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KE 1^4-5;^

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FORD IDEALS

Being a Selection from

''Mr. Ford's Page"

in
The Dearborn Independent

Published by

The Dearborn Publishing Company

Dearborn, Michigan
1922

KE ILH-5P-

I HARVARD
I UNIVtRSlTY
LIBRARY

Preface

FROM the first number of The Dearborn Independ-
ent under the presidency of Henry Ford, there has
been presented weekly a department entitled "Mr.
Ford's Page" in which it is sought to offer the ideas
of Mr. Ford upon various questions.

This page has enjoyed a very wide reading both at
home and abroad and has been frequently reproduced
in many languages and in many parts of the world.
Its soundness and substantiality, its dependence upon
the force of ideas rather than exuberance of statement,
no doubt account in large measure for the number
of friends it has made.

The present selection for preservation in a volume
has been occaisioned by the demand of readers of The
Dearborn Independent not only for back copies of
certain numbers of "Mr. Ford's Page," but also the
very wide request for the **page" in book form. This
is the sole reason for the present volume's existence.
The selection has been made upon the principle of
popularity as expressed by our readers, and also upon
the principle of diversity, that the reader may have a
variety of subjects to consider. A glance at the table
of contents will indicate the wide range which the
discussions cover.

One characteristic of the page will be immediately
apparent to the reader, namely, that independence of
thought has not brought with it fantastic angles or
impossible counsels. It is riot independence that makes
for unsoundness ; a lack of independence is the fruit-
ful cause of unsoundness because it seeks to square
life with what is wrong to begin with. Independence
is always giving life a chance to get upon a right basis.
It is a constant renewal, a constant liberation from the
human tendency to warpedness. Common sense is
the most dynamic and independent force on the planet.

The question has often been asked what part Mr.
I^'ord personally takes in the preparation of "Mr.

PREFACE

Ford's Page/' Every essential part. He supplies the
ideas. Very often he supplies the words in which his
ideas are set forth. He does not manipulate the type-
writer nor does he occupy himself with the detail of
seeing the copy through the press, but the entire in-
spiration, the point of view, the resistless analysis, the
ripeness of judgment, are his. Without him there
would be no "Mr. Ford's Page."

This volume is sent out in the confidence that it
represents a fair selection of the material that has
appeared up to this time.

February, 1922.

Contents

Opposite Views— And Both Right! 9

'*No Help Wanted"— An Untrue Sign 13

Managers Must Share the Blame 17

On Taking Sides 21

Wrong Ripens and Rots — a. Fact Worth Considering 25

Poisons That Creep Into Industry 29

Be Very Careful of Success 33

Who Is the Real ''Owner"? 37

"Swelled Head" in Business 41
Regarding Charity, Welfare Work and Olher Matters 45

Where High Wages Begin 49

The Army Is Never "Laid Off" 55

Prevention Is Better Than Sympathy 61

Success Plays No Favorites 67

Personal Relations — Their Importance for Life 74

Cultivate Your Own Market 81

"Labor and Capital" Are False Terms 87

The Right of a Man to His Work 94

The Fear of Change 99

How Much Domestic Trouble Is Preventable? 106

Farming — the Food-Raising Industry ' 113

"A Few Strong Instincts and a Few Plain Rules" 119.

.-The Farmer — Nature's Partner 124

Limitations Are Guide Posts, Not Barriers 129

All Men Are Created Needful 134

Can You Make Your Job Bigger? 139

A Nation of Pioneer Blood 144

Human Nature and the Social System 149

. The Modern City — A Pestiferous Growth 154

Catching the Boss's Eye 159

Patriotism an Inclusive Emotion 164

False "Success Philosophy" 169

Competition and Co-operation 174

Land Is the Basic Fact 179

Ideals Versus Ideas 184

What Is Education — Cargo or Motive Power? 189

When in Doubt — Raise Wages! 194

Humanity Is Our Basic Wealth 199

Managers and Men Are Partners 204

New Paths to Fame 209

Let Every Man Think for Himself 214

Universal Training — Yes, for Usefulness 219

Strike Profiteers Are the Cause of Strikes 224

Unrest Is Not Disorder 229
Employment Is Greater Than "Employer" or "Employe" 234

CONTENTS

Profit and Cost in a Day's Work 239

Who Is the Producer? 244

All Are Members of the Consuming Class 249

Every Man Needs Elbow Room 253

The Need oi Social Blueprints 257

Party Politics 261

Honest and Dishonest Propaganda 265

Grow Along With the Business 269

Revolutions Not Promoters of Progress 273

The Obstructionist 277

Would the Farmers Strike? 281

Who Is Their Boss ? 285

Tl\e American Shop 289

The Small Town 293

Man's Laws and Nature's Law 297

The Fact Shortage 301

Should Married Women Work? 305

The Story of Jones 309

What It Costs for War 313

Paying for Greed's Mistakes 317

Administration Versus Government 321

Loyalty Has Two Sides 325

What Shall Prevent War? , 329

The County Fair ZZZ

The Old Ways Were Good ZZ1

It Is Imperfect— But It Works 341

A New Year 345

How It Will Be Solved 349

Lining Up on Your Own Side 353

Change Is Not Always Progress 357

In Bondage to a Reputation 361

Depression, First Step Back to Normalcy 365

Flattery Used as Bribery 369

Inflated Prosperity the Real "Bad Times" TPZ

Choosing and Being Chosen 377

Can You Stand Friction? 381

If You're Settled You're Sagging 385

When Not to Borrow Money 389

Tariff — Taxes — Transportation 393

Illusions Are Not Faith 397

What Makes Immigration a "Problem"? 401

The Three Foundation Arts 405

A Few Remarks on Education 409

Common Life Is Standard and Best 413

Discouraging People From Thinking 417

Getting Rid of Fear and Failure 421

"The Exodus From the Cities 425

Use Is Better Than Economy 429

Interest Robbery in Bonus Loan 433

On Being Fit for the New Era 437

Much Nonsense in Titles 441

Developing Talent in a Small Community 445

Parties Are Born, Not Made 449

Opposite Views — And
Both Right! .

MOST of the things which people say they see, are
actually seen. There is no imagination about it.
The pessimist who sees things going to pieces, is not
deluded; he is correctly reporting what he actually
sees. The optimist who sees things soaring up to the
height of perfection is an equally good reporter — he
is not fooling us or himself — he sees what he says
he sees.

But the trouble is, too many people are doing all
their seeing within too narrow limits, and while their
reports of what they see are true, they are not com-
prehensive. There is nothing more likely to be mis-
leading than a field of vision so narrow as to leave out
part of the points. It is like seeing the elephant so
limitedly as to report only his tail or tusks. The
animal appears quite differently in a comprehensive
view.

Now, all this has an important application to
the state of mind in which many people find themselves
today. There are perhaps more minds focused on
economic problems than ever before, more people
thinking, or perhaps it is more truthful to say they
are wondering, about the conditions which have be-
fallen human affairs.

It is probably true that though we are all looking
and wondering, we do not see very much as yet; but
it is still a mighty fact that the minds of the people
are focused on their affairs. Formerly we left it all
to the government or destiny; but now the govern-
ments have failed us, and destiny is not a thing to take
without co-operation. And there is a million-fold
more chance of seeing when we are looking than when
we are not. That is the attitude of people today ; they
are looking, and presently they will see.

Some people see certain things going to pieces.

FORD IDEALS

They see correctly.' Certain' established customs,
methods, processes, institutions, traditions we have
been accustomed to lean upon, are undoubtedly going
to pieces, and they are going to pieces irrecoverably
too.

It is that last element — ^the irrecoverability — ^that
strikes fear to many people. They thought that "nor-
malcy" meant the recovery of the old things, the re-
establishment of the old way, the restoration of the
old habitual leaning-posts. Most people thought of
"normalcy" in that way — as yesterday come back.
But yesterday is not coming back.

The old world is dead, dead, dead. It is beyond
recovery. God himself will not restore it, and Satan
cannot.

That is the a b c of the new alphabet, namely, the
old world is dead. Not dying, but dead. The things
you see going to pieces are its funeral, its decay.

If people would only learn this a b c, it would
save them from a great deal of confusion.

But the point is this : those who say that everything
they see is going to pieces, are telling the truth, because
their eyes are focused on the things which belonged
to the old era. The old era is dead, and is being
buried bit by bit. Every day another fragment of
it falls into dust.

Now, if that is all that you see — and it will be all
that you see if it is all that you look for — no wonder
you have the feeling that everything is going to pieces.

But if you turn around and see what is coming
swiftly up behind your back, as you gaze apprehen-
sively into the past, you will get the other half of the
field of vision: you will see the things that are to be.

Perhaps you have seen the oak take color in com-
pany with other trees in the autumn. Then came the
rains, and the other trees let go their leaves; not so
the oak, only a few did he let fall. Then came the
winds, and the branches of the other trees were left
ragged ; but the oak held most of his leafage. Then
came the frost, and all the trees were stripped clean
and bare of leaves; but the oak leaves shriveled a bit
and took on the tone of old Cordovan leather, but for
the most part clung to the parent boughs. They are

OPPOSITE VIEWS — AND BOTH RIGHT !

a cheering sight in winter, those shriveled leaves that
defied the frosts of autumn ; they are a cheering sight
as they defy the winter's snow and blast. Then win-
ter begins to wane, and spring is a promise in the
air, and green things begin to appear, but still the oak
holds tenaciously to last year's foliage. A little later
and the leaves begin to fall — in spring. If you had
not looked around upon the earth to see what else
was transpiring there, if you did not know what com-
pensating work was being done, you might well think
that at last every leaf in the world was about to go.

But this is the fact : the leaves that stayed longest,
that we had learned to associate with stability — ^those
are the leaves that fall before the new leaves appear.

In the social order, is it not our seemingly most
strongly established things that are beginning to
flutter down? Are not the most solidly essential
services the ones that are now most under doom?
Certainly, as anyone who focuses his vision only on
the passing things will tell you. It is the collapse of
the most dominant methods and institutions that alarms
most people. Well, it need not alarm anyone. When
the leaves of the strongest tree fall, spring is here.
If you will widen your field of vision you will soon
see other things springing up to take the place of that
which is passing.

So, you have a choice. You can sit and look at the
fading out of all that made the old "norrnalcy" and
you can wail about calamity to come ; or you can stand
up and watch the new era come in, looking for your
place in its ranks. If you do the latter, you will see
an entirely different state of facts. It will not be
imagination, or mental suggestion, or this foolish
mysticism of pretending things are all right whether
they are or not; it will be fact — ^the thing is true, the
new era IS here.

A business man in a small town said it all very
well the other day. Said he : "I just try to accustom
myself to the thought that I have waked up in a new
world. I don't know just what kind of world it is
going to be, but I know it is my duty to keep on the
watch to find out so that I may be ready for it. I
know there is going to be a new way of salesmanship,

FORD IDEALS

and I am trying to find out what it is. I know I shall
have to keep wider awake, and I am trying to find
out on what lines. I am in a new world and I have
got to learn about it all over again. The only things
that have carried across from the old world into the
new are Service and Honesty — but you can drop the
'Honesty' and save time, for when you say 'Service'
you say it all."

That is the attitude ! That man was awake to the
fact that the new era is here ; he wanted to be alert in
all his senses when it tried to teach him something. He
says he hasn't learned much yet, but he has learned the
basic thingi — without which he could not learn any-
thing at all — he has learned that the world is new.
If that plain fact could be dinned into people's heads
and hearts, so that even without understanding it com-
pletely, it could become the time-beat of their thinking,
a great deal would have been accomplished.

Certainly many things are going to pieces. They
ought to ! And if you look at them long enough you
may get ,the impression that everything is going to
pieces. You should turn around and look the other
way^ and see the New Era marching up the side of
the hill. Then you will see that although the ruin of
all our own stupid, inefficient, unjust and unproductive
methods is unavoidable and good, the real cause of
their disappearance is the New Way which is pushing
them out.

While you are looking, be sure and see it all.

^'No Help Wanted"
An Untrue Sign

THERE are good signs and bad signs, but the most
unwelcome and untruthful sign of all is that which
sometimes hangs in the windows of business places —
"No Help Wanted." Or, perhaps, it is not untruthful ;
perhaps it is stating the exact truth, in which case it
is much worse. It is one of those straws which in-
dicate a certain mental current which, followed far
enough, tips the voyager over destructive falls and
into roaring abysses.

Regard the world from the point of view of the
No Help Wanted" sign and you get a few instructive
glimpses for both employers and employes.

Is it not plain fact that in periods when the "No
Help Wanted" sign is most frequently displayed, that
is just the time when the most "Help Wanted" con-
ditions appear? It is rather strange, but it is true —
help is never so much needed as when the signs state
that it is not wanted.

What does the man looking for a job want? —
he wants help. It is true, of course, to a certain ex-
tent, that he wants to give help also, but things have
become so turned around in this world that it will be
generally agreed by everybody that a man seeking a
job is seeking help. He is willing to pay for the help
with the service he can render, but the main object
is to get the help he needs.

Now, in these times, when in so many places the
"No Help Wanted" signs are seen, when the pressure
of a mismanaged world has dislocated all normal in-
dustrial operations, just what does that sign mean?
Does it really mean that no help is wanted? Does it
mean that no help is needed? Is there any railroad
today that can hang out the "No Help Wanted" sign
and really intend the deepest significance of that state-
ment? Is there any government that can say "No

FORD IDEALS

Help Wanted"? Is there any condition whatever on
the earth today that justifies that sign I

Every one of these is in the direst need of help.

The "No Help Wanted" sign is a limited state-
ment addressed only to the job seeker, and to him it
does not mean "No Help Wanted" at all; it means
"We Have No Help To Give You."

If you would just abbreviate the sign to read "No
Help," as a general description of the slough in which
the world finds itself ; and then if you would put up
another sign — "Have You Any Help to Offer?" as a
general description of the need of the world, you
would go far toward providing honesty in signs.

"Help Wanted" will always be the normal condi-
tion of a world of progressive beings, but the dif-
ference between that normal condition and the pres-
ent would be the fact that the needed help would
normally be obtainable. Everything seems to need
help now, but it is not obtainable.

There is doubtless a feeling of resentment in some
breasts when you say that the man Ipoking for a job
is really looking for help. In recent years we have
been reared on a feeling that we have certain "rights"
which we ought to "demand." Yes, we have rights,
but "demanding" doesn't procure them. Our very
rights are given us by the help of others. One of
our rights is security of life and liberty-^-never having
lived in a society where men are not sure of either of
these, we do not vividly appreciate these rights. But
we could not enjoy them were it not for the help of
others in preserving them for us.

The same way with security of property. Some
people sneer at that, too. Well, they wouldn't sneer
at it if they knew what the absence of it would mean.
Demagogues talked a long time about "putting prop-
erty rights above human rights," but it is very notice-
able that in Russia when they abolished property
rights, they abolished human rights also. When you
do not respect the things that a man has gathered
around him by his own labor for the use of his family,
you don't respect his right to life. Robbery (a prop-
erty crime) and murder (a crime against life) go to-
gether, whether in the criminal records of our cities,

"no help wanted"— an untrue sign

or in the "social revolutions" overseas. There is a
vital link between property and life, just as there is
between bread and life: bread is property; and the
right to bread is property, also.

So, we all have to have help, even in the most nor-
mal times. When the business concern places the
sign "Help Wanted" in its doorway, meaning that it
needs more employes, it is seeking help just the same
as the man who is looking for a job. The employer
confesses that he cannot live without help, and the
employe confesses the same thing; it is true of all of
us. We had better recognize it and cease our profit-
less flirting with fine-sounding fallacies which have
collapsed wherever and whenever the slightest pres-
sure of testing has been put on them.

The so-called government of Russia proclaimed
all the rights, real and imaginary, in the category of
wild anarchy. It has failed even to procure the right
of enough to eat. It was quite natural that Sovietism
should be a political failure as at present operated,
but why could not the Soviets raise wheat? All that
Russia needed was bread. But even the simple laws
of seedtime and harvest were ignored by the so-called
"makers of the new world." Men who cannot feed
themselves are thereby dethroned from the place of
leadership.

We need "direct action" of a constructive sort.
The thing needed now is not theory, but something
that hioves.

Suppose you are a man out of a job. You see a
shop which says "No Help Wanted" and you know,
of course, that the sign means that the shop needs
help before it can give any. Have you an idea that
will start another wheel turning? Have you any
help to give that shop? Can you open any channel
for the outflow of its product? Can you serve as an
ignition point in its organization?

The man in the front office is tied ,in a knot by
business conditions — can you untie him and set him
going again?. He is smothered in his own habit of
doing things — can you show him a way to shake
loose and get into action again?

The man who brings help with him is always wel-

15 ^

FORD IDEALS

come. The world wants help. It needs it. It will
reward the man who brings it — whether to a little
broom-shop in the alley, or the biggest business in
the world.

If you can set the smallest business going, you
have done something at which the biggest men often
fail.

One poiat to consider is this: help differs with
the need. A year or two ago the world asked only
the kind of help which anybody could give, the help
of energy and labor to keep it moving in the way it
was then going. The kind of help then asked was
virtually as easy as pushing business down hill.

But conditions have changed. Business arrived at
the foot of the hill in due time. And now it needs a
different kind of help.

There are, of course, thousands of theories, mil-
lions of ideas. But what counts now is help to get up
hill again. As a matter of fact, the world is through
with theories. The world has starved on the best
theories ever devised. What it asks is an object les-
son in something actually going. If a man can start
even a wheel-barrow, or dirt cart, he will take rank
among the people whom the world is waiting for, the
helpers that the world must haver

If a man can start himself going, even; if he can
swing out of his rut and so organize his efforts to
start going and keep going at something which sup-
ports himself and renders an equivalent to others, he
has shown himself to be .of the quality of world-
helpers.

Great hosts are out asking for help. If they could
start things for themselves by doing needed things
they never thought of before, it would send such an
impulse of energetic self-reliance through society, that
the tide would turn ; for the tide is tumable.

Managers Must Share the

Blame

THE government will not be in a position to ad-
vocate economy and efficiency in private business
until it has demonstrated these qualities in public
business. And the government will scarcely demon-
strate these qualities until it gets the idea that economy
is more than the cut-off of expenditure. Economy
has frequently nothing whatever to do with the amoimt
of money being spent, but with the wisdom used in
spending it. The expensiveness of government is due
to its inefficiency, and that cannot be cured by "saving
money." It can only be done by reorganization. 'And,
as reorganization frequently means the cutting out of
useless jobs, it is easy to understand how, in politics,
very little of it is undertaken.

Cutting out jobs has an inhuman sound and it can
be used with immense effect in rousing the prejudices
of thoughtless people. If formerly it required ten men
to do a piece of work, and a reorganization of ef-
ficiency enabled that same work to be. done by nine
men, resulting in a decrease of one-tenth in the cost
to the public, there is danger of the habitual howlers
setting up a cry :

"Yes, but what about the tenth man who lost his
job? And what about the other nine men who must
work harder to make up the tenth man's work ?"

The answers are, of course, quite simple and easily
understood by anyone who will use his mind.

In the first place, the fact that the work' is now
being done by nine men does not imply that the tenth
man is unemployed. He is merely not employed on
that work, and the public is not unnecessarily carrying
the burden of his support by paying more than it ought
on that work — for after all, it is the public that pays !

An industrial concern that is wide enough awake
to reorganize for efficiency, and honest enough with

FORD IDEALS

the public to charge it necessary costs and no more, is
usually such an enterprising concern that it has plenty
of jobs at which to employ the tenth man. It is bound
to grow, and growth means more jobs. A well-man-
aged concern that is always seeking to relieve the labor
cost to the public is certain \o employ more men than
the concern that loafs along and makes the public pay
the cost of its mismanagement.

That, then, is a point worth remembering; the
tenth man was an unnecessary cost on that certain
commodity. The ultimate consumer was paying him.
But, the fact that he was unnecessary on that par-
ticular job does not mean that he is unnecessary in
the work of the world, or even in the work of his
particular shop. It is a matter of seeing that produc-
tion costs no more than it should, and that the public
is not loaded with costs which good management can
avoid.

The public pays for all mismanagement. More
than half the trouble with the world today is the
"soldiering" and dilution and cheapness and ineffi-
ciency for which the people are paying their good
money. Wherever two men are being paid for what
one can do, the people are paying double what they
ought.

This should be ninderstood. There is a feeling
that employers use efficiency to increase their personal
profits. The surplus of an industrial enterprise is
what insures it, keeps it going. Efficiency is not the
act of taking a man's wages from him and putting it
in the money box; efficiency is seeing that the public
is not being charged two prices for one service.

Human sympathy is a fine and potent power. But
if the public knew how much of its burden is due to
the unnecessarily heaped-up cost on some of its daily
commodities, they would be able to view this question
in another light. The tenth man, and the ninth man,
and the eighth man too, if possible, should be lifted
oflf the load which the people bear. As to the feeling
that in such efficiency those who are left must work
beyond what they ought, this should be considered :
the test of good management is that it makes work
easier, not harder. Efficiency that is obtained by

MANAGERS MUST SHARE THE BLAME

loading an extra burden on men already doing a full
day's work, is not efficiency. The difference must be
made up out of the brains of the managers. It is not
a question of eight men, or nine men doing ten men's
work ; it is a question of good management finding
ways of doing the same work with the lesser number,
the difference being in the improvement of the method
used. One man now moves a casting which twenty
men formerly strained - themselves to lift. The one
man now only presses a button. The difference is in
the methods used, not in the greater burden heaped on
the one man. In doing the work of 20 men he now
does less than any one of the 20 formerly did.

There is far too much shortsightedness and false
feeling about it. This is the result of ignorance and
thoughtlessness. People don't realize that the indus-
trial system has no magic about it, and that they them-
selves sustain it. When its wastefulness and care-
lessness and laziness pile up, then everything stops,
and the people wonder why!

This readjustment should not be the task of the
managers of industry alone; the workiiigman himself
ought to bear a part in it. The workingman who has
intelligence and foresight would be showing great
efficiency in the management of his private affairs if
he- would shun the job where he felt he was a sort of
"fifth wheel to the coach."

Labor can do half of this job of readjustment by
simply realizing that a day's work means more than
merely being "on duty" at the shop for the required
number of hours. It means- giving an equivalent in
service for the wage drawn. And when that equivalent
is tampered with either way — when the man gives
more than he receives, or receives more than he gives
— it is not long before serious dislocation will be mani-
fest. Extend that condition throughout the country,
and you have a complete upset of business. All that in-
dustrial difficulty means is the destruction of basic
equivalents in the shop.

Management must share the blame with labor.
Management was lazy too ; management found it easier
to hire an additional 500 men than so to improve its
methods that 100 men of the old force could be re-

FORD IDEALS

leased to other work. The public was paying, and
business was booming, and management didn't care a
pin. It was no different in the office than it was in
the shop. The law of equivalents was broken just as
much by managers as by workmen.

And the process of reduction should go on among
managers just as much as elsewhere. There are too
many jobs up in the front office — and that is where
the real trouble^starts. Reorganization for efficiency
really begins where all the inefficiency came from, in
the front office.

As a matter of abstract fact, everybody agrees with
the principle here stated. If we have 100 men tied
up on jobs that can be done by 75, it is not only an
inefficient use of human effort, it is also an unfair
charge against • the public which must pay for the
extra 25. The public has been doing this on every
commodity it has used, and it has swamped the public.
Everybody grants that.

The matter of jobs is easily taken care of. There
are thousands of things waiting to be done in the
world. There is productive work waiting for more
man-power than the world possesses. Jobs that are
unnecessary to production are not jobs. They are
cancers eating into the body of the people's earnings.
Cutting them out is curative.

We need more of it. It is the only way we can
insure everybody going back to work.

On Taking Sides

THE human race is not a brotherhood as yet. It
may become so at some future time, but it is not
so now. For one thing, there is no sentiment of
brotherhood throughout the world. For another thing,
there is a very strong and well-estabHshed sentiment
of strangerhood, which education, civiHzation, con-
tact and understanding have been powerless, to di-
minish.

We so commonly accept as possible facts, the
things that we wish to be true, that it was once our
habit to say that if the peoples of the world only un-
derstood each other, the reign of perfect amity would
arrive. But there is no lack of suggestion that, in
some cases, the better some of the peoples understand
each other, the more they dislike each other.

It is not so very different in individual matters:
we accept the majority of people because we do not
know them; the majority of those we avoid are the
ones whom we know.

If it be true that there are in the world two or
more opposite and antagonistic elements which can
never be reconciled without doing violence to the very
nature of things, then it follows that until the superior
element arrives at mastery and the inferior element
is disposed of, such a thing as unity is not to be
thought of.

Our present times are times of break-up. Many
people stand aghast at the opening seams which appear
throughout society. There are rips and fissures where
apparently all was cemented into a solid whole. "What
does it all mean?" the people cry in their anxiety. It
simply means that where we thought there was unity,
there was no unity at all — it was all veneer; society
has been "kidding" itself into believing that it could
ignore the profounder principles and secure a super-
ficial sort of unity by the process of back-slapping and

FORD IDEALS

glad-handing and general meaningless chatter about
human unity.

A suspicion of this is always with mankind. "Let
sleeping dogs lie/' is a common proverb, but it does
not describe a secure state of things. If security de-
pends upon our keeping certain dogs asleep, then it
is not security. For sleeping dogs will wake, and then
security will be gone. If dogs awake are dangerous,
the only possible security is in taming them so that
asleep or awake they may be friendly, else remove
them from any possibility of doing harm.

Anyway, no matter what may appeal to us in the
form of theory, the fact is present and indisputable,
that there is in the world a new consciousness of dif-
ferences between groups, and that this consciousness
is most felt and is most manifested in countries which
most profess democracy.. It is a popular manifesta-
tion, that is, it appears among the people, growing up
out of them, not imposed upon them from above or
from without.

