Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 204, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 August 1915 — Profit-Sharing $500,000 A Day With Ford Owners. [ARTICLE]

Profit-Sharing $500,000 A Day With Ford Owners.

These are busy days—particularly busy days—at the Ford Motor Company’s administration building, Detroit Checks—each for —are going out to more than 300,000 Ford owners who by purchasing their cars between August, 1914, and August, 1915, participate in Ford profits to the aggregate of more than $15,000,000. This disbursement is in itself rather>a stupendous task. The checks are being mailed at the rate of about 10,000 a day, a per diem distribution of $500,000. A large and distinct organization has been arranged to complete this task. When the profit sharing plan for Ford owners was announced Aug. 1, 1914, a department to handle the details was installed in the Ford Administration Building. For several weeks now a large corps of stenographers has been filling in the 300,000 names ip the checks. These names are taken from the original bjlls of sale. Open-face envelopes are used, the name of the payee serving also as the Wailing address. The. amount of the check, SSO, is printed on its face. The work of signing' more than 300,000 checks itself offered a problem. Each check carries the signature of one of three assistant cashiers and the most inveterate scribbler might easily develop writer’s cramp and grow exceedingly tired of his own name without some device to lighten his labor. There, are five checks to a sheet and by a single operation of the pen these five checks are signed simultaneously. As far as possible the checks are being mailed to the owners in the same chronological order as the cars were purchased. Bill of sale number one, by the way, was signed by Genevieve Morrison, 914 North Florence St., El Paso, Texas. It covers a Ford touring car, motor No. 544,547, bought August 1, 1914. The profit-sharing owners in this huge list range from large corporations, who have bought many Fords for the equipment of their salesmen or for delivery purposes, to thrifty Americans who have invested their savings in their Fords as a pleasuregiving, health-bringing gift to themselves and their families. And it is a complete democracy. Everybody gets the same sized check—sso on each car purchased. The large number of women on the list of beneficiaries, too, is significant. Evidently women buy and drive the Ford, not only because of its safetyelement, but because of its ease of operation and control—its sheer simplicity. The effect of this huge sum—more than $15,000,000 —going back into nearly every city, town, hamlet and rural district of the United States will be tremendous. Everybody will feel the effect and stimulus of it, because all sorts of business, all kinds of professions and trade, all wal.es of life are represented in that list of more than 300,000 Ford profit-shaTers. It goes broadcast across the country. At the rate at which the checks are now being mailed—about 10,000 a day—the distribution of the total, over 300,000, will be completed in about 30 days.