Ogden Standard-Examiner | 1922-07-13 | Page 4 | Borrowing Money

BORROWING MONEY. Rich men play different Byatems. John D, Rockefeller htm been quoted as attributing hla wealth to his ability a l borrowing money, Henry Ford doesn't believe In borrowing. The Ford Motor company originally was capitalliod at ,100,000 Only about 118,000 of thlB was uubscribed in cash. That waa the only money that ever wont into Fowl's tmelneaa Irom the outside. Additions to the operating, capita hare been oreated by the Ford i buslnw4 taken from profit, Three years ao, Edaed Ford beugbt out the minority stockholders. They had A'2 per cent of the Ford stock, for which Edscl paid "about 75 millions." mil-lions." according to Henry Ford, writ Ing in McClnre'fl Magazine. In other words, an original invest- ment of $11 .620 sold for $75,000,000. Ford climbed to success without borrowing much. Henry Ford, when he decided to make autos instead of watches, had wonderful vision and organizing genius, gen-ius, also an almost superhuman genius at mechanical production portunlty than John R Rockefeller. Both men created industries Rockefeller had, as his greatest handicap, this problem In the early days of the oil industry, the price of crud oil was on worse than a gam bllng basis It sold for $20 p barrel and 20 cents a barrel both in the same year. The price of refined oil products fluctuated correspondingly. Rockefeller's big Job was to "sta hilize" the oil Industry regulate pro-duct pro-duct ion and prices. He succeeded, through the organization he built up. But In those early days, there were not enougn proms to supply we gi gantic capital needed by Standard Oil. j Rockefeller borrowed heavily. He had to. And the ones from whom he borrowed made no mistake. You find this out when you buy Standard 6tocks. How to make money U is confusing, confus-ing, with Ford adlsing against going Into debt, Rockefeller adv)6ing borrowing bor-rowing Back of this Is an important hunch" for Mr Average Man. The hunch Is this: There is no cut-and-drled rule for accumulating wealth. A method or system that will work In one Industry or situation will fall financially In another. No two problems are exactly the same Nor have any two problems the same solution. Most of us are Imitators We select se-lect a successful man as our Ideal and try to duplicate his system. Fall-ure Fall-ure Is Inevitable when we back the wrong system Don't hitch your wagon to the wrong star. r,n m