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international self-respect--and international peace. Trying to take the

trade of the world can promote war. It cannot promote prosperity. Some

day even the international bankers will learn this.

 

I have never been able to discover any honourable reasons for the

beginning of the World War. It seems to have grown out of a very

complicated situation created largely by those who thought they could

profit by war. I believed, on the information that was given to me in

1916, that some of the nations were anxious for peace and would welcome

a demonstration for peace. It was in the hope that this was true that I

financed the expedition to Stockholm in what has since been called the

"Peace Ship." I do not regret the attempt. The mere fact that it failed

is not, to me, conclusive proof that it was not worth trying. We learn

more from our failures than from our successes. What I learned on that

trip was worth the time and the money expended. I do not now know

whether the information as conveyed to me was true or false. I do not

care. But I think everyone will agree that if it had been possible to

end the war in 1916 the world would be better off than it is to-day.

 

For the victors wasted themselves in winning, and the vanquished in

resisting. Nobody got an advantage, honourable or dishonourable, out of

that war. I had hoped, finally, when the United States entered the war,

that it might be a war to end wars, but now I know that wars do not end

wars any more than an extraordinarily large conflagration does away with

the fire hazard. When our country entered the war, it became the duty of

every citizen to do his utmost toward seeing through to the end that

which we had undertaken. I believe that it is the duty of the man who

opposes war to oppose going to war up until the time of its actual

declaration. My opposition to war is not based upon pacifist or

non-resistant principles. It may be that the present state of

civilization is such that certain international questions cannot be

discussed; it may be that they have to be fought out. But the fighting

never settles the question. It only gets the participants around to a

frame of mind where they will agree to discuss what they were fighting

about.

 

Once we were in the war, every facility of the Ford industries was put

at the disposal of the Government. We had, up to the time of the

declaration of war, absolutely refused to take war orders from the

foreign belligerents. It is entirely out of keeping with the principles

of our business to disturb the routine of our production unless in an

emergency. It is at variance with our human principles to aid either

side in a war in which our country was not involved. These principles

had no application, once the United States entered the war. From April,

1917, until November, 1918, our factory worked practically exclusively

for the Government. Of course we made cars and parts and special

delivery trucks and ambulances as a part of our general production, but

we also made many other articles that were more or less new to us. We

made 2 1/2-ton and 6-ton trucks. We made Liberty motors in great

quantities, aero cylinders, 1.55 Mm. and 4.7 Mm. caissons. We made

listening devices, steel helmets (both at Highland Park and

Philadelphia), and Eagle Boats, and we did a large amount of

experimental work on armour plate, compensators, and body armour. For

the Eagle Boats we put up a special plant on the River Rouge site. These

boats were designed to combat the submarines. They were 204 feet long,

made of steel, and one of the conditions precedent to their building was

that their construction should not interfere with any other line of war

production and also that they be delivered quickly. The design was

worked out by the Navy Department. On December 22, 1917, I offered to

build the boats for the Navy. The discussion terminated on January 15,

1918, when the Navy Department awarded the contract to the Ford Company.

On July 11th, the first completed boat was launched. We made both the

hulls and the engines, and not a forging or a rolled beam entered into

the construction of other than the engine. We stamped the hulls entirely

out of sheet steel. They were built indoors. In four months we ran up a

building at the River Rouge a third of a mile long, 350 feet wide, and

100 feet high, covering more than thirteen acres. These boats were not

built by marine engineers. They were built simply by applying our

production principles to a new product.

 

With the Armistice, we at once dropped the war and went back to peace.

 

* * * * *

 

An able man is a man who can do things, and his ability to do things is

dependent on what he has in him. What he has in him depends on what he

started with and what he has done to increase and discipline it.