It must be very clear to anyone who thinks about
it that the present situation could not have arisen if
the previous situation had been what we supposed it
to be. That is, if everything had been as lovely as
we supposed it to be, if the "sleeping dogs" were really
not dangerous, then what has happened within the
last year could not have occurred. There were sores
left unhealed, there were differences left unsettled,
there were rival claims left undecided. And there
never will be peace until the sores are healed and until
the differences are settled and until the rival claims
are finally and rightly adjudged.

Now, what does this mean, practically? It means
this: there will be division and strife until the natur-
ally and eternally superior thing is acknowledged in
its superiority.

"The survival of the fittest" is more than a term
of science, it is more than a statement reeking with
the sense of universal struggle, it is the declaration
of the method of history and the objective of destiny
— only the fit do survive.

The main difference in human thinking arises with
reference to what constitutes the fitness of the fit.

ON TAKING SIDES

One side says that might makes right, and the other
side says that right makes might. One side says that
the brute will reign, the other side says that the angel
will reign. To common sight it looks as if power
would win, and money, and influence, and force, and
majorities. That is the way flesh-minded men figure
it. But faith-minded men see it differently and more
truly. They see that there is an essential element of
superiority without which money, majorities, force,
influence and prestige are failures already. The flesh-
minded men are always saying that the swiftest wins
the race and the strongest wins the battle. But his-
tory is sufficiently long for us to confirm the truth-
fulness of the faith-minded man's declaration that
"the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the
strong."

But we must not be misled by this term "the sur-
vival of the fittest" into the delusion that the fit sur-
vive by struggle. Not so. If there is a "struggle for
life" it is on the part of those elements which are
already passing away; they struggle to retain their
place. The superior elements of life do not have to
struggle to maintain their place nor to retain their
superiority. Not at all ; their whole strength is to be
what they are; "he that believeth shall not make
haste" ; struggle belongs to the defeated.

All of which has a side light on tolerance. Some
people do not like the word. Nevertheless it stands
for a real elemental fact in our civilization. Tolerance
is possible only to the superior ; the lower elements are
always intolerant. The nearer right a man is, the
more tolerant he is ; his tolerance is in ratio to his im-
mersion in error. Good grows and multiplies of itself
and crowds wrong to the corners; it is wrong that
struggles and fights ; the good does not have to.

What is occurring in the world today is this:
under a false notion that vital differences could be
patched up by a specious attempt at "good fellowship,"
the world has gone along for many years trying to
pretend that nothing mattered much so long as nothing
interfered with our fun or our pursuit of money. It
has been mostly pretense, a rosy cloud of words with-
out meaning.

FORD IDEALS

Well, reality has overtaken us again, as it always
will. There are strains of blood that will not mix,
there are great group ideas and ideals that will never
agree, there are great contrary claims that will never
be reconciled. We have been pretending that it doesn't
matter, but life is teaching us that it does matter; the
differences are rolled back upon the consciousness of
humanity once more, to be dealt with more wisely
than we dealt with it during the miscalled "era of
good feeling," which was only an era of camouflage.

A great deal of mushy sentimentalism has gone
by the board. Some people, mistaking the matter,
say that it is "idealism" that has disappeared. No,
only sentimentalism. Sentimentalism is mushy, and
soft, and polite, and likes a nice book in a cozy corner.
Idealism is willing to fight, and be unpopular, and
rouse nasty language and get its head cracked, if
need be, for the honor of the idea.

In the meantime, let every man be true to his own
position, if he is honestly convinced it is the true one.
And let us give room and liberty for everyone to
profess his own loyalty. The world is breaking up
iiito its component parts. Every man must line up
with the group to which his inmost soul gives its vote.
It is a time of taking sides, and a man must take his
own side. Afterward, when once again the position
is made clear, we may find a better plan of working
and living together in spite of our differences, and yet
without denying them.

Wrong Ripens and Rots — a
Fact Worth Considering

THERE are many good people in the world who
are in great mental distress because they see very
clearly the evils which exist, and because they are
impatient to do away with them. This combination
of clear seeing and impatient spirit is very destructive
of interior peace, and many are running around with
the impression that the rest of the world is wrong
because it takes the matter less anxiously.

Every man who is doing something, knows that
there are thousands of people who have each chosen
another thing that they think he can do. And most of
these thousands are people who are troubled with the
disease just mentioned — clear seeing, complicated
with an impatient spirit. Their home-made prescrip-
tion by which they hope to cure themselves seems to
be a very simple one, namely, to get some one else
started on the line of action which their impatient
spirits dictate.

There is a surprising number of people in the
world who would be immensely relieved if yoi4 — "you
are the one person in this world to do it" — would
simply do the thing they want done, and which they
are sure is the only proper thing to do.

It is a rather difficult matter to deal with, because
most of the activities proposed are good, with a
promise of being useful. But most of them will never
be realized at all, because they will never be done by
one person for all the rest, but rather by all the people
for themselves. And another reason is: the people
to whom the work is given have the habit of looking
around for someone else to do it.

What we overlook is that only people can do
things. It seems simple enough to say, and yet it
is hardly simple enough to understand. Any number
of individuals are buzzing around the world today

FORD IDEAI^S

under the delusion that people are the last element to
be selected, on the theory that you can always get
the people if you can get the money.

Indeed, that is the new process of beginning a
"good work" — induce somebody to give money, and
then, after the money is given, the person who receives
it will undertake to find people to do the human side
of the work; the consequence being that in a short
time you discover that "the work" never had any
human element at all, and that the money which it
certainly had is gone.

One would say offhand: If you see a thing to
be done, go and do it. If you cannot do it all, do
what you can; you cannot take the /fifth step until
you have taken the first four. If you cannot do
anything at all, consider whether the time has come
to do anything. Times grow ripe, like everything else ;
yet many people think they can pick ripe events off
green years; which cannot be done any more than
ripe apples can be picked in months when they are
green. Many reforms are picked green; many pro-
gressive plantings are done, not in mellow soil, but
in the frozen ground. People don't observe the times
and the seasons.

Now, take the evils in the world. They are many,
and perhaps the weightiest burden we have to carry
is the wonderment that they are allowed to exist. But
there they are. Everybody doesn't see them ; but you,
let us say, can see them clearly. Everybody doesn't
realize how these evils are eating into the life of the
people; but you, let us say, see it so clearly that it is
a pain to you.

Now, you can spoil your own life, sour your
friends and bring your very vision into question by
insisting that everyone sees exactly what you see.
They will see it when the time is ripe, but not until
then, and you are very foolish if you fret about it.

There are men working day and night on the
problem of cancer; but as for you, you don't think
much of cancer because it has not come within your
life. And you would possibly resent it very much if
a cancer researcher should continually insist that you
take up an interest in cancer. You would say, "I

WRONG RIPENS AND ROTS — A FACT WORTH CONSIDERING

don't want to. I am not called to consider cancer.
That is your field, not mine." Very well, you would
be right.

Don't you see that with everyone working in his
field, not insisting that the whole world come in also,
much is being done? Every little while reports come
from this field or that of achievements, and you had
not even heard that men were working in those fields.
Yet they are, each doing his work, and when the time
is ripe, up goes the flag and the job is completed.

There are sentries along the frontiers of all our
problems, men and women here and there who are
sometimes lonely, who wonder why they must pace
their beat alone; but we know that where sentries
walk now, the whole army will march soon. Some
people are sentries, to whom it is given to be on watch,
this one on the frontiers of cancer, this one on the
frontiers of financial diseases, this one on the new
boundaries of statesmanship, this one on the limits
of a new order of social life. Sentries all, but never
so foolish as when they insist on calling the whole
army out before the day dawns.

If it is given to a man to see that a certain condi-
tion exists, he is sentry at that point to give the alarm.
Presently at the right time, the time set by the director
of destiny, his work will bear fruit.

"Well, but," the impatient spirit cries, "what about
the evil done in the meantime? We must do some-
thing to prevent that!"

Well, do it !

"But," says the impatient spirit, "I can't do it."
Rightly said; you cannot, neither can anyone else.
You cannot ripen an apple faster than it will ripen,
and you cannot rot it faster than it will rot. These
things appear to be under the law.

The people have the evils they deserve, no more,
no less. By "deserve" one does not mean the judg-
ment which any human being can pass as to desert;
one means that all of us together have the sort of
life that we have made, and we will continue to have
it until we are fit to remake it in better quality.

When people begin to feel the evil; when there
runs through society a new consciousness of the stu-

FORD IDEALS

pidity and the wrong of certain things ; when the false
notes begin to irritate us ; when the heat of indignant
resentment begins to break out in thought and speech
— ^these are the first streaks of the new day, or, to
change the figure, these are the first flushes of color
which begin to show that the fruit is ripening for the
autumn.

What is needed by people who see the evil is a
still dearer sight; they need to see that the evil will
collapse, utterly collapse. And what people of im-
patient spirit need to learn is that they must detach
themselves from the system they despise and turn their
efforts against it.

All of us want to slay the giant with one dramatic
stroke of our sword. As a matter of fact, the giant
usually dies from self -generated poisons.

Whatever the moral judgment of the morally sensi-
tive people is against, that thing is inevitably doomed.
Though it become the social rage and sweep all the
people within the circle of its viciousness, it is never-
theless doomed. Indeed, when you see evil at the
height of its popularity and power, when you see all
who speak against it ridiculed and despised, you may
be very glad — for from that apex the fall is swift and
sure. Never forget that. That is the ripeness of the
times for the fall of the fruit. It falls, it rots, its
pulp fertilizes more wholesome growths.

Poisons That Creep Into

Industry

IT IS a pathetic illusion of the people that perfection
can be found in government or iadustrial organ-
izations. Ceasing to believe in the eternal verities they
transfer their worship to little gods of temporary
fashion, bowing down before each one of them in
turn as if at last the answer to all questions had come.

We have learned a great many things of recent
years, one of which is that there is no perfect wisdom,
foresight or ability. Governments get things done
because they have the power to command power, they
-have unlimited means to ride over all mistakes; some
of their mechanical achievements a*e at a cost that
would be ruinous to even the largest privately con-
trolled means. It is not dishonesty, it is not wflful
waste, it is mere human frailty which even connection
with a government does not cure.

Likewise a great industrial institution. At first
it was a very wonderful thing that large production
could be secured. The very bigness of growing busi-
ness impressed the mind, and the increasing flow of
goods made people believe that the apex of human
daring and ingenuity had been reached. But new
developments proved that mere bigness was not all.
Big production sometimes spelled big waste. And so,,
a new element entered industry — the element which
took the name of "efficiency": the saving of time,
labor, material, money: producing as good an article
at a lower cost, or perhaps a much better article at a
lower cost, and thus permitting the buyer to profit, too.

That was merely the addition of brain to brawn,
the mixing of mind with machinery.

Then came something more: the element of hu-
manity began to thrust itself up through industrial
development, and forward-looking manufacturers and
managers began to consider men. It was natural that

FORD IDEALS

the product should usurp the center of the stage in
its.^time, but it was also natural that the producer
should arrive to share the attention given the product.

This was the beginning of the era of good will in
industry. Employers who were fit for their jobs be-
gan to see that while it was an excellent thing that
the buyers of their products were treated honestly,
there were other people to consider, too — ^the men in
the shop.

Of course, a great deal of nonsense accompanied
the eruption of this new idea. New ideas always have
that handicap. Professional "welfare workers" saw
their opportunity. A great deal of impertinent pa-
ternalism was indulged in. Attempts were made to
model men on office-made standards and to regulate
home life on professional theories, and it did not work
out very well, although it did accomplish some good
and was a hopeful omen. The object of all welfare
work ought to be to make itself unnecessary ; to estab-
lish men in their sense of dependency is most harmful.

But this arrival of the idea of humanity in industry
has always had to reckon with the parasitic nature of
men. It is amazing how many men would like to
regard industries as perennial Christmas trees which
hang with free fruits. No industry has anything but
what is put into it by the men who are in it. What
"the company ought to do" is only what work and
management permit it to do.

It has followed, therefore, that those who looked
for the complete purification of industry by the hu-
manitarian idea, have been disappointed. In the very
best intcntioned industry, if it be of great size, there
are undoubted injustices and perhaps even occasional
brutalities, which do not grow out of the policy of
the industry, but out of the nature of the men en-
gaged in it. It is a matter of observation, and worthy
of much thought, that the treatment accorded the
workers between themselves, the cruelty of man to
man, is beyond that which the least humane manage-
ment would attempt.

A great industry is like a human body. If you
analyze it closely you will find all sorts of disease
germs in it. If you specialize on the individual in-

POISONS THAT CREEP INTO INDUSTRY

justices that may occur within it, you will appear to
have gathered such a mass as spells death to any or*
ganism or organization. Yet, the industry goes on.
Its product is of service to the world. It provides
the means of livelihood to thousands of families. It
fills its place in the world and, in the main, has the
respect and good will of men.

It is undeniable that the disease germs are there.
There are men whose sense of human relations may
be blunted. There are perhaps general methods which
could be improved. There is always the tendency of
men and managers to break up into cliques — "office
politics," "shop politics," as it is called. There are
men who like to gain and keep personal power. There
are men whose very ideas circulate as a poison through
the organization.

And when you segregate these men, these ideas,
these tendencies, you wonder how in the name of
decency the organization survives!

Well, it is just like isolating a disease germ in
the body. There is nothing to be said in favor of the
disease germ. But we have learned that every healthy
body contains disease germs. There is enough disease
in any body to kill it, if resistance should fall below
the requirement of health. The reason that the body
remains healthy even while carrying disease germs is
that the health germs are in the majority. You could
make a very startling report on any body by merely
finding and counting the disease germs within it. But
it would not be a complete report.

An industrial organization is like a human body in
that respect. The poison creeps into it. There are
methods of elimination, of course, but a certain
amount of poison manages to lurk around. And the
only reason for the organization retaining its health
and activity is the existence of the Jiealth germs
which always resist the poison. When resistance lags
or ceases, death comes.

This is an idea which should occupy the mind of
every worker in any industrial concern which has
this antagohism between good ideals and only partial
achievements. In such a case, men tend to one of
two extremes. Either they condemn the whole busi-

FORD IDEALS

ness as one immense hypocrisy living on false esti-
mates, or they totally deny that there is any evil in
the business whatever.

Both are wrong. The evil is there. But evil is to
be resisted, it is to be overcome with good, the poison
is to be drained off. That is the part of all who see
where the wrong is. It is a big mistake so to focus
your eyes that you can see nothing but^ the wrong ; it
is an equally big mistake to close your eyes so that you
cannot see the wrong at all. The evil, if it is there,
is to be recognized and resisted.

And this also is true: unless this warfare against
the poison is kept up, it soon exerts its toxic power
to such an extent as to paralyze all possible resistance.
Some of this poison is in the management ; some of it
is in the shop. It looks much worse when it is found
in men of authority, than when it is found in the rank
and file of the workers. But even officials are not
immune from penalty. Usually they go quickest of
all when they become poison to the organization.

Nobody ought to assume for a moment that be-
cause something is wrong it has got to stay wrong, or
that it is going to stay wrong. They have got to as-
sume that, like a gum boil, when it comes to a head
it is going to burst. When poison becomes so mani-
fest in an organization that the men begin to notice it
and those who really desire the health of the institu-
tion are beginning to feel it keenly, then is the time
when it is just about ready to break.

The only power any wrong can exert over us is to
make us believe that it is here to stay. Expose its
transient character and its sting is drawn.

Be Very Careful of Success

SUCCESS is the enemy. It is the only enemy that
can overcome men who are invincible to failure.
Men who cannot be beaten though they fail a score of
times, men who cannot be discouraged by an army
of difficulties, sometimes go tumbling down as the
result of a little success. More men are failures on
account of success, than on account of failure.

It is very easy to show how this comes to be.

Here is a railroad that has suddenly come to its
senses. It has not done anything very wonderful, it
has merely roused itself out of its loafing. It has not
introduced a single new plan, it has not practiced a
single magical formula, it has simply taken the old,
time-worn system and tightened up the bolts, put in
some grease and compelled it to go ! It has done only
the simplest and most common-sense things. It has
cut out the slack and the loafing and the senseless
waste. It has made cars and locomotives and men
do what they were created for — move !

Now, it is a commentary on the slough into which
we had fallen that when one railroad did that very
simple thing, it made a sensation. That really is a
point to think of. When the simple, common-sense
thing is so unusual as to cause a sensation, it is proof
that common sense is not being used very extensively,
else people would be more familiar with it.

But with all the buzz and talk, there comes another
element, that most people would not look for. Every
man down the line knows that the railroad is doing
its work better than ever before, that a new spirit and
a new alertness have come into the work, that clumsy
duplication and the necessity for loafing have been
cut out. And every man naturally feels better about
it. Anyone who tells you that a man prefers the dog's
life of loafing to the real life of going after something
and getting it done, does not know men.

Besides that, the common-sense thing is so unusual

FORD IDEALS

that it causes a great deal of outside talk. Common
sense in business administration appears to be so un-
usual that it is "news." And thus the men on the
railroad know that the world is talking about the big
improvement they have made in railroad operation.

They make clippings of the papers and magazines.
They take a personal satisfaction (which is right and
proper) in all the praise that is given. They enjoy
it thoroughly.

But all the time they are unconscious of what this
praise, and all this credit for success, is doing to them.
The most common mistake of all is the belief that when
people begin to buzz, it is a sign that something has
been definitely and finally accomplished, that success
has been won. We are such* simple creatures that
we imagine the race is run the moment the cheers
are heard.

Now, in the illustrative case of the railroad which
we are using, it is very easy to see4iow praise and the
sense of success works upon the minds and energies
of men.

If the manager has kept, his head at all, he knows
that though much has been done in lifting the old
system out of its rut, it is not to be compared with
what is yet to be done. And just there is one of the
diiTerences that mark men : you find one type of men
standing still, complacently enjoying the little good
work they have already done, smiling over it, receiving
congratulations upon it, simply sucking it dry of all
that can minister to their sense of pride and personal
satisfaction.

If the manager is of that type, he has reached the
end of his achievement ; he is through, so far as mak-
ing progress is concerned. The man who thinks he
has done something, hasn't many more things to do.

But there is the other type of manager who is so
busy with the things yet to be done that he cannot
stop to enthuse over what has already been done. His
is a long-range program. What he has done he re-
gards as a beginning — maybe a mighty good beginning,
but only a beginning after all. His eye is far ahead
on plans yet to be realized, new ideas yet to be intro-
duced. He spends no time congratulating himself. Of

BE VERY CAREFUL OF SUCCESS

course, he misses a lot of the soft enjoyment of the
other type; he misses^ lot of that enervation which
comes from basking in praise and adulation; he seems
rather callous to public opinion — ^but all that is because
he has not yet done the thing for which he will perhaps
deserve praise.

Now, this man sees defects that the satisfied crowd
of men don't see. He sends for his railroaders, and
points out what is wrong. He brings them to book
on this dereliction of duty or that failure of alertness.
He talks to them in a tone which reveals none of the
self-satisfaction which they supposed 'was the con-
stant atmosphere of the inside office — ^satisfaction
with all the praise and buzzing which was going
around.

"Why, boss," they seem to say, "what difference
does a little thing like that make? See how well we
are doing. Why, here is a newspaper clipping which
says . . . .," and they go down into their pocketbooks
for the cherished bit of paper.

Don't you see what the air of success does? Don't
you see how it has seduced these men? Don't you
see that after fighting failure through, they are now
ready to surrender to a little success ?

Success is the enemy. It brings those elements
with it that minister to our softness. There are more
people desiring to enjoy life than to contribute some-
thing to life. A man wants recognition and reward ;
we say these are natural desires, and so they are.
But when a man gains recognition, the temptation is
very great to stop and enjoy the recognition. And
when he gains reward the temptation is to think that
he has "arrived." Who can count the number of the
men who have been halted and beaten by. recognition
and reward!

Make your program so long and so hard that the
.people who praise you will always seem to you to be
talking about something very trivial in comparison
with what you are really trying to do.

If success comes you will have to work twice as
hard to keep on top of it ; once it gets on top of you,
then success becomes your failure.

People at large will never be convinced of this, of

FORD IDEALS

course, and it is not necessary that th^y should. It
is only when they apprpach the perilous place of
popular approval that they must be sternly warned.

The people transfer their own feelings to the
successful person, and then think of his success under
those terms. They see the statesmen carried aloft,
the ruler exalted, the man of achievement moving
along to the plaudits of the people. And they think
how lovely, how enjoyable, how perfectly satisfactory
such a position must be. And so the attainment of
that loveliness and enjoyaWeness and satisfaction be-
comes their idea of success. If they only knew it,
the man so honored was probably fuming because he
was wasting his time to make a public holiday — ^he
wanted to get back to his work.

This much is certain: had the man who was thus
honored behaved himself so unseemly as to indicate
that he thought he deserved all that adulation, had he
shown that success was to him what the people thought
it was, they would have dethroned him.

It is all a very strange game, and the man who is
deceived thereby is lost. Better have a job too big
for popular praise, so big that you can get a good
star! on it before the cheer-squad can get its first in-
telligent glimmerings of what you are trying to do.
Then you will be free to work. And being free to work
you will have achieved the truest success and satis-
faction.

Who Is the Real "Owner"?

THE question of ownership is not so acute as it
was. Not long ago therejvas a theory abroad that
if so-called "private ownership" could be abolished
and "public ownership" set up, then all our troubles
would cease. It has been tried in various ways, on a
huge scale as in Russia, on a small scale as in some
American cities. The net result so far is this : if you
propound a theory that the cook should be driven out
of the kitchen and that the whole boarding house
personnel should be brought into the kitchen to super-
intend the cooking of the steak, you might be for-
tunate enough to find a boarding house that would try
out your theory. But from the standpoint of a well-
cooked steak it is only a matter of time when you are
going to call the cook back.

The question of ownership will be settled when it
ceases to be acute ; that is, it will settle itself. What
the world is restless about is the recognition of cer-
tain ideas, not the general position of the people. Ideas
have a hard time being born, and restlessness is part
of the general operation. Once born, however, the
effect is rather greater easiness of miijd than a strong
overturning of the fundamentals of life.
' A man owns what is given him in his personality
and what he earns by his labor — that, and nothing
eke. If a man has character, he owns it; no one can
claim a share in it. If he owns self-respect and the
respect of his neighbors, it is his, absolutely his. If
he has the gift of foresight, if he has the faculty of
insight, if he has the power to plan and to manage and
execute, if he has the qualities of a leader — these are
all his own. They are his in a personal, private sense.
The mind and the. eye are greater reapejs, and what
they reap cannot be taken from them.

But what else is his ? What can he absolutely own
in the physical realm? By common consent he can
own all that he needs for the living of his life — if he

FORD IDEALS

earns it. Civilized mankind recognizes the investment
of a man's soul and body into his home and all the
material requirements of his life. That is what we
mean by "the sacred right of property" — property is
sacred by reason of the thought and sweat and blood
that human beings have put into it. When you take
that from a man, you take his life. Where property is
not respected, life is not respected.

But what about all this other wealth — ^this great
expansion of industrial wealth that we see all around
us? This is what people mean when they talk about
"ownership."

Well, take any big concern you may happen to
think about. Who made it what it is? Everybody
who had a hand in it. The man whose idea inspired
it. The men he called in to help him. The public
whose patronage supported the business. They all
made it. They are the only ones who own it because
they are using it.

Well, but what about the "millions" that the busi-
ness has made? Let us see where those millions are.
There are "millions" in the buildings, "millions" in
the machinery, "millions" in the outlying sources of
supply, "millions" in railroads and tank cars, "mil-
lions" in material, "millions" in goods on the market.

Now, no one can put those "millions" in his pocket
when he goes home at night. No one "owns" those
"millions." vThey are out in use by hundreds of
thousands of people all the time. If tomorrow the
world should be turned upside down and another
"class" should take control of business, it would have
to leave the "millions" right where they are — else there
would be no service nor business.

That was the crude, childish thing that occurred in
Russia. They rushed in and took those "millions"
out and then wondered why they could no longer pro-
duce their daily bread.

There is a great deal of misunderstanding about
wealth. Wealth is not money. Wealth is in things of
use. That is where all the wealth of the big in-
dustrial institutions is — in things of use. All of it lies
out-of-doors. It cannot be locked up in safes. If,
however, it were all divided equally, so that everyone

WHO IS THE REAL "OWNER"?

now participating in its operative benefits could par-
ticipate in its dead value as material, what would it
amount to? — this one would have a few bricks, that
one half a wheel, another a pile of junk.

In fact, it was only because all this material and
all this effort were successfully taken out of the field
of absolute private ownership and piled together into
one well-planned whole, that the public could be served
as well as it is. Redistribute it all back to its private
ownership, and the public is left gasping for every-
thing that it needs.

But what people usually have in mind when they
talk about "ownership" is not the question of who
ought to own the bricks and the mortar and the fur-
naces and the mills, but rather the question "who ought
to be boss?" That is really the big question in most
minds. "Who set this man over us ?" is the often un-
spoken challenge.

Well, this is very much like asking, "Who ought
to be the tenor in the quartette ?" Obviously, the man
who can sing tenor. You could not depose Caruso.
Let' any theory of musical democracy come, depose
Caruso to the musical "proletariat"; very well, there
is no substitute; Caruso's gifts are still his own.

Who will be the leader of the army? The man
who can lead. Who will be the pilot of the ship ? The
man who knows the way. Who will be the leader of
the country in a moral emergency: men say this one
or that one, but God said "Lincoln."

In lesser things it is the same. The man who can,
is the man who does. No one chose the real leaders of
today; they came forward because they could lead,
and men followed them because they knew a leader.
They came up from the ranks, all of them. The new
leaders are in the ranks now.

Some young men, poisoned by the cynicism of a
false social philosophy, do not believe this. They feel
sore within, they are straining and stressing. That is
good. That is the way leaders are bom. There is a
great deal of that kind of feeling before a man is
forty. Don't interpret it as rebellion, it is growing
pains. The old principles still hold true. Modem
industrial development hasn't changed a single rule

FORD IDEALS

of life — ^and cannot! Go back to your grandfather's
copy books, and what the maxims said then is true
now. Men rise today, just as they have always done,
by backing their native gifts with their acquired
energy.

