My Life and Work by Henry Ford (surface ebook reader TXT) 📖

The “thrift” and “economy” ideas have been overworked. The word “economy” represents a fear. The great and tragic fact of waste is impressed on a mind by some circumstance, usually of a most materialistic kind. There comes a violent reaction against extravagance—the mind catches hold of the idea of “economy.” But it only flies from a greater to a lesser evil; it does not make the full journey from error to truth.

Economy is the rule of half-alive minds. There can be no doubt that it is better than waste; neither can there be any doubt that it is not as good as use. People who pride themselves on their economy take it as a virtue. But what is more pitiable than a poor, pinched mind spending the rich days and years clutching a few bits of metal? What can be fine about paring the necessities of life to the very quick? We all know “economical people” who seem to be niggardly even about the amount of air they breathe and the amount of appreciation they will allow themselves to give to anything. They shrivel—body and soul. Economy is waste: it is waste of the juices of life, the sap of living. For there are two kinds of waste—that of the prodigal who throws his substance away in riotous living, and that of the sluggard who allows his substance to rot from non-use. The rigid economizer is in danger of being classed with the sluggard. Extravagance is usually a reaction from suppression of expenditure. Economy is likely to be a reaction from extravagance.

Everything was given us to use. There is no evil from which we suffer that did not come about through misuse. The worst sin we can commit against the things of our common life is to misuse them. “Misuse” is the wider term. We like to say “waste,” but waste is only one phase of misuse. All waste is misuse; all misuse is waste.

It is possible even to overemphasize the saving habit. It is proper and desirable that everyone have a margin; it is really wasteful not to have one—if you can have one. But it can be overdone. We teach children to save their money. As an attempt to counteract thoughtless and selfish expenditure, that has a value. But it is not positive; it does not lead the child out into the safe and useful avenues of self-expression or self-expenditure. To teach a child to invest and use is better than to teach him to save. Most men who are laboriously saving a few dollars would do better to invest those few dollars—first in themselves, and then in some useful work. Eventually they would have more to save. Young men ought to invest rather than save. They ought to invest in themselves to increase creative value; after they have taken themselves to the peak of usefulness, then will be time enough to think of laying aside, as a fixed policy, a certain substantial share of income. You are not “saving” when you prevent yourself from becoming more productive. You are really taking away from your ultimate capital; you are reducing the value of one of nature’s investments. The principle of use is the true guide. Use is positive, active, life-giving. Use is alive. Use adds to the sum of good.

Personal want may be avoided without changing the general condition.

Wage increases, price increases, profit increases, other kinds of increases designed to bring more money here or money there, are only attempts of this or that class to get out of the fire—regardless of what may happen to everyone else. There is a foolish belief that if only the money can be gotten, somehow the storm can be weathered. Labour believes that if it can get more wages, it can weather the storm.

Capital thinks that if it can get more profits, it can weather the storm. There is a pathetic faith in what money can do. Money is very useful in normal times, but money has no more value than the people put into it by production, and it can be so misused. It can be so superstitiously worshipped as a substitute for real wealth as to destroy its value altogether.

The idea persists that there exists an essential conflict between industry and the farm. There is no such conflict. It is nonsense to say that because the cities are overcrowded everybody ought to go back to the farm. If everybody did so farming would soon decline as a satisfactory occupation. It is not more sensible for everyone to flock to the manufacturing towns. If the farms be deserted, of what use are manufacturers? A reciprocity can exist between farming and manufacturing. The manufacturer can give the farmer what he needs to be a good farmer, and the farmer and other producers of raw materials can give the manufacturer what he needs to be a good manufacturer. Then with transportation as a messenger, we shall have a stable and a sound system built on service. If we live in smaller communities where the tension of living is not so high, and where the products of the fields and gardens can be had without the interference of so many profiteers, there will be little poverty or unrest.

Look at this whole matter of seasonal work. Take building as an example of a seasonal trade. What a waste of power it is to allow builders to hibernate through the winter, waiting for the building season to come around!