 

An educated man is not one whose memory is trained to carry a few dates

in history--he is one who can accomplish things. A man who cannot think

is not an educated man however many college degrees he may have

acquired. Thinking is the hardest work any one can do--which is

probably the reason why we have so few thinkers. There are two extremes

to be avoided: one is the attitude of contempt toward education, the

other is the tragic snobbery of assuming that marching through an

educational system is a sure cure for ignorance and mediocrity. You

cannot learn in any school what the world is going to do next year, but

you can learn some of the things which the world has tried to do in

former years, and where it failed and where it succeeded. If education

consisted in warning the young student away from some of the false

theories on which men have tried to build, so that he may be saved the

loss of the time in finding out by bitter experience, its good would be

unquestioned. An education which consists of signposts indicating the

failure and the fallacies of the past doubtless would be very useful. It

is not education just to possess the theories of a lot of professors.

Speculation is very interesting, and sometimes profitable, but it is not

education. To be learned in science to-day is merely to be aware of a

hundred theories that have not been proved. And not to know what those

theories are is to be "uneducated," "ignorant," and so forth. If

knowledge of guesses is learning, then one may become learned by the

simple expedient of making his own guesses. And by the same token he can

dub the rest of the world "ignorant" because it does not know what his

guesses are. But the best that education can do for a man is to put him

in possession of his powers, give him control of the tools with which

destiny has endowed him, and teach him how to think. The college renders

its best service as an intellectual gymnasium, in which mental muscle is

developed and the student strengthened to do what he can. To say,

however, that mental gymnastics can be had only in college is not true,

as every educator knows. A man's real education begins after he has left

school. True education is gained through the discipline of life.

 

There are many kinds of knowledge, and it depends on what crowd you

happen to be in, or how the fashions of the day happen to run, which

kind of knowledge, is most respected at the moment. There are fashions

in knowledge, just as there are in everything else. When some of us were

lads, knowledge used to be limited to the Bible. There were certain men

in the neighbourhood who knew the Book thoroughly, and they were looked

up to and respected. Biblical knowledge was highly valued then. But

nowadays it is doubtful whether deep acquaintance with the Bible would

be sufficient to win a man a name for learning.

 

Knowledge, to my mind, is something that in the past somebody knew and

left in a form which enables all who will to obtain it. If a man is born

with normal human faculties, if he is equipped with enough ability to

use the tools which we call "letters" in reading or writing, there is no

knowledge within the possession of the race that he cannot have--if he

wants it! The only reason why every man does not know everything that

the human mind has ever learned is that no one has ever yet found it

worth while to know that much. Men satisfy their minds more by finding

out things for themselves than by heaping together the things which

somebody else has found out. You can go out and gather knowledge all

your life, and with all your gathering you will not catch up even with

your own times. You may fill your head with all the "facts" of all the

ages, and your head may be just an overloaded fact-box when you get

through. The point is this: Great piles of knowledge in the head are not

the same as mental activity. A man may be very learned and very useless.

And then again, a man may be unlearned and very useful.

 

The object of education is not to fill a man's mind with facts; it is to

teach him how to use his mind in thinking. And it often happens that a

man can think better if he is not hampered by the knowledge of the past.

 

It is a very human tendency to think that what mankind does not yet know

no one can learn. And yet it must be perfectly clear to everyone that

the past learning of mankind cannot be allowed to hinder our future

learning. Mankind has not gone so very far when you measure its progress

against the knowledge that is yet to be gained--the secrets that are yet

to be learned.

 

One good way to hinder progress is to fill a man's head with all the

learning of the past; it makes him feel that because his head is full,

there is nothing more to learn. Merely gathering knowledge may become

the most useless work a man can do. What can you do to help and heal the

world? That is the educational test. If a man can hold up his own end,

he counts for one. If he can help ten or a hundred or a thousand other

men hold up their ends, he counts for more. He may be quite rusty on

many things that inhabit the realm of print, but he is a learned man

just the same. When a man is master of his own sphere, whatever it may

be, he has won his degree--he has entered the realm of wisdom.