This much is certain: no one will long remain
"boss'' who was not called to that work by nature and
development. It would be an extremely simple matter
to displace all the "bosses" and leaders today, but it
would be an extremely difficult matter to replace them.
That was the trouble in Russia.

But say that by force you do replace the natural
bosses with artificially created ones, what happens?
Why, shortly there is nothing left to "boss," the whde
thing has just crumbled away into uselessness.

So, there are correctives. In the natural course
of events the incapable man cannot get into positions
of power, but if through an unnatural, artificial course
of "pull" or "favor" or "relationship" an incapable
man does rise to that position, natural law soon begins
to operate : he fails and his failure is apparent to all.

If there is a great industry which has ceased to
serve the people; if there is a great industry whose
leader has ceased to care for it and has begun to ex-
ploit it; if there is a great industry who^e leader has
been poisoned with the thought, "This is mine and
exists for my benefit alone" — you will not long be
puzzled about the problem of ownership. Nature will
soon settle it.

"Swelled Head" in Business

THERE is a disease known as "swelled head"
which may be contracted in any line of activity,
but which is particularly dangerous in business. Be-
cause of the inelegance of its name and the common-
ness of its occurrence among light and giddy youth,
it is regarded not as a dangerous disease, but as some-
thing light, like the ailments of childhood. We know,
however, how serious the ailments of childhood can
be when they attack grown persons.

If we were to be very strict about words, we
should perhaps say that the term "swelled head" was
hardly descriptive. If the head of the patient ac-
tually should enlarge and his brain power increase,
the disease would not exist. It is the feeling of en-
largement in heads that have not enlarged nor ex-
panded at all, that constitutes the abnormal condition.

That is to say, the condition described as "swelled
head" is a delusion — the patient thinks he has ex-
panded when he has not. The only element in him
that has increased is his self-esteem, and when that
increases out of proportion to everything else, there
comes an unbalanced condition which is just as danger-
ous to his affairs as insanity is to society.

This ailment is not confined to men in small and
unimportant positions, although it is found there too;
but it is frequently found among men whom the world
thinks to be "big men" because they wear big titles
and deal in big things-. There would seem to be little
reason for much swelled-headedness among the "big
men" of today, for it is precisely in their fields that
all the big failures and all the big humiliations have
come.

There is, of course, such a thing as a sense of self-
satisfaction in one's work, a sense of being able to do
the thing required, a sense of mastery, and a plain
knowledge of having accomplished something when a
good job has been done — these are the wholesome

FORD IDEALS

flavors and reactions of honest work. They are not
to be confused with the disease of "swelled head/*
The difference between them is this: the former has
the work for its center; the latter has one's self for
its center. And self -centered persons (not necessarily
selfish persons) are- in great danger of letting them-
selves get in the way of their work. They are in
great danger of the delusion that their work exists
for their glory.

The sign of a little man is so various that it is next
to impossible for an ordinarily observant person to
mistake him. He never forgets himself . He is afraid
to surround himself with bigger men than himself,
with men who know more, or who can give him help.
Thus the little man is a fool; if he knew where his
interest lay, he would surround himself with the
biggest and best men, and by his just treatment of
them retain their services. But the little man lives in
daily dread that somebody will show up more meri-
toriously than he, and he strives to keep a false pre-
eminence by seeing to it that, little as he himself may
be, those who surround him are smaller still. This is
often true because the little man is usually himself a
subordinate who fears displacement. But even a sub-
ordinate who can surround himself with superior and
efficient assistants is not in nearly so much danger of
displacement as one who deliberately hammers down
the standard of his organization.

The disease of "swelled head" has its preliminary
symptom in shortsightedness. No one who can see
very far ahead or very far around, is ever troubled
with it. The world is so big and there is so much to
be done that a man can contract "swelled. head" only
by comparing himself with himself.

Is not that the trouble? The process is usually
something like this : a man goes to work earnestly and
intelligently, and as a consequence his work attracts
attention. Any man who works this way is bound to
make an impression. In course of time this man is
advanced, and the recognition thus accorded has the
effect of making him still more earnest and intel-
ligent, and therefore more useful and desirable. So

"swelled head" in business

another advancement inevitably comes; and perhaps
another, and another.

Then one day, the man stops to consider what has
befallen him and the idea creeps into his mind that he
must be quite a fellow. Look what he was then, and
look what he is now! Comparing himself with him-
self, you see. It is the first whisper of the tempting
serpent.

The man receives his last advancement — and us-
ually it is his last — with the feeling that at length he
has arrived. He has ceased to regard every new
step as a new challenge to his ability ; he has come to
regard it as a decoration pinned on him for what he
has done some time in the past. As a result, he sits
down to enjoy his new place and his new title — and his
degeneration begins right there. He has caught
"swelled head" and the treatment needed to cure that
is ofien very drastic and severe.

Where did the disease begin? In the man's
thought that advancements are decorations instead of
new challenges. Nobody has "arrived" imtil he has
filled his post and is leaving it — only then can a judg-
ment be rendered on his work.

Can you imagine a newly elected President of the
United States entering the White House with a smug
smile and saying to himself, "Well, at last I have at-
tained success — I have arrived — I have become Presii-
dent" — can you imagine that? Oh, no, for just at
that moment there would come thundering through the
corridors of his soul the cutting challenge — "What
kind of a President?" Ah! — that is a question to be
answered after four or eight years of service.

The President does not arrive until he leaves; it
is then his record is made; it is then his measure is
recorded on history's page. The exalted position is
sometimes only a loftier stage upon which to enact a
tragedy of failure.

It is true everywhere. If you are promoted, it is
only another burden, another demand laid on you,
with the questions: "Can you carry that? Can you
fulfill that?" The reward for good work done is
always more work. Not decorations, nor titles, nor

FORD IDEALS

"soft snaps" ; these are the snares which have wrecked
many a career.

It is better to remain a good bookkeeper and to
be known as such, than to be promoted because you
are a good bookkeeper and think that you can dis-
pense with the quaHties that made you a good book-
keeper. Unless you take those qualities with you,
enlarged and intensified, you are only ascending the
scale to a more spectacular failure. Promotion that
is not regarded as a challenge to greater and better
performance may easily become a snare.

We want to write the word "success" too soon. It
should be kept for the epitaph. Any man who thinks
he is a' success, has come to his terminal. He is about
ready to get off. He is running under the momentum
of past steam. He is coming down with a form of
"swelled head."

One fact about this disease should be noted: it
does not always take an offensive form. It does not
always show itself in bumptiousness. A man may be
a victim of it and yet never suspect it. When a man
settles back as if he had done all he ought to do, when
he begins to have the deliciously drowsy feeling that,
after all, he has done pretty well — it is time to be on
guard. The disease is not unpleasant to the victim and
therein lies its danger. He should distrust such
thoughts and go on a hunt for something hard and
difficult and "impossible" to do — something that will
bring back a normal sense of proportion.

Regarding Charity, Welfare
Work and Other Matters

THE world doesn't owe anybody a living, but ev-
erybody owes it to the world that he get a living
and in getting it leave a margin of service for the
others. Nothing is more productive of a sour spirit
than the mistaken belief that we are here to be waited
on, and nothing is more productive of breadth and
prosperity of life than the belief that we are here to
do something beyond that which necessity compels us
to do for ourselves.

It is hard to get such an idea clearly accepted to-
day, because there are so many words that have lost
their meaning through overuse. It is next to im-
possible to talk about "service" in these days without
having the very word lose itself in a tangle of pre-
conceived ideas — ideas which were bom in the wisjly-
washy period of romantic idealism out of which we
are happily passing.

It is hard for another reason, namely that this
whole period of sentimental idealism to which we have
-just referred had the effect of giving a namby-pamby
surfacing to any number of people. The idea went
abroad that "service" was something that we should
expect to be done for us. Untold numbers of people
became the recipients of the well-meant but over-done
"social service" of others. Whole sections of our
population were coddled into the habit of expecting
something, as children do. There grew up a regular
profession of doing things for people, which gave an
outlet for a laudable desire for service, but which
contributed nothing whatever to the self-reliance of
the people nor to the correction of the conditions out
of which the supposed need for such service grew.

Worse than this encouragement of childish ex-
pectancy, instead of training for self-reliance and self-
sufficiency, was the creation of a feeling of resentment

FORD IDEALS

which nearly always overtakes the objects of charity.

People often complain of the "ingratitude" of
tljose whom they help. Nothing is more natural. In
the first place, precious little of our so-called charity
is ever real charity, offered out of a heart full of
interest and sympathy. In the second place, no per-
son ever relishes being in a position where he is forced
to take favors from anyone.

This situation creates a strained relation: the
recipient of another's bounty feels that he has been
belittled in the taking of it, and it is just a. question
whether the giver should not also feel that he has been
belittled in the giving of it. Service is objected to by
no one, appreciated by all; but who would designate
charity as "service"?

Charity never led to a settled state of affairs. The
charitable system that does not aim to make itself
unnecessary is not performing service: It is simply
making a job for itself and is an added item to the
record of non-production.

Factory welfare work that does not educate the
factory personnel to a point beyond the need of
chaperonage, is not doing its duty. The work of
every welfare worker is similar to that of the physi-
cian, namely, to perform the work so well that it will
soon be unnecessary. Welfare work is not a crutch
for a permanent injury, it is an educational program
which justifies itself only by placing its beneficiaries
beyond need of it. Whatever is permanently necessary
is just plain decency and justice and should not be
decked out with names which suggest that somebody
deserves credit for being just a little bit more human
than he was expected to be.

It may sometimes seem that an advance step is
charity, but it need not be stigmatized by that word —
it would better be called vision. A man sees the
proper thing to do for those who have not the facilities
as yet to do it for themselves, and he does it — it only
means that he uses the power at his command to bring
in the New Era in that particular matter. The New
Era has been "inching along" for some time in this
manner.

This was really the way in which "human rights"

R£GAIU)ING CHARITY, WELFARE WORK AND OTHER MATTERS

came in. They first began as "privilege." Those who
could get "grivileges" got them. But the fact that
"privileges" could be had by one group led the way
to their being^had by all groups. Every inalienable
right we now possess was once a "class privilege." We
scold a great deal about "privilege" these days, and it
is right to do so, for what we nowadays call "priv-
ilege" is mostly daylight robbery ; but at the same time
it is well to remember that there are instances where
the privilege of the few is really a prophecy of the
coming rights of the many.

Humanitarianism is splendid when it is not pro-
fessionalized. But it is not a good word. Suppose
there comes a time when everyone will be self-suf-
ficient, so far as the material assistance we can render
each other is concerned, where then will be the field
for "humanitarianism"? That is, the kind of human-
itarianism that really gives you the feeling of vet-
erinarianism.

There is only human helpfulness, and directly that
is systematized, organized, commercialized and pro-
fessionalized, the heart of it is extinguished, and it
becomes a cold and clammy thing.

Human helpfulness which is never card catalogued
nor advertised is the most helpful agency in the world
today. There are more orphan children being cared
for in the private homes of people who love them, than
in the institutions. There are more old people being
sheltered among friends, without money and without
price, and with no thought of either, than you can
find in the Old People's Homes. There is more afd
by loans and other assistance between family and fam-
ily than all the loan societies or banks are doing. That
is, human society on a humane basis, looks out for
itself. It is a grave question how far we ought to
countenance the commercialization "of this instinct.
We certainly ought to subject it to the severest
scrutiny to find, if possible, by what interests and for
what interests it is being commercialized.

Above all, however, we should devote ourselves to
the cultivation of the old-fashioned virtue of self-
reliance in our people. Americans were formerly
self-reliant; Americans in blood and spirit doubtless

FORD IDEALS

form the self-reliant part of, our population now. But
we have received large admixtures from other coun-
tries where an obsequious attitude is counted neces-
sary before one can even receive one's rights.

That was carried to America by a sufficient num-
ber of people to have its effect, especially on the of-
ficers of municipal government. Foreigners thought
an alderman was a great personage and a policeman a
power to be placated. It wasn't good for the alder-
man or the policeman to be thus exalted. Good old-
fashioned American self-reliance is a much better
attitude to adopt before all political powers. We need
more of it in the country right now.

One of the common sayings which came out of
the dawn of common sense on this whole question was
this: "Help a man to help himself." But how have
we beefi doing it ? We have been starting too far this
side of the root of the matter. The way to help a
man to help himself is to get the idea firmly rooted
in his understanding that his help is in himself. That
is the entire basis of our much boasted self-govern-
ment.. Only a self-reliant people can be self-govern-
ing, and if we have found the government slipping
away from ourselves, we may take it as a sign that
we are losing our national virtue of self-reliance. There
is something tragically comic in lazily relying on a
government that relies on us. And if a government
ceases to rely on the people, and the people cease to
rely on themselves, that is the beginning of dissolu-
tion. We do not, however, think of dissolution for
this nation or government; it is made of the prin-
ciples that forever endure.

Let every American become self -protective from
coddling. Americans ought to resent coddling like a
drug. Stand up and stand out; let weaklings take
charity; we will have Rights because we will simply
go to work and make them; create them, and then
enjoy them.

Where High Wages Begin

HIGH wages sounds mighty good. That is, to
most people. It is true that a few men seem to
think that high wages will ruin business. But the
majority of people know better than that. The grocer,
the clothier, the furniture maker, the boot and shoe
man, the banker — ^all know better.

There are short-sighted men who cannot see that
Business is a bigger thing than any one man's in-
terests. Business is a process of give and take, live
and let live. It is co-operation between many forces
and interests.

Whenever you find a man who believes that Busi-
ness is a river whose beneficial flow ought to stop
as soon as it reaches him, and go no farther to re-
fresh and enrich other men's fields, you find a man
who thinks he can keep Business alive by stopping
its circulation.

There are some men who, if they got all they
wanted, would get everything, and so destroy the very
thing they seek. This is lack of vision.

What do we mean by high wages, anyway?

We mean a higher wage than was paid ten months
or ten years ago. We do not mean a higher wage
than ought to be paid. Our high wages of today may
be low wages ten years from now.

If it is right for the manager of a business to try
to make it pay larger dividends, it is just as right that
he should try to make it pay higher wages. For wages
are the chief dividend — on the money side at least—,
and more people are dependent on them.

But where the commonest mistake is made is here :
We sometimes imagine that it is the manager of the
business who pays the high wages. Of course, if he
can and will not, then the blame is his. But if he can,
it is not himself alone that makes it possible.

When you trace it all down to its source, it is really
the workmen who earn the wages. Their labor is the

FORD IDEALS

productive factor. It is not the only productive fac-
tor, of course, for poor management can waste labor
just as it can waste material and make it unproductive.

But in a partnership of good management and good
labor, it is the workman who makes good wages pos-
sible. He invests his energy and skill, and if he
makes an honest, whole-hearted investment, good
wages ought to be his reward. Not only has he earned
them, but he has had a big part in creating them.

The employer who, in fairness, is paying good
wages is not, therefore, to be applauded as an angel.
It is not all his doing. If his men did not do their
part in making the business productive and profitable,
he would not have the big wage to pay. So that the
credit is not all his. He is only sharing justly, or
nearly so, with the men who were his active partners
in the business.

It is not a question of the employer showing his
generosity, or playing My Lord Bountiful, or any-
thing like that. It is simply the square deal. And
it is the only practical way of keeping a business pro-
ductive and profitable.

A business whose benefits come to a halt in the
company's office is not a healthy business. The bene-
fit has got to circulate so that every man who had a
part in creating and running it has also a part in en-
joying it. It is simple fairness.

Paying good wages is not charity at all — it is the
best kind of business.

The kind of workman who gives the business the
best that is in him is the best kind of workman a
business can have. But he cannot be expected to do
this indefinitely without proper recognition.

Good wages help keep the good workmen a good
workman for the sake of the business.

The man who comes to the day's job feeling that
no matter how much he may give, it will not yield
him enough of a return to keep him beyond the margin
of want, is not in shape to do his day's work. He
is anxious and worried and it all reacts to the detri-
ment of his work.

But if a man feels that his day's work is not only
supplying his basic need, but is also giving him a

WHERE HIGH WAGES BEGIN

margin of comfort, and enabling him to give his boys
and girls their opportunity and his wife some pleasure
in life, then his job looks good to him and he is free
to give it his very best.

This is a good thing for him and a good thing for
the business. The man who does not get a certain
satisfaction out of his day's work is losing the best
part of his pay.

Do you know, the day's work is a great thing — b,
very great thing! It is at the very foundation of our
economic place in the world; it is the basis of our
self-respect ; it is the only way to reach out and touch
the whole world of activity.

All of us are workingmen these days. If we are
not, we are parasites. No amount of money excuses
any man from working. He is either producer or
parasite — ^take your choice.

All of us don't do the same things, our jobs are
different. But all of us are working for the same end,
and that end is bigger than any of us.

The employer who is seriously trying to do his
duty in the world must be a hard worker. It is use-
less for him to say, "I have so many thousand men
working for me." The fact of the matter is that so
many thousand men have him working for them —
and the better they work the busier they keep him dis-
posing of their products.

Wages and salaries are in fixed amounts, and this
must be so in order to have a basis to figure on. But
where the profits exceed these there ought to be profit-
sharing. Wages and salaries are a sort of fixed profit-
sharing, but it often happens that when the business
of the year is closed up it is discovered that more
can be done, and then more ought to be done. Where
we are all in the business working together, we all
ought to have some share in the profits, either a good
wage or salary, or added compensation.

The business man's ambition ought to be to pay
the best wages the business can carry, and the work-
man's ambition should be to respond to make the best
wages possible.

A business man sometimes does not know just
how to say this. There are men in all shops who seem

FORD IDEALS

to believe that when they are urged to do their best,
it is for their employer's benefit and not their own.
It is a pity that siKh a feeHng should exist. But per-
haps there have been enough abuses in the past to
justify it in many instances.

If an employer urges men to do their best, and
the men learn after a while that their best does not
mean any reward for them, then they simply go back
into the rut and all the urging is wasted.

But if men follow the urging and do their best,
and then see the fruits of it in their pay envelope, it
is proof to them that they are an essential part of that
business, and that its success largely depends on them.
They feel also that there is justice in that business
and that their efforts will not be ignored.

It ought to be clear, however, that the higher wage
begins down in the shop. If it is not created there it
cannot get into the pay envelopes. It must begin there,
and it ought to keep on circulating until a just pro-
portion of it gets back there, and when profit-sharing
time comes the men who helped to make the profits
should not be forgotten.

So when the workman is urged to do his best, it
ought not to be a game that is playing on him. His
best ought to mean the best for him as well as for the
business. And unless it does mean this his best is
going to be hard to get.

It is a sense of fellowship in work that we need.
And fair dealing will give it to us. Why do we have
these classes of "capital" and "labor" set apart as
enemies? Simply because fair dealing has not been
the rule. What is "capital" without "labor"? And
what is "labor" but "capital"? And what earthly use
is "capital" unless it labors and produces the things
which life requires?

We must get together on these matters, and the
only way we can get together is to begin with fair
dealing.

One ounce of fair dealing is worth a ton of fair
speeches.

Every business that employs more than one man
is a partnership. This is so whether the man at the
head of the business acknowledges it or not.

WHERE HIGH WAGES BEGIN

Suppose a man invents an article which is capable
of wide use by the people. With his own two hands
he cannot make enough of them to satisfy the demand.
He might work hard all his life and make only a few.

So he gets other men to give their labor that his
creation may gain currency in the world. It is still
his idea, but they help hinv to spread it. Without his
idea there would not be so many jobs in the world.
Without their labor there would not be so many
articles of commerce.

You see, the man at the head can no longer say
MY business, but all of them together can say OUR
business, and when this is the spirit, and it is prac-
ticed all the way through, the very best kind of part-
nership exists.

There is too much of the "my" and too little of
"our;*' both in the shops and the head office. The
workman has got to assume that it is "our" business.
It is the only way he can feel that it is '*his" busi-
ness, too.

The source of every productive result is the day's
work. That is the seed from which every fruitful
crop springs. The farmer gets no more out of the
ground than he puts into it by his labor. And it is
what the worker puts into the business that makes
it pay.

What would any of us be without work? Who is
so pitiable as the man without an occupation that
contributes something to the life of the race?

And just as pitiable is the man who drags him-
self through the day's work as if he were a slave,
doing as little as possible, and that little badly.

He is a brake on the wheels of industry. He is
lowering its wage-paying power. He is like a faulty
machine that costs more than it produces. Multiply
him by a sufficient number and the business is ruined
— it loses its power to support anybody connected
with it.

There will never be a system invented which will
do away with the necessity of work. Nature has seen
to that. Idle hands and minds were never intended
for any one of us. Work is our sanity, our self-re-
spect, our salvation. So far from being a curse, work

FORD IDEALS

is the greatest blessing. It is only when it is mixed
with indolence or injustice that it becomes a curse.

Take it from a man who has worked from his
earliest years, and who is a workingman now, and
proud to be one, that no one can get any more out
of his job than he puts into it.

Not because any man says so, biif because it is the
real nature of things.

The Army Is Never "Laid Off

WE HEAR a great deal these days about getting
back to a peace basis. Some countries seem to
be finding it a hard thing to do. But this is probably
because they hesitate to face the other charges that
must come with the new peace.

Our own problem is not simple, but it is not im-
possible. We went on a' war footing in double-quick
time. We broke alWecords, even the records of na-
tions which were more accustomed to the war-thought
than we were.

Now we ought to get back as quickly as we made
the first change. We ought not to wait to be pushed
back by the pressure of business — we ought to go
back under our own will.

That seems to be the point where some plans
failed ; it was expected that we would be pushed back
into the old channels by a strong rush of business.

The rush has not come. A sort of "between acts'*
period is upon us. The world is readjusting its mind
after nearly five years of strange experience. The
new beginning has not been as brisk in certain lines
as some people expected.

But it is coming. There can be no doubt of that.
The war is over in a way, and still it is not over. The
iron hand is still on the world, stopping up many av-
enues of action. So that we have not really arrived
at the "after the war" period as yet. Peace has not
been signed. Blockades have not been removed. The
nations have not settled down to the work of re-
building. When they do, you will see things begin
to move in a hurry.

America is in good condition to begin. We were
a peace people clean through. Our industries were
organized for peace. For that reason it was a bigger
job for us than for others to go on a war footing.
We had everything to get ready and to make. And
we did it very well, considering the time we had. We

FORD IDEALS

did it very well indeed. The Kaiser would agree
with that.

This will make it easier for us to go back where
we were. Our peace machinery is all intact. It only
needs to be set up and started. In many places it was
not even taken down, but was set at once doing war
work. We are ready for business.

But suppose business isn't here. Are we to sit
down and wait? Is there nothing for us to do?

It is not the American way to sit down and wait.
If not enough is doing, we must start something.

When a man has not work enough for the mo-
ment to keep his circulation up, what does he do?
He begins to exercise for the sake of stimulating his
circulation. He runs; he swings his arm. He starts
doing something in order that he may not stagnate.

Now, business is simply circulation. Usually there
is enough of it to keep us going. That is, we have
enough regular business to keep us warm. But if
it slows up, the sensible thing is to refuse to slow up
with it. If we cannot do a certain thing, we have
been accustomed to do, we must do something else.

For the cost of a month of war we could make
such public improvements in this land as would be
worth most of the territory involved in the war. We
could make a new Eden of the Mississippi "Valley,
turning it into the great garden and powerhouse of
the country. We could build the canals and establish
the waterpower we have been talking about and have
never seen our way clear to do. We could develop a
greater agricultural area and make the produce of
former years look like a handful.

There are any number of things waiting to be
done which will bring fabulous benefits to our coun-
try if we would only turn out to do them. And they
are the very things which must be done if American
business is not to burst its already tight bounds.

Somebody may ask where the money would come
from. That is easiest of all. If it were a shortage of
men or food that confronted us, it would be serious;
but money is the cheapest thing there is.

All the money we spent on the war is here now.
It is only the material that is gone. The war is paid

THE ARMY IS NEVER "lAID OFF"

for, SO far as money for its support is concerned.
Every man who contributed "a bushel of grain, a ton
of material, or a day of labor to that great enterprise
has been paid. All the borrowing we did, we borrowed
from ourselves, and we spent it among ourselves. All
the money we lent, or the larger part of it, was spent
here among us.. When the borrowed money is paid
back, it will be paid to the citizens who lent it. It
will still be here.

There never was such an outpouring of money as
during the war. Everybody had money to lend to
the Government, and everybody got part of the bene-
fit of the money he lent. It made big things possible.
It made large central management possible. It kept
up the circulation at a critical time.

Now, if it were necessary, why could not such a
collective enterprise be undertaken for the purposes
of peace? The Government is only ourselves. It is
our central office. When the Government undertakes
anything it is really ourselves doing it, whether it be
fighting a war or building a canal.

Lack of employment ought to be as rare in the
United States as snow is in the tropics. And so it
would be if we thought more of the collective welfare
and less of individual profit.

There is no denying that we gain or lose together.
When everybody is busy, everything moves, and we
all profit thereby. ^

And what makes everybody busy? Well, the first
motive power is the necessity of three meals a day.
If everyone stopped eating, very little business would
be done. We must feed ourselves, and the work of
doing that breeds a lot of related work, and so it
goes on, broadening into what we know as modern
business.

When business slows up, is it a sign that the people
have slowed up on food? No. Usually it is a sign
that those who handle the money are afraid to set
things going. With no pressure on their gainful
nature from without, they refuse to start a motive
power within.

The basis of business is always with us, in the
primary needs of life. The medium of business is

FORD IDEALS

always with us in the form of money. It is only a
question of starting the thing going.

We don't have to wait for China or Germany to
give us the sign to get busy; we can get busy right
here among ourselves, on our own concerns.

This brings it straight down to the individual who
has capital, and who hangs on to it because he can-
not see more of it rolling in. He ought to start some-
thing. Every man of money has in his money the
surplus push which will start the wheels turning again.

The time to push is when the momentum from
without has ceased.