And what an equal waste of skill it is to force experienced artisans who have gone into factories to escape the loss of the winter season to stay in the factory jobs through the building season because they are afraid they may not get their factory places back in the winter. What a waste this all-year system has been! If the farmer could get away from the shop to till his farm in the planting, growing, and harvesting seasons (they are only a small part of the year, after all), and if the builder could get away from the shop to ply his useful trade in its season, how much better they would be, and how much more smoothly the world would proceed.

Suppose we all moved outdoors every spring and summer and lived the wholesome life of the outdoors for three or four months! We could not have “slack times.”

The farm has its dull season. That is the time for the farmer to come into the factory and help produce the things he needs to till the farm.

The factory also has its dull season. That is the time for the workmen to go out to the land to help produce food. Thus we might take the slack out of work and restore the balance between the artificial and the natural.

But not the least benefit would be the more balanced view of life we should thus obtain. The mixing of the arts is not only beneficial in a material way, but it makes for breadth of mind and fairness of judgment.

A great deal of our unrest to-day is the result of narrow, prejudiced judgment. If our work were more diversified, if we saw more sides of life, if we saw how necessary was one factor to another, we should be more balanced. Every man is better for a period of work under the open sky.

It is not at all impossible. What is desirable and right is never impossible. It would only mean a little teamwork—a little less attention to greedy ambition and a little more attention to life.

Those who are rich find it desirable to go away for three or four months a year and dawdle in idleness around some fancy winter or summer resort.

The rank and file of the American people would not waste their time that way even if they could. But they would provide the teamwork necessary for an outdoor, seasonal employment.

It is hardly possible to doubt that much of the unrest we see about us is the result of unnatural modes of life. Men who do the same thing continuously the year around and are shut away from the health of the sun and the spaciousness of the great out of doors are hardly to be blamed if they see matters in a distorted light. And that applies equally to the capitalist and the worker.

What is there in life that should hamper normal and wholesome modes of living? And what is there in industry incompatible with all the arts receiving in their turn the attention of those qualified to serve in them? It may be objected that if the forces of industry were withdrawn from the shops every summer it would impede production. But we must look at the matter from a universal point of view. We must consider the increased energy of the industrial forces after three or four months in outdoor work. We must also consider the effect on the cost of living which would result from a general return to the fields.

We have, as I indicated in a previous chapter, been working toward this combination of farm and factory and with entirely satisfactory results.

At Northville, not far from Detroit, we have a little factory making valves. It is a little factory, but it makes a great many valves. Both the management and the mechanism of the plant are comparatively simple because it makes but one thing. We do not have to search for skilled employees. The skill is in the machine. The people of the countryside can work in the plant part of the time and on the farm part of the time, for mechanical farming is not very laborious. The plant power is derived from water.

Another plant on a somewhat larger scale is in building at Flat Rock, about fifteen miles from Detroit. We have dammed the river. The dam also serves as a bridge for the Detroit, Toledo & Ironton Railway, which was in need of a new bridge at that point, and a road for the public—all in one construction. We are going to make our glass at this point. The damming of the river gives sufficient water for the floating to us of most of our raw material. It also gives us our power through a hydroelectric plant. And, being well out in the midst of the farming country, there can be no possibility of crowding or any of the ills incident to too great a concentration of population. The men will have plots of ground or farms as well as their jobs in the factory, and these can be scattered over fifteen or twenty miles surrounding—for of course nowadays the workingman can come to the shop in an automobile. There we shall have the combination of agriculture and industrialism and the entire absence of all the evils of concentration.

The belief that an industrial country has to concentrate its industries is not, in my opinion, well-founded. That is only a stage in industrial development. As we learn more about manufacturing and learn to make articles with interchangeable parts, then those parts can be made under the best possible conditions. And these best possible conditions, as far as the employees are concerned, are also the best possible conditions from the manufacturing standpoint. One could not put a great plant on a little stream. One can put a small plant on a little stream, and the combination of little plants, each making a single part, will make the whole cheaper than a vast factory would. There are exceptions, as where casting has to be done. In such case, as at River Rouge, we want to combine the making of the metal and the casting of it and also we want to use all of the waste power. This