Produced by Marvin Hodges, Tom Allen, Tonya Allen, Eric Eldred,
Charles Franks, and the DP Team
MY LIFE AND WORK
By Henry Ford
In Collaboration With Samuel Crowther
CONTENTS
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
though dead-weight fat increased speed! A deal of poverty grows out of
the carriage of excess weight. Some day we shall discover how further to
eliminate weight. Take wood, for example. For certain purposes wood is
now the best substance we know, but wood is extremely wasteful. The wood
in a Ford car contains thirty pounds of water. There must be some way of
doing better than that. There must be some method by which we can gain
the same strength and elasticity without having to lug useless weight.
And so through a thousand processes.
The farmer makes too complex an affair out of his daily work. I believe
that the average farmer puts to a really useful purpose only about 5 per
cent of the energy that he spends. If any one ever equipped a factory in
the style, say, the average farm is fitted out, the place would be
cluttered with men. The worst factory in Europe is hardly as bad as the
average farm barn. Power is utilized to the least possible degree. Not
only is everything done by hand, but seldom is a thought given to
logical arrangement. A farmer doing his chores will walk up and down a
rickety ladder a dozen times. He will carry water for years instead of
putting in a few lengths of pipe. His whole idea, when there is extra
work to do, is to hire extra men. He thinks of putting money into
improvements as an expense. Farm products at their lowest prices are
dearer than they ought to be. Farm profits at their highest are lower
than they ought to be. It is waste motion--waste effort--that makes farm
prices high and profits low.
On my own farm at Dearborn we do everything by machinery. We have
eliminated a great number of wastes, but we have not as yet touched on
real economy. We have not yet been able to put in five or ten years of
intense night-and-day study to discover what really ought to be done. We
have left more undone than we have done. Yet at no time--no matter what
the value of crops--have we failed to turn a first-class profit. We are
not farmers--we are industrialists on the farm. The moment the farmer
considers himself as an industrialist, with a horror of waste either in
material or in men, then we are going to have farm products so
low-priced that all will have enough to eat, and the profits will be so
satisfactory that farming will be considered as among the least
hazardous and most profitable of occupations.
Lack of knowledge of what is going on and lack of knowledge of what the
job really is and the best way of doing it are the reasons why farming
is thought not to pay. Nothing could pay the way farming is conducted.
The farmer follows luck and his forefathers. He does not know how
economically to produce, and he does not know how to market. A
manufacturer who knew how neither to produce nor to market would not
long stay in business. That the farmer can stay on shows how wonderfully
profitable farming can be.
The way to attain low-priced, high-volume production in the factory or
on the farm--and low-priced, high-volume production means plenty for
everyone--is quite simple. The trouble is that the general tendency is
to complicate very simple affairs. Take, for an instance, an
"improvement."
When we talk about improvements usually we have in mind some change in a
product. An "improved" product is one that has been changed. That is not
my idea. I do not believe in starting to make until I have discovered
the best possible thing. This, of course, does not mean that a product
should never be changed, but I think that it will be found more
economical in the end not even to try to produce an article until you
have fully satisfied yourself that utility, design, and material are the
best. If your researches do not give you that confidence, then keep
right on searching until you find confidence. The place to start
manufacturing is with the article. The factory, the organization, the
selling, and the financial plans will shape themselves to the article.
You will have a cutting, edge on your business chisel and in the end you
will save time. Rushing into manufacturing without being certain of the
product is the unrecognized cause of many business failures. People seem
to think that the big thing is the factory or the store or the financial
backing or the management. The big thing is the product, and any hurry
in getting into fabrication before designs are completed is just so much
waste time. I spent twelve years before I had a Model T--which is what
is known to-day as the Ford car--that suited me. We did not attempt to
go into real production until we had a real product. That product has
not been essentially changed.
We are constantly experimenting with new ideas. If you travel the roads
in the neighbourhood of Dearborn you can find all sorts of models of
Ford cars. They are experimental cars--they are not new models. I do not
believe in letting any good idea get by me, but I will not quickly
decide whether an idea is good or bad. If an idea seems good or seems
even to have possibilities, I believe in doing whatever is necessary to
test out the idea from every angle. But testing out the idea is
something very different from making a change in the car. Where most
manufacturers find themselves quicker to make a change in the product
than in the method of manufacturing--we follow exactly the opposite
course.
