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

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  Speaker 1: Chapter twenty nine 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 nine,
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  Speaker 1: The European War War. The news caught at the heart
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  Speaker 1: of the world and stopped it for a time. The
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  Speaker 1: whole business structure of every nation on Earth trembled, threatened
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  Speaker 1: to crumble into ruin under this weight to which it
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  Speaker 1: had been building from the beginning. Greed, grasping selfishness, a
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  Speaker 1: policy of each man for himself against other men. These
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  Speaker 1: are the foundations on which nations have built up their commercial, social,
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  Speaker 1: industrial success. These are the things which have always led
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  Speaker 1: and always will lead, to war, to the destruction of
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  Speaker 1: those structures they have built. Austria, Germany, France, Belgium, Russia, England, Japan, Turkey, Italy.
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  Speaker 1: One by one they crashed down into the general wreck.
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  Speaker 1: Everything good that the centuries had made was buried in
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  Speaker 1: the debris. The world rocked under the shock. Here in
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  Speaker 1: America we read the reports and dazed incredulity. It could
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  Speaker 1: not be possible. It could not be possible, we said
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  Speaker 1: to each other with white lips. And this age now today,
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  Speaker 1: for living, as most of us do, on the surface
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  Speaker 1: of things, among our friends, in an atmosphere of kindliness
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  Speaker 1: and helpfulness. We had been cheerfully unconcerned about the foundations
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  Speaker 1: of our economic and industrial life. In the winter, there
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  Speaker 1: are thousands of unemployed men. We tried to give each
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  Speaker 1: one a bowl of soup a place to sleep. Our
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  Speaker 1: street corners are unpleasantly infested with beggars. We pass an ordinance,
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  Speaker 1: arrest them for vagrancy, feed them a few days, and
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  Speaker 1: order them to leave town. The city is full of criminals.
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  Speaker 1: What are the police doing, we inquire testily. We build
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  Speaker 1: another prison erect in other gallows. We are like an
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  Speaker 1: architect who, seeing threatening cracks in the walls of the building,
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  Speaker 1: would hurriedly fill them with putty and add another story.
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  Speaker 1: Henry Ford read the news from Europe. He saw there
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  Speaker 1: a purposeless, useless, and waste of everything valuable. He saw
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  Speaker 1: a machine wrongly built for centuries, so that each part
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  Speaker 1: would work against all the other parts, suddenly set in
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  Speaker 1: motion and wrecking itself. It was a repetition on a
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  Speaker 1: larger scale of a catastrophe with which he had been
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  Speaker 1: familiar in the business world. How many companies in his
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  Speaker 1: own field had been organized in the early days of
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  Speaker 1: the industry, had gone into business with the one purpose
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  Speaker 1: of getting all they could from everyone workers, stockholders, buyers,
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  Speaker 1: and had gone down in ruin. Only those companies which
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  Speaker 1: had been built on some basis of fair service had succeeded,
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  Speaker 1: and these had done so in proportion to their real
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  Speaker 1: value to others. Whether or not this principle is recognized
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  Speaker 1: by those who profit from it, it is the fundamental
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  Speaker 1: principle on which business success is built. The trouble is
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  Speaker 1: that people do not see that, said Ford, a man
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  Speaker 1: goes into business from purely selfish motives. He works for
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  Speaker 1: himself and against everyone else as far as he can,
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  Speaker 1: but only so far as his grasping selfishness really works
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  Speaker 1: out and benefit to other people. He succeeds if he
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  Speaker 1: knew that if he went to work deliberately to help
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  Speaker 1: other people, he would do more good and at the
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  Speaker 1: same time he would make a bigger success for himself.
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  Speaker 1: But instead of that, he gets more and more selfish.
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  Speaker 1: When he has got a lot of money and becomes
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  Speaker 1: a real power, he uses his power selfishly. He thinks
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  Speaker 1: it is his grasping policy that has made him successful.
