THE BEST PREPAREDNESS
Henry Ford saw that the meaning of his work was about to be lost. He was
in for the greatest fight of his life.
He counted his resources. The mammoth factory was still running to
capacity, the farm tractors, which would mean so much in increased
production of food, in greater comforts for millions of farmers, were
almost ready to be put on the market. His plan for profit-sharing with
the buyers of his cars had recently been announced. Three hundred
thousand men in this country would have, during 1915, an actual proof in
dollars and cents of the practical value of coöperation, of Ford's
principle that "helping the other fellow will help you." Those men would
share with him the profit which would add still more millions to his
credit.
Ford had these things; he had also a tremendous fortune at his command.
He cast about for ways of using that fortune in this fight, and again
the uselessness of money was impressed upon him.
"Money is of no real value whatever," he says. "What can I do with it
now? I cannot pay a man enough to make him change his real opinions. The
only real resource this country has now is the intelligence of our
people. They must think right, they must know the true principles on
which to build a great, strong nation.
"They must hold firm to the big, true things, and realize--some way they
must be MADE to realize--that they are practical, that ideals are the
only practical things in this world.
"It is to everybody's interest to do right. Not in the next world, nor
in a spiritual way only, but in good, hard dollars-and-cents business
value.
"Let's be practical. Suppose we do prepare for war? Suppose we do take
the energies of our young men and spend them in training for war. Our
country needs the whole energy of every man in productive work, work
that will make more food, more clothing, better houses. But suppose we
turn that energy from real uses, train it to destroy, instead of to
create? Suppose we have half a million young men ready to fight? What
weapons shall we give them?
"Shall we give them guns? They will be out of date. Shall we give them
poisonous gases, or disease germs, or shall we invent something even
more horrible? As fast as we make these things, other nations will make
worse ones.
"Shall we turn our factories into munition plants? Shall we build
dreadnoughts? The submarine destroys them. Shall we build submarines?
Other nations will make submarine-destroyers. Shall we build
submarine-destroyers? Other nations will build war-aeroplanes to destroy
them. We must make something worse than the aeroplanes, and something
worse still, and then something still more horrible, bidding senselessly
up and up and up, spending millions on millions, trying to outdo other
nations which are trying to outdo us.
"For if we begin to prepare for war we must not stop. We can not stop. I
read articles in the magazines saying that we might as well have no navy
at all as the one we have; that we might as well have no army as the
army we have, if this country should be invaded. Yet we have already
spent millions on that army and that navy. Let us spend millions more,
and more millions, and more, and still, unless we keep on spending more
than any other nation can spend, we might as well have no army or navy
at all.
"And yet there are people who think that to begin such a course is
'practical,' is good common sense!
"I tell you, the only real strength of a nation is the spirit of its
people. The only real, practical value in the world is the spirit of the
people of the world. There were animals on the earth ages ago who could
kill a hundred men with one sweep of a paw, but they are gone, and we
survive. Why? Because men have minds, because they use their minds in
doing useful things, making food, and clothes, and shelters.
"A few hundred years ago no man was safe on the street alone at night.
No woman was safe unless she had a man with her who was strong enough to
kill other men. We have changed all that. How? By force? No, because we
have learned in a small degree that there are things better than force.
We have learned that to look out for the interests of every one in our
community is best for us in the end.
"Let us realize that to think of the welfare of the whole world is best
for each one of us. We do not carry a gun so that if we meet an
Englishman on the street and he attacks us we can kill him. We know he
does not want to kill us.
"We know that the real people of the whole world do not want war. We do
not want war. There are only a few people who think they want war--the
politicians, the rulers, the Big Business men, who think they can profit
by it. War injures everybody else, and in the end it injures them, too.
"The way to handle the war question is not to waste more and more human
energy in getting ready to hurt the other fellow. We must get down to
the foundations; we must realize that the interests of all the people
are one, and that what hurts one hurts us all.
"We must know that, and we must have the courage to act on it. A nation
of a hundred million people, of all nationalities and races, we must
work together, each of us doing what he can for the best good of the
whole. Then we can show Europe, when at last her crippled people drag
themselves back to their ruined homes, that a policy of peace and
hopefulness does pay, that it is practical.
"We can show them that we do mean to help them. They will believe it, if
we do not say it behind a gun.
"If we carry a gun, we must depend on the gun to save our nation. We
must frankly say that we believe in force and nothing else. We must
admit that human brotherhood and ideals of mutual good will and
helpfulness are secondary to power and willingness to commit murder;
that only a murderer at heart can afford to have them. We must abandon
every principle on which our country was founded, every inch of progress
we have made since men were frankly beasts.
"But if our country is not to go down as all nations have gone before
her, depending on force and destroyed by force, we must build on a firm
foundation. We must build on our finest, biggest instincts. We must go
fearlessly ahead, not looking back, and put our faith in the things
which endure, and which have grown stronger through every century of
history.
"Democracy, every man's right to comfort and plenty and happiness, human
brotherhood, mutual helpfulness--these are the real, practical things.
These are the things on which we can build, surely and firmly. These are
the things which will last. These are the things which will pay.
"I have proved them over and over again in my own life. Other men, so
far as they have trusted them, have proved them. America has built on
them the richest, most successful nation in the world to-day. Just so
far as we continue to trust them, to build on them, we will continue to
be prosperous and successful.
"I know this. If my life has taught me anything at all, it has taught me
that. I will spend every ounce of energy I have, every hour of my life,
in the effort to prove it to other people. Only so far as we all believe
it, only so far as we all use our strength and our abilities, not to
hurt, but to help, other peoples, will we help ourselves."
This is the end of my story, and the beginning of Henry Ford's biggest
fight.
THE END
End of Project Gutenberg's Henry Ford's Own Story, by Rose Wilder Lane