Henry Ford’s Own Story |
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"WHEN I saw thousands of men in Detroit alone fighting like wild animals for a chance at a decent living wage it brought home to me the tremendous economic waste in our system of doing business/ Ford said. "Every man in those crowds must go back to a job if he found one at all that did not give him a chance to do his best work because it did not pay him enough to keep him healthy and happy.
"I made up my mind to put my project through, to prove to the men who are running big industries that my plan pays. I wanted employers to see that when every man has all the money he needs for comfort and happiness it will be better for everybody. I wanted to prove that the policy of trying to get everything good for yourself really hurts you in the end."
He paused and smiled his slow, whimsical smile.
"Well, I guess I proved it," he said.
Six weeks after the plan went into effect in his factory a comparison was made between the production for January, 1914, and January, 1913. In 1913, with 16,000 men working on the actual production of cars for ten hours a day, 16,000 cars were made and shipped. Under the new plan 15,800 men working eight hours a day made and shipped 26,000 cars.
Again Ford had shown the value of that in tangible, "impractical" thing a spirit of friend liness and good will.
On the ebb tide of the enthusiasm which had stirred this country at the announcement of his profit-sharing plan a thousand skeptical opinions arose. "Oh, he s doing it just for the advertising." "He knew, right enough, that he would make more money in the end by this scheme - he s no philanthropist."
Ford wanted his new plan known; he wanted employers everywhere to see what he was doing, how he did it, and what the effects would be. He did expect the factory to run better, to produce more cars. If it had not done so his plan would have been a failure.
"Do the thing that is best for everybody and it will be best for you in the end." That was his creed. He hoped to prove its truth so that no one would doubt it.
Nor is Ford a philanthropist, with the ordinary implications that follow that word. He is a hard-headed, practical man, who has made a success in invention, in organization, in the building of a great business. His contribution to the world is a practical contribution. His message is a practical message.
"This whole world is like a machine every part is as important as every other part. We should all work together, not against each other. Anything that is good for all the parts of the machine is good for each one of them.
"Or look at it as a human body. The welfare of one part is dependent on all the other parts. Once in a while a little group of cells get to gether and takes to growing on its own account, not paying any attention to the rest. That is a cancer. In the end what it takes from the rest of the body causes the death of the whole organism. What do those independent, selfish cells get out of it?
"I tell you, selfishness, trying to get ahead of the other fellow, trying to take away from other people, is the worst policy a man can follow. It is NOT a practical viewpoint on life. Any man who is a success is a success because his work has helped other men, whether he realizes it or not. The more he helps other men the more success ful every one will be, and he will get his share."
Putting his profit-sharing plan into effect was not a simple matter of writing the checks. He had to educate not only other employers, but his own men as well. They must be taught the proper way to use money, so that it would not be a detriment to themselves or a menace to society in general. %
On the other hand, Ford did not believe in the factory systems in use abroad. He did not mean to give each of his workmen a model cottage, with a model flower garden in front and a model laundry in the rear, and say to them : "Look at the flowers, but do not pick them; it will spoil my landscape effect. Look at the lawn, but do not cut it; I have workmen for that."
He meant to place no restraints on the personal liberty of the men. He believed that every man, if given the opportunity, would make himself a good, substantial citizen, industrious, thrifty and helpful to others. He meant his plan to prove that theory also.
It has been rumored that the extra share of profits was given with "a string to it." That is not so. There was no single thing a man must have to do to entitle him to his share. He need not own a home, start a bank account, support a family, or even measure up to a standard of work in the shops. Manhood and thrift were the only requisites, and the company stood ready to help any man attain those.
The first obstacle was the fact that 55 per cent of the men did not speak English. Investigators visiting their miserable homes were obliged to speak through interpreters. A school was started where they might learn English, and the response was touching. More than a thousand men enrolled immediately, and when the plan was discussed in the shops 200 American workmen volunteered to help in teaching, so thoroughly had the Ford spirit of helpfulness pervaded the factory. The paid teachers were dismissed, and now those 200 men, on their own time, are helping their fellow-employees to learn the language of their new country.
Shortly after the newspapers had carried far and wide the news of Ford s revolutionary the ories a man knocked late one night at the door of the manager s home.
"Will you give me a job?" he asked.
"Why, I don t know who you are," the man ager replied.
"I m the worst man in Detroit," said the caller defiantly. "I m fifty-four years old, and I ve done thirty-two years in Jackson prison. I m a bad actor, and everybody knows it. I can t get a job. The only person that ever played me true is my wife, and I ain t going to have her taking in washing to support me. If you want to give me a job, all right. If you don t I m going back to Jackson prison for good. There s one man yet I want to get, and I ll get him."
Somewhat nonplussed by the situation the man ager invited the man in, talked to him a bit, and called up Ford.
"Sure, give him a chance," Ford's voice came over the wire. "He's a man, isn t he? He s en titled to as good a chance as any other man."
The ex-convict was given a job in the shops. For a couple of months his work was poor. The foreman reported it to the manager. The man ager wrote a letter, telling the man to brace up, there was plenty of good stuff in him if he would take an interest in the work and do his best.
The next morning he came into the manager s office with his wife, so broken up he could hardly hold his voice steady. "That letter s the finest thing, outside of what my wife has done, that I ve ever had happen to me," he said. "I want to stick here, I ll do the best I know how. I ll work my hands off. Show me how to do my work better."
A couple of months later he came into the office and took a small roll of bills out of his pocket.
"Say," he said, shifting from one foot to the other, and running his fingers around the brim of the hat in his hands, "I wonder if you d tell me how to get into a bank and leave this ? And what bank? I m wise how to get in and take it out, but I ain t up to putting it in without some advice."
To-day that man is living in his own home which he is paying for on the installment plan, and he is one of the best workers in Detroit, a good, steady man.
His chance appearance resulted in Ford’s policy of employing convicts wherever his investigators come across them. Nearly a hundred ex-criminals, many of them on parole, are working in his shops to-day, and he considers them among his best men.
"No policy is any good if it cannot go into a community and take every one in it, young, old, good, bad, sick, well, and make them all happier, more useful and more prosperous," he says. "Every human being that lives is part of the big machine, and you can t draw any lines between parts of a machine. They re all important. You can t make a good machine by making only one part of it good."
This belief led to his establishing a unique labor clearing-house in his administration building a department that makes it next to impossible for any man employed in the organization to lose his job.
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