Our big changes have been in methods of manufacturing. They never stand
still. I believe that there is hardly a single operation in the making
of our car that is the same as when we made our first car of the present
model. That is why we make them so cheaply. The few changes that have
been made in the car have been in the direction of convenience in use or
where we found that a change in design might give added strength. The
materials in the car change as we learn more and more about materials.
Also we do not want to be held up in production or have the expense of
production increased by any possible shortage in a particular material,
so we have for most parts worked out substitute materials. Vanadium
steel, for instance, is our principal steel. With it we can get the
greatest strength with the least weight, but it would not be good
business to let our whole future depend upon being able to get vanadium
steel. We have worked out a substitute. All our steels are special, but
for every one of them we have at least one, and sometimes several, fully
proved and tested substitutes. And so on through all of our materials
and likewise with our parts. In the beginning we made very few of our
parts and none of our motors. Now we make all our motors and most of our
parts because we find it cheaper to do so. But also we aim to make some
of every part so that we cannot be caught in any market emergency or be
crippled by some outside manufacturer being unable to fill his orders.
The prices on glass were run up outrageously high during the war; we are
among the largest users of glass in the country. Now we are putting up
our own glass factory. If we had devoted all of this energy to making
changes in the product we should be nowhere; but by not changing the
product we are able to give our energy to the improvement of the making.
The principal part of a chisel is the cutting edge. If there is a single
principle on which our business rests it is that. It makes no difference
how finely made a chisel is or what splendid steel it has in it or how
well it is forged--if it has no cutting edge it is not a chisel. It is
just a piece of metal. All of which being translated means that it is
what a thing does--not what it is supposed to do--that matters. What is
the use of putting a tremendous force behind a blunt chisel if a light
blow on a sharp chisel will do the work? The chisel is there to cut, not
to be hammered. The hammering is only incidental to the job. So if we
want to work why not concentrate on the work and do it in the quickest
possible fashion? The cutting edge of merchandising is the point where
the product touches the consumer. An unsatisfactory product is one that
has a dull cutting edge. A lot of waste effort is needed to put it
through. The cutting edge of a factory is the man and the machine on the
job. If the man is not right the machine cannot be; if the machine is
not right the man cannot be. For any one to be required to use more
force than is absolutely necessary for the job in hand is waste.
The essence of my idea then is that waste and greed block the delivery
of true service. Both waste and greed are unnecessary. Waste is due
largely to not understanding what one does, or being careless in doing
of it. Greed is merely a species of nearsightedness. I have striven
toward manufacturing with a minimum of waste, both of materials and of
human effort, and then toward distribution at a minimum of profit,
depending for the total profit upon the volume of distribution. In the
process of manufacturing I want to distribute the maximum of wage--that
is, the maximum of buying power. Since also this makes for a minimum
cost and we sell at a minimum profit, we can distribute a product in
consonance with buying power. Thus everyone who is connected with
us--either as a manager, worker, or purchaser--is the better for our
existence. The institution that we have erected is performing a service.
That is the only reason I have for talking about it. The principles of
that service are these:
1. An absence of fear of the future and of veneration for the past. One
who fears the future, who fears failure, limits his activities. Failure
is only the opportunity more intelligently to begin again. There is no
disgrace in honest failure; there is disgrace in fearing to fail. What
is past is useful only as it suggests ways and means for progress.
2. A disregard of competition. Whoever does a thing best ought to be the
one to do it. It is criminal to try to get business away from another
man--criminal because one is then trying to lower for personal gain the
condition of one's fellow man--to rule by force instead of by
intelligence.
3. The putting of service before profit. Without a profit, business
cannot extend. There is nothing inherently wrong about making a profit.
Well-conducted business enterprise cannot fail to return a profit, but
profit must and inevitably will come as a reward for good service. It
cannot be the basis--it must be the result of service.
4. Manufacturing is not buying low and selling high. It is the process
of buying materials fairly and, with the smallest possible addition of
cost, transforming those materials into a consumable product and giving
it to the consumer. Gambling, speculating, and sharp dealing, tend only
to clog this progression.