 

* * * * *

 

The work which we describe as Studies in the Jewish Question, and which

is variously described by antagonists as "the Jewish campaign," "the

attack on the Jews," "the anti-Semitic pogrom," and so forth, needs no

explanation to those who have followed it. Its motives and purposes must

be judged by the work itself. It is offered as a contribution to a

question which deeply affects the country, a question which is racial at

its source, and which concerns influences and ideals rather than

persons. Our statements must be judged by candid readers who are

intelligent enough to lay our words alongside life as they are able to

observe it. If our word and their observation agree, the case is made.

It is perfectly silly to begin to damn us before it has been shown that

our statements are baseless or reckless. The first item to be considered

is the truth of what we have set forth. And that is precisely the item

which our critics choose to evade.

 

Readers of our articles will see at once that we are not actuated by any

kind of prejudice, except it may be a prejudice in favor of the

principles which have made our civilization. There had been observed in

this country certain streams of influence which were causing a marked

deterioration in our literature, amusements, and social conduct;

business was departing from its old-time substantial soundness; a

general letting down of standards was felt everywhere. It was not the

robust coarseness of the white man, the rude indelicacy, say, of

Shakespeare's characters, but a nasty Orientalism which has insidiously

affected every channel of expression--and to such an extent that it was

time to challenge it. The fact that these influences are all traceable

to one racial source is a fact to be reckoned with, not by us only, but

by the intelligent people of the race in question. It is entirely

creditable to them that steps have been taken by them to remove their

protection from the more flagrant violators of American hospitality, but

there is still room to discard outworn ideas of racial superiority

maintained by economic or intellectually subversive warfare upon

Christian society.

 

Our work does not pretend to say the last word on the Jew in America. It

says only the word which describes his obvious present impress on the

country. When that impress is changed, the report of it can be changed.

For the present, then, the question is wholly in the Jews' hands. If

they are as wise as they claim to be, they will labour to make Jews

American, instead of labouring to make America Jewish. The genius of the

United States of America is Christian in the broadest sense, and its

destiny is to remain Christian. This carries no sectarian meaning with

it, but relates to a basic principle which differs from other principles

in that it provides for liberty with morality, and pledges society to a

code of relations based on fundamental Christian conceptions of human

rights and duties.

 

As for prejudice or hatred against persons, that is neither American nor

Christian. Our opposition is only to ideas, false ideas, which are

sapping the moral stamina of the people. These ideas proceed from easily

identified sources, they are promulgated by easily discoverable methods;

and they are controlled by mere exposure. We have simply used the method

of exposure. When people learn to identify the source and nature of the

influence swirling around them, it is sufficient. Let the American

people once understand that it is not natural degeneracy, but calculated

subversion that afflicts us, and they are safe. The explanation is the

cure.

 

This work was taken up without personal motives. When it reached a stage

where we believed the American people could grasp the key, we let it

rest for the time. Our enemies say that we began it for revenge and that

we laid it down in fear. Time will show that our critics are merely

dealing in evasion because they dare not tackle the main question. Time

will also show that we are better friends to the Jews' best interests

than are those who praise them to their faces and criticize them behind

their backs.

 

 

CHAPTER XVIII

 

DEMOCRACY AND INDUSTRY

 

 

Perhaps no word is more overworked nowadays than the word "democracy,"

and those who shout loudest about it, I think, as a rule, want it least.

I am always suspicious of men who speak glibly of democracy. I wonder if

they want to set up some kind of a despotism or if they want to have

somebody do for them what they ought to do for themselves. I am for the

kind of democracy that gives to each an equal chance according to his

ability. I think if we give more attention to serving our fellows we

shall have less concern with the empty forms of government and more

concern with the things to be done. Thinking of service, we shall not

bother about good feeling in industry or life; we shall not bother about

masses and classes, or closed and open shops, and such matters as have

nothing at all to do with the real business of living. We can get down

to facts. We stand in need of facts.

 

It is a shock when the mind awakens to the fact that not all of humanity

is human--that whole groups of people do not regard others with humane

feelings. Great efforts have been made to have this appear as the

attitude of a class, but it is really the attitude of all "classes," in

so far as they are swayed by the false notion of "classes." Before, when

it was the constant effort of propaganda to make the people believe that

it was only the "rich" who were without humane feelings, the opinion

became general that among the "poor" the humane virtues flourished.

