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28 - Henry Fords Own Story by Rose Wilder Lane · Henry Fords Own Story

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  Speaker 1: Chapter twenty seven of Henry Ford's Own story. This LibriVox
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  Speaker 1: recording is in the public domain. Recording by Leanne Howlett.
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  Speaker 1: Henry Ford's Own Story by Rose Wilder Lane, Chapter twenty seven,
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  Speaker 1: The importance of a job. That surging mob of men
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  Speaker 1: outside this factory during the week following the announcement of
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  Speaker 1: his profit sharing plan had impressed indelibly on Ford's mind,
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  Speaker 1: the tremendous importance of a job. A working man's job
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  Speaker 1: is his life, he says. No one man should have
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  Speaker 1: the right, ever to send another man home to his
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  Speaker 1: family out of work. Think what it means to that
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  Speaker 1: man sitting there at the supper table, looking at his
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  Speaker 1: wife and children, and not knowing whether or not he
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  Speaker 1: will be able to keep them fed and clothed. A normal,
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  Speaker 1: healthy man wants to work. He has to work to
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  Speaker 1: live right. Nobody should be able to take his work
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  Speaker 1: away from him. In my factory, every man shall keep
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  Speaker 1: his job as long as he wants it. Impractical, the
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  Speaker 1: idea seems fantastic in its impracticality. What keep every man lazy, stupid, impudent,
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  Speaker 1: dishonest as he may be? Every man in a force
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  Speaker 1: of eighteen thousand workmen on the pay roll as long
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  Speaker 1: as he wants to stay. Surely, if there is any
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  Speaker 1: point at which ideals of human brotherhood end and cold
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  Speaker 1: blooded business methods begin, this should be that point. But Ford,
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  Speaker 1: obstinate in his determination to care for the interests of everyone,
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  Speaker 1: declared that this policy should stand as a part of
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  Speaker 1: his new plan. He installed the labor clearing house as
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  Speaker 1: part of his employment department. Now, when a foreman discharges
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  Speaker 1: a man, that man is not sent out of the factory.
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  Speaker 1: He goes with a rich slip from the foreman to
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  Speaker 1: the labor clearing house. There he is questioned what is wrong?
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  Speaker 1: Is he ill? Does he dislike his work? What are
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  Speaker 1: his real interests? In the end, he is transferred to
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  Speaker 1: another department which seems more suited to his taste and abilities.
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  Speaker 1: If he proves unsatisfactory there, he returns again to the
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  Speaker 1: clearinghouse Again, his case is discussed again. He has given
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  Speaker 1: another chance, and still another department. Meantime, the employment manager
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  Speaker 1: has taken active interest in him, in his health, his
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  Speaker 1: home conditions, his friends. He is made to feel that
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  Speaker 1: he has friends in the management who were eager to
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  Speaker 1: help him make the right start to the right kind
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  Speaker 1: of life. Perhaps he is ill. Then he is sent
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  Speaker 1: to the company hospital, given medical care and a leave
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  Speaker 1: of absence until he is well enough to resume work.
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  Speaker 1: Over two hundred cases of tuberculosis in various stages were
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  Speaker 1: discovered among Ford's employees when his hospital was established. These
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  Speaker 1: men presented a peculiar problem. Most of them were still
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  Speaker 1: able to work. All of them must continue working to
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  Speaker 1: support families. Yet, if their cases were neglected, admit not
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  Speaker 1: only their own deaths, but spreading infection in the factory.
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  Speaker 1: The business world has never attempted to solve the problem
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  Speaker 1: of these men waste from the great machine. They are
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  Speaker 1: thrown carelessly out, unable because of that telltale cough to
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  Speaker 1: get another job, left to shift for themselves in a
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  Speaker 1: world which thinks it does not need them. Ford established
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  Speaker 1: a heat treating department especially for them. When the surgeons
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  Speaker 1: discover a case of incipient tuberculosis in the Ford factory,
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  Speaker 1: they transfer the man to this department, where the air filtered, dried,
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  Speaker 1: and heated is scientifically better for their disease than the
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  Speaker 1: mountain climate of Denver. Here the men are given light
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  Speaker 1: jobs which they can handle, and paid their regular salaries
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  Speaker 1: until they are cured and able to return to their
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  Speaker 1: former places in the shops. It's better for everybody when
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  Speaker 1: a man stays at work instead of laying off. For says,
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  Speaker 1: I don't care what's wrong with him, whether he's a
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  Speaker 1: misfit in his department, or stupid or sick. There's always
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  Speaker 1: some way to keep him doing useful work. And as
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  Speaker 1: long as he is doing that, it's better for the man,
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  Speaker 1: and for the company, and for the world. And yet
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  Speaker 1: there are men in business today who install systems to
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  Speaker 1: prevent the waste of a piece of paper or a stamp,
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  Speaker 1: and let the human labor and their plants go to
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  Speaker 1: waste wholesale. Yes, and they sat up and said, I
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  Speaker 1: was a sentimental idiot when I put in my system
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  Speaker 1: of taking care of the men in my place. They
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  Speaker 1: said it would not pay well. Let them look over
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  Speaker 1: the books of the Ford factory and see how it paid,
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  Speaker 1: how it paid all of us. Five months after Ford's
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  Speaker 1: new plans had gone into effect, his welfare workers made
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  Speaker 1: a second survey. Eleven hundred men had moved to better homes.