How all of this arose, how it has worked out, and how it applies
generally are the subjects of these chapters.
CHAPTER I
THE BEGINNING OF BUSINESS
On May 31, 1921, the Ford Motor Company turned out Car No. 5,000,000. It
is out in my museum along with the gasoline buggy that I began work on
thirty years before and which first ran satisfactorily along in the
spring of 1893. I was running it when the bobolinks came to Dearborn and
they always come on April 2nd. There is all the difference in the world
in the appearance of the two vehicles and almost as much difference in
construction and materials, but in fundamentals the two are curiously
alike--except that the old buggy has on it a few wrinkles that we have
not yet quite adopted in our modern car. For that first car or buggy,
even though it had but two cylinders, would make twenty miles an hour
and run sixty miles on the three gallons of gas the little tank held and
is as good to-day as the day it was built. The development in methods of
manufacture and in materials has been greater than the development in
basic design. The whole design has been refined; the present Ford car,
which is the "Model T," has four cylinders and a self starter--it is in
every way a more convenient and an easier riding car. It is simpler than
the first car. But almost every point in it may be found also in the
first car. The changes have been brought about through experience in the
making and not through any change in the basic principle--which I take
to be an important fact demonstrating that, given a good idea to start
with, it is better to concentrate on perfecting it than to hunt around
for a new idea. One idea at a time is about as much as any one can
handle.
It was life on the farm that drove me into devising ways and means to
better transportation. I was born on July 30, 1863, on a farm at
Dearborn, Michigan, and my earliest recollection is that, considering
the results, there was too much work on the place. That is the way I
still feel about farming. There is a legend that my parents were very
poor and that the early days were hard ones. Certainly they were not
rich, but neither were they poor. As Michigan farmers went, we were
prosperous. The house in which I was born is still standing, and it and
the farm are part of my present holding.
There was too much hard hand labour on our own and all other farms of
the time. Even when very young I suspected that much might somehow be
done in a better way. That is what took me into mechanics--although my
mother always said that I was born a mechanic. I had a kind of workshop
with odds and ends of metal for tools before I had anything else. In
those days we did not have the toys of to-day; what we had were home
made. My toys were all tools--they still are! And every fragment of
machinery was a treasure.
The biggest event of those early years was meeting with a road engine
about eight miles out of Detroit one day when we were driving to town. I
was then twelve years old. The second biggest event was getting a
watch--which happened in the same year. I remember that engine as though
I had seen it only yesterday, for it was the first vehicle other than
horse-drawn that I had ever seen. It was intended primarily for driving
threshing machines and sawmills and was simply a portable engine and
boiler mounted on wheels with a water tank and coal cart trailing
behind. I had seen plenty of these engines hauled around by horses, but
this one had a chain that made a connection between the engine and the
rear wheels of the wagon-like frame on which the boiler was mounted. The
engine was placed over the boiler and one man standing on the platform
behind the boiler shoveled coal, managed the throttle, and did the
steering. It had been made by Nichols, Shepard & Company of Battle
Creek. I found that out at once. The engine had stopped to let us pass
with our horses and I was off the wagon and talking to the engineer
before my father, who was driving, knew what I was up to. The engineer
was very glad to explain the whole affair. He was proud of it. He showed
me how the chain was disconnected from the propelling wheel and a belt
put on to drive other machinery. He told me that the engine made two
hundred revolutions a minute and that the chain pinion could be shifted
to let the wagon stop while the engine was still running. This last is a
feature which, although in different fashion, is incorporated into
modern automobiles. It was not important with steam engines, which are
easily stopped and started, but it became very important with the
gasoline engine. It was that engine which took me into automotive
transportation. I tried to make models of it, and some years later I did
make one that ran very well, but from the time I saw that road engine as
a boy of twelve right forward to to-day, my great interest has been in
making a machine that would travel the roads. Driving to town I always
had a pocket full of trinkets--nuts, washers, and odds and ends of
machinery. Often I took a broken watch and tried to put it together.
When I was thirteen I managed for the first time to put a watch together
so that it would keep time. By the time I was fifteen I could do almost
anything in watch repairing--although my tools were of the crudest.
There is an immense amount to be learned simply by tinkering with
things. It is not possible to learn from books how everything is
made--and a real mechanic ought to know how nearly everything is made.