 

But the "rich" and the "poor" are both very small minorities, and you

cannot classify society under such heads. There are not enough "rich"

and there are not enough "poor" to serve the purpose of such

classification. Rich men have become poor without changing their

natures, and poor men have become rich, and the problem has not been

affected by it.

 

Between the rich and the poor is the great mass of the people who are

neither rich nor poor. A society made up exclusively of millionaires

would not be different from our present society; some of the

millionaires would have to raise wheat and bake bread and make machinery

and run trains--else they would all starve to death. Someone must do the

work. Really we have no fixed classes. We have men who will work and men

who will not. Most of the "classes" that one reads about are purely

fictional. Take certain capitalist papers. You will be amazed by some of

the statements about the labouring class. We who have been and still are

a part of the labouring class know that the statements are untrue. Take

certain of the labour papers. You are equally amazed by some of the

statements they make about "capitalists." And yet on both sides there is

a grain of truth. The man who is a capitalist and nothing else, who

gambles with the fruits of other men's labours, deserves all that is

said against him. He is in precisely the same class as the cheap gambler

who cheats workingmen out of their wages. The statements we read about

the labouring class in the capitalistic press are seldom written by

managers of great industries, but by a class of writers who are writing

what they think will please their employers. They write what they

imagine will please. Examine the labour press and you will find another

class of writers who similarly seek to tickle the prejudices which they

conceive the labouring man to have. Both kinds of writers are mere

propagandists. And propaganda that does not spread facts is

self-destructive. And it should be. You cannot preach patriotism to men

for the purpose of getting them to stand still while you rob them--and

get away with that kind of preaching very long. You cannot preach the

duty of working hard and producing plentifully, and make that a screen

for an additional profit to yourself. And neither can the worker conceal

the lack of a day's work by a phrase.

 

Undoubtedly the employing class possesses facts which the employed ought

to have in order to construct sound opinions and pass fair judgments.

Undoubtedly the employed possess facts which are equally important to

the employer. It is extremely doubtful, however, if either side has all

the facts. And this is where propaganda, even if it were possible for it

to be entirely successful, is defective. It is not desirable that one

set of ideas be "put over" on a class holding another set of ideas. What

we really need is to get all the ideas together and construct from them.

 

Take, for instance, this whole matter of union labour and the right to

strike.

 

The only strong group of union men in the country is the group that

draws salaries from the unions. Some of them are very rich. Some of them

are interested in influencing the affairs of our large institutions of

finance. Others are so extreme in their so-called socialism that they

border on Bolshevism and anarchism--their union salaries liberating them

from the necessity of work so that they can devote their energies to

subversive propaganda. All of them enjoy a certain prestige and power

which, in the natural course of competition, they could not otherwise

have won.

 

If the official personnel of the labour unions were as strong, as

honest, as decent, and as plainly wise as the bulk of the men who make

up the membership, the whole movement would have taken on a different

complexion these last few years. But this official personnel, in the

main--there are notable exceptions--has not devoted itself to an

alliance with the naturally strong qualities of the workingman; it has

rather devoted itself to playing upon his weaknesses, principally upon

the weaknesses of that newly arrived portion of the population which

does not yet know what Americanism is, and which never will know if left

to the tutelage of their local union leaders.

 

The workingmen, except those few who have been inoculated with the

fallacious doctrine of "the class war" and who have accepted the

philosophy that progress consists in fomenting discord in industry

("When you get your $12 a day, don't stop at that. Agitate for $14. When

you get your eight hours a day, don't be a fool and grow contented;

agitate for six hours. Start something! Always start something!"), have

the plain sense which enables them to recognize that with principles

accepted and observed, conditions change. The union leaders have never

seen that. They wish conditions to remain as they are, conditions of

injustice, provocation, strikes, bad feeling, and crippled national

life. Else where would be the need for union officers? Every strike is a

new argument for them; they point to it and say, "You see! You still

need us."

