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INTRODUCTION--WHAT IS THE IDEA?

I. THE BEGINNING

II. WHAT I LEARNED ABOUT BUSINESS

III. STARTING THE REAL BUSINESS

IV. THE SECRET OF MANUFACTURING AND SERVING

V. GETTING INTO PRODUCTION

VI. MACHINES AND MEN

VII. THE TERROR OF THE MACHINE.

VIII. WAGES

IX. WHY NOT ALWAYS HAVE GOOD BUSINESS?

X. HOW CHEAPLY CAN THINGS BE MADE?

XI. MONEY AND GOODS

XII. MONEY--MASTER OR SERVANT?

XIII. WHY BE POOR?

XIV. THE TRACTOR AND POWER FARMING

XV. WHY CHARITY?

XVI. THE RAILROADS

XVII. THINGS IN GENERAL

XVIII. DEMOCRACY AND INDUSTRY

XIX. WHAT WE MAY EXPECT.

 

INDEX

 

 

INTRODUCTION

 

WHAT IS THE IDEA?

 

 

We have only started on our development of our country--we have not as

yet, with all our talk of wonderful progress, done more than scratch the

surface. The progress has been wonderful enough--but when we compare

what we have done with what there is to do, then our past

accomplishments are as nothing. When we consider that more power is used

merely in ploughing the soil than is used in all the industrial

establishments of the country put together, an inkling comes of how much

opportunity there is ahead. And now, with so many countries of the world

in ferment and with so much unrest every where, is an excellent time to

suggest something of the things that may be done in the light of what

has been done.

 

When one speaks of increasing power, machinery, and industry there comes

up a picture of a cold, metallic sort of world in which great factories

will drive away the trees, the flowers, the birds, and the green fields.

And that then we shall have a world composed of metal machines and human

machines. With all of that I do not agree. I think that unless we know

more about machines and their use, unless we better understand the

mechanical portion of life, we cannot have the time to enjoy the trees,

and the birds, and the flowers, and the green fields.

 

I think that we have already done too much toward banishing the pleasant

things from life by thinking that there is some opposition between

living and providing the means of living. We waste so much time and

energy that we have little left over in which to enjoy ourselves.

 

Power and machinery, money and goods, are useful only as they set us

free to live. They are but means to an end. For instance, I do not

consider the machines which bear my name simply as machines. If that was

all there was to it I would do something else. I take them as concrete

evidence of the working out of a theory of business, which I hope is

something more than a theory of business--a theory that looks toward

making this world a better place in which to live. The fact that the

commercial success of the Ford Motor Company has been most unusual is

important only because it serves to demonstrate, in a way which no one

can fail to understand, that the theory to date is right. Considered

solely in this light I can criticize the prevailing system of industry

and the organization of money and society from the standpoint of one who

has not been beaten by them. As things are now organized, I could, were

I thinking only selfishly, ask for no change. If I merely want money the

present system is all right; it gives money in plenty to me. But I am

thinking of service. The present system does not permit of the best

service because it encourages every kind of waste--it keeps many men

from getting the full return from service. And it is going nowhere. It

is all a matter of better planning and adjustment.

 

I have no quarrel with the general attitude of scoffing at new ideas. It

is better to be skeptical of all new ideas and to insist upon being

shown rather than to rush around in a continuous brainstorm after every

new idea. Skepticism, if by that we mean cautiousness, is the balance

wheel of civilization. Most of the present acute troubles of the world

arise out of taking on new ideas without first carefully investigating

to discover if they are good ideas. An idea is not necessarily good

because it is old, or necessarily bad because it is new, but if an old

idea works, then the weight of the evidence is all in its favor. Ideas

are of themselves extraordinarily valuable, but an idea is just an idea.

Almost any one can think up an idea. The thing that counts is developing

it into a practical product.

 

I am now most interested in fully demonstrating that the ideas we have

put into practice are capable of the largest application--that they have

nothing peculiarly to do with motor cars or tractors but form something

in the nature of a universal code. I am quite certain that it is the

natural code and I want to demonstrate it so thoroughly that it will be

accepted, not as a new idea, but as a natural code.

