The Expanded and Annotated My Life and Work

FIND A USE FOR EVERYTHING
Ford and Crowther (1926, p. 175) elaborate on the following material with 
a description of the virtues of coking coal to extract the valuable coal 
chemicals, and only then burning the coke as fuel: “When one thinks of 
the precious elements which have been consumed for decades on the fur-
nace grates, all going up in smoke and being lost to human use, it becomes 
clear that the new method has not come too soon.” This reference (p. 106) 
adds that Ford paid $5 a ton for coal, from which he got $12 worth of coke 
and coal chemicals, such as those described below.
The following material also exemplifies how Ford could well have met 
the key requirements, at least in terms of results, of the ISO 14001 environ-
mental management system standard in an era in which there were few if 
any environmental protection laws. The combustion of sulfur-containing 

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How Cheaply Can Things Be Made?  •  137
coal produces sulfur dioxide, which is now a recognized pollutant that 
a coal user must pay to remove from its waste stream. Coking, however, 
allowed recovery of the sulfur as ammonium sulfate, which was then sale-
able as a fertilizer. Ford’s intelligent approach, therefore, turned a pol-
lutant into a useful product for which customers would pay. Ford News 
(1922, December 8, p. 4) elaborates as follows:
* * *
Arrangements have been made to sell Ford ammonium sulphate to any-
one in need of fertilizer, within reasonable distance of the Rouge plant. It 
may be obtained through the regular Ford Dealer, at reasonable prices.
Ammonium sulphate is a by-product of the coke ovens at the Ford—River 
Rouge Plant. It is a white crystalline substance, known the world over as the 
best available source of nitrogen.
* * *
Note also Ford’s practice of pouring molten iron from the blast fur-
nace directly into a mold, instead of making pig iron that would later 
require remelting.
* * *
Among the by-products of the coke ovens is a gas. It is piped both to the Rouge 
and Highland Park plants where it is used for heat-treat purposes, for the 
enamelling ovens, for the car ovens, and the like. We formerly had to buy 
this gas. The ammonium sulphate is used for fertilizer. The benzol is a motor 
fuel. The small sizes of coke, not suitable for the blast furnaces, are sold to 
the employees—delivered free into their homes at much less than the ordi-
nary market price. The large-sized coke goes to the blast furnaces. There is 
no manual handling. We run the melted iron directly from the blast furnaces 
into great ladles. These ladles travel into the shops and the iron is poured 
directly into the moulds without another heating. We thus not only get a uni-
form quality of iron according to our own specifications and directly under 
our control, but we save a melting of pig iron and in fact cut out a whole pro-
cess in manufacturing as well as making available all our own scrap.
What all this will amount to in point of savings we do not know—that is, 
we do not know how great will be the saving, because the plant has not been 
running long enough to give more than an indication of what is ahead, and 
we save in so many directions—in transportation, in the generation of our 
power, in the generation of gas, in the expense in casting, and then over and 
above that is the revenue from the by-products and from the smaller sizes of 
coke. The investment to accomplish these objects to date amounts to some-
thing over forty million dollars.

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138  •  The Expanded and Annotated My Life and Work
How far we shall thus reach back to sources depends entirely on circum-
stances. Nobody anywhere can really do more than guess about the future 
costs of production. It is wiser to recognize that the future holds more than 
the past—that every day holds within it an improvement on the methods of 
the day before.