 

The only true labour leader is the one who leads labour to work and to

wages, and not the leader who leads labour to strikes, sabotage, and

starvation. The union of labour which is coming to the fore in this

country is the union of all whose interests are interdependent--whose

interests are altogether dependent on the usefulness and efficiency of

the service they render.

 

There is a change coming. When the union of "union leaders" disappears,

with it will go the union of blind bosses--bosses who never did a decent

thing for their employees until they were compelled. If the blind boss

was a disease, the selfish union leader was the antidote. When the union

leader became the disease, the blind boss became the antidote. Both are

misfits, both are out of place in well-organized society. And they are

both disappearing together.

 

It is the blind boss whose voice is heard to-day saying, "Now is the

time to smash labour, we've got them on the run." That voice is going

down to silence with the voice that preaches "class war." The

producers--from the men at the drawing board to the men on the moulding

floor--have gotten together in a real union, and they will handle their

own affairs henceforth.

 

The exploitation of dissatisfaction is an established business to-day.

Its object is not to settle anything, nor to get anything done, but to

keep dissatisfaction in existence. And the instruments used to do this

are a whole set of false theories and promises which can never be

fulfilled as long as the earth remains what it is.

 

I am not opposed to labour organization. I am not opposed to any sort of

organization that makes for progress. It is organizing to limit

production--whether by employers or by workers--that matters.

 

The workingman himself must be on guard against some very dangerous

notions--dangerous to himself and to the welfare of the country. It is

sometimes said that the less a worker does, the more jobs he creates for

other men. This fallacy assumes that idleness is creative. Idleness

never created a job. It creates only burdens. The industrious man never

runs his fellow worker out of a job; indeed, it is the industrious man

who is the partner of the industrious manager--who creates more and more

business and therefore more and more jobs. It is a great pity that the

idea should ever have gone abroad among sensible men that by

"soldiering" on the job they help someone else. A moment's thought will

show the weakness of such an idea. The healthy business, the business

that is always making more and more opportunities for men to earn an

honourable and ample living, is the business in which every man does a

day's work of which he is proud. And the country that stands most

securely is the country in which men work honestly and do not play

tricks with the means of production. We cannot play fast and loose with

economic laws, because if we do they handle us in very hard ways.

 

The fact that a piece of work is now being done by nine men which used

to be done by ten men does not mean that the tenth man is unemployed. He

is merely not employed on that work, and the public is not carrying the

burden of his support by paying more than it ought on that work--for

after all, it is the public that pays!

 

An industrial concern which is wide enough awake to reorganize for

efficiency, and honest enough with the public to charge it necessary

costs and no more, is usually such an enterprising concern that it has

plenty of jobs at which to employ the tenth man. It is bound to grow,

and growth means jobs. A well-managed concern is always seeking to lower

the labour cost to the public; and it is certain to employ more men than

the concern which loafs along and makes the public pay the cost of its

mismanagement.

 

The tenth man was an unnecessary cost. The ultimate consumer was paying

him. But the fact that he was unnecessary on that particular job does

not mean that he is unnecessary in the work of the world, or even in the

work of his particular shop.

 

The public pays for all mismanagement. More than half the trouble with

the world to-day is the "soldiering" and dilution and cheapness and

inefficiency for which the people are paying their good money. Wherever

two men are being paid for what one can do, the people are paying double

what they ought. And it is a fact that only a little while ago in the

United States, man for man, we were not producing what we did for

several years previous to the war.

 

A day's work means more than merely being "on duty" at the shop for the

required number of hours. It means giving an equivalent in service for

the wage drawn. And when that equivalent is tampered with either

way--when the man gives more than he receives, or receives more than he

gives--it is not long before serious dislocation will be manifest.

Extend that condition throughout the country, and you have a complete

upset of business. All that industrial difficulty means is the

destruction of basic equivalents in the shop. Management must share the

blame with labour. Management has been lazy, too. Management has found

it easier to hire an additional five hundred men than to so improve its

methods that one hundred men of the old force could be released to other

work. The public was paying, and business was booming, and management