Machines are to a mechanic what books are to a writer. He gets ideas
from them, and if he has any brains he will apply those ideas.
From the beginning I never could work up much interest in the labour of
farming. I wanted to have something to do with machinery. My father was
not entirely in sympathy with my bent toward mechanics. He thought that
I ought to be a farmer. When I left school at seventeen and became an
apprentice in the machine shop of the Drydock Engine Works I was all but
given up for lost. I passed my apprenticeship without trouble--that is,
I was qualified to be a machinist long before my three-year term had
expired--and having a liking for fine work and a leaning toward watches
I worked nights at repairing in a jewelry shop. At one period of those
early days I think that I must have had fully three hundred watches. I
thought that I could build a serviceable watch for around thirty cents
and nearly started in the business. But I did not because I figured out
that watches were not universal necessities, and therefore people
generally would not buy them. Just how I reached that surprising
conclusion I am unable to state. I did not like the ordinary jewelry and
watch making work excepting where the job was hard to do. Even then I
wanted to make something in quantity. It was just about the time when
the standard railroad time was being arranged. We had formerly been on
sun time and for quite a while, just as in our present daylight-saving
days, the railroad time differed from the local time. That bothered me a
good deal and so I succeeded in making a watch that kept both times. It
had two dials and it was quite a curiosity in the neighbourhood.
In 1879--that is, about four years after I first saw that
Nichols-Shepard machine--I managed to get a chance to run one and when
my apprenticeship was over I worked with a local representative of the
Westinghouse Company of Schenectady as an expert in the setting up and
repair of their road engines. The engine they put out was much the same
as the Nichols-Shepard engine excepting that the engine was up in front,
the boiler in the rear, and the power was applied to the back wheels by
a belt. They could make twelve miles an hour on the road even though the
self-propelling feature was only an incident of the construction. They
were sometimes used as tractors to pull heavy loads and, if the owner
also happened to be in the threshing-machine business, he hitched his
threshing machine and other paraphernalia to the engine in moving from
farm to farm. What bothered me was the weight and the cost. They weighed
a couple of tons and were far too expensive to be owned by other than a
farmer with a great deal of land. They were mostly employed by people
who went into threshing as a business or who had sawmills or some other
line that required portable power.
Even before that time I had the idea of making some kind of a light
steam car that would take the place of horses--more especially, however,
as a tractor to attend to the excessively hard labour of ploughing. It
occurred to me, as I remember somewhat vaguely, that precisely the same
idea might be applied to a carriage or a wagon on the road. A horseless
carriage was a common idea. People had been talking about carriages
without horses for many years back--in fact, ever since the steam engine
was invented--but the idea of the carriage at first did not seem so
practical to me as the idea of an engine to do the harder farm work, and
of all the work on the farm ploughing was the hardest. Our roads were
poor and we had not the habit of getting around. One of the most
remarkable features of the automobile on the farm is the way that it has
broadened the farmer's life. We simply took for granted that unless the
errand were urgent we would not go to town, and I think we rarely made
more than a trip a week. In bad weather we did not go even that often.
Being a full-fledged machinist and with a very fair workshop on the farm
it was not difficult for me to build a steam wagon or tractor. In the
building of it came the idea that perhaps it might be made for road use.
I felt perfectly certain that horses, considering all the bother of
attending them and the expense of feeding, did not earn their keep. The
obvious thing to do was to design and build a steam engine that would be
light enough to run an ordinary wagon or to pull a plough. I thought it
more important first to develop the tractor. To lift farm drudgery off
flesh and blood and lay it on steel and motors has been my most constant
ambition. It was circumstances that took me first into the actual
manufacture of road cars. I found eventually that people were more
interested in something that would travel on the road than in something
that would do the work on the farms. In fact, I doubt that the light
farm tractor could have been introduced on the farm had not the farmer
had his eyes opened slowly but surely by the automobile. But that is
getting ahead of the story. I thought the farmer would be more
interested in the tractor.