 

The natural thing to do is to work--to recognize that prosperity and

happiness can be obtained only through honest effort. Human ills flow

largely from attempting to escape from this natural course. I have no

suggestion which goes beyond accepting in its fullest this principle of

nature. I take it for granted that we must work. All that we have done

comes as the result of a certain insistence that since we must work it

is better to work intelligently and forehandedly; that the better we do

our work the better off we shall be. All of which I conceive to be

merely elemental common sense.

 

I am not a reformer. I think there is entirely too much attempt at

reforming in the world and that we pay too much attention to reformers.

We have two kinds of reformers. Both are nuisances. The man who calls

himself a reformer wants to smash things. He is the sort of man who

would tear up a whole shirt because the collar button did not fit the

buttonhole. It would never occur to him to enlarge the buttonhole. This

sort of reformer never under any circumstances knows what he is doing.

Experience and reform do not go together. A reformer cannot keep his

zeal at white heat in the presence of a fact. He must discard all facts.

 

Since 1914 a great many persons have received brand-new intellectual

outfits. Many are beginning to think for the first time. They opened

their eyes and realized that they were in the world. Then, with a thrill

of independence, they realized that they could look at the world

critically. They did so and found it faulty. The intoxication of

assuming the masterful position of a critic of the social system--which

it is every man's right to assume--is unbalancing at first. The very

young critic is very much unbalanced. He is strongly in favor of wiping

out the old order and starting a new one. They actually managed to start

a new world in Russia. It is there that the work of the world makers can

best be studied. We learn from Russia that it is the minority and not

the majority who determine destructive action. We learn also that while

men may decree social laws in conflict with natural laws, Nature vetoes

those laws more ruthlessly than did the Czars. Nature has vetoed the

whole Soviet Republic. For it sought to deny nature. It denied above all

else the right to the fruits of labour. Some people say, "Russia will

have to go to work," but that does not describe the case. The fact is

that poor Russia is at work, but her work counts for nothing. It is not

free work. In the United States a workman works eight hours a day; in

Russia, he works twelve to fourteen. In the United States, if a workman

wishes to lay off a day or a week, and is able to afford it, there is

nothing to prevent him. In Russia, under Sovietism, the workman goes to

work whether he wants to or not. The freedom of the citizen has

disappeared in the discipline of a prison-like monotony in which all are

treated alike. That is slavery. Freedom is the right to work a decent

length of time and to get a decent living for doing so; to be able to

arrange the little personal details of one's own life. It is the

aggregate of these and many other items of freedom which makes up the

great idealistic Freedom. The minor forms of Freedom lubricate the

everyday life of all of us.

 

Russia could not get along without intelligence and experience. As soon

as she began to run her factories by committees, they went to rack and

ruin; there was more debate than production. As soon as they threw out

the skilled man, thousands of tons of precious materials were spoiled.

The fanatics talked the people into starvation. The Soviets are now

offering the engineers, the administrators, the foremen and

superintendents, whom at first they drove out, large sums of money if

only they will come back. Bolshevism is now crying for the brains and

experience which it yesterday treated so ruthlessly. All that "reform"

did to Russia was to block production.

 

There is in this country a sinister element that desires to creep in

between the men who work with their hands and the men who think and plan

for the men who work with their hands. The same influence that drove the

brains, experience, and ability out of Russia is busily engaged in

raising prejudice here. We must not suffer the stranger, the destroyer,

the hater of happy humanity, to divide our people. In unity is American

strength--and freedom. On the other hand, we have a different kind of

reformer who never calls himself one. He is singularly like the radical

reformer. The radical has had no experience and does not want it. The

other class of reformer has had plenty of experience but it does him no

good. I refer to the reactionary--who will be surprised to find himself

put in exactly the same class as the Bolshevist. He wants to go back to

some previous condition, not because it was the best condition, but

because he thinks he knows about that condition.

