SOURCE: "Fixation and the Twenty-Five Track Mind," in The First Henry Ford: A Study in Personality and Business Leadership, The MIT Press, 1970, pp. 34-74.

In the following essay, Jardim examines the early part of Ford's career.

"Mr. Ford," W. J. Cameron liked to say, "had a twenty-five track mind and there were trains going out and coming in on all tracks at all times." Here Cameron was attempting to account for the diverse interests and the singular opinions that at one time or another Ford saw fit to uphold. How else, runs the implication, does one make sense of Ford's excursions into international politics, racial bigotry, newspaper publishing, fertilizer manufacture, old-fashioned dancing, antique collecting, and the professions of medicine and education?

One of the less friendly of Ford's biographers described Cameron as Ford's "verbal alter ego," and this was in essence a job description. After the closing in...