Now is the time for the man of the future to in-
vest in the future. If he has any building to do, let
him do it now. If he has a stock to create, let him
make it now.

Nobody is taking any chances when he gets busy
meeting the future beforehand.

This little breathing spell is a good thing to take
advantage of. Now is the time to spend money and
prepare for tomorrow's business, because it is going
to come rolling in fast.

And then there is the human side of it. Let us
take a lesson from the Government in this. The Gov-
ernment has a great army to provide for. The busi-
ness of that army, is to fight. But suppose there comes
a lull of months when there is no fighting to do. Dur-
ing this war it has happened, as it sometimes does in
industry, that there is nothing for an army to do in
the task it was organized for.

We have seen whole winters pass with nothing
special for the armies to do.

Did the Government lay the men oflF and stop
their pay, saying, "Come back when the fighting opens
up again and we'll put you on the payroll" ?

No. The Government felt itself under obligation
to keep that army intact and in good trim.

Where is the difference between our fighting
armies and the armies of peace — our great industrial
army ?

There are about twenty millions of men engaged in
the industrial maintenance of the United States. They
are our great standing army of production. They are
necessary to our existence as a self-supporting people.

THE ARMY IS NEVER "LAID OFF"

No calamity could overtake the country that would
equal the removal of this great force from agri-
culture, manufacturing and transportation.

Yet what is done with these men in slack times?
They are turned out at their own charges, and ex-
pected to be on hand when they are needed again.

It isn't good management. It isn't the kind of
treatment to which loyalty responds. It breaks us up
into separate interests, when really we are but one
interest and ought to be united for the general wel-
fare.

This is one point where we are wrong.

It is easy enough to place the blame, but it is hard
to prove the blame. If any one man could remedy
it, that man could be blamed for not doing so. But
it is too big for any man or group of men to cure by
their own efforts, and therefore it is too big for them
to bear the blame for it.

It is something we must all try to do together,
and do on a system. We must so adjust matters that
the slack in employment will be automatically taken
up. Dullness in one .line must be offset by brisk ef-
fort in another.

If we set about it intelligently we could find profit-
able productive work for twice the number of our
present industrial army. America teems with work
waiting to be done. America will never be oversup-
plied with labor if we develop our resources as we
ought. It is the duty of men of vision, men of re-
source to lay out the new channels for the industry
of new millions of men. There is enough to be done
in America to engage our largest man-power to the
farthest generation.

Individually, it is our duty to endeavor as far as
we possibly can to regard our own men as our own
regiments in the struggle for industrial civilization,
and to feel a responsibility for them in slack times.
We do not allow our shop machinery to rust in times
of dull business; why should we allow our men to
deteriorate? The cost of tiding over enforced stop-
pages ought to be figured in as a cost of the business
itself.

If we undertook to do this, we would be surprised
at the speed we would make in looking for large public

FORD IDEALS

undertakings to be started in order 'to fill up times of
slack employment. In fact, we would soon have mat-
ters arranged so that slack times would be impossible.
When one line slowed up, we would simply switch
on another, and so keep things going.

It is our duty to do each of us our, bit in solving
this problem, and we may be sure that when Amer-
ican business men try to straighten out the industrial
situation and make it square all round, they are going
to succeed. Nothing but selfishness can hinder, for
selfishness is blind.

This talk of the returned soldier being a problem
hardly squares with the facts. He is only two mil-
lions of our twenty millions. He ought to fit back
into business life as readily as he fitted into the army.

To hear some men talk you would think that the
returning soldier would double our dependent popula-
tion. He is bringing up the reserve force that will
put the country over the top.

They talk of putting him to work building roads,
booming worn-out real estate schemes, and so forth.
It is a wonder they would not ask him about k first!

No doubt, after the outdoor life of the army,
thousands of yoimg men will have no desire to enter
the office and store again. They would prefer the
farm. But why plan to settle them 3,000 miles from
the chief markets? There are hundreds of thousands
of unused acres of farm land at the very back doors
of our large eastern markets.

Leave the big unsettled tracts of the West for
wholesale reclamation and power projects. It would
be splendid if we could enlist an army of men to
make the desert bloom and make every mile of our
streams and every foot of our land productive. That
would be an Army of the United States indeed ! And
it would appeal to heroism and constructive general-
ship. And it would bring a service record of which
any man might be proud.

There are big days coming to us. We must get
ready for them. We must act as if we had the or-
ders in our hands now. We must begin to organize
our forces and processes so as to achieve the most
and the best we can.

Prevention Is Better Than

Sympathy

PAINTING the blotch on the skin, and leaving the
blood unpurified, is poor medical practice and poor
business. Unless we go to the root of our wrongs
and grub them out, it is of no use to try to doctor
the branches. Pruning the thorn will not change it
into a potato plant.

You can fight a symptom until the patient dies on
your hands, but unless you get at the cause of his
distemper you are only wasting your time and giving
the disease a stronger hold.

Take the life of our people, for example. We
know that something is wrong with it. It would be
extreme folly for us to deny that.

The man who does deny it is usually the man who
is profiting by the things that are wrong. Because
his nest is soft, he coddles himself into believing that
every nest is soft. He does not want to be disturbed
by any other view of it.

This is one of the strong marks by which you may
distinguish sympathy from selfishness.

Granting that something is wrong in our method
of life, the wise course to take is not to go about
tinkering and doctoring the effects, but to dig straight
in toward the causes.

You will find, for one part, that something is
wrong with the people themselves. There is a great
deal of shiftlessness in the world, a great deal of
waste, a great deal of drifting.

You will find men who want to be carried through
on the shoulders of others. You will find men who
believe that the world OWES them a living, by which
they seem to mean that their employer owes them a
living. They don't seem to see that we must all lift
together and pull together, or nobody will have any
living whatever.

FORD IDEALS

It is one of the /most harmful thoughts a man can
harbor — that he is at the mercy of any other man.
We are all units of power. We are all parts of the
social order. Wherever one of us holds back or falls
down, there is a gap, and the whole line suffers by
that much.

All this is true enough, but to stop here is to miss
half the truth. Many people stop here. They lay
the whole blame for poverty and failure and suf-
fering and waste upon individuals.

But our scheme of society is at fault, too. We do
many things badly. We permit too many practices
that take advantage of the weak. We open too wide
a field to the grabber. After we have charged up
all we can to individual fault, there is a big social
fault that must be accounted for.

And one of our most glaring mistakes is to try to
cover up the results of social faults by charity, in-
stead of striking at the causes which make charity
seem necessary.

Charity at its best is only a makeshift. It is an
endless patching of a garment that ought to be thrown
away and a new one made. Charity lowers the self-
respect of the person who receives it and it deadens
the conscience of the person who gives it. It offers
far too easy an escape from a harder job.

We say we are sorry for the hungry man. How
sorry are we? We are sorry enough to give him a
little food. But are we sorry enough to go out and
tackle the conditions that make hunger possible?

We say we are sorry for the unemployed. But
how sorry are we ? Are we sorry enough to shoulder
the job of abolishing unemployment from the land
by a new and daring system of industrial advance?

It is easy enough to be sorry, and to ease our own
sorrow by a trifling gift. For that is really what we
do in most of our makeshift charity — we simply ease
our own pain at the sight of suffering. Whether we
really ease the suffering of the other man, or improve
his condition, is quite another matter.

We were sorry for the man wounded in battle, and
so we supported the Red Cross and other humane
agencies. But how many of us were sorry enough to

PREVENTION IS BETTER THAN SYMPATHY

undertake to abolish war altogether? To aid the
wounded was easier than to tackle the big blunder
that has been wounding men for centuries.

We can go on to the end of time patching up the
wounded who ought never to have been wounded,
feeding the hungry who ought never to have been
hungry, helping the poor who ought never to have
been poor — and at the end of all our efforts we shall
still have war and poverty as much as before.

Regarded from the standpoint of efficiency our
charity system fails; no matter how hard we try we
are never able to cover the ground. We are always
missing someone. From whatever angle you study
it, charity is a poor substitute for reform.

We must go deeper if we are ever to^accomplish
anything worth while.

And we must quit being satisfied with our charity
if we are ever to see the real job that awaits us. And
it is no easy job, either; it is not for bunglers, nor
for hasty people, nor for any one who believes in any-
thing but sound construction.

The doctors are ahead of us on this line. Their
great word now is, Prevention. When typhoid breaks
out, they do not content themselves with giving their
best service to the afflicted individuals; they know
that typhoid is a disease that no man ever ought to
have, and so they search out its source. They abolish
it there.

The progress of medicine does not consist merely
in discovering cures for disease, but in abolishing it
so /Utterly that it will cease to be a problem.

We need that word in our efforts toward a better
kind of social and industrial life — Prevention.

Instead of organizing great machinery and making
great appeals for money to camouflage the effects of
our social system, we ought to be at work preventing
the effects.

The very best charity we know anything about is
to help a man to the place where he wtH- never need it.

Nothing seems more useless than the trouble we
take to ease the effects, when half the trouble would
serve to destroy the cause.

We get up fancy dances, we give theatricals, we

FORD IDEALS

make budgets and take up collections, we sell tickets
for this and that from one year's end to the other —
we undertake great expense to grant a little temporary
benefit, and when we get through we haven't touched
the real problem.

Surely the futility of it ought to get through our
minds very soon!

It is not the charitable mind that one objects to.
Heaven forbid that we should ever grow cold toward
a fellow-creature in need. Human sympathy is a
great motive power, and no cool, calculating attitude
will take the place of it. One can name very few of
the great advances which were not due to human sym-
pathy. It is in order to do something for people that
every notable service is undertaken.

The trouble is that we have been using this great
motive force for too small ends. If human sympathy
prompts us to feed the hungry, why should it not give
a much greater prompting toward making hunger im-
possible ?

If we have sympathy enough for people to help
them IN their trouble, surely we ought to have feeling
enough to help them OUT OF their trouble.

The difficulty is that the latter is a different sort
of task. This kind of help costs more than common
charity.

We must look beyond the individual to the causes
of his misery, not* hesitating to relieve him in the
meantime, of course, but not stopping with that.

It is a pity that we have to confess that more
people can be moved to help a poor family than can
be moved to give their minds toward the removal of
poverty altogether.

We have a human conscience all right; cannot
we develop it into a social conscience?

But people say, "What can I do?" And men in
positions of leadership say, "What can we do?" Well,
this is certain — whatever is done will have to be done
by all of us together, so that it is time for all of us
to get busy.

And this is certain — we cannot improve condi-
tions by kicking over the methods which make our
conditions as good as they are.

PREVENTION IS BETTER THAN SYMPATHY

Grant that something is wrong; still we cannot
say that everything is wrong. If it were, there would
be much more suffering in the world than we now see.

Comparing the present with the past, there is far
less poverty than ever before; our material life is on
a much higher level than it has ever been.

So far, so good. But comparing the present with
what ought to be, and what could be, we cannot fail
to see that much is yet to be done.

What can we do to create what ought to be?

Our first duty is our own duty. We must do our
best where we are. We must be fair where we are.
We must do honest work where we are.

No one who throws down his tools is helping to
abolish poverty.

Whatever we may agree to do in the future, we
may be sure of this: we shall never be able to make
any program go without work.

If work is to be necessary in the better order of
things, work is a good quality to develop now.

Every man who works is helping to drive poverty
out of the world-^first his own, and then that of his
fellow-beings.

The man who does better and more productive
work today than he did yesterday is a social reformer
of the highest type. He is doing something genuine.
He is squaring his own account with the world, and
helping others to square theirs.

Every time a man stops work, he throws that
much extra burden on others; he creates that much
more poverty for the world.

It is not the men who are domg the talking who
are solving our problems, but the men who are at
work. When they talk, they know what it is about.

And after work, the next duty is to think. No-
body can think straight who does .not work. Idleness
warps the mind. It is a wonder we do not hear more
about that fact — that the practiced hand gives bal-
ance to the brain.

Thinking which does not connect with constructive
action becomes a disease ; the man who has it sees
crooked; his views are lopsided.

No one man can think out our great problems for

FORD IDEALS

US. We believe in democracy because we believe that
the collective mind is better than any single mind.

It is the people thinking together, and planning to-
gether, and acting together, that make the great ad-
vances possible.

In the long run the people are cool-headed.

That is one of the reasons why changes seem to
come so slowly: the people do not risk the big mis-
takes which end in the big tragedies. Every age
teems with theories which only require to stand awhile,
and th^n their falsity is revealed.

We don't have to test every theory that is offered.
Let it stand. If it is right, it will endure. If it is
wrong, the public mind simply outgrows it.

No one can imagine how much worse off we
should be if we followed every theory and every
leader that promised us the Golden Age.

So, if our progress seems slow, it is only the
people's carefulness not to make a mis-step.

But there is progress being made all the time, now
in this direction, now in that, and then all along the
line. And such progress is a social creation. It is
the people moving up.

And that is the only kind of progress there is.

If we have not always gone forward rapidly, there
is a very great fact to set against that fact: the race
has not had to retrace many steps because of false
moves.

Success Plays No Favorites

SOMEONE has said that "imitation is the sincerest
flattery," but that is only a hint to those who wish
to flatter. Imitation is a confession that the thing
which is imitated is better than one can do himself;
it is also a confession that one is content to be an
imitator.

The truth about imitation is found in another
saying — "Imitation is suicide."

Certainly it is the end of initiative and independ-
ence; it is the farewell of originality; it is the delib-
erate abandonment of individuality, and the enemy of
genius.

This has a direct bearing on a subject in which
everybody is interested — Success.

Too often we hear Success spoken of as if it can
be imitated. Successful men are held up as examples
to young people who are advised, "Do as this man
did it." Methods of success are held up for imita-
tion with the counsel, "Follow this course and it will
lead to success."

But success does not come by imitation. An im-
itation may be quite successful in its own way, but
imitation can never be Success.

Success is a first-hand creation. Take a thousand
successful men, and each man's story will be different.
It will be original. His grasp of opportunity, his
methods, his plan of meeting and overcoming ob-
stacles, all of these things will be different.

The most dangerous notion a young man can
acquire is that there is no more room for originality.
There is no large room for anything else.

Let us put to one side the usual arguments against
imitation in the search for Success. Everybody knows
what they are, so that we need not recount them here.

But it is not always so clear why much of our
Success advice is dangerous.

FORD IDEALS

It is very unwise to look too long at the successful
person. It is most unwise to copy after him.

Because the things which you will first see, the
qualities which will stand out as marking him, are
probably not the ones to which he owes his success.
And yet, because they are most prominent, it will
appear that they hold the secret of his power. Very
often they are blemishes, and had they not been over-
balanced by other qualities which are not so easily per-
ceived they might have caused his failure.

You see a man who is very successful and who
is at the same time very unfeeling. His heart is hard.
He regards other men as so many bricks to build with.
His conscience seems to be asleep. He rides over
every human instinct and crushes every human con-
sideration that would oppose him. Looking at such a
man, it is easy to say, "To succeed, you musfbe like
that; you must harden your heart and go rough-shod
over everything."

Or you may see another successful man who ap- *
pears to be very daring. He seems to do everything
thoughtlessly, on the spur of the moment, in a bril-
liant dare-devil spirit. He does not appear to trust to
anything but luck. But matters turn out fortunately
for him, and therefore it is easy to draw the con-
clusion, "The way to be successful is to fling ahead
regardless, gamble with chance, and trust affairs to
come out all right."

These appearances may be very misleading. Dis-
honest men do sometimes achieve great financial suc-
cess — American financial history shows that. Un-
feeling, cruel-hearted men sometimes win great for-
tunes in industry — we don't have to look far to see it.

But the question is: Is their success due to dis-
honesty and hardness, or to qualities that are not so
prominent ?

We must declare that dishonesty is not sufficient to
win success. A man must have something beside a
hard heart to win success.

He may have these undesirable qualities — he may
have them in large measure — but has he other quali-
ties beside?

SUCCESS PLAYS NO FAVORITES

If you look closely at these men you will see that
they do have other qualities. They have strength,
foresight, knowledge, skill, experience, endurance, ap-
plication, determination, gifts of management, judg-
ment.

But these are not surface qualities. They do not
stand out. They are seen only on close examination
of the man and his business.

Take a group of successful men, sort out the ones
who have undesirable traits of character — men who
have broken the laws of the land and the laws of
humanity, men who have wrung their money out of
other men's labor and out of the public's necessity — •
and you can easily make out an argument that Suc-
cess is the sign of a bad character.

But the law of Success is impartial. So long as
you have the qualities necessary for success, it is to
be won, even if you have other qualities which alone
would spell failure.

You may have a character which is perfect in every
other respect, and yet if you lack the qualities neces-
sary to success, you will never win it.

Success, then, is a matter of certain qualities com-
ing into play.

Now you cannot imitate a quality. You must cre-
ate it, develop it. If you are fooled into thinking that
hardness and dishonesty are qualities of Success, and
you develop these, you will find that they will not
make you a successful man at all. Hardness will make
you a bully and dishonesty will make you a crook.
You must develop other characteristics if you would
be successful.

We are not considering genius here at all. Genius
is a gift. It comes to very few. We are discussing
the normal man who enters life endowed with phys-
ical health, his five senses, and the average degree of
intelligence.

The genius walks into his success. The rest of us
must work for ours.

Now, what is Success?

Some say that Success is not mopey. Well, it is
doubtless true that money is not the whole of Suc-

FORD IDEALS

cess, and yet in these days you never see any kind of
Success that does not have money somewhere around
it. Certainly money is not the end of life, but it is a
sign. Since everyone needs money to live as he ought,
to develop himself, to give scope to his powers, money
has become not only a necessary part of living, but
the ambition to command enough of it to_do these
things has become a commendable ambition.

Success is each man finding the work he can do
best, doing it to his highest satisfaction, and getting
the proof of his service in a suitable reward.

If he is the kind of pan who has still greater vi-
sions of service which need still more money to realize,
Success is his getting enough money to fulfill his serv-
ice. There is no harm in large sums of money if
they are kept at work opening up lines of opportunity
and service. The only harmful money is the money
which lies idle, or is used to block progress.

Money for money's sake is a perfectly stupid motto.
Money would be as useless as a heap of brass checks
if it were not used for development. So that it is
true that money itself is not the whole of Success.

And then there are certain lines of service whose
Success does not require money for their enlargement,
and therefore money is not the sign of their worth.
Take a successful surgeon, for example. His skill is
his capital. He will make money, of course, and he
deserves to make it. But often he will do service that
makes him no money at all, and still it will be highly
successful service, because it accomplishes its object.
But the surgeon does not need millions in order to
extend his skill. That skill is in his hand, controlled
by his brain. He cannot multiply it. He cannot stand-
ardize operations and do them by machine. There-
fore, though his financial success is deservedly satis-
factory, he has not the same need of capital as another
would have.

But in the industrial line it is indispensable that
financial success be won, else there is no way to keep
going, there is no way to open up new lines and cre-
ate new jobs for men, there is no way of paying better
wages and so contributing to the general human
welfare.

SUCCESS PLAYS NO FAVORITES

So that it is true again; money is not the only
standard of success, though in some lines of service
it is.

But in every Success, whether it be professional
or industrial, the same qualities are necessary. And
these, cannot be imitated. They must be real. They
must live in the man himself and grow out of his
nature. Few of them are natural growth, however.
They must be developed, trained, kept under discipline.

No man wins success without paying for it.

No man fails without good reason.

Tht law of success is no respecter of persons.
' If a man whom we feel to be bad turns out to be
a success, it is because he has fulfilled the law of
success. If a man whom we feel to be a very good
man is a failure, it is because he has failed to fulfill
the law of success.

There is no favoritism.

The law of success is a fair law. It gives all a
chance. It doesn't choose the extraordinary man and
favor him. Most successful men you meet are really
ordinary men who have applied themselves to one
thing and paid the price to win.

And the law of failure is just and fair. We dis-
like to think this sometimes, but unless it also is true,
then there is nothing but confusion, no guide-posts to
direct us.

We know there are failures just as we know there
are successes. Honest men fail and dishonest men
fail. Hard-hearted men fail and kind, humane men
fail. Why ?

To find the reason we must examine failure as
carefully as we examine success. And, as in the case
of success, the truth is not on the surface.

There is always a reason for failure, just as there
is always a reason for Success, and it is found in dis-
obedience to one part of the law of Success.

If failures did not fail, there would be no law. All
would be chance. The fact that failures fail is not a
discouraging fact ; it is just the other side of the law
by which those who have fulfilled the law of Success,
succeed.

FORD IDEALS

There is always a good reason, one which impresses
ds as entirely fair when we iinderstand it.

To state the law of Success is a pretty big task.
We may try to state part of it at another time. But
certain elements of it are clear at once.

There is no Success without Application. This
means concentration of mind, labor of hand and brain,
and a complete surrender of one's powers to what one
wishes to do.

There must be Confidence in one's plan, not be-
cause it is one's own plan, but because^ after surveying
the whole field, the needs of the people, the fitness of
the service one intends to give, one knows that he is on
the right track.

There must be Courage. Unless you have tried
to do something for yourself, you have no idea now
often your courage will be tested, how often you will
stare bleak failure full in the face, how many almost
crushing obstacles will arise to fall on you and block
the way. The road to Success is hard, and often the
feet bleed and the heart nearly fails. People only see
the end of it, and even the end is not all sunshine. So
unless you have courage, a courage within your own
heart that keeps you going, always going, no matter
what happens, there is no certainty of Success. It
is really an endurance race. It is a test in holding out.
The untried venture has no friends anywhere. It
must make every friend it gets.

You must have Knowledge of what you are doing.
Now, this is within every man's reach. There is no
favoritism here. You must know all there is to know
of your particular field, and keep on the alert for new
knowledge. The least difference in knowledge be-
tween you and another man may spell his success and
your failure. Guessing does not go. Trusting to luck
is folly. Going it blind is taking a chance that may
prove disastrous. You must KNOW. And this, of
course, means that you must be a sincere searcher all
the time. Yes, even when you have become what the
world calls a success. For the world moves swiftly,
and it is as bad not to keep up with it as never to have
caught up with it. Today's success is no security for

SUCCESS PLAYS NO FAVORITES

tomorrow's success. Your knowledge must be the
up-to-the-minute kind.

As to the moral qualities, the more you have the
better. Dishonest men, by obeying the other laws of
Success, may have won a place. But it is becoming
harder and harder to do that. They may have been
dishonest in dealing, but they cannot be dishonest with
materials. They must build their brick wall true, or
it falls down. They must honestly obey the law of
strain, or their bridge collapses. They may cheat
their customer once, they cannot cheat nature even
once. Better not try to cheat either, for dishonesty
is a dry-rot that creeps in everywhere. Other things
being equal, the honest man has the better chance of
winning. The same is true of human kindliness. All
other qualifications being equal the humane man has
the edge on the hard man.

Personal Relations — Their
Importance for Life

IF YOU trace down the troubles which afflict us all,
the big disturbing troubles and the little nagging
ones, you will discover that a large proportion of
them have, their roots in personal relations.

Trace them and see. See what an amazingly large
influence is exerted on your life by what you think
of other people, and by what you think other people
think about you.

Wrong personal relations are the greatest ob-
struction that a man can meet. Almost any other kind
of obstacle he can face with a high heart ; but broken
relations between himself and his fellows afflict his
nature like a wound.

We were meant to get along one with another.
We were meant to be in harmony. And no other
proof 6T this is needed than the fact that the better
we know each other the more we trust each other;
and the larger the number of people who work in
harmony the greater the results of their work.

People always think better, work better, see more
clearly when they are in harmony with the people
whom they know. But their minds are clouded, tfieir
hands are heavy and their foresight is blinded when
they carry within them the feeling that they are at
odds with their kind.

It is like a strain in one's body; it is painful and
hindering. Humanity-at-large seems to be one body;
our immediate circle of associates, friends and kin
make a sort of inner body, and any break or strain
that occurs with them hurts and hinders us.

If a man leaves the house in the morning after
an angry word with his wife he has practically ruined
his day and hers, too. He ought to go back and fix
up the strained relations. Husband and wife simply
cannot live their best or do their best under strained
conditions. '

PfJlSONAL RELATIONS — ^THEIR IMPORTANCE FOR UFE

You can pretty nearly identify the man who left
home in a sulk — ^probably you could identify the wife,
too, if you saw her. The signs of moral accident and
mental injury are about them. They are cripples so
far as human harmony is concerned.

Railroad managers long ago learned how danger-
ous it was for an engineer to climb into his cab and
take charge of a train, after he had left home in a
tantrum. It would be safer to hold up the train while
the engineer went back home and made up with his
wife — far safer.

If you cannot identify these injured minds by the
faces they carry, you can usually, do so by the work
they turn out. It is crippled work. None of us can
work unless our minds are free.

There is a hint for employers in this. It is just as
possible to injure human relations by wrong shop
methods as by wrong home conditions.

The workman can be made to feel that he is under
a driver or under a leader. If he feels that he is under
a driver you have simply pinched up his initiative and
good-will to such an extent that he cannot, at least
does not, do his best.

If he feels that he is under a leader, whom he re-
spects and trusts, then his initiative and strength are
released, and his day's work is free and full.
' Nervous strain operates on people to their dis-
advantage. Fill a child with the feeling of con-
straint, and he will appear to you a most stupid young-
ster, although he may in reality be a bright child.
Chill a performer by criticism and antagonism in ad-
vance, and you simply freeze up the stream of his skill.

Now, if you simply want the people who help you
in your shop to know who is boss, you can let them
know it all right — ^know it in such a way that they will
never forget it nor forgive you.

The cheapest and easiest thing in the world is to
show your authority. You can show your authority
till doomsday and make people fear it too; but you
will never make them respect it.

The authority which men respect is the authority
of superior knowledge and good- will.

FORD IDEALS

When you fill a shop with f ej^r, making men slaves
who bend to their tasks when the overseer's eyes are
upon them and slacken when the "boss" passes on —
you haven't a free industry at all. You are running a
sort of prison.

It is not the DRIVE of the boss that makes pro-
duction; it is the loyal good- will of the workers.