 

The one crowd wants to smash up the whole world in order to make a

better one. The other holds the world as so good that it might well be

let stand as it is--and decay. The second notion arises as does the

first--out of not using the eyes to see with. It is perfectly possible

to smash this world, but it is not possible to build a new one. It is

possible to prevent the world from going forward, but it is not possible

then to prevent it from going back--from decaying. It is foolish to

expect that, if everything be overturned, everyone will thereby get

three meals a day. Or, should everything be petrified, that thereby six

per cent, interest may be paid. The trouble is that reformers and

reactionaries alike get away from the realities--from the primary

functions.

 

One of the counsels of caution is to be very certain that we do not

mistake a reactionary turn for a return of common sense. We have passed

through a period of fireworks of every description, and the making of a

great many idealistic maps of progress. We did not get anywhere. It was

a convention, not a march. Lovely things were said, but when we got home

we found the furnace out. Reactionaries have frequently taken advantage

of the recoil from such a period, and they have promised "the good old

times"--which usually means the bad old abuses--and because they are

perfectly void of vision they are sometimes regarded as "practical men."

Their return to power is often hailed as the return of common sense.

 

The primary functions are agriculture, manufacture, and transportation.

Community life is impossible without them. They hold the world together.

Raising things, making things, and earning things are as primitive as

human need and yet as modern as anything can be. They are of the essence

of physical life. When they cease, community life ceases. Things do get

out of shape in this present world under the present system, but we may

hope for a betterment if the foundations stand sure. The great delusion

is that one may change the foundation--usurp the part of destiny in the

social process. The foundations of society are the men and means to

_grow_ things, to _make_ things, and to _carry_ things. As long as

agriculture, manufacture, and transportation survive, the world can

survive any economic or social change. As we serve our jobs we serve the

world.

 

There is plenty of work to do. Business is merely work. Speculation in

things already produced--that is not business. It is just more or less

respectable graft. But it cannot be legislated out of existence. Laws

can do very little. Law never does anything constructive. It can never

be more than a policeman, and so it is a waste of time to look to our

state capitals or to Washington to do that which law was not designed to

do. As long as we look to legislation to cure poverty or to abolish

special privilege we are going to see poverty spread and special

privilege grow. We have had enough of looking to Washington and we have

had enough of legislators--not so much, however, in this as in other

countries--promising laws to do that which laws cannot do.

 

When you get a whole country--as did ours--thinking that Washington is a

sort of heaven and behind its clouds dwell omniscience and omnipotence,

you are educating that country into a dependent state of mind which

augurs ill for the future. Our help does not come from Washington, but

from ourselves; our help may, however, go to Washington as a sort of

central distribution point where all our efforts are coordinated for the

general good. We may help the Government; the Government cannot help us.

The slogan of "less government in business and more business in

government" is a very good one, not mainly on account of business or

government, but on account of the people. Business is not the reason why

the United States was founded. The Declaration of Independence is not a

business charter, nor is the Constitution of the United States a

commercial schedule. The United States--its land, people, government,

and business--are but methods by which the life of the people is made

worth while. The Government is a servant and never should be anything

but a servant. The moment the people become adjuncts to government, then

the law of retribution begins to work, for such a relation is unnatural,

immoral, and inhuman. We cannot live without business and we cannot live

without government. Business and government are necessary as servants,

like water and grain; as masters they overturn the natural order.

 

The welfare of the country is squarely up to us as individuals. That is

where it should be and that is where it is safest. Governments can

promise something for nothing but they cannot deliver. They can juggle

the currencies as they did in Europe (and as bankers the world over do,

as long as they can get the benefit of the juggling) with a patter of

solemn nonsense. But it is work and work alone that can continue to

deliver the goods--and that, down in his heart, is what every man knows.

 

There is little chance of an intelligent people, such as ours, ruining

the fundamental processes of economic life. Most men know they cannot

get something for nothing. Most men feel--even if they do not know--that

money is not wealth. The ordinary theories which promise everything to

everybody, and demand nothing from anybody, are promptly denied by the

instincts of the ordinary man, even when he does not find reasons

against them. He _knows_ they are wrong. That is enough. The present

order, always clumsy, often stupid, and in many ways imperfect, has this

advantage over any other--it works.