I built a steam car that ran. It had a kerosene-heated boiler and it
developed plenty of power and a neat control--which is so easy with a
steam throttle. But the boiler was dangerous. To get the requisite power
without too big and heavy a power plant required that the engine work
under high pressure; sitting on a high-pressure steam boiler is not
altogether pleasant. To make it even reasonably safe required an excess
of weight that nullified the economy of the high pressure. For two years
I kept experimenting with various sorts of boilers--the engine and
control problems were simple enough--and then I definitely abandoned the
whole idea of running a road vehicle by steam. I knew that in England
they had what amounted to locomotives running on the roads hauling lines
of trailers and also there was no difficulty in designing a big steam
tractor for use on a large farm. But ours were not then English roads;
they would have stalled or racked to pieces the strongest and heaviest
road tractor. And anyway the manufacturing of a big tractor which only a
few wealthy farmers could buy did not seem to me worth while.
But I did not give up the idea of a horseless carriage. The work with
the Westinghouse representative only served to confirm the opinion I had
formed that steam was not suitable for light vehicles. That is why I
stayed only a year with that company. There was nothing more that the
big steam tractors and engines could teach me and I did not want to
waste time on something that would lead nowhere. A few years before--it
was while I was an apprentice--I read in the _World of Science_, an
English publication, of the "silent gas engine" which was then coming
out in England. I think it was the Otto engine. It ran with illuminating
gas, had a single large cylinder, and the power impulses being thus
intermittent required an extremely heavy fly-wheel. As far as weight was
concerned it gave nothing like the power per pound of metal that a steam
engine gave, and the use of illuminating gas seemed to dismiss it as
even a possibility for road use. It was interesting to me only as all
machinery was interesting. I followed in the English and American
magazines which we got in the shop the development of the engine and
most particularly the hints of the possible replacement of the
illuminating gas fuel by a gas formed by the vaporization of gasoline.
The idea of gas engines was by no means new, but this was the first time
that a really serious effort had been made to put them on the market.
They were received with interest rather than enthusiasm and I do not
recall any one who thought that the internal combustion engine could
ever have more than a limited use. All the wise people demonstrated
conclusively that the engine could not compete with steam. They never
thought that it might carve out a career for itself. That is the way
with wise people--they are so wise and practical that they always know
to a dot just why something cannot be done; they always know the
limitations. That is why I never employ an expert in full bloom. If ever
I wanted to kill opposition by unfair means I would endow the opposition
with experts. They would have so much good advice that I could be sure
they would do little work.
The gas engine interested me and I followed its progress, but only from
curiosity, until about 1885 or 1886 when, the steam engine being
discarded as the motive power for the carriage that I intended some day
to build, I had to look around for another sort of motive power. In 1885
I repaired an Otto engine at the Eagle Iron Works in Detroit. No one in
town knew anything about them. There was a rumour that I did and,
although I had never before been in contact with one, I undertook and
carried through the job. That gave me a chance to study the new engine
at first hand and in 1887 I built one on the Otto four-cycle model just
to see if I understood the principles. "Four cycle" means that the
piston traverses the cylinder four times to get one power impulse. The
first stroke draws in the gas, the second compresses it, the third is
the explosion or power stroke, while the fourth stroke exhausts the
waste gas. The little model worked well enough; it had a one-inch bore
and a three-inch stroke, operated with gasoline, and while it did not
develop much power, it was slightly lighter in proportion than the
engines being offered commercially. I gave it away later to a young man
who wanted it for something or other and whose name I have forgotten; it
was eventually destroyed. That was the beginning of the work with the
internal combustion engine.
I was then on the farm to which I had returned, more because I wanted to
experiment than because I wanted to farm, and, now being an all-around
machinist, I had a first-class workshop to replace the toy shop of
earlier days. My father offered me forty acres of timber land, provided
I gave up being a machinist. I agreed in a provisional way, for cutting
the timber gave me a chance to get married. I fitted out a sawmill and a
portable engine and started to cut out and saw up the timber on the
tract. Some of the first of that lumber went into a cottage on my new
farm and in it we began our married life. It was not a big
house--thirty-one feet square and only a story and a half high--but it
was a comfortable place. I added to it my workshop, and when I was not
cutting timber I was working on the gas engines--learning what they were
and how they acted. I read everything I could find, but the greatest
knowledge came from the work. A gas engine is a mysterious sort of
thing--it will not always go the way it should. You can imagine how
those first engines acted!