You see, this directly concerns personal relations
in industry. Handling men, giving them leave to act
upon their own good-will and not under constant com-
pulsion, emancipating them from all fear and anxiety
and insecurity in their thoughts of the shop and the
job — ^this is the secret of good- will in production.

You cannot secure all this by good wages alone.
High wages help to relieve anxiety about living con-
ditions at home. But if in order to keep those high
wages a man is kept on tiptoe of anxiety while he is
at the shop, the very purpose of high wages is per-
verted.

That is all we have to go on — personal relations.
And personal relations mean that we know one an-
other, that we acknowledge one another to be men, that
we deal squarely with one another, that we have con-
fidence in one another, and that we feel good- will
toward each other.

The day is coming when good-will shall be the
most valuable asset a man can have.

Now just to enlarge this circle of thought a little,
take the so-called question of "labor and capital."
When you boil it down, what do you get? — a lot of
broken human relations.

The capitalist is just a man. The laborer is just
a man. They are bom, grow, marry, live and die in
the same way. Their joys are pretty much alike, and
so are their troubles. They are plain human beings.
Circumstances have placed one in one job, the other
in another job. But in the end it is always the same
job.

Well^ what has driven them apart? What makes
them say hard things against one another?

They have gotten out of touch with each other,
broken the human relation, that's all — and often
through no fault of their own.

PERSONAL RELiVTIONS— THEIR IMPORTANCE FOR UFE

Take certain capitalist papers and read them. You
will be amazed by some of the statements they make
about the laboring class, as they call it. We who
have been and still are a part of the laboring class know
that the statements are untrue. We feel that if the
writers only knew the people of whom they write,
their views would be changed.

And then take certain .of the labor papers and
read them. You are equally amazed by some of the
statements they make about "capitalists," so-called.
Some of us who know that capitalists are just men,
many of them working harder than they ever did
years ago when they were classed "laboring** men,
know how unjust some of these statements are.

And yet on both sides there is truth, of course.
The man who is a capitalist and nothing else, who
gambles with money in the fruits of other men's
labors, deserves all that is said against him. He is in
precisely the same class as the cheap gambler who
cheats workingmen out of their wages. There is no
difference.

Now, if you look close you will see that in the
capitalistic and the labor press there is a sort of mid-
dle-class who pander to the prejudices of the class
they serve. The statements we read about the labor-
ing class in the capitalistic press are seldom written
by managers of great industries, but by a middle-
class of writers who are writing what they think will
please their capitalistic leaders. They write what they
imagine will please; they have no desire to correct
or instruct.

Examine the labor press and you will find, in some
parts of it, another middle-class of writers who seek
to tickle the prejudices which they conceive the labor-
ing man to have.

And what is the result? Why, one class reads
material that inflames it against the other, and the
other does the same. The result is that we have two
great necessary and complementary classes in con-
tempt of each other without even knowing each other
— ^taking the word of middlemen-writers for it.

Now, this will never do. This is inhuman, un-

FORD IDEALS

reasonable. You can no more indict a class than you
can indict a nation. Good and bad are mixed up in
all classes. The only class line any sound-minded man
ought to recognize is the line drawn by decency and
morality.

Because one man is at the machine end of an in-
dustry and another man is at the management end,
that is no reason why human relations should be
broken between them. Th^t is no basis for class dis-
tinctions. If the manager thinks it is, he is wrong.
If the machinist thinks it is, he is wrong too.

Men are not divided by the kind of work they do,
but by the kind of men they are.

Men who are doing their own work as ^well as
they can, who are working out methods which will
bring more justice into industry and more comfort to
mankind, who are on the side of progress and order
and humanity and right — these men belong to one
class, no*matter what their financial rating may be.

And men who are shirking work whenever they
can, who are inventing new tricks to steal the fruits
of others' labor, who oppose better conditions and who
are standpatters on all the privilege and injustice and
semi-slavery that exist — these men belong to another
class, and some of them are capitalists and some of
them are laborers.

It is the first class that is going to make the world
a better place to live in and the lot of humanity more
desirable. It is the class to which every man of good-
will should belong — does belong by his very nature.

Nothing is more perilous to right human relations
than to take your views of any man through a third
man's eyes.

Every one of us has had the experience of being
made suspicious and unfriendly toward a person on
another person's say-so, and having to revise our
opinions as soon as we came to k*now the man himself.

Something like this is going on all the time. It
makes for disorder in all our relations, industrial,
social and domestic. You see it in almost every shop
— two men at loggerheads, simply because they have
received their views of each other from unfriendly
second-hand sources.

PliRSONAL RELATIONS — ^THtlR IMPORTANCE , FOR UFE

The cure of all this is to come together, know each
other, see the man as he is, know him in his natural
feeling and intention — and when we can do this, there
are very, very few human beings in whom we cannot
find a basis of fellowship.

And until we can do this, the wiser way is to sus-
pend judgment altogether.

Half the disharmony in human relations today is
founded on assumption, guesses, misinformation.

One of the regrettable and yet inevitable results
of our modem industrial development is that it places
us so far apart. We all remember the time when
we knew every person in the shop; it was a kind of
family. We knew about good luck and bad luck at
home ; we knew about new babies and about the sick-
nesses and deaths; we had a fellow-feeling for one
another.

Human beings have not changed. Human rela-
tions are just as necessary now as they ever were.
And men have not become machines in the meantime.
We must contrive some way of retaining the human
touch in industry. We shall need it as long as we
need the human element and that will be until the
end of time.

One way to do this is to maintain the superiority
of men over machines. You can drive a machine until
it breaks — ^you must not drive men that way.

Another way is to retain human initiative in in-
dustry. A shop that is organized in fear may be ap-
parently a smoothly working organization, but it has
not the willing "shove" of the shop that works from
loyalty. Even the driver cannot drive all the time.
And the shop personnel that works all day in the feel-
ing pf fear or anxiety is always on the look-out to get
another job. It doesn't pay to be changing men.

Old employes, like old friends, are best.

Satisfied employes, men who are on their honor,
men who feel that it is to their own interest to do
their best — ^that is the best organization any business
can have. But you cannot get it through friction.
You must get it through real human relations.

When we all feel that we can trust one another,

FORD IDEALS

that we do not have to be continually on guard against
each other, that our loyalty and interest are not going
to be taken a mean advantage of, then how freely the
work flows, how freely a man gives his best to his job !

We need better personal relations everywhere. It
is the great need of the world just now. All that
looks dark on the horizon of modern life is really the
result of bad personal relations. And it can be cleared
up by a new growth of genuine friendship among us.

That, after all is said and done, is what the brother-
hood of man means — we^ trust each other, we wish
•well to each other, we help each other.

Cultivate Your Own Market

THERE was a time when the wise men assured
us that Commerce would be a world preventive
of war. Trade was valuable, we were told, and only
a fool would want to kill off his customers. Much
was said also about the better acquaintance which
would grow out of international business; we would
like the Chinese better because we bought tea from
them; we would understand and appreciate the Ger-
man because we bought goods from him ; and every
nation which did business with Americans would learn
to love and respect them.

Well, at the apex of the greatest commercial age
the greatest war broke out. And if there is any truth
at all in the mass of explanation that has been made,
our business relations with each other had a great
deal to do with it. Some of the greater business men
of Germany have told how the war was figured in
advance on a profit basis, and there are enough facts
at hand to indicate that business had more to do with
the outbreak than politics had.

At the same time, and in spite of the commercial
element in the causes of the war, there ought to be an
enlightening and binding quality in the commercial
relations between nations, and there would be if busi-
ness were only what it ought to be and can be.

The signs of the times are that the world is ready
to go back to the same old business basis as before,
and if it does we are only laying the basis for new
misunderstandings.

If the nations are to become business competitors
again, the old spirit of antagonism will be revived.

Two men or two firms may be competitors and
live together without rupturing their relations with
each other, without departing from the law of de-
cency; but that is next to impossible for two nations
to do.

.FORD IDEALS

When the political power of a government puts
itself behind the competitive commercial ambitions of
its money magnates, acts are likely to be committed
of which no private competitor would dream.

It is to the credit of the United States that our
Government refused to allow American business to
take unfair advantage of the stricken nations of Eu-
rupe in stealing their markets from them ; and one of
the very great moral acts of the war was the assurance
given by America that we were above making a grand
grab for the very living of those nations for whose
help we raised armies.

And yet, in spite of this, there is every indication
that the world is going to slip back into the old system
of one nation cutting under another for the sake of
trade.

It isn't the amount of trade that makes a nation
great, for if you will study the more recently indus-
trialized countries you will discover that the change
consists mostly in taking the people off the land, away
from agriculture, and running them through a factory
system whose sole aim and object is the creation of
great private fortunes.

The creation of private fortunes, like the creation
of an autocracy, does not make any country great;
nor does the mere change of an agricultural popula-
tion into a factory population.

What accomplishes the desired end is the wise
development of its natural resources combined with a
.high development of the skill of its people, and a gen-
eral diffusion among all classes of the prosperity thus
gained.

Foreign trade is full of delusions. The ultimate
basis of foreign trade is going to be the supply of
those commodities which cannot be raised or manu-
factured in the places to which we send them.

If every nation were fully developed so that it
could supply itself with the articles 'it now imports,
foreign trade would be diminished just that much.

We ought to wish for every nation as large a de-
gree of self-support as possible. Instead of wishing
to keep them dependent on us for what we manu-

CULTIVATE YOUR OWN MARKET

facture, we should wish them to learn the arts them-
selves, to clothe and feed and house themselves and
build up a solidly founded civilization.

When every nation learns to produce the things
which every nation can produce, then we will be able
to get down to a basis of serving each other along
those special lines in which there can be no competi-
tion.

The north temperate zone will never be able to
compete with the tropics in the special products of
the tropics. Our country will never be a competitor
with the Orient in the production of tea, nor with the
South in the production of rubber.

A very large proportion of our foreign trade is
based on the backwardness of our foreign customers.
Selfishness is a motive that would preserve that back-
wardness. Humanity is a motive that would help the
backward nations to a self-supporting basis.

Better than shooting the African native to make
him buy your cotton and your beads, is his develop-
ment so that he can supply his own needs and build
up a business in the commodities of which Nature
has given his country a monopoly.

Take Mexico, for example. We have heard a
great deal about the "development" of Mexico. Ex-
ploitation is the word that ought to be used instead.
When its rich natural resources are exploited for
the increase of the private fortunes of foreign capi-
talists, it is not development, it is ravishment.

You can never develop Mexico until you develop
the Mexican. And yet how much of the "develop-
ment" of Mexico by foreign exploiters ever took ac-
count of the development of its people ? The Mexican
peon has been regarded as mere fuel for the foreign
money-makers, that's all. Foreign trade has been his
degradation;

Yet think what Mexico could be, with its people
trained to use the resources of the land, and supplying
the world with those commodities in which she most
abounds. She would then become a different kind of
a customer, it is true, but also a better kind.

Start Mexico working. Teach her people how to
erect and manage their own industries. Give them

FORD IDEALS

the benefit of our experience and guidance. And
then you have done something for the peace and pros-
perity of the world.

Short-sighted people are afraid of such counsel, ^f or
they say, "Where would our foreign trade be then?"r

When the natives of Africa begin raising their
own cotton and the natives of Russia begin making
their own farming implements and the natives of China
begin supplying their own wants, it will make a dif-
ference to be sure, but does any thoughtful man
imagine that the world can long continue on the pres-
ent basis of a few nations supplying the entire world?
We must think in terms of what the world will be
when civilization becomes general, when all the peoples
have learned to help themselves.

Take Germany for example. The United States
formerly depended on her for dye-stuffs. Now we
are making our own. Isn't it right that we should
make our own ? Had Germany any ground for believ-
ing that we should always remain dependent on her
when our own initiative could make us independent?
Is Germany doomed because foreign trade is cut off?

Not at all. Germany has the land with which to
feed herself and in the absence of foreign trade she
is left free to develop herself.

When a country grows mad about foreign trade
it usually depends on other countries for its raw ma-
terial, turns its population into factory fodder, creates
a private rich class, and lets its own immediate in-
terests lie neglected.

Here in the United States we have enough work
to do developing our own country to relieve us of the
necessity of looking for foreign trade for a long time.
We have agriculture enough to feed us while we are
doing it ; and money enough to carry the job through
without a jolt.

If there is anything more stupid than the United
States standing idle because Japan or France or any
other country hasn't sent us an order, when there is
a hundred-year job awaiting us in developing our
own country, it would be difficult to discover it.

Every nation's country is its farm, so to speak.

CULTIVATE YOUR OWN MARKET

It can live on it. There are always chores to do to
keep up the farm. There are always improvements
to be made — ^and there's the farmer to do it and food
in his granary to support him while he is doing it.

Commerce in its purity is a great fact. But com-
merce began in service. Men carried ef their surplus
to people who had none. The country that raised
com carried it to the country that could raise no com.
The lumber country brought wood to the treeless plain.
The vine country brought fruit to cold northern
climes. The pasture country brought meat to the
grassless region. It was all service.

When all the peoples of the world become de-
veloped in the art of self-support, commerce will get
back to thafbasis. Business will once more become
service. There will be no competition, because the
basis of competition will have vanished. The tropics
have a monopoly of sunshine. The temperate zones
have a monopoly of the hardy grains. The great
pampas have a monopoly of pasturage for cattle
raising. The mineral regions and the oil depositories
have a natural monopoly of these things.

And the peoples will develop skill which will be in
the nature of monopoly and not competitive. We al-
ready see evidence of these national gifts in th6 arts.
From the beginning the races have exhibited distinct
strains of genius: this one for government; another
for colonization ; another for the sea ; another for art
and music ; another for agriculttif e ; another for busi-
ness, and so on.

Lincoln said that this nation could not survive half-
slave and half-free. The human race cannot forever
exist half exploiter and half exploited. Until we be-
come buyers and sellers alike, producers and con-
sumers alike, keeping the balance not for profit but
for service, we are going to have a topsy-turvy con-
dition.

Until society in its relations balances, the account
is going to be wrong. And the best way to balance
it is to make every nation as nearly self-supporting in
the common necessities as is possible. Then com-
merce may be built up on those articles which do not

FORD IDEALS

depend on competitive throat-cutting for their ad-
vancement, but on sheer need and supply.

France has something to give the world of which
no competition can cheat her. So has Italy.. So has
Russia. So have the countries of South America.
So has Japan. So has Britain. So has the United
States.

Everyone knows, also, that our present system of
foreign exploitation is a menace to our own peace.
President Wilson saw that most clearly in the Mex-
ican situation. Fortunately for our country, both
President and people saw what the trouble was down
there. It was nothing more nor less than the demand
of exploiters that we protect them while they skimmed
the cream of Mexican natural wealth.

There is no backward country in the world but
would welcome any foreign producer who comes in
with a view to developing the country. Because, when-
ever you undertake to develop a country you must de-
velop the people, too. Whenever any people raises the
cry, "Our country for ourselves,'* as Mexico said,
"Mexico for the Mexicans," it is a sure sign that
they have been exploited by outsiders. Nobody ob-
jects to true development because everybody sees the
good and shares in the benefit of it. But human na-
ture, even in the black savages of Africa, who are
exploited in the rubber trade and the diamond mines,
objects to being regarded as mere human fuel for
foreign forge fires.

Men who are kept busy at home do not start wars
for foreign markets. And foreign markets that are
won through service and not through commercial
trickery are never the breeding cause of wars.

A nation, like a man, should be self-supporting.
Having squared his own account, the man becomes a
good citizen, a good customer, and a peaceable factor
in the general prosperity. So also the nation.

But, if after the battle of guns, we 'are going back
to the battle of goods again, in the same old spirit of
injury and deceit, we are only preparing for the day
when, as in 1914, we drop our order-books and seize
weapons.

It is the part of wisdom to abolish war everywhere
and first of all in Commerce.

''Labor and GapitaF' Are
False Terms

AMONG the tools we work with are words. Words
stand for ideas, but ideas ar^ often held back for
lack of words, as freight is held up for lack of cars.
Many men who possess ideas are hindered because
they do not possess enough words to deliver them.
Yoii may notice this in current discussions of our
social problems. It sometimes happens that people
who indulge in these discussions exhibit a lack of
word-tools with which to complete their mental work.

For example : you may hear the whok human race
summed up imder two heads. Labor and Capital ; and
you may hear serious discussions proceed on the
assumption that these two "classes'* comprise all the
elements of the social problem.

When you take the man who works with his hands
and set him on one side, and the capitalist-idler on
the other side, you have not divided the human world.
There are hosts of people in between. But because
we are tied to the terms Labor and Capital, we go
along under the notion that we have included every-
body.

The figure 4 will not serve if 7 is meant; neither
will the word "capitalist" serve when it is only "manu-
facturer" that is intended.

The trouble is that under the terms Labor and
Capital we include elements we do not intend.

We ought to be absolutely merciless in our intel-
lectual isolation of capitalists, so that we may see
them clearly by themselves and not mixed up with
other elements that do not befong there.

To speak only of Labor and Capital is to permit
too much good company to surround the mere capi-
talist who produces nothing and who skims the cream
off other men's product. %

Under that formula which divides the world into

FORD IDEALS

two classes, the dangerous capitalist is allowed to
escape in the crowd, or take to himself the credit of
other people who happen to be mistaken for mem-
bers of his class. He claims the credit due the man-
ufacturer, banker, legitimate financier — for it must
always be borne in mind that a man may be a manu-
facturer, a banker or a gifted financier without being
within a ^Jiousand miles of the status of a mere
capitalist.

There is a tendency in some circles to recognize
the poverty of these word-tools "labor" and "capital,"
and to help enrich them by adding another — "public
opinion."

The idea is that somewhere between "labor" on
the one hand and "capital" on the other, there stands
a neutral body of humanity which is neither "labor"
nor "capital," but the Public.

This idea is erroneous. It is applicable only iru
the most narrowly local way. If a small group like the
street railway employes or the milkmen — any small
group that serves the larger group — ^has an industrial
disagreement which prevents its giving service, thus
causing public loss or danger, then this entity which
we call Public Opinion asserts itself, because the Pub-
lic is larger than the group that disturbs its functions.

But in the larger social sense, when you have
marshaled all the people who are involved in the social
problem, you have none left to classify as the Public
— there are no neutrals. Public Opinion, as it is com-
monly meant, can exist Only when the majority is not
directly concerned in a disagreement but only affected
by its results.

. If there were "labor" and "capital" only, as two
camps, with Public Opinion between, and if this Pub-
lic Opinion were definitely decided as to the difference
between the two camps, then the difficulty would be
as good as settled.

If Public Opinion were some great Court of the
Human Conscience to which, on a set day. Labor and
Capital could both go to plead their cause and get a
verdict in agreement with the will of the Public, it
would be very simple. But in the larger social prob-

"labor and capital" are false terms

lem, when you have drawn up your litigants, there is
no one. left to man the bench.

Better than Public Opinion is the Social Con-
science ; this exists over and in and through all social
divisions. We know, some of us vividly and some of
us vaguely, that something is wrong with the social
system. And we know that we scarcely know enough
about the trouble to set it right. But the world and
his wife, of all classes and interests, are mulling the
matter over in their minds. By and by they will de-
cide that the trouble is here, and here, and there, and
having decided this, the Social Conscience, which is
far more effective than Public Opinion, will step in
and set right the wrong.

We are always doing that. The difficulty is that
no individual life is long enough to see how steadily
social progress has been made, how relentlessly the
Social Conscience has kept on the job. We can hardly
visualize the progress that has been made in our own
lifetime. Certainly we are leaving a better system to
our children than our fathers left to us. And it is
certain that those who come after us will build upon
our work where it is good, and tear it down where it
is bad. Our work is bad wherever we have allowed
selfish or class interest to rule it. It is good wherever
we have looked to justice and humanity to guide us.

But what we were saying is that in adding the
word-tool "Public Opinion" we have not helped very
mi^ch our poverty of word-symbols for the things we
are trying to think intelligently about.

If we must divide the world into two camps, why
not label them Producers and Non-Producers? That
rules out the idlers of every class — and we must isolate
the idlers first. When we find the producers and
classify them according to their value to the pro-
ductive process, then we are in a position to go on to
the question of distributing the rewards of production.

It is in industry as in the recent war: the war
could not have been carried on only by the men who
bore rifies in the front trenches. The engineers, the
transport men, the commissary, the managing officers,
the financial geniuses, the planners and managers both
military and civil — ^these also had a part in the war.

FORD IDEALS

It required six men to maintain one soldier in the field.

So, when you say Labor or Producers, whom do
you mean? Not only the infantrymen of industry at
the machines in the shops, but all who in any way
are essential to the making of the product.

The man whose idea gave birth to the machine,
the draughtsman whose skill determined the relation
of part with part, the trained machine maker whose
ability and experience brought the machine into exist-
ence, all these have their part as well as the workman
who operates the machine after it is tuilt and installed.

The manager who may not soil his hands at all,
whose workbench may be a desk, whose job is to make
the shop a harmonious whole so that neither time, ef-
fort nor material is wasted, also has a part in the
pro(^uct. Management is an essential part of in-
dustry, it is a trade in itself.

Then there is the financial end of the business,
whose part is to see that enough money is brought in
to pay the workman and to carry the business over
slack periods or periods of expansion — ^this also is pro-
ductive work. Everyone knows what a tragedy it is
when a business fails through mismanagement or bad
financiering. It simply destroys jobs, throws men
out of work, renders their earning ability a total loss
for the time being, and often makes a sad difference
in the condition of families.

So, when you have begun with the workman who
is the infantryman of industry and gone on through
all the departments which co-operate with the work-
man to render his work effective and his job profitable
and secure, you reach the man who is sometimes called
"the big boss." And yet because he is "the big boss"
it does not follow that he is a mere capitalist.

In the division of humanity into "Labor" and
"Capital" you may not fairly include the manufac-
turer with "capitalists."

A manufacturer works. He has a part in the pro-
duction of useful commodities. He earns his bread.

But a capitalist doesn't work at all. In a false
phrase, "his money works for him." Having control
of capital which he did nothing to acquire he uses it to

/'labor and capital" are false terms

skim a heavy tax off other men's product. When yon
get to these idlers who gamble in money, you have
reached the "capitalist," but in all fairness we ought
to be careful upon whom we place that name.

Someone asked recently who came first, the work-
man or the capitalist? The ^juestioner meant who
came first, the workman or the manager, the laborer
or the inventor?

In the simple work of the early man which con-
sisted entirely in self-support all were equal, but the
world was not the comfortable civilized sphere Which
we have today.

In the work of industry, that is, the creation of
work for others by which articles of use might be
made for all, the man with the idea came first. In-
dustry did not begin spontaneously. Someone first
had an idea. Most of the men who had the idea which
set others to work, did not have the money. They
were not "capitalists" in the modem sense. Their
capital was in their idea. If they gained money af-
terward, they gained it by what people paid for the
use of their idea in usable form. Mere capitalists,
men who possess money and nothing else, men who
use their control of money to escape useful work — ^this
class of "capitalists" never has ideas that help the
world. It schemes to fatten on other men's ideas.

Sometimes the man with an idea makes money,
Sometimes he doesn't. Our history is full of the tales
of men who really discovered the idea and failed to
profit by it. They were not managers. Some "capi-
talist" took it and made money out of it.

But when the man with an idea combines man-
aging ability with it, and his idea fills a felt want in
the world, he makes money. He doesn't make it alone,
of course ; everyone who works with him helps him.

The question then comes: Does he make too
much? Does he take too large a share for himself?
Is he overpaid for what he has contributed ?

Well, he usually begins in a very small way. A
business that now employs over 50,000 men began
less than fifteen years ago with 20 men. The idea
proved useful and acceptable to the public, and bu?t-

FORD IDEALS

ness grew. If whatever that idea made in money had
been equally distributed every Saturday night between
the proprietor and the 20 men then employed, do you
suppose the business would ever have had a surplus
on which to grow to its present dimensions, giving
employment under far better conditions and better
pay to 50,000 men than the first 20 men enjoyed?

No. Things being as they are, the business might
have lived and supported 20 men. But the chances
are it would have died, and the idea would have been
seized and exploited by others whose sole object would
have been profits and not service and industrial im-
provement.

Capital that a business makes for ^itself, that is
employed to expand the workman's opportunity and
increase his comfort and prosperity, and that is used
to give more and more, and ever more men work, at
the same time reducing the cost of service to the pub-
lic — that sort of capital, even though it be under single
control, is not a menace to humanity. It is a working
surplus held in trust and daily use for the benefit of
^11.

To regard such surplus as a personal reward is
hardly possible to the intelligent and honest possessor
or controller of it. One big reason stands in the way
of any man regarding such surplus as his own, namely,
that he himself did not make it all. It is the joint
product of his whole organization. The manufac-
turer's idea may have released all the energy and di-
rected it, but certainly it did not supply it. Every
workman, whatever his part, was a partner in the
creation of it.

And yet no business can possibly be considered
only with reference to today and to the individuals
engaged in it. To liquidate every day or every week
or every year would be the death of business ; it would
prevent expansion, it would subject the business to
the mercy of every up or down of conditions. This
means, of course, that it would constantly jeopardize
every job involved in the business.

The best wages ought to be paid. A proper living
ought to be assured every participant in the business,

"labor and capital" are false terms

no matter what his part. But for the sake of that
business* ability to support those who work in it, a
surplus ought to be held somewhere for the business'
benefit. And that is the only relation the honest man-
ufacturer has with the surplus profits which his idea
made possible.

Ultimately it does not matter where this surplus is
held nor who controls it ; it is its use that matters.

Capital that is not constantly creating more and
better jobs is more useless than sand.

Capital that is not constantly making the condi-
tions of daily labor better and the reward of daily
labor more just, is not fulfilling its highest function.

The highest use of capital is not to make more
money, but to make money do more service for the
betterment of life. Unless we in our industries are
helping to solve the social problem, we are not doing
our principal work.

The Right of a Man to His Work

THE Rights of Man! It has been the battle cry
of progress for generations. But what are the
rights of man? What determines them? And who
guarantees them? We^ talk quite glibly about hu-
man rights without topping to consider whether they
are really rights or not, and if they are, how they
came to be.