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  Speaker 1: Bank deposits had increased two hundred five percent, twice as
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  Speaker 1: many men owned their own homes. More than two million
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  Speaker 1: dollars worth of Detroit real estate had passed into the
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  Speaker 1: hands of Ford employees who were paying fort on the
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  Speaker 1: installment plan. Among the eighteen thousand workmen, only one hundred
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  Speaker 1: forty still lived conditions which could be called bad in
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  Speaker 1: the reports, and the output of Ford automobiles had increased
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  Speaker 1: over twenty percent that year. With an eight hour day
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  Speaker 1: in force and ten million dollars divided in extra profits
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  Speaker 1: among the men, the factory produced over one hundred thousand
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  Speaker 1: more cars than it had produced during the preceding year
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  Speaker 1: under the old conditions. Cold Figures had proved to the
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  Speaker 1: business world the practical value of sentimental theories. Ford's policy
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  Speaker 1: had not only done away with the labor problem, it
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  Speaker 1: had also shown the way to solve the employer's problems.
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  Speaker 1: The heart of the struggle between capital and labor is
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  Speaker 1: the idea of employer and employee. He says, there ought
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  Speaker 1: not to be employers and workmen, just workmen. There are
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  Speaker 1: two parts of the same machine. It's absurd to have
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  Speaker 1: a machine in which one part tries to foil another.
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  Speaker 1: My job at the plant is to design the cars
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  Speaker 1: and keep the departments working in harmony. I'm a workman
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  Speaker 1: I'm not trying to slip anything over on the other
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  Speaker 1: factors in the machine. How would that help the plant.
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  Speaker 1: There's trouble between labor and capital. Well, the solution is
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  Speaker 1: not through one side getting the other by the neck
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  Speaker 1: and squeezing, No, sir, that isn't a solution. That is
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  Speaker 1: ruined for both. It means that later the other side
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  Speaker 1: is going to recover and try to get on top again,
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  Speaker 1: and there will be constant fighting and jarring where there
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  Speaker 1: ought to be harmony and adjustment. The only solution is
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  Speaker 1: to get together. It can't come only by the demands
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  Speaker 1: of labor. It can't come only by the advantages of capital.
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  Speaker 1: It's got to come by both recognizing their interest and
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  Speaker 1: getting together. That's the solution of all the problems in
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  Speaker 1: the world as I see it. Let people realize that
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  Speaker 1: they're all bound together, all parts of one machine, and
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  Speaker 1: that nothing that hurts one goofle people will fail on
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  Speaker 1: the end to come back and hurt all the people.
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  Speaker 1: So at the end of thirty seven years of work,
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  Speaker 1: Henry Ford sat in his office on his fifty second
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  Speaker 1: birthday and looked out on a community of nearly twenty
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  Speaker 1: thousand persons working efficiently and happily together, working for him
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  Speaker 1: and for themselves, well paid, contented. He thought of the
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  Speaker 1: world covered with a network of his agencies, crossed and
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  Speaker 1: recrossed with the tracks of his cars. He had run
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  Speaker 1: counter to every prompting of practical business judgment all his life.
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  Speaker 1: He had left the farm, built his engine, left the
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  Speaker 1: moneyed men who would not let him build a cheap car,
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  Speaker 1: started his own plant on insufficient capital, built up his business,
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  Speaker 1: established his profit sharing scheme, all against every dictative established practice.
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  Speaker 1: He had acted from the first on that one fundamental principle,
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  Speaker 1: Do the thing that means the most good to the
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  Speaker 1: most people. His call, his factory, his workman, his sixty
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  Speaker 1: millions of dollars, answered conclusively the objection, I know it's
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  Speaker 1: the right thing theoretically, but it isn't practical. Thinking of
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  Speaker 1: these things, on that bright summer day in nineteen fourteen,
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  Speaker 1: Ford decided that there remained only one more thing he
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  Speaker 1: could do. End of Chapter twenty seven.