It was in 1890 that I began on a double-cylinder engine. It was quite
impractical to consider the single cylinder for transportation
purposes--the fly-wheel had to be entirely too heavy. Between making the
first four-cycle engine of the Otto type and the start on a double
cylinder I had made a great many experimental engines out of tubing. I
fairly knew my way about. The double cylinder I thought could be applied
to a road vehicle and my original idea was to put it on a bicycle with a
direct connection to the crankshaft and allowing for the rear wheel of
the bicycle to act as the balance wheel. The speed was going to be
varied only by the throttle. I never carried out this plan because it
soon became apparent that the engine, gasoline tank, and the various
necessary controls would be entirely too heavy for a bicycle. The plan
of the two opposed cylinders was that, while one would be delivering
power the other would be exhausting. This naturally would not require so
heavy a fly-wheel to even the application of power. The work started in
my shop on the farm. Then I was offered a job with the Detroit Electric
Company as an engineer and machinist at forty-five dollars a month. I
took it because that was more money than the farm was bringing me and I
had decided to get away from farm life anyway. The timber had all been
cut. We rented a house on Bagley Avenue, Detroit. The workshop came
along and I set it up in a brick shed at the back of the house. During
the first several months I was in the night shift at the electric-light
plant--which gave me very little time for experimenting--but after that
I was in the day shift and every night and all of every Saturday night I
worked on the new motor. I cannot say that it was hard work. No work
with interest is ever hard. I always am certain of results. They always
come if you work hard enough. But it was a very great thing to have my
wife even more confident than I was. She has always been that way.
I had to work from the ground up--that is, although I knew that a number
of people were working on horseless carriages, I could not know what
they were doing. The hardest problems to overcome were in the making and
breaking of the spark and in the avoidance of excess weight. For the
transmission, the steering gear, and the general construction, I could
draw on my experience with the steam tractors. In 1892 I completed my
first motor car, but it was not until the spring of the following year
that it ran to my satisfaction. This first car had something of the
appearance of a buggy. There were two cylinders with a two-and-a-half-inch
bore and a six-inch stroke set side by side and over the rear axle. I
made them out of the exhaust pipe of a steam engine that I had bought.
They developed about four horsepower. The power was transmitted from the
motor to the countershaft by a belt and from the countershaft to the
rear wheel by a chain. The car would hold two people, the seat being
suspended on posts and the body on elliptical springs. There were two
speeds--one of ten and the other of twenty miles per hour--obtained by
shifting the belt, which was done by a clutch lever in front of the
driving seat. Thrown forward, the lever put in the high speed; thrown
back, the low speed; with the lever upright the engine could run free.
To start the car it was necessary to turn the motor over by hand with
the clutch free. To stop the car one simply released the clutch and
applied the foot brake. There was no reverse, and speeds other than
those of the belt were obtained by the throttle. I bought the iron work
for the frame of the carriage and also the seat and the springs. The
wheels were twenty-eight-inch wire bicycle wheels with rubber tires. The
balance wheel I had cast from a pattern that I made and all of the more
delicate mechanism I made myself. One of the features that I discovered
necessary was a compensating gear that permitted the same power to be
applied to each of the rear wheels when turning corners. The machine
altogether weighed about five hundred pounds. A tank under the seat held
three gallons of gasoline which was fed to the motor through a small
pipe and a mixing valve. The ignition was by electric spark. The
original machine was air-cooled--or to be more accurate, the motor
simply was not cooled at all. I found that on a run of an hour or more
the motor heated up, and so I very shortly put a water jacket around the
cylinders and piped it to a tank in the rear of the car over the
cylinders. Nearly all of these various features had been planned in
advance. That is the way I have always worked. I draw a plan and work
out every detail on the plan before starting to build. For otherwise one
will waste a great deal of time in makeshifts as the work goes on and
the finished article will not have coherence. It will not be rightly
proportioned. Many inventors fail because they do not distinguish
between planning and experimenting. The largest building difficulties
that I had were in obtaining the proper materials. The next were with
tools. There had to be some adjustments and changes in details of the
design, but what held me up most was that I had neither the time nor the
money to search for the best material for each part. But in the spring
of 1893 the machine was running to my partial satisfaction and giving an
opportunity further to test out the design and material on the road.