It is one thing to claim a certain right. It is an-
other thing to have the community recognize your
claim as a right. And it is still quite another thing to
have that recognized claim acknowledged in such a
way that you can avail yourself of it.

Hiunan rights were not always what they are
today.

With the organization of society, the number of
human rights tends to increase.

The reason for this doubtless is found in the fact
that when you organize human society you do it by
regulating everybody connected with it. You cut off
certain elements of freedom here and there. You do
this, of course, for the purpose of preventing trespass
on the freedom of all the people. Civilization is
restraint.

But in doing this work of restraining the wild and
reckless tendencies of men, you balance it by defining
certain Rights which they keep. You cannot define
your own rights without defining the other man's, too.

When government is set up, taxation goes with it.
But the right of taxation on the part of the govern-
ment involves the right of representation on the part
of the man who pays the taxes.

That in turn involves his equal participation in the
benefits which the tax money purchases.

Thus Civil Rights grow. They become by demand
equal rights," for the only way to keep one man's
right from trespassing on another's, is to keep both
rights equal. And that is the essence of democracy.

THE RIGHT OF A MAN TO HIS WORK

Here in America we have long been proud to say that
we believe in "equal rights before the law" for all
men. Whether we really achieve that desirable con-
dition is another question.

But Civil Rights do not exhaust human rights.
Our rights as citizens are a small part of our real
rights as human beings.

To sum up the list of Rights claimed for people
today would make a list longer than this page. It
runs all the way from the right to be well bom, to the
right to be fairly judged when life is done, and it in-
cludes all that goes between. If we were only as keen
about our duties as we are about our rights, this
would be a fine old world.

The Rights of which we hear most today are those
which concern men's life in Industry.

Now when men lived on the land and got their
living by farming, that mode of industry gave rise to
certain rights — land rights, riparian rights, road rights
and the rest.

And so when men began to organize themselves in
modern industrial work, the new form of life brought
its rights along with it too — they grew out of the cir-
cumstances; they grew out of the human conscience
as it considered the balance of equity between man
and man.

Some of these rights we have discussed in this col-
umn at one time or another, but there is one which
is paramount, which precedes and conditions all the
rest.

It is The Right To Work.

Years ago, when anyone could get a plot of land
and support himself, besides adding a little to the
surplus of the world, they used to preach The Duty
of Working.

There is not much chance for that kind of preach-
ing nowadays. We are more accustomed to the sight
of men hunting for work than to the spectacle of men
trying to escape work.

Among the new industrial rights, then, is this —
The Right of The Man to A Job.

As long as we have reorganized society on an in-

FORD IDEALS

dustrial basis, we have got to see that our industries
offer a place to every worker to earn his living.

That is primary humanity. You may thresh around
it for a hundre^i years, but it wiir still be facing you
in, the end.

It would not do much good to discuss the theory
of this. It is very simple. Every human being has
the Right to live in self-respect. It is the collective
duty to acknowledge that right by providing for it.
In a natural state of society it would take care of
itself. As matters are now, it must be deliberately
provided for.

Now, assuming that there are more men tiian
there is work, what are we to do in order to protect
men in The Right To A Job.

A number of ways suggest themselves at once. We
shall do scarcely more than name them.

The work day might be shortened, thus curtailing
the output of a worker and forcing the hiring of an-
other man to keep up the output. The disadvantage
of this plan, of course, is that it cannot be extended
indefinitely. Let us agree that good management
could reduce the work day to a point where the phys-
ical health of the worker would be benefited and the
strength of the business not injured — ^yet, even so, it
is doubtful if this alone would guarantee anyone a
job.

Again: child labor might be diminished and its
place supplied with adults. Without doubt the em-
ployment of children has had the effect of keeping
many men out of work. We have seen in our own
country — although it is quite common in other coun-
tries — mere children in competition with their own
parents for jobs. That is a most shameful condition.

So that if there are those employed who by right
ought to be in school or in the home, the placing of
them in their proper spheres would release a large
number of jobs for men to take.

But it ought to be evident that these methods, in-
cluding farm and labor colonies and other suggested
remedies, only touch the problem in spots.

The need is for something bigger and more de-
pendable. These other improvements ought to be

THE RIGHT OF A MAN TO HIS WORK /

made also, of course, but in themselves they are not
sufficient to cure the whole evil. They ought to be
undertaken on grounds of simple human justice, re-
gardless of whether they really help to solve the prob-
lem ' of unemployment or not.

We have to begin to guarantee our national pros-
perity where it begins — ^with the mass of workers.

We have got to be just at the bottom of the ladder
first, trusting that a policy of justice at the bottom
will result in justice at the top too. But we ought not
stop to speculate : we ought to begin to be just at the
beginning of things, regardless.

This is not asking charity for Labor. It is only
asking for Labor what has already been done for
Banks and Business — a Method to realize on its
assets.

A man awakes in the morning. His chief asset
is his ability to perform a day's work. He ought to
be assured of a chance to realize on that asset, just
as the business man was assisted to realize on a stock
of goods, or a bank on a stock of perfectly good notes.

Neither would this involve a policy of "making
work" — ^giving the men something to do for the sake
of keeping them busy.

With the advance of inventive genius and with the
perfection of human methods of business management,
more and more jobs are going to be created and the
conditions of labor are going to be mcreasingly im-
proved. Here and there we see private employers
who are doing their full part to reduce the problem of
unemployment, and they are not doing it as a charity,
but because a busy world is a good world to do busi-
ness in — it is a buying and selling world.

But the Government, which has the whole country
to oversee, has mountains of work that it ought to do
too. The United States in many places resembles an
unkempt, undeveloped farm.

There are great campaigns of work needed be-
fore our country can compare with any European
country in the utilization of its advantages and re-
sources.

We have arid lands to irrigate, deserts to fertilize,
water power to develop, national road systems to

FORD IDEALS

build, railroad and other transportation systems to
double and triple to take care of our needs; we have
canals to build and reforestation projects to under-
take — indeed, there is no end to the NECESSARY
and URGENT work to be done.

If the United States undertook to do all that ought
to be done, it would drain private industry of its man-
power.

A Federal Industrial Reserve, established to take
up the slack in employment would be a great step
toward protecting in this country the Right of A Man
To A Job.

There are those who claim that a certain propor-
tion of unemployed men is desirable from the in-
dustrial standpoint. A crowd of men clamoring around
the factory gates for jobs helps keep the men inside
steady and helps keep wages down, they say.

That is a detestable philosophy. It is cold specu-
lation in flesh and blood and anxiety and hunger. We
don't want any condition that is dependent on un-
employment for its steadiness.

What we want are enough jobs to go around. And
just as there was enough wealth to do business, though
not enough money until the Federal Reserve System
got to work, so there is enough work for all, though it
is not as yet divided into jobs, but will be when we
tackle it in a big national way. When the People,
through the Government, become an employer on
great public projects, unemployment will become a
thing of the past.

The Fear of Change

VOICES on every side are counseling us to fill our-
selves with fear. Wherever you go, whatever you
read, the tones of calamity are strongly emphasized.
The proper aftermath of war does not seem to be a
sense of relief at all, nor a spirit of gratitude for the
deliverance, nor yet a hopeful view of the future.
Our loudest advisers would have us believe that the
only proper feeling is one of dread for the dire events
that are expected to follow.

All this is very strange when you stop to consider
it, because it is not so many months ago when any-
one who forecasted the future in other than rosy hues
was denounced as a **calamity howler."

Today, however, Jeremiah is chief among the
prophets.

And when this occurs, it is a sign.

No stronger sign could be given that something has
been wrong and still is wrong in America than the
readiness of a certain class to accept this counsel of
fear.

The man whom you can reduce to a state of fear
by threats of retribution, is not reduced to such a
state by your words, but by the corroboration of a
guilty conscience within him.

One is justified by human experience in gauging
the degree of guilt by the readiness of the fear. When
a spokesman arises and says, "Yes, we have a great
deal to fear," it is probably true that he and those
he represents really have much to fear. But it does
not follow that everyone has.

Those whose conscience is clear, who know that
they have done their duty and have not denied theii
obligations to humanity, who have not thought them-
selves better or more deserving than their fellow-
creatures — these do not have to take refuge in fears.
They are free to scan the future and to greet what-
ever it may have in store.

FORD IDEALS

The accusing conscience, the life that knows it
has ignored the rights of others, is Fear's ally.

Well, what about the mysterious future? What
are its portents ? What is the outlook ? False prophets
always prophesy peace, and the reason their prophecy
is false is that there never is peace in the way they
mean it.

So, if this page were to begin on the note of
"Peace, peace," you could at once set it down as false.
As long as there is life there is Change. The peace
of stagnation is an attribute of death.

That, therefore, is one element we may expect in
the future — ^the element of Change.

Whatever we may regret about it, the old world
as we knew it can never come back. It can never be
the same again. Even if every human being on the
globe devoted himself to reconstructing the old world
as it was, it could not be done.

And the reason for this is that we ourselves have
changed. We are not what we were. We can never
be the same again. Something has passed over us
and upon us that has rendered us different. We have
changed our angle ^of view. That which formerly
seemed all-important now occupies a lower place, and
that of which we seldom thought has been made the
chief interest of life. The world has really been
turned upside down as far as its thinking is concerned.

Of course, this is nothing new. It has always hap-
pened, though not always so suddenly and inclusively
as it has happened now. We are continually changing
and life is always changing for us and the world is
changing beneath and around us — so why fear
Change ?

And yet there are people who really do fear it.
These are the people who are falling victims to the
propaganda of Fear today.

To shrink from a new situation is, in ordinary
times, a sign of weakness. When a man feels that he
is afraid to Jackie anything out of the ordinary routine,
when circumstance throws an obstruction in his way
and it cows him instead of rousing him, then he has
lost his zest for real life.

Life is just one unexpected thing after another,

100

THE FEAR OF CHANGE

and if a man fails to appreciate the glory of the un-
expected, his pulse is slowing up. It is Change that
keeps men alive, just as it is the flow that keeps water
pure. ^

But aside from the fear which is a sign of weak-
ness, there is another fear which is a sign of selfish-
ness. It is that fear which has clutched a whole class
in America today.

We have been pretty calm and easy-<going in
America. We have left a great many leaks which
shrewd men use to exploit for their personal gain.
We+iave unregulated power w^ich unscrupulous men
use to entrench themselves at the expense of others.

And the whole posse of get-rich-quick thieves, and
the whole clique of get-richer-still blunders, and the
whole class of those who fatten on the productive
thought and labor of others, are the ones who fear
the specter of Change as it were an accusing spirit.

And in their case impending Change is an ac-
cusing spirit. For what can be changed to anyone's
hurt is wrong to begin with. The right system cannot
be changed. Even an improvement of the right sys-
tem injures no one, but helps all. But if Change
strikes the grafts of the idle rich class and hurts
them, it is a proof that their system is wrong and
harmful to others.

Anyone who has been living by his productive
thought and labor, who has been mindful to bring
his fellow-men along with him, who has never thought
in terms of his own wealth and glory but always in
terms of the general good and prosperity, such a one
has nothing to fear from Change. He usually fore-
sees it and meets it half way. It is his friend and ally.

Why should it be so hard to get this thought into
men's minds, that Change can only hit those matters
which ought to be changed for the better?

If our rich idlers are made to work for their bread
and contribute something beside their ornamental
presence to the general good, will that be a disastrous
change ?

If those who live by dickering instead of by labor-
ing are made to get down to business and earn their
living, will that be a change to be feared ?

101

FORD IDEALS

If the whole mass of human spiders, financial,
professional and social, are hindered from spinning
their webs to catch hard-working human flies and
their earnings, is that a change to be dreaded?

If the dishonest, shrewd, scheming, gambling,
double-crossing tribe of shirkers are put out of their
feathered nests and made to pay their labor for their
living, will such a thing mean "the end of civilization"
as some of the fear-peddlers tell us?-

Instead of bringing "the end of civilization," they
will constitute a very promising beginning along sadly
neglected lines.

It is a pretty safe method to follow, when you
hear a man raving about the danger there is to Civ-
ilization at the present moment, to ask him, "Which
of your grafts is in danger?"

You don't see people who do their daily work
honestly and well going about and spreading this fear.

You don't hear of the farmers calling mass-meet-
ings and warning each other to look out, that some-
thing is going to happen!

Why? Because these people are doing their duty
to mankind. They are producing their living. They
are not living off other people. Their conscience
doesn't accuse them.

This is very significant. It is so significant that
you had better consider it a moment.

The fear-peddlers of the present hour are the priv-
ileged class, the big grafter class, and its servants —
and these servants are the reactionary politicians, and
the newspapers which seem to believe that all Change
and improvement is of the devil.

Observe and see if this is not true. Watch the
"voices of warning" and see if they do not issue from
those classes where the Guilty Conscience would
naturally become most active in times of threatened
Change.

Surveying the disorder in Europe, its cause would
appear to be the determination of the privileged
classes that the world shall go on in the old way, and
the utter impossibility of the world going on in the
old way. For we must remember that when kings
were dethroned. Private Privilege was not dethroned.

102

THE FEAR OF CHANGE

Kingship was always built upon the foundation of
class privilege, and it was possible for the head to
abdicate without breaking up the system. Kings were
useful to private privilege because they helped keep
the people's respect for high ghift. But Privilege
can get along without kings if it can only control the
people by other means. Here in the United States we
have never had a king, yet we have a privileged aris-
tocracy which can be as sharply defined as the nobility
of England or the Junkers of Germany.

So, unless these privileged classes of yesterday
can start again on yesterday's plan, they will not start
at all, and that is at the bottom of the disorder of
Europe. They are trying to hold back the tide of
progress, which is impossible.

Europe has been the scene of. endless war simply
because it has distrusted and feared Change.

The danger of Europe today is not that Progress
is knocking at her door, but that she will fear to open
the door, and will come to her senses only when the
door is broken down. Progress will pass, even though
it must batter down the barricades of selfishness and
prejudice. But it would rather pass peacefully through
the doorways of those who trust and welcome it.

Two thousand years of civilization have not taught
certain parts of Europe the primary lesson that no
nation or system is stronger than the strength and
privilege of its humblest member.

Things were coming to an end in Europe even if
the war had not intervened. When men deliberately
invent a philosophy, print it in books and teach it in
schools, which pretends to prove that certain classes
are the destined slaves of other classes, the question of
privilege being a matter of caste or birth, it was sig-
nificant that the end was near. For no sooner do you
formulate an erroneous philosophy than you inform
the world where to strike, and it strikes.

The teaching that any class is good enough to rule
another class is the old theory of the divine right of
kings revamped and applied to a privileged aristocracy.

Who is so foolish as to believe that the people of
Europe, having rid themselves of autocrats, are going

103

FORD IDEALS

to turn around and submit to the same misuse from
aristocrats?

"But," say some of those aristocrats with an ex-
pression that would be comical were it not so pitiable,
"But, if this new thing comes, then my privileges and
my vast wealth and lands disappear!"

And why not ? Why should not land be put .to
productive use? Why should not wealth minister to*
the good of all the people instead of the luxurious
tastes of the few?

The land cannot be destroyed, neither can the
wealth. It is just a taking of the useless thing and
making it useful. Surely that is civilized and right!

There are two evils we want to abolish from our
world : one of them is Poverty, the other is Privilege.
Now, how can we abolish Poverty? You do not ac-
complish it by destroying the poor. You accomplish
it by destroying the causes of Poverty.

Then how can we abolish Privilege? You do not
do it by standing the privileged class against stone
walls. You accomplish it by abolishing the causes of
Privilege. Privilege has just as definite causes as
Poverty, and they are just as easily controlled — just
as easily.

No one will be hurt in the good Changes that may
be in store for this world. Not at all.

Even the idle nobleman who loses his luxury is
not going to be hurt — ^he will be a better man with-
out his idleness, his useless luxury and his expensive
vices.

They say that some of the princes of Europe are
going into business, becoming clerks and salesmen
and farmers. Well, have they been harmed? Not at
all. They are more princely now than they ever were
with the baubles of rank dangling from their narrow
chests.

Get the gambling aristocrats and the selfish capi-
talists to work for a year, and they would never go
back to the old life. They will come round and thank
the influences that made them get out and hustle and
become of some use.

If the poor will thank you for abolishing Poverty,

104

THE FEAR OF CHANGE

the useless rich will thank you for abolishing Privilege.

Because a good Change works good all round.

That is why a man with a clear conscience need
never fear a Progressive Change. If he is a worker
now, he will be needed in the world whatever happens.

Nothing will ever happen that will dethrone the
worker. He is the one class whose place is secure
throughout all time. The man who produces by his
thought or his labor will always be in request and in
favor. He constitutes the continuing class — ^he is the
hold-over through every change.

That is why the workers are not afraid.

If a moral were needed, this might do: to escape
fear and a guilty conscience, become a worker. And
this applies very directly to the wealthy idler whose
fears are very lively just now.

105

How Much Domestic Trouble

Is PreventableP

IT IS impossible to state the exact proportion of the
world's trouble which is preventable, but we are
well within the limit when we say that it approxi-
mates 75 per cent. We shall never be in a position
accurately to appraise mankind's earthly life until we
have exhausted our last experiment for that life's
betterment.

Most of the trouble that man is heir to, except
old age and death, is preventable; a vast amount of
it is curable even after it occurs; and, taking life on
its practical side, it could be made much smoother
than it is.

In excepting old age and death as troubles which
are incurable, it is not intended to adopt a hopeless at-
titude toward them. Old age is not a trouble, rightly
speaking. It ought to be in many, respects a man's
happiest period of life — its golden sunset. And it
woiild be this if only other conditions were right. It
is when old age comes before its time as the result of
hard conditions or wrong methods of living, or when
it comes without any sunset glow, that it becomes a
burden artd a trouble.

As for death — in the economy of nature it is one
of the arrangements that make for progress. It lets
the generations come on. It allows new ideas to sweep
up on the shores of the world. Perhaps it also gives
great assistance to the human personality in its own
development.

But even as inevitable as death now is, inevitable as
perhaps it may remain throughout human history,
there is no need of its being the trouble we experience.
Ripe deaths are not grievous; it is only the untimely
ones that leave scars upon our lives. When the young
man dies with his future unfulfilled; when the young
father dies leaving his wife and brood of children;

106

HOW MUCH DOMESTIC TROUBLE IS PREVENTABLE?

when the strong men of the world drop off long be-
fore their natural time and from causes that were
clearly preventable, then death becomes unnatural —
it becomes a great trouble.

So that even when we are compelled to make ex-
ceptions of old age and death from the list of pre-
ventable troubles, there is a sense in which the injury
they do is also preventable. When old age comes in
its time, when death comes as the harvest comes, at
the ripe end of a fruitful life, it is natural, often it is
even beautiful, and the wounds thus made are not the
unnatural ones which are made by untimely passings
and breakdowns.

Now, if these two great experiences can be so regu-
lated as to lose their terror and hurt, what is there
which we cannot say about the lesser troubles which
harass us?

Take domestic trouble, for example — ^perhaps one
of the -bitterest of troubles which afflict mankind to-
day.

It is impossible for the man who is wrapped up in
his own happiness and who has no means of knowing
what is the exact condition among his fellow men, to
realize just how much domestic trouble exists in the
world. Get a few thousand men together and the
bulk of such trouble, past or present, which they rep-
resent is really appalling.

And yet it is mostly preventable. Perhaps it is
fair to say that it is all preventable. A little wisdom
exercised beforehand, a little forbearance afterward,
would be the cure of most domestic difficulties.

Most people marry in the delusion that they are
marrying Perfection. Of course they are not. But
at least they are marrying a possibility of happiness.

When two people believe that they think enough
of each other to marry, they possess therein a possible
foundation for future happiness no matter how little
romance they may have in their lives.

Domestic happiness is not so much a matter of
'Love as of Good Sense. Many people who claim to
love each other, are unhappy together. Many people
who smile at the mention of love are very happy to-
gether, simply because they have good common sense.

107

FORD IDEALS

Those who say it is impossible to base domestic
happiness on good sense, mutual forbearance and
mutual respect are drawing their conclusions from
novels instead of life.

Many domestic disasters could be prevented by a
knowledge of the course which domestic life often
takes. Two young people marry — as it is right they
should, and, other circumstances being favorable and
equal, they can hardly marry too young — ^and they
fancy they will never, never change. Sometimes they
even swear to each other that they will never change.

But, they do. They cannot help it. They change
because they grow. He becomes more of a man, and
she more of a woman. He becomes more critical —
not necessarily in his manner, but in his insight; she
opens her eyes also. If the truth were told it is prob-
ably the woman who comes to the balanced view of
matters first.

Dreams cannot last forever, and it would be a pity
if they should. For the realities are better.

But the passing of the dream is a dangerous period,
for it tends to make one or the other, sometimes both,
to feel that they have been tricked.

However, they have not been tricked. A hundred
to (me they have not married unwisely. They are
simply going through a normal experience — a. moult-
ing period, as it were.

But there is the first danger, the suspicion that
they have married unwisely.

The second danger is more to be feared, namely,
the false belief that the first part of the married life
is the best, and that if that part disappoints, there is
nothing but misery waiting in the future.

Now the fact is that the first part of marriage is
not the best. It seems to be so at the time ; even out-
side beholders are betrayed into thinking it so ; but it
is not. It may be more ecstatic, more spring-like, more
ruled by the stormier emotions of joy.

But after all, there is no happiness like that of
Darby and Joan at their own firesides many, many
years after — she not a bit deluded about him but
knowing him to be a true man, and he not a bit
deluded about her but knowing her to be a true woman,

108

HOW MUCH DOMESTIC TROUBLE IS PREVENTABLE?

and both loving each other more deeply than they ever
did before, but perhaps not saying so.

It should be incorporated into our marriage cere-
monies, so that young folks would not be deluded
when it arrives, that a time of change will come when
the fresh young affection will begin to make room for
something deeper and more enduring.

It should be impressed upon young men and women
that it is this latter time that they are really playing
for, that all sorts of inconveniences and disappoint-
ments in the readjustment period should be borne
wisely for the sake of the better understanding and
the better loyalty which is to come in later years.

In business, in education, in every other line of
life men play for the distant prize. In marriage the
prize is to be loyally understood 25 years from the
wedding day. It is worth everything to achieve that.

If this second danger, the danger of thinking the
first part the best, can be avoided, the course of do-
mestic life is usually safe.

All this, however, takes no account of those far
too many homes which have snagged on both rocks.
Because husband and wife think that the fading of
the early glamour is proof of their having made a
mistake, and because they mistakenly think that the
end must necessarily be grayer and gloomier than the
beginning, there is very, very much bitterness in the
world.

There is hardly any bitterness one can conceive that
approaches the bitterness of a married couple who
fancy they have made a mistake.

That is why our divorce courts are so busy.

But observe this: There are more mistaken di-
vorces than there are mistaken marriages.

We don't need divorce courts in this country half
so much as we need Courts of Explanation and Courts
of Reconciliation and Courts of Understanding.

When you have divorced two people you have
simply turned two soured souls into society to exer-
cise a souring influence on others.

The most powerful argument in favor of the di-
vorce grist is that divorce is in the interest of the
happiness of the parties concerned and not society;

109

FORD IDEALS

and that argument is completely neutralized by the
fact that the happiness of those parties more often
consists in saving their marriage than in destroying it.
> A certain lawyer, who once did a large divorce
business, reformed, and for the purpose of making
an experiment for his own satisfaction began to be
the friendly adviser of all who applied to him to obtain
divorces for them. Their application opened the door
for hiis inquiries, and he found himself able in all but
a negligible percentage of cases to be able to effect a
good understanding and reconciliation.

Our more progressive communities also are wak-
ing up to the folly of grinding out divorces wholesale.
They are now establishing intermediary courts where
the applicants for divorce may be reasoned with.

It is not to be expected that this official interven-
tion for the sake of preventing divorce is going to be
fully successful. In the first place, the relation of
adviser in such matters should not be official at all,
but friendly. In the second place, the official adviser
is seldom the type of person who knows the prof ounder
phases of the problem with which he deals. In the
third place, the people whose domestic life is most
worth saving are the very people with whom even
these intermediary institutions would hesitate to deal.

Yet it is true that husband and wife, in circum-
stances of domestic bitterness, seldom possess the
means of coming to an understanding by themselves.
It is one of the strange aspects of this difficulty that
people who, of all the people in the world, are closest
to each other, should in their own most intimate and
important concerns be farthest apart. But so it is —
and it is far from being the only paradox that human
nature presents.

There must be some outside influence from some-
where to enable two such unfortunate people to see
their true condition. And even this influence cannot
be effective unless the man and woman themselves
adopt a spirit of simplicity and regard themselves as
a grown boy and a grown girl who have simply lost
their way in one of life's most intricate forests. Only -
in this spirit can they profit by that which the heart

HOW MUCH DOMESTIC TROUBLE IS PREVENTABLE?

of friendliness and the wisdom of experience would
offer them.

If it could be made clear as a matter of educa-
tion or public information that changes of temperature
in the married life are not abnormal but perfectly
natural; if it could be made clear that the day of
dreams comes to an end and the day of grown-up
reality begins ; if it could be very strongly insisted that
team-work, team-work and again team-work is the
chief rule of domestic success — absolute confidence,
loyalty and exchange of views — many domestic sor-
rows would be avoided.

And then if it could be made clear to everybody
that the idea of divorce being an escape is not true —
that instead of being an escape, divorce is more likely
to be a leap into the fire — that would be of vast as-
sistance also.

If the testimony of divorcees could be taken on
this point, the revelation would be ^startling.

Marriage may be repaired ; it is broken, at great
peril.

Domestic happiness is not only of private im-
portance. It is the world's business, the future's busi-
ness, how our domestic life goes. A great many un-
desirable conditions in the present day can be traced
by the untoward domestic conditions.

