MAKING IT PAY
"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 intangible, "impractical"
thing--a spirit of friendliness 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
together 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 successful
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 theories 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 manager 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 manager 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 entitled 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 manager 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.