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  Speaker 1: Why everything I ever did selfishly in my life has
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  Speaker 1: come back like a boomerang and hurt me more than
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  Speaker 1: it hurt anyone else. And the same way with everything
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  Speaker 1: I have done to help others, it helps me in
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  Speaker 1: the end, every time it is bound to. As long
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  Speaker 1: as a machine runs, anything that is really good for
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  Speaker 1: one part is good for the whole machine. Look at
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  Speaker 1: those fighting nations. Every one of them is hurting itself
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  Speaker 1: as much as it hurts the enemy. Their success was
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  Speaker 1: founded on the fact that they have helped each other.
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  Speaker 1: England got her dyes and her tools and her toys
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  Speaker 1: from Germany. Germany got her whak from Russia and her
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  Speaker 1: fruits and olives from Italy. Turkey got her ships from England.
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  Speaker 1: They were all helping each other. Their real interests, the
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  Speaker 1: comfort and happiness of their people, were all one interest
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  Speaker 1: left to themselves. The real German people would never fight
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  Speaker 1: the French people. Never in the world, no more than
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  Speaker 1: Iowa would fight Michigan. Race differences, they do not exist
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  Speaker 1: in sufficient degree to make men fight, and they are
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  Speaker 1: disappearing every day. See how the races mix in America.
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  Speaker 1: I have fifty three nationalities speaking more than one hundred
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  Speaker 1: different languages and dialects in my shops, and they never
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  Speaker 1: have any trouble. They realize that their interests are all
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  Speaker 1: the same. What is the root of the whole question?
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  Speaker 1: The real interests of all men are the same work,
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  Speaker 1: food and shelter and happiness. When they all work together
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  Speaker 1: for those, everyone will have plenty. What do people fight for?
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  Speaker 1: Does fighting make more jobs, better homes, more to eat. No.
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  Speaker 1: People fight because they are taught that the only way
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  Speaker 1: to get these things is to take them from someone else.
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  Speaker 1: The common people, the people who lose most by fighting,
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  Speaker 1: don't know what they are fighting for. They fight because
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  Speaker 1: they are told to. What do they get out of it? Disgust, shame, grief, wounds, death, ruin, starvation.
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  Speaker 1: War is the most hideous waste in the world. In
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  Speaker 1: the first terrible months of the war, the American people,
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  Speaker 1: in horror echoed that opinion. With a spectacle of half
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  Speaker 1: the world in bloody ruins before our eyes. We recoiled.
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  Speaker 1: We thanked God that our country remained sane. We saw
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  Speaker 1: a vision of America after the madness had passed, helping
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  Speaker 1: to mind up the wounds of Europe, helping to make
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  Speaker 1: a permanent peace, which should bring the people of the
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  Speaker 1: earth together in one fraternity by degrees that feeling began
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  Speaker 1: to change. We want peace. Are there a hundred men
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  Speaker 1: among our hundred million who will say they want war
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  Speaker 1: for war's sake? We want peace? But we've begun to
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  Speaker 1: ask that old question. Is it practical? That vision of
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  Speaker 1: the people of the world working together, increasing their own
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  Speaker 1: happiness and comfort by helping to make happiness and comfort
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  Speaker 1: for each other. It is a beautiful theory. But is
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  Speaker 1: it not a bit sentimental, a bit visionary, just a
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  Speaker 1: little too good to be true. Here is a world
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  Speaker 1: where war happens. We said, if a war should happen
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  Speaker 1: to us, what would we do. Let us begin to
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  Speaker 1: prepare for war. Let us take war into our calculations.
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  Speaker 1: Let us be practical. And Henry Ford, reading the papers,
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  Speaker 1: listening to the talk of the men in the streets,
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  Speaker 1: saw the object lesson of his great organization disregarded. He
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  Speaker 1: heard again the objection which had met every step of
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  Speaker 1: his life. It is a good idea, but it is theoretical,
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  Speaker 1: It is not practical. It will not work. Things never
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  Speaker 1: have done that way. He saw this country already wasting
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  Speaker 1: in calculable human energy destroying innumerable lives daily, because of
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  Speaker 1: a practical system of organization preparing to drain off still
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  Speaker 1: more energy, still greater wealth, in preparation for a still
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  Speaker 1: more terrible waste. The dearest principle of his life, the
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  Speaker 1: principle whose truth he had proven through a life of
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  Speaker 1: hard work, was in danger of being swept away and forgotten.
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  Speaker 1: End of Chapter twenty nine.