Take a shop which is manned by men of unhappy
home life and compare it with a shop manned by men
whose home life is happy, and you will see a vast dif-
ference in the quality and quantity of the output.
Moreover, you will see a vast difference in the wisdom
and reasonableness with which the men manage their
private and industrial affairs.

The business man who is in domestic difficulty,
and who is not doing anything to clear it up, is up
against the strongest kind of competition in the busi-
ness man whose home affairs are well adjusted. It
would be an interesting sociological investigation to
compute how many business failures have been con-
nected with domestic failures.

A man's first success ought to be in his home.

There are no two men and women on the face of
the globe, no matter how much they may prate about

111

FORD IDEALS

"affinity," difference of temperament and "incompati-
bility," who could not together make a most excellent
home, one that would attract the widest and worthiest
circle of friends, if they only wanted to.

And it would be worth doing. It would be the
strongest asset either of them could have.

There is a baneful connection between domestic
failure and every other kind of failure.

' But cheating the domestic bogie means team-work.
It means talking it out together. It means compromise
here and there. It-means experiments, now with her
Way of managing matters, now with his. It means
"bear and forbear" and the old-fashioned rule that
only one shall be grouchy at a time. It means a sense
of humor, too, for the oldest and wisest of us are
only boys and girls.

But perhaps it means first and deepest of all the
solid fact that domestic difficulty is absolutely pre-
ventable. It is not fated. It is not necessary. It is
not inevitable. It is preventable. And if through ig-
norance or ill-will it is not prevented, then it is very
far from the necessity of going through to a break-up,
for it is curable.

112

Farming — the Food-Raising

Industry

Now that the planting time has come, it is the
duty of everyone who can to get out of the
factories and into the fields to raise food. Our all-
year factory life is a mistake. It is a physical as well
as an economic mistake. We somehow got started
on the wrong track when the industrial system was
established in America. Factory and farm should
have been organized as adjuncts one of the other, and
not as competitors. Men were never meant to stay
within walls while Nature is waking the Earth to
her annual labor and clothing the visible creation with
beauty and fertility.

If we adopted the practice of going outdoors to
work when outdoor work was the seasonable and
natural thing to do, and came back to indoor work
when the food-producing processes of Nature were
complete, we should be a happier, healthier people
and many of our economic problems would be solved.

It is the nature of men, when the spring-time
comes, to^Avish to work in the soil. They take a de-
light in the wholesome odor of the freshly upturned
earth in their back yards. There is a deep instinct
for the soil in every one of us. Where is the man who
has not wished scores of times that he might live and
work in the country among growing things? Our
natures crave direct contact with Nature herself.

The pity is that life is not organized so that this
pet-fectly wholesome instinct might be gratified. If
we could all leave the factories when the time comes
to plant com, and return to the factories after the
harvest, not only would we be better men physically
and mentally, but the effect on the social situation
would be most beneficial.

We are engaged in something like that in our fac-
tories. We are encouraging the men who can do so

113

FORD IDEALS

to go back to their land, raise a crop, and come back
to us when the crop is harvested.

A man who works on the land in the proper season,
and returns to work in the factory when the land is
resting, is living a very wise program. He is living
his life in rhythm with Nature. He is maintaining
his health. He is keeping his mind in fine tone. And
he is doing a service to society.

We may talk as much as we please about in-
dustrialism, but the fact remains that Agriculture is
the first of the arts — it is basic. No wheels turn, no
invention thrives, no commerce is carried on, no busi-
ness is done if the furrows remain unturned. The
farmer heads the van. When he stops the whole
world-procession comes to a standstill.

Everyone knows this. That is to say, everyone
assents to the truth when such a statement is made.
But very few realize it. Fewer still ever think of it
as imposing a personal obligation on themselves.

If we had the complete figures, showing to how
great an extent the farm had been abandoned for
the factory, they would be startling. They are startling
enough for a single large concern.

In one factory it was found that 10 per cent of the
men had come directly from the farm to work in the
factory, and half of these \vere owners of farms.

Bear in mind, it is not the exodus of farmers'
children we are considering now — that exodus which
has been going on since the city lights first attracted
boys from paternal acres — but the exodus of the
farmers themselves, the mature generation upon whom
the weight of agricultural responsibility rests.

These men have come in by hundreds and thou-
sands to take advantage of the high wages paid in
modem industry. They are a good class of work-
man. They are, for the most part, sober, steady,
thrifty and intelligent. It is easy to understand why
any employer should wish to keep them.

But if the employer will check up his classifica-
tion lists showing from what previous occupations his
employes have come, he will very directly be met by
the question whether he is not party to a serious dis-

114

Farming — the food-raisii^g Industry

location of effort by inducing to stay with him men
who would be better employed raising food.

These farmers should be helped to see that any
financial benefit they may seem to derive from farm-
abandonment is only apparent and temporary. That
is, in ceasing to raise food they are creating a condi-
tion which nullifies the benefits of high wages. The
price of food today is one of the reasons why our
high wages possess less purchasing power than they
should, and the high price of food is due to a decrease
in the food supply, which in turn is caused by the
movement from farm to factory.

The man who comes from the farm to the factory
for the sake of high wages may seem to profit for a
time, but he is making it harder for everyone else, and
eventually for himself also — for when he ceases to be
a producer of food, becoming merely a consumer, he
is caught in the jaws of the very situation he has
helped to create.

If a factory worker's land is lying idle, he should
go and work it — always with the understanding that
he can come back to the shop, if he wishes, when the
crop is harvested.

If he has rented his farm, he should go back at
this season and see that it is being properly planted
and maintained.

The knowledge of farming is so precious that

everyone who possesses it has a sacred duty to use it.

Experienced farmers ought to be as unwilling to leave

the land to inexperienced hands as are engineers to

-leave valuable machinery in the hands of amateurs.

It is not always possible to send back the man who
did hired work on the farm, for often that would
mean turning him out of one job to seek another
which he might fail to find.

But if we were living under a plan where it was
understood that the Spring and Summer months were
the months of outdoor work, these matters would be
more easily adjusted.

. Turn aside from the farming question for a mo-
ment and look at the building question. In the upset
of conditions that followed upon war, the various fac-
tory industries absorbed thousands of trained build-

115

FORD IDEALS

ers — carpenters, bricklayers, stone masons, plaster-
ers, etc.

Now, building is largely a seasonal trade. That
is, it is best pursued in the "outdoor months." What
a waste of power it has been to allow builders to hi-
bernate through the winter, waiting for the building
season to come round.

And what an equal . waste of skill it has been
when experienced building mechanics have been forced
into factories to escape the looses of the winter sea-
son, and, in order to hold their jobs in the factories,
have been forced to stay there all through the building
season when they might have been outdoors helping
to build homes for the people or shops for industry.

What a waste this all-year system has been, any-
way! If the farmer could get away from the shop
to till his farm in the planting, growing and harvest-
ing season (it is 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 smoother the world
would proceed. ^

Suppose we all moved outdoors every Spring and
Summer — ^the whole nation with, its wife and family —
and lived the wholesome life of outdoor work for
three or four months! Wouldn't that be very much
better than an insipid vacation at some inane sum-
mering placfe?

And after that we would all move back to the city
for the Fall and Winter work in the mechanical and
manufacturing field. But how much better we would
be in every way upon our return! How invigorated!
How tuned up! How balanced we would feel!

Well, it is not at all impossible.

What is desirable and right is never impossible.

It would only mean a little team-work, a little less
attention to greedy ambition and a little more atten-
tion to life.

Those who are rich find it desirable to go away
for three or four months a year and dawdle in idle-
ness 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

116

FARMING — ^THE POOD-RAISING INDUSTRY

they would provide the team-work necessary to this
outdoor seasonal employment, and they would be quick
to see how much more evenly Nature's contribution
and Humanity's contribution to Life would be
balanced.

It is hardly possible to doubt that much of the
unrest we see about us is the result of an unnatural
mode of life. Men who do the same thing continu-
ously the year round, in the midst of the same scenes,
and shut away from the health of the sun and the
spaciousness of the great out-of-doors, are hardly
to be blamed if they begin to see matters in a gloomy
or distorted light.

The physical strain consequent upon unnatural
modes of life has a great deal to do with the causation
of social irritability and general discontent.

Why should a change of scene iilways be in the
nature of a vacation, or upon the doctor's orders ?

Why should we not have it as a part of the normal
workaday affairs of life?

What is there in life that should hamper normal
and )vholesome 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 the most universal point of view.

We must consider the increased energy of the
industrial forces that should spend three or four
months every year in outdoor work.

We must also consider the effect on the cost of
living which would result from this general return
to the fields.

Besides this, we must consider the great and steady
increase of general needs which such a program would
stimulate, and the prevention of "slack times" every-
where.

The farm has its "slack times." That is the time
for the farmer to come into the factory and help pro-
duce the things he needs to till the farm.

The factory also has its "slack times." That is

117

FORD IDEALS

the time for the workman to go out to the land to
help produce the food which is the ultimate factor in
all human activity.

Thus, by taking the "slack" out of every line of
work through the application of this seasonal dis-
posal of industry, we should be restoring the balance
between the artificial and the natural.

But not the least, perhaps by far the greatest
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 today is the result of narrowness of mind
and 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 clears his mind of cobwebs. It
draws away the ill-humors of the blood. It puts us
in touch with the ancient harmony of night and day,
sun and shower, seedtime and harvest. We can live
so closely with one thing and fill our minds so com-
pletely with one aspect of life as to become unbalanced
as far as any fair and practicable judgment upon the
whole of life is concerned.

Let us never be afraid of these ideals of better
things. The very fact that they come to us is a
prophecy that one day the reality will come, too. And
where an ideal is social enough to include all of us
in a new and beneficial plan, it is pretty certain to
be a true ideal, destined to realization.

118

''A Few Strong Instincts and
a Few Plain Rules"

ALL that the world needs for the guidance of its
. life could be written on two pages of a child's
copy book. "A few strong instincts and a few plain
rules" would set the world singing on its way, in-
stead of tying it up in the periodical blunders which
hinder progress and give a sense of infinite and ir-
remediable confusion.

Learning may need' large space, thousands of vol-
umes, vast experiment and failure and progress; but,
strange to say, Wisdom carries very little of such
baggage.

There are a few truths all of us know when we
have reached the more mature years, and we see
them to be the very foundation wisdom of life — plain,
enduring, true. But when we happen to mention
them in convers94:ion we are met, if not with the
words, then with the spirit which says, "Old stuff!
Give us something new."

A curious illusion persists among us that because
we have heard a thing, we therefore know it. Repeti-
tion is not desired. We begin to refer contemptu-
ously to "platitudes."

Well, it is very evident to the observer that a
"platitude" is a truth of which everybody has heard,
but whi^h few really know.

The world has heard everything that is necessary
to the re-establishment of life in universal peace, uni-
versal prosperity, and universal progress. It has
heard every essential principle any number of times.
And yet there is no sign that it fully knows them.

If you saw a man continually making sums on
paper in which 2 plus 2 equaled 5, you would say,
"But 2 plus 2 equals 4."

"Yes, yes," the man would reply, "every school

119

FORD IDEALS

child knows that. Tell me something new/*^ and go
on making the same mistake.

He would be behaving very much like the human
race today.

"Yes, yes," says the world impatiently, when a
simple principle of lif^ is uttered, "we know that. We
heard it when we were children. Everybody knows
that. Give us something new," and goes on in the
same way as before.

What does it mean? Simply that we do not know
an)i:hing until, convinced of its truth, we act upon it.

The truth of things escapes us, mostly because
truth is so simple. If it came only in the scholar's
vesture, in a dead and learned language, behind a
barrier of books which a lifetime would not suffice
to master, it would be hardly possible that the world
should miss being wise.

But Wisdom comes in such simple guise that more
often she is received by the peasant than by the prince.

All the personal and social morality known to the
race is summed up in the brief Ten Commandments,
and all the higher and finer principles of life are sum-
med up in the Sermon on the Mount, and both of
them together are not enough to fill a penny pamphlet.

Whatever may be the form in which the World
Covenant of the Nations is written, you will find
every true assertion in it harking back to the Deca-
logue;, and whatever may be the finer service attained
by the choicer spirits among mankind, it will never
exceed the Words Spoken on the Mount.

And yet, these would be among the things of which
lovers of newness would say, "It is old and stale.
Give us something new."

Now, as a matter of fact, there isn't anything new ;
and if there were it could only be attained through a
complete use and absorption of what is old and true.

At the core of everything is The Principle, and
principles are from eternity and to eternity.

All of our apparent going forward is simply a
progress farther into the heart of Principle. It is not
a learning of new things, but a new learning of the old.

It has always been wrong to steal ; it always will

120

"a few strong instincts and a few plain rules''

be wrong to steal, whether it affects the potatoes a
farmer has planted, the child's affection which the
parent possesses, or the territory which forms an in-
tegral part of a nation's sovereignty.

If you take this single matter of stealing, and
trace it through all the operations of the political,
financial, industrial, social and moral worlds, you will
find that — shall we say more than half ? — of the world's
trouble is caused by plain stealing.

If the entire story of the recent war — including the
quarter century of preparation for it — is studied along
the line of this single clue of stealing, the discoveries
would be amazing.

It is not too much to say that if the world were
to learn no more in the next century than to live by
the truths it already knows, the year 2,000 would
dawn upon an Earth without a single sore problem.
So^ much of our progress consists in going back and
starting over again on another plan, when it might
consist in going from one complete conquest to an-
other !

Yet, if you insist on these simple, fundamental
principles without which no substantial achievement
is possible anywhere, the ready retort is that "every-
body knows them."

Everybody does not know them, although every-
body may have heard of them.

You don't know that a lie is wrong until you know
that when lies are circulated in the human inter-
change of speech, it is like flooding monetary currency
with bogus coins.

Speech is the currency of thought among^men.
We depend more on the genuineness of men's words
than we do on the genuineness of the coins that cir-
culate among us. Let the suspicion get abroad that
men's words are bogus and not the coinage of truth,
and the whole system of human exchange breaks down.

Until we know that, until we act upon the knowl-
edge that falsehoods injure the most delicate nerves
in the social body, we cannot be said to know the
simple principle of truth-telling. And until we do
know it. It doesn't matter how many new-fangled
matters may be presented to please our fancy. Truth-

^ 121

FORD IDEALS

telling is mighty old-fashioned, but it will still be a
vital principle a million years hence, wherever con-
fidence between man and man is the basis of fellow-
ship or co-operation.

If a censor should go through the world today,
cleaning out everything that needs a lie to bolster it
up, abolishing everything that has the taint of deceit
upon it, forbidding everything that needs to be" con-
cealed or dissembled, there would be such a house-
cleaning in governments, banking houses, industries,
societies and combinations as would leave the world
unrecognizably^ clean.

Why, it is the very lack of confidence in the ability
of high-placed persons to tell the truth and stand by
it that has led to all the difficulty at the Conference of
Paris ! The nations have no confidence in each other's
fair professions. Why? Simply because they feel
that this "old stuflF," this "platitude" about the basic
importance of truth has not yet been learned by the
world.

Why demand novelties for a world that has yet to
learn the A B C of common man-to-man honesty?

The impatience of the world goes even deeper
than that. There is not only a tendency to thrust aside
these old-fashioned basic principles, but there is a
still more dangerous tendency to believe that morality
of mind and body has no place in big affairs at all.

"Yes, yes," is a common remark, "we take these
things for granted without mentioning them."

The trouble is that we do not take them for
granted unless we insist upon them. This world is
built on morality — and morality is simply honest think-
ing and honest doing. There is nothing that endures
without this morality.

There will never be any system of government,
or society, or business, or progress — no possible liv-
ing together at all, except on a basis of this morality.

Yet we see one great group of men contending
that all we need for the millennium is a new system
of distribution, and another great group is insisting
that all we need is a system that will forever guar-
antee to the inheritor of a dollar the right to collect

122

"a few strong instincts and a few plain rules"

6 to 10 per cent from the man who did not inherit the
dollar.

No. It doesn't matter^ how mechanically perfect
a social system may be devised — the better it is the
more miserably it will fail without a fundamental
morality to infuse and sustain it. It is like making a
hoe. The style may be fine, the proportions right,
the pattern perfect; but if you make it of soft tin, it
will not be a good hoe.

The world teems with social plans and programs,
but you will never get a just and happy society until
there is a high degree of common morality to pour
into the molds.

It is one of the fallacies of modem thought, this
notion that we may sidetrack this vital element which
distinguishes man from the brute and raises society
above the herd.

In olden times the teachers of Wisdom refused to
admit to their instruction any man who was not clean
within and without, a man well grounded in the mor-
alities. For the old masters reasoned that he who
had not learned the fundamentals could not learn the
other things. Wisdom presupposed morality.

The old masters were right. They grasped a truth
which is beginning to emerge again in our day, namely,
that men who are in wrong relations with the moral
universe are not to be trusted with the secrets which
make for progress.

We have seen what use was made by man of his
command over the forces of nature in the recent war.

We may shudderingly imagine what would have
happened if man's knowledge of nature's mysteries
had" been greater than it is.

All of which impresses us strongly with the thought
that if still more power is to be won by human beings,
it must be kept under the restraint of conscience and
used according to the dictates of morality. Else
knowledge becomes our destruction instead of, as it
was intended to be, our great good.

123

The Farmer — Nature's Partner

THIS is the time of year when city people think of
Nature as a big showroom, filled with bloom, per*
fume and song. A sunnier season has come, liberating
us from the protection of confining walls and the ne-
cessity of stoking fires. Multitudes of people have no
other conception of Spring than as a delightful change
in the weather.

There is one man, however, who knows better. He
knows that the first songs of the returning birds are
but the whistles annouhcing the turning of wheels in
Nature's great food factory. The increased warmth
of the earth is turning on the power which moves the
processes of that first industry. Spring freshets, wood-
land flowers, balmy breezes, cordial sunshine — ^all
these are to him much more than themes for poetry;
they are signs that for him his day's work has begun,
a day which lasts from seedtime to harvest.

Of course we know, even when we do not fully
realize, that if the Farmers should let the birds whistle
unheeded, and decide to let this year pass without
labor, the wheels of nature could grind as they pleased,
the sun could furnish heat and the clouds drop mois-
ture, and it would not avail mankind. Without the
labor of man — and in this relation, "man" means the
Farmer — ^the whole produce of the earth would
amount to no more than matted weeds.

We are living and working today by virtue of the
food which men planted in the Spring of 1918 and
harvested in the Autumn of 1918. And we shall be liv-
ing and working in 1920 as a result of the food which
is even now in process of producti6n in this year, 1919.

Farming is the First Industry. Without it there
could be no other industry. The complete absence of
steam or electric power from the earth would not re-
sult in so absolute a tie-up of effort as would the ces-
sation of farming.

All this seems hardly worth the saying, it is so

124

THE FARMER — NATURE'S PARTNER

elementary, so widely known. And yet if there is any
division of human labor upon which the inhabitants
of large cities expend little if any thought, it is the
work of Farming. For all that multitudes of people
know, their food is made in factories and purveyed
in the stores. That the loaves of the bakeries were
once brown fields of grain, the meats of the markets
once grazing herds, the canned goods on the grocers'
shelves once laboriously cultivated crops, is all too
little considered.

The purpose in calling attention to this is not to
enlarge the consideration of the unintentionally incon-
siderate, but to throw a sidelight on the general neglect
which has been visited on the most fundamental
industry.

Because the Farmer's work was done at a distance
from the cities, thus preventing him from acquiring
that "veneer of civilization" which goes with starched
collars and polished shoes, it became a superior fancy
with city people that the man who trod the furrows
was their inferior. The list of nicknames applied to
the Farmer is ample proof of this.

Of course, the Farmer had the better of this situa-
tion all the time. He could see the joke. He knew
wherein his position had advantages of which city
dwellers were ignorant. The healthfulness, independ-
ence, sterling honesty of the work in which he was
engaged made it incomparably more desirable than
the work by which many city people lived.

Nevertheless, it reacted on the Farmer to this ex-
tent : for a long time the inventive genius of the world
was almost exclusively exercised in behalf of the city
dweller and his industries. ^

Machinery for city industries, conveniences for
city homes, opportunities for city people, all of these
commanded the attention and services of progressive
leaders, to the almost total exclusion of interest in the
Farmer, his needs. and his situation. He was remem-
bered chiefly at election time — and then it was to get
something out of him, not to do something for him.

Only a few persons were engaged in trying to
make the farmer's business more efficient, and of

125

FORD IDEALS

these fewer still did anything with an undivided pur-
pose to aid him.

How the Farmer has been held up by trusts when
he bought; beaten down by trusts when he sold; de-
rided by ignorance when he appeared in the city.;
ignored when he would send his representatives to
legislature — all these injustices form some of the best
known chapters in the history of American agriculture.

The effect of this soon began to a|)pear. Young
people are sensitive, not so ready to weigh certain at-
titudes in the balances of an impartial judgment ; thus
there began a decrease in the number of Farmers'
sons following the ancient profession of agriculture.

This in turn had its effect on the life of cities, on
the cost of living, until there was never a time in the
history of the world when the value and virtue of
Farming was more profoundly appreciated than it is
today. We ought no longer to rest under any doubt
as to where the credit is due for the great changes
which have come not only in Farming itself but also
in the public attitude toward it.

The Farmer himself has furnished the initial stim-
ulus for the vast improvements which have come or
are coming into his business. He agitated for schools
in which his boys could be taught scientific agriculture.
The numerous agricultural colleges scattered through-
out the land have made Farming a profession and
given it the dignity of an art. It was only when med-
ical knowledge was systematized, so that it could be
tested by wide experience and communicated to in-
quiring minds in an authoritative way, that medicine
rose from the darkness of superstition into the clear
light of practical science; and so with Farming.

The science of the soil, the romance of rotation of
crops, the creative improvement of strains of cattle,
the organization of dairy production, the efficient
planning of farm work and the business-like marketing
of crops and produce — all of these have not only
given the Farmer and his son the inner sense of be-
longing to the great world of business, but have also
placed in their purse the world's certificate of service
in the form of handsome payments.

More than that, |||yentive genius has placed itself

126

THE FARMER — NATURE'S PARTNER

at the Farmer's service, and it will be found that this
inventive ability did not originate in cities, but on
farms. One who has gone from the Farm to the
machine shop, or who all his life has worked at inter-
vals in both, has a better idea of the Farmer's needs
and a more ardent desire to meet them, than the
engineer who simply seeks to design a new kind of
implement or machine to catch the farm trade.

Man-power and horse-power are rapidly receding
before machine-power and water-power.

The effect of this is to decrease the number of
days work required to produce a crop, to decrease the
strain upon the Farmer's strength, to decrease the de-
mands upon his financial resources; while, on the
other hand, it increases the time he has for planning
his work, increases the reserve of energy he can give
to the mental side of his job, and makes for a larger,
broader life for him generally.

Farming need not be an all-year job. The Farmer,
his crop harvested and his field work done, should be
free to devote himself to other lines of work and so
broaden his experience and improve his point of view.

The tendency to give credit for these betterments
to conventions of city people is dying out, for it is be-
coming more and more evident that only the Farmer
could have done as much for the Farmer as recent
years have seen done.

We have greatly overestimated the cities — most
people will agree with that. When we all stand up
and sing, "My Country 'Tis of Thee," we seldom
think of the cities. Indeed, in that old national hymn
there are no references to the city at all. It sings of
rocks and rivers and hills — the great American Out-
of-Doors.

And that is really The Country. That is, the
country is THE Country. The real United States
lies outside the cities.

The food that sustains us, the raw material that
feeds our factories, the broad waterways on which
our commerce floats — all of these have their sources
outside the cities.

The wealth with which people speculate has its
origin in scenes far different, and if you want to see

127 /

FORD IDEALS

the true foundations of the Treasury of the United
States, look at the soil beneath your feet.

The fresh moist earth is the greatest of all gold
mines, and the wealth it produces does only good and
never harm.

We are going back to this ideal of the land some
day. Both as an economic measure and as a plan
whereby each man may get the most pleasure and
profit out of life, all of us are going to be proud to
be known as tillers of the soil.

Some one has humorously said that the dream of
the Farmer is to occupy an office in a city skyscraper,
while the office man in the skyscraper has one great
desire, which is to raise chickens on a farm.

Both desires are natural. The Farmer wants to
have his share in the busy life of the world of in-
dustry, exchange or professionalism. The worker,
business man and thinker want to have a share in the
processes of nature, to bury their hands in the soil and
see growing things come to maturity beneath their care.

Some day we are going to be sensible enough to
see that the best thing that can happen to both classes
will be such a seasonal interchange of work. City
people grow narrow, too. Working in the soil would
give them more wholesome views. And the modem
improvements of farm conditions are doing mone to
prepare for this new mode of life than any amount
of economic argument to the contrary.

128

1 '

Limitations Are Guide Posts,

Not Barriers

IT IS better to be "narrow'' and to know a few
things with certainty, than to be "broad" and be
doubtful and hesitant about everything. Take, for
example, the fact of limitation. Everybody has his
limitations. Everywhere there are limitations. There
are certain things some of us will never be able to do,
and there are definite boundaries set up around every
force and principle known to man.

Limitation is not only a personal fact; it is a uni-
versal fact.

But to establish such a fact is not the end of the
matter. There still remains the manner in which men
react to it. Facts are facts, but to one man they may
mean discouragement and defeat; to another man,
guidance, inspiration and success.

It is curious to contemplate, that we need to
modify very, very few natural facts; but we need
greatly to modify certain attitudes which men adopt
^ toward the facts.

Now, in the matter of personal limitations, this
difference in the attitude of men is very marked : One
man regards his limitations as a big "Forbidden" sign
set squarely across his path, another man regards his
limitations as a very useful signpost set up at the side
of the road — "This Way To Achievement."

We must not overlook the fact that both of these
men may be right and still be contradictory of each
-other. If a man is headed straight forward on the
road that he should go, his limitations serve* as a guide-
post. But if a man is determined to angle off and
not keep the road that leads to his destination, then
his limitations will confront him as prohibitions.

It is all a question of whether a man regards his
limitations as Nature's friendly hint, or as her hostile
hindrance.