 

Doubtless our order will merge by degrees into another, and the new one

will also work--but not so much by reason of what it is as by reason of

what men will bring into it. The reason why Bolshevism did not work, and

cannot work, is not economic. It does not matter whether industry is

privately managed or socially controlled; it does not matter whether you

call the workers' share "wages" or "dividends"; it does not matter

whether you regimentalize the people as to food, clothing, and shelter,

or whether you allow them to eat, dress, and live as they like. Those

are mere matters of detail. The incapacity of the Bolshevist leaders is

indicated by the fuss they made over such details. Bolshevism failed

because it was both unnatural and immoral. Our system stands. Is it

wrong? Of course it is wrong, at a thousand points! Is it clumsy? Of

course it is clumsy. By all right and reason it ought to break down. But

it does not--because it is instinct with certain economic and moral

fundamentals.

 

The economic fundamental is labour. Labour is the human element which

makes the fruitful seasons of the earth useful to men. It is men's

labour that makes the harvest what it is. That is the economic

fundamental: every one of us is working with material which we did not

and could not create, but which was presented to us by Nature.

 

The moral fundamental is man's right in his labour. This is variously

stated. It is sometimes called "the right of property." It is sometimes

masked in the command, "Thou shalt not steal." It is the other man's

right in his property that makes stealing a crime. When a man has earned

his bread, he has a right to that bread. If another steals it, he does

more than steal bread; he invades a sacred human right. If we cannot

produce we cannot have--but some say if we produce it is only for the

capitalists. Capitalists who become such because they provide better

means of production are of the foundation of society. They have really

nothing of their own. They merely manage property for the benefit of

others. Capitalists who become such through trading in money are a

temporarily necessary evil. They may not be evil at all if their money

goes to production. If their money goes to complicating distribution--to

raising barriers between the producer and the consumer--then they are

evil capitalists and they will pass away when money is better adjusted

to work; and money will become better adjusted to work when it is fully

realized that through work and work alone may health, wealth, and

happiness inevitably be secured.

 

There is no reason why a man who is willing to work should not be able

to work and to receive the full value of his work. There is equally no

reason why a man who can but will not work should not receive the full

value of his services to the community. He should most certainly be

permitted to take away from the community an equivalent of what he

contributes to it. If he contributes nothing he should take away

nothing. He should have the freedom of starvation. We are not getting

anywhere when we insist that every man ought to have more than he

deserves to have--just because some do get more than they deserve to

have.

 

There can be no greater absurdity and no greater disservice to humanity

in general than to insist that all men are equal. Most certainly all men

are not equal, and any democratic conception which strives to make men

equal is only an effort to block progress. Men cannot be of equal

service. The men of larger ability are less numerous than the men of

smaller ability; it is possible for a mass of the smaller men to pull

the larger ones down--but in so doing they pull themselves down. It is

the larger men who give the leadership to the community and enable the

smaller men to live with less effort.

 

The conception of democracy which names a leveling-down of ability makes

for waste. No two things in nature are alike. We build our cars

absolutely interchangeable. All parts are as nearly alike as chemical

analysis, the finest machinery, and the finest workmanship can make

them. No fitting of any kind is required, and it would certainly seem

that two Fords standing side by side, looking exactly alike and made so

exactly alike that any part could be taken out of one and put into the

other, would be alike. But they are not. They will have different road

habits. We have men who have driven hundreds, and in some cases

thousands of Fords and they say that no two ever act precisely the

same--that, if they should drive a new car for an hour or even less and

then the car were mixed with a bunch of other new ones, also each driven

for a single hour and under the same conditions, that although they

could not recognize the car they had been driving merely by looking at

it, they could do so by driving it.

 

I have been speaking in general terms. Let us be more concrete. A man

ought to be able to live on a scale commensurate with the service that

he renders. This is rather a good time to talk about this point, for we

have recently been through a period when the rendering of service was

the last thing that most people thought of. We were getting to a place

where no one cared about costs or service. Orders came without effort.

Whereas once it was the customer who favored the merchant by dealing

with him, conditions changed until it was the merchant who favored the

customer by selling to him. That is bad for business. Monopoly is bad

for business. Profiteering is bad for business. The lack of necessity to

hustle is bad for business. Business is never as healthy as when, like a

chicken, it must do a certain amount of scratching for what it gets.

