundreds of deer on his own place.

He walks a lot and keeps in the best of health, as he claims, because he does not overload his stomach. One of his rich friends was recently chiding him about being so slim. That rich friend said: "What's the matter, Mr. Ford, are you too stingy to eat enough to keep you fat?"

Mr. Ford said: "I have a big hospital in Detroit. I never go there except to see the doctors carve up fat, over-fed fellows like you.'

Mr. Ford says of the Peace Ship: "At least I tried

to do something to bring about Peace and some of you clergymen didn't even try.”

"I look forward to the future with hope and optimism and confidence. I am an optimist at heart. I believe 'that to-day is better than yesterday,' as some writer has said, 'and that to-morrow will be better than to-day.'"

That about sums up Mr. Ford's spirit. He is an optimist but a sane and a practical one.

Politically Mr. Ford has always been a power in Michigan. The famous Newbury race was made at the solicitation of President Wilson, or Mr. Ford would never have consented to run. That case has gone down in history and Mr. Newbury's repudiation has vindicated Mr. Ford in every way.

The three presidents who have influenced American tife in recent years Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and President Calvin Coolidge-have been glad of Mr. Ford's friendship and advice. Roosevelt sought Ford out when he came to Detroit. At that time he said to a few friends in the Detroit Athletic Club: "A formidable candidate for the Presidency in 1924 will be your fellow-townsman Henry Ford." Mr. Ford refused to see ex-President Roosevelt at that time because he did not want to go to the Detroit Athletic Club. He said that he would be glad to see him at his own home or at the plant. It is too bad