Things were coming too easily. There was a let-down of the principle

that an honest relation ought to obtain between values and prices. The

public no longer had to be "catered to." There was even a "public be

damned" attitude in many places. It was intensely bad for business. Some

men called that abnormal condition "prosperity." It was not prosperity--

it was just a needless money chase. Money chasing is not business.

 

It is very easy, unless one keeps a plan thoroughly in mind, to get

burdened with money and then, in an effort to make more money, to forget

all about selling to the people what they want. Business on a

money-making basis is most insecure. It is a touch-and-go affair, moving

irregularly and rarely over a term of years amounting to much. It is the

function of business to produce for consumption and not for money or

speculation. Producing for consumption implies that the quality of the

article produced will be high and that the price will be low--that the

article be one which serves the people and not merely the producer. If

the money feature is twisted out of its proper perspective, then the

production will be twisted to serve the producer.

 

The producer depends for his prosperity upon serving the people. He may

get by for a while serving himself, but if he does, it will be purely

accidental, and when the people wake up to the fact that they are not

being served, the end of that producer is in sight. During the boom

period the larger effort of production was to serve itself and hence,

the moment the people woke up, many producers went to smash. They said

that they had entered into a "period of depression." Really they had

not. They were simply trying to pit nonsense against sense which is

something that cannot successfully be done. Being greedy for money is

the surest way not to get it, but when one serves for the sake of

service--for the satisfaction of doing that which one believes to be

right--then money abundantly takes care of itself.

 

Money comes naturally as the result of service. And it is absolutely

necessary to have money. But we do not want to forget that the end of

money is not ease but the opportunity to perform more service. In my

mind nothing is more abhorrent than a life of ease. None of us has any

right to ease. There is no place in civilization for the idler. Any

scheme looking to abolishing money is only making affairs more complex,

for we must have a measure. That our present system of money is a

satisfactory basis for exchange is a matter of grave doubt. That is a

question which I shall talk of in a subsequent chapter. The gist of my

objection to the present monetary system is that it tends to become a

thing of itself and to block instead of facilitate production.

 

My effort is in the direction of simplicity. People in general have so

little and it costs so much to buy even the barest necessities (let

alone that share of the luxuries to which I think everyone is entitled)

because nearly everything that we make is much more complex than it

needs to be. Our clothing, our food, our household furnishings--all

could be much simpler than they now are and at the same time be better

looking. Things in past ages were made in certain ways and makers since

then have just followed.

 

I do not mean that we should adopt freak styles. There is no necessity

for that Clothing need not be a bag with a hole cut in it. That might be

easy to make but it would be inconvenient to wear. A blanket does not

require much tailoring, but none of us could get much work done if we

went around Indian-fashion in blankets. Real simplicity means that which

gives the very best service and is the most convenient in use. The

trouble with drastic reforms is they always insist that a man be made

over in order to use certain designed articles. I think that dress

reform for women--which seems to mean ugly clothes--must always

originate with plain women who want to make everyone else look plain.

That is not the right process. Start with an article that suits and then

study to find some way of eliminating the entirely useless parts. This

applies to everything--a shoe, a dress, a house, a piece of machinery, a

railroad, a steamship, an airplane. As we cut out useless parts and

simplify necessary ones we also cut down the cost of making. This is

simple logic, but oddly enough the ordinary process starts with a

cheapening of the manufacturing instead of with a simplifying of the

article. The start ought to be with the article. First we ought to find

whether it is as well made as it should be--does it give the best

possible service? Then--are the materials the best or merely the most

expensive? Then--can its complexity and weight be cut down? And so on.

 

There is no more sense in having extra weight in an article than there

is in the cockade on a coachman's hat. In fact, there is not as much.

For the cockade may help the coachman to identify his hat while the

extra weight means only a waste of strength. I cannot imagine where the

delusion that weight means strength came from. It is all well enough in

a pile-driver, but why move a heavy weight if we are not going to hit

anything with it? In transportation why put extra weight in a machine?

Why not add it to the load that the machine is designed to carry? Fat

men cannot run as fast as thin men but we build most of our vehicles as