129

FORD IDEALS

We hear a great deal about the power of the
human will, and he would be bold indeed who should
set limits to what any man can do. If the most un-
likely man should set himself with all his strength and
will and spirit to achieve the most unlikely success, he
would be likely to win to an amazing degree. The
full exertion of the Will carries one far.

But it goes without saying that such a man could
not possibly win so full a measure of success as the
man who was naturally equipped and applied himself
just as diligently.

The man who exerted all his powers in an unlikely
field, that is, a field for which he was not intended,
may have the satisfaction of overcoming difficulty, but
it is quite apparent that had he applied the same energy
to a likely field, a field for which his bent and ability
fitted him, his success would have been very much
greater.

You see, in bucking his limitations he consumed
so much of his power in negative effort that less of
it was available for positive effort. If he had worked
within his limitations, making them serve him, instead
of fighting them and so losing their co-operative value,
he would have had the stream of natural tendency
with him instead of against him.

Limitations are not to be condemned until they
are understood. We misunderstand them when we
regard them as wholly negative. We often think of
limitations as the "Thou Shalt Nots" of life. You
shall not be a poet. You shall not be a statesman.
You shall not be a surgeon. You shall not be a
scholar. You shall not be a society pet. You shall
not .be a merchant. — ^That is how we thing of lim-
itations.

But limitations are positive. Instead of insisting
on what you cannot do, they indicate what you can
do. When the stream of your energy runs strongly
toward one career, that is a positive indication; it is
the limitation of your energy to the career in which
your best chance of success may be found.

Limitations in this sense are signboards guiding
you into the right path, warning you against the by-
paths which open on this side and that.

130

LIMITATIONS ARE GUIDE POSTS, NOT BARRIERS

That which throws up limits against your being
a poet, is the very strength which equips you to be an
engineer, or whatever your special bent may be.

Follow the direction in which your limitations
point. V

A man carries his own directions inside himself,
in the nature of his tastes and capacities.

Every thing he cannot do is a finger pointing to
the thing he can do.

Every failure he makes is an indication of the line
in which his success may be found.

Limitations exist; no one can deny the testimony
of experience on that point ; but they exist as friendly
hints to man, not as hindrances across his path.

It is like this: you are driving along a highway
across country, and the highway is fenced on both
sides, preventing your driving out of the path and
losing your direction. The fence is there, it is true,
but it defines your path ; it does not obstruct it. That
is what our limitations do: they define our path. But
try to turn out of the path, and they obstruct us. We
were meant to go forward. When we turn aside from
the path of our nature and capabilities, our limitations
become obstructions.

That is the fundamental truth of limitations: —
their principal function is not to tell you what you
cannot do, but what you can do. Their service is
positive. A man who takes counsel of his irremovable
limitations will find the work he was meant for. Cer-
tainly he cannot succeed in a work he was not meant
for, and just here is where his limitations serve his
interests. >

The principle might be extended to include other
phases of life. It is not only in the choice of our
vocations that we find limitations, but in all other
undertakings too.

Society is as much hedged about as the individual.
We know there are certain courses which society
cannot countenance, because they are the antithesis of
social integrity. All the laws of conduct relative to
property, health, demeanor, traffic, industry, marriage,
are simply signs of limitation which we set up because
we have learned that outside certain limitations there

131

FORD IDEALS

are no such desirable conditions as peace and security
and progress.

But you will notice that these limitations which
society sets up are not for the discouragement of any
proper activity; they only declass those conditions
which make for disruption and ruin.

Well-disposed people find these limitations to be
a guide of conduct. Self-seeking persons find them
to be a check. That is, those who are headed right
find the law to be their friend, while those who are
headed wrong find the law to be their foe. It is
chiefly a matter of attitude.

And then, ranging still farther afield, there are
those wider and yet not less defined limitations which
inhere in our humanity.

Man is a creature whose vision excels his power,
so that he is always apprehending with his imagination
many, many matters which are far outside the reach
of his hands. Mystery hedges him on every side.
But here again the positive side of limitations comes
into view, for the surrounding mystery has had as
definite an eflfect on man's mind as the light has had
on his skin.

And here too the same impulse to ignore the lim-
itation comes into view, and leads to many grotesque
notions. But the impulse, here as elsewhere, springs
from the same misconception as to why the boundary
lines exist.

Nothing seems more unreasonable than that, of
two babes born in the same home and reared under
the same conditions, one will exhibit an almost mirac-
ulous aptitude for a given line of work and the other
none at all. It would seem that if one man can do
it, any man can. And in the same way, the limitations
which surround our humanity seem unreasonable too.
Man, we know, is the heir of all the Past and, we
assume, the heir of all the Future too. Then why,
we ask, cannot he penetrate this mystery or that?
Why cannot he unlock all Nature's secrets with one
turn of the key ? Why cannot he disclose the invisible
world with one eflFort of his will ? Why is he limited
to a small planet as far as his corporeal self is con-
;:erned, and to a little space in time as far as his con-

132

LIMITATIONS ARE GUIDE POSTS, NOT BARRIERS

sciousness is concerned ? Why these limitations, which
in moments of swelling impatience he would thrust
aside and enter boldly the long locked chambers of
mystery ?

Well, we may reasonably expect that the frontiers
of mystery will recede little by little as man becomes
able to occupy the new territory and use it for good
instead of ill. But even with this expectation in view,
it remains none-the-less true that our limitation with
regard to those profounder matters is not a hindrance
to our evolution.

Always the price of man's advance is his faithful
use of what he has. And it is only as mankind learns
how to perfect and purify life on the simpler outlines
now vouchsafed to him that he can expect new rev-
elations of purpose and power. In becoming trust-
worthy in what the race now has, it will become fit
to receive more.

So all through the sphere, from the matter of per-
sonal vocation to that of racial status, the fact of
limitation appears as a friendly one, capable of wear-
ing a frowning face only when we view it from a re-
bellious angle.

Some Power has marked the path of individual
destiny as well as the path of world destiny. It is all
good destiny insofar as the super-hint, which we call
limitation, is followed. Otherwise destiny becomes
delayed and confused, until in a good hour we find the
secret of limitation again, and follow it to achieve-
ment.

133

All Men Are Created Needful

IT WAS once the cnstom of men who posed as
thinkers to do acrobatic stunts with that proposi-
tion of our Declaration of Independence which asserts
that "all men are created equal," and to spend weary
and profitless hours discussing what "equality" meant
and whether the proposition expressed a fact or
merely an ideal with which the Fathers of the Re-
public pleased themselves.

We have been caught in the wake of that discus-
sion many times and have heard it declared with
monotonous persistency that men were not created
equal, that they never could be equal, that equality
would be a most tragical condition on the earth.

Then, descending spirally from the tip of the ideal
to the stump of the fact, we have heard it demon-
strated over and over again that physical equality did
not exist, that mental equality did not exist, that moral
equality did not exist; and so on through all the pos-
sible classifications of human divergences.

So far as the meaning of the statement in the
Declaration is concerned there is no room for wide
diflPerence of opinion. The doctrine is that men are
equally endowed with certain fundamental rights, not
that they are equally endowed with certain qualities.

Indeed, the very fact of the inequality of men in
respect of their qualities, is the reason their equality
of rights had to be declared and decreed.

The minute you declare equality of human rights
you imply inequality of human quality. It is one way
of warning the highly endowed individual that his
higher possessions do not give him any right to inter-
fere with the fundamental rights of others. The most
inferior individual has rights which even the most
superior dare not violate.

Of course, as long as we remain safely on the
high plane of general principles we move along peace-
fully without disturbing challenges. But when we

134

ALL MEN ARE CREATED NEEDFUL

try to apply the principles, we find ourselves con-
fronted with all the aspects of human nature. Within
the limits of the Declaration of Independence we are
safe etiough, for the Fathers were thinking mostly
about the fundamentals of political rights. But when
we approach the newer ideals of rights and equality
we find ourselves floundering in a waste of conflicting
theories.

Someone has said that it makes all the difference
in the world whether your attitude says, "I am as good
as anybody else," or "Everybody else is as good as I
am." And so it does. Likewise when a man preaches
the equal division of property, it makes all the dif-
ference between selfishness and sincerity whether he
means that he should divide with his neighbor, or his
neighbor with him. And as to equality, no matter in
what we may agree that it consists, it makes a world
of diflference whether the plan is to equalize every-
body on a low standard or on a high one — ^levelling
up, or levelling down.

Some extremists seem, to believe that a levelling
down will result in a levelling up. But they have not
looked long enough at the figures.

Certainly we ought to be agreed — it is probably
time to say that we all are agreed — that certain in-
dispensable necessities to self-respect and independ-
ence must^ put within the reach of all.

The physical basis of life must be made secure,
not on the narrowest margin on which life can be
maintained, but on a margin sufficient to permit soul-
room, so to speak — room for the individual to grow,
to show what is in him.

To say that these ought to be made inalienable,
that is, put beyond the possibility of loss, is to go
further than common sense would warrant. To guar-
antee a man a living simply because he took the trouble
to be bom into the world would be to create a larger
race of idlers than we now have. No; justice is
served, humanity is honored and equality is estab-
lished when we put the indispensable within the reach
of all, even of those whose ability is not equalled by
their willingness to do.

The minimum rights of human beings are life, lib-

135

FORD IDEALS

erty, the opportunity to express in service all the power
that is in them, and in every emergency beyond their
control a livelihood that is honorable to their manhood.

These rights are based on our equality of need.
All of us, regardless of our individual endowments of
mind or heart, need food, shelter, clothing and the
satisfaction of the social sense which is "a sense of
belonging." The great man never becomes so great as
to rise beyond the need of these ; the small man never
becomes so imimportant as to sink beyond the need
of them. They are the equal necessities of our com-
mon humanity.

With this equality established, even if no more
were permitted, there would still be a firm f oimdation
— a place to start from — ^which would in time see the
inequalities .of endowment appear in human life. Na-
tural gifts are never equal. Where we have erred is
in lavishly rewarding the possession of great gifts as
if they were the creation of the man possessing them,
and penalizing the man who has no great gifts, as if
the lack of them were his fault.

To possess a great gift is in itself a great reward.
To have power and insight, a stored-up energy and
an intuitive knowledge as if in some mystic laboratory
of the past all the drudgery of learning had been fin-
ished — ^this is indeed a great reward, as also is the
sense of usefulness in putting that gift at the service
of others.

We cannot pay the big mind that comes to earth
with great visions to unfold and realize, and we
should not penalize the little mind which comes only
with two willing hands to help work out slowly and
laboriously the other's glowing vision. The bodies of
both inhabit the same environment under the same
conditions, and the self-respect and honor of one re-
quires asxareful safeguarding as those of the other.

And yet equality can be so conceived and regu-
lated as to destroy liberty. That would appear to be
the difficulty in Russia. Taking a low standard which
owes its existence in the first place to a denial of f im-
damental human equality, and msdcing that the stand-
ard to which the newer practice of equality must con-

136

ALL MEN ARE CREATED NEEDFUL

form, the result is that equality is made a cage in-
stead of an opportunity.

The only inequalities within our power to remedy
are those which have to do with the material side.
Much is being said about so manipulating the condi-
tions of human existence as to produce a super-race,
but that is so far in the future, even should it be pos-
sible at all, that it cannot serve as a substitute for what
we ought to do today.

It is sometimes said that if we were only economi-
cally adjusted to a true and practical kind of equality,
then would genius begin to blossom among us. We
are told that it is our economic conditions which make
for a scarcity of great leaders and seers and developers
of new powers.

Well, that sounds hopeful enough, and yet when
one looks abroad on those classes which have never
been "hampered by the necessity of working for their
living," is the percentage of genius very large among
them?

Hardly. Outside of the new dances and new
methods of flimflamming the producing public, we
owe scarcely anything to them — certainly not enough
to justify their position as idlers and meddlers and a
sort of semi-royalty in this nation of ours.

One is not even sure that an increase of economic
equality will make us a morally better people. Look
at those same classes which have been "emancipated
from labor" and you don't find high morality in ex-
cessive degree, do you? Why, those people are part of
our inferior classes !

That is to say, it is easy to prophesy too much
from our efforts to straighten out the imperfect prac-
tices of our society. But even that ought not to deter
us from the effort. For this must always be true : that
upon those who see the wrong the duty devolves to
right it, and they at least are better for the attempt.
We must do right because it is right and not from
delusive expectations of what results will be.

Opportunity is equal now. If anything remains
unequal it is the power to use it. You cannot make
opportunity anything but equal. If a person cannot
measure up to his opportunity, you cannot make him

137

FORD IDEALS

measure up. The question of justice enters only in the
event of that person having been subjected to such con-
ditions as prevented him from having a fair chance to
measure up. If he was deprived of early training;
if compelled to work in early youth he ruined his
health ; if constantly borne down under the burden of
injustice he lost his spirit and ambition — ^these in-
equalities, of course, are chargeable to society and are
social sins.

No one will deny that we have made progress along
these lines, and if anyone points to the prevailing talk
of disturbance, one may simply reply that it is one of
the proofs that we have made progress.

As our intelligence increases, our needs increase;
and as our needs increase, our demands increase;
and as our demands increase, the greater the readjust-
ment necessary in industrial, social and political prac
tices.

We ought to welcome change for the better. No
one wants the world to remain what it was even a few
months ago.

If there is one point on which counsel is required
today it is this: Change is not the main thing, for
mere Change may be Change For The Worse. We
must keep our eye on the constructive and forward-
looking effort, so that our changes may be toward a
better and greater civilization.

138

Can You Make Your Job

Bigger?

THERE are many ways of forging ahead, some of
which are mere spurts soon succeeded by retreats ;
but the best way, the way that involves least doubt
and yields most satisfaction, is the method of getting
ahead with one's job.

There are men who get l;hemselves ahead regard-
less of whether their job goes ahead or not — self-
boosters; but these men are soon looking for other
things.

There are men who get way ahead of their jobs,
in which case they must be given more and greater
opportunities to progress.

But the man who goes ahead with the job and on
the job and by reason of the job, is the man who makes
the most substantial progress.

This may sound very much like some of the ad-
vice that was given us when we were young, but
there is one quality about most of the advice we got
then which we ought not to overlook — it was good and
true; and much of it is just as true today as it was
then.

Everywhere there are men who think they could
do something else much better than they are doing
their present work. It is customary to make light of
such men and their dreams, and even to doubt that
they would be a bit better in another job than they are
in their present one.

But, taking for granted that 'their view of the
situation is the true one, what is the answer? Simply
this: either they must themselves act on their faith
in themselves and find the other thing which they think
they can do better ; or they must do so well the thing
they are now doing that with this accumulated ex-
perience their desire for something diflPerent will com-
mand confidence and respect in those who may be

139

FORD IDEALS

able to help them make the change. You see, it all
comes back to the job.

The job is the barometer of the man. No matter
what it is, you can always tell how much of industry,
judgment and carefulness a man brings to his work
by watching how he does what he is doing.

You can always tell a slouch by his work, whether
his work be in finance or farming, in professional or in
industrial life.

It doesn't matter what it is, there is no job so
menial that it cannot tell as much about a man as the
presidency could.

Just now there are more menial jobs than there
will be in the future ; and as long as there are menial
jobs, someone will have to do them; but there is no
reason why a man should be penalized because his job
is "menial."

There is one thing that can be said about "menial"
jobs that cannot be said about a great many so-called
more responsible jobs, and that is, they are useful and
they are respectable and they are honest.

Did you ever see dishonest callouses on a man's
hand ? Hardly. When men's hands are calloused and
women's hands are worn, you may be sure that Hon-
esty is there. And that's more than you can say about
many soft, white hands !

But even so, the time is coming when the hand will
not be subjected to so much hard work as falls to it
today. Steel fingers and arms will do many things that
fleshly arms and fingers now do, and a part of at least
the physical burden will be lifted off our race.

It is very natural for a man who is alive in his
mind and vigorous in his ambition to desire a job that
is fit for him. But does he ever stop to think of this :
— ^What is to hinder any job being made fit for any
man?

There is not so much difference between men as
we sometimes think. We like to classify men by races
or intelligence or business success, and thus reach the
conclusion that there are "superior" and "inferior"
people.

But any man who knows his own heart and his
fellow men, knows there is scarcely any fundamental

140

CAN YOU MAKE YOUR JOB BIGGER?

difference between human beings. There is more real
difference between two breeds of dogs than there is
between the mpst highly cultivated man in the world
and the most unfortunate mortal. Our likeness to one
another is astonishing. It ought to keep us more
balanced in our judgments of our fellow men.

People classify men according to false standards,
and are quite satisfied to do so — why? Because by
that means they can always contrive to make them-
selves appear "superior" to someone. No matter how
many people may be superior to them, if they can only
be superior to men inferior still, that fully satisfies
those who hanker after human gradations — our Amer-
ican snobs.

One of the reasons the man who is engaged in
hand-work wants some other kind of work is this : he
fancies that somehow hand-work is a little lower than
head-work. Well, that formerly was the theory. But
it isn't so any longer. Thank heaven ! the hand-worker
has at last come into his own, and even measured by
the financial rewards he is on a higher plane than many
a so-called "head-worker." Many a man wears a
white collar who isn't earning what a grimy handed
worker is paid today.

It is a terrible thing that we ever allowed this false
idea to belittle the nobility of hand-work! Why,
hand-work keeps the world going. When next you
ride home on the street car at the rush hour, note the
hands of the men who ride with you. They are not
soft and pink and manicured ; they are big and rough
and smeared with oil aiid smudge. Look well at those
hands, for they turn the very world on its axis, mak-
ing it a planet of power by day and a glory of light by
night, and really give our country the industrial repu-
tation it has gained.

Hand-work! All the arts engage the hand. The
balanced work-ration includes both head and hand.
When the creative hand is denied its place in the
world's work, life becomes unbalanced.

But perhaps there is another and deeper reason why
men sometimes grow discontented and seek a change :
they want a career, and the job they have may not
seem to promise a career. Again the question comes :

141

FORD IDEALS

Could that job be made so as to afford a man his
career ?

The time has come, as already stated, when drudg-
ery must be abolished out of labor. It is not work
that men object to, but the element of drudgery in
work. We must drive out drudgery wherever we
find it and set men physically free. We shall never
be wholly civilized until we remove the tread-mill from
the daily job.

Of course, invention is doing this in some degree
now. We have succeeded to a very great extent in
relieving men of the heavier and more onerous jobs
that used to sap their strength, but even when lighten-
ing the heavier labor we have not yet succeeded in re-
moving monotony. That is another field that beckons
us — the abolition of monotony, and in trying to ac-
complish that we shall doubtless discover other changes
that have to be made in our system.

But here is the point : If invention must do these
things for your job, why don't you search for the
invention ?

Your job is your field. If you say you are too
good for your present job, have you ever given any
thought to methods by which your present job could
be made good enough, or even too good, for you ?

You say you want a job on which you can look
forward to a life's career: Have you ever studied
your own job from the standpoint of making it a
worthy life career?

You know, if these things are to be done, some-
body must do them. If all of us leave the job that
doesn't fit us without doing something to make it fit
men like us, we are not making progress very fast.
If we simply desert our jobs, leaving them to whom-
soever happens along, we are not making the world
much better for our fellow men. If the man who fol-
lows you on the job is going to be up against the same
conditions that you were, the world has not moved
forward one step so far as that particular job is
concerned.

Then, if someone is destined to do these things,
why not you ? Who knows the job better than you do ?
It is quite possible that men do not always find their

142

CAN YOU MAKE YOUR JOB BIGGER?

career in the first job they get, nor always in the
second. But this much is true : Every job is destined
to become in some sense some man's career, and if
that is true it ought to be so adjusted as to make a
worthy career for him.

Now, there is no worldly success greater than leav-
ing more jobs and better jobs where we found new
jobs and less desirable ones. The trend of progress
will never be toward a decrease in the number or
quality of jobs — always in an increase. Every new
idea brings new jobs. Every time a job is improved,
it breeds more of them, and by its influence makes
better the jobs around it.

This is just a suggestion toward finding a career
and finding success: How do you know that the
career you seek and the success you desire is not right
there in the job you have? How do you know you
cannot make it a career, and turn it into a success ?
There's a field for your invention. There's a chance
to serve humanity down to the last working day of
Time.

And be sure of this: in thus moving, not ahead
of your job, nor in despite of your job, but in moving
ahead with the job and on the job and by the impetus
you give the job, the other rewards of labor, too, will
be vours in abundance.

143

A Nation of Pioneer Blood

ONE of the great things about the American peo-
ple is that they are pioneers. They are of pioneer
blood. Even though most of the world has been trod-
den by man, and the farthest frontiers have been
linked together by the intrepid inquiring spirit of the
pioneer, the blood of high adventure has not thinned
nor cooled, and where we lack lands and seas to ex-
plore we are making up by conquering/new continents
of life.

Ask anyone you meet what his origin is, and you
will discover that his family roots are overseas. If
not a pioneer himself, he is a pioneer's descendant. _

The "forty-niners" are practically all gone, and
those equally audacious men who visioned cities on
the prairies ; but in any shop in any city you can find
men who came half way round the world in search,
not of a new country, but of a new life. Pioneers !

In a near-by neighborhood whose residents had
long prided themselves on being completely American,
the school-teachers inaugurated a letter-writing con-
test about the advantages of life in the United States,
and when the little essays were published in the local
paper the neighbors were astonished to learn that 50
per cent of the children wrote as travelers, as pioneers
— ^they had not been long over -from foreign lands
where they were bom.

Astonished, too, by the testimony of their own eyes,
that the little foreign-bom children could write better
essays on Americanism than the American-bom chil-
dren could, because the little immigrants had a back-
ground of contrast. They had the outlook of the
pioneer.

It is perfectly clear, when we think of it, that a
man who has spirit enough to pull up his roots and
betake himself to a strange land and a strange people
from a motive of bettering his condition, is a superior
sort of man.

144

A NATION OF PIONEER BLOOD

He eould have remained overseas. He could have
settled down into the conditions which satisfied his
forbears, and which still satisfy many of Ms fellows.
It is natural for men to do this, unless they have an
urge within which drives them to seek the better thing.

And so he comes to us, by way of the great sea-
ports. He comes down the gang-plank a bk bewil-
dered. His dress is not as ours ; his speech is not as
ours; all his habits stamp him as a stranger.

To the ignorant he brings amusement. To the
exploiter of human labor, he brings a temptation. But
to the man who sees and understands, he brings a
prophetic vision.

Who is this man with his bundle ? He is a pioneer.
Make way for him.

Now, wherever we go in this country we find
pioneers or the sons of pionfeers. Not the pioneers of
Mayflower nor yet of Revolutionary days — pioneers
of five and ten years ago.

It makes little difference if your forefathers did
come over in the Mayflower — ^they were immigrants,
strangers in a strange land, pioneers — ^and we are their
sons.

So that the spirit of initiative, the very blood-
stream of high daring, the vitial urge to rest nowhere
until Opportunity is attained, are bred in the very
fibers of our bodies.

Of no other people can it be said in the same sense
as it is said of the people of the United States — "They
are the pioneers of every people under heaven."

It is only natural, therefore, that the pioneer spirit,
denied further exercise in exploration of new seas and
conquest of new continents, now- turns itself to other
exploits, different, yet calling for the same old daring
of the pioneer.

It was natural at the outset that the first comers
should pioneer upon a new venture into freedom.
Had they been no more than colonists, set down in a
certain place to build up sin imitation of the land they
left, the history of the world would have been very
different.

Colonists they were at first, but colonists of their
own free will, and that made them pioneers.

145

FORD IDEALS

Therefore they were not imitators but creators,
and it was not long before the attempted imitations of
government and social conditions were banished in a
great ebullition of the creative spirit.

They called it "revolution" then, but it was crea-
tion. It depends upon your point of view which one
of these words you use. Creation is always an un-
comfortable, even a reprehensible process in the view
of the old, outworn but exceedingly profitable forms
which it removes.

It was just as natural that within this newly cre-
ated form of opportunity new freedom of effort should
reveal itself. Invention, enterprise, commerce, wealth,
power followed quickly, as they always follow where
men breathe free air.

If the late war may be said to have expanded the
limits of htmian freedom everywhere, especially where
freedom was not complete before, it may also be said,
as a consequence, that we are on the eve of a new era
of inventiveness, a new influx of epoch-making ideas.
. Just as rain cannot fall in some regions, so ideas
cannot be bom and developed in an atmosphere of
oppression. But the temperature of the world has
become more favorable of late, and we may expect to
see a great downpour of ideas which will further lib-
erate man and make him free of the world in which
he finds himself.

All this is just another way of saying that we are
a pioneering people. We seek the conditions of free-
dom, and all else follows as day follows night.

Our latest great pioneering effort was directed to-
ward opening a new route through world war to world
peace. We pioneered the thought of a war being
fought to end all war. We pioneered the thought of
a war being waged in utter scorn of material profit
from it. We pioneered the thought of actually com-
pelling .the^ peace terms which settled a single war to
serve also as the machinery which should prevent all
future wars.

In doing these things we are exhibiting our pioneer
blood in its best strains. We are striking out upon new
paths as truly as did Columbus when he set sail toward
the mysterious west.

146

A NATION OF PIONEER BLOOD

The prominent feature of the American pioneering
spirit is that it is constructive. We do not always
realize that there is a perversion of the pioneering urge
which it behooves us to watch.

Illustrations of this lower sort of adventure are
numerous in history. There are pioneers who rush to
a land upon first reports of its richness, to strip it
bare and carry away its wealth. There are other
pioneers who move in to occupy the latid, develop and
conserve it, and enhance its value and usefulness.

Where we have known exactly what to do in our
pioneering work, we have done it with directness and
speed. But where we have not known exactly what
to do, we have gone carefully, with true pioneer cau-
tion, in order not to cause injury through our ig-
norance.

That, perhaps, is a fair description of our social
attitude these days. There can be no doubt whatever
that we feel the surge of pioneer blood in us once
more as we contemplate social conditions in our coun-
try. We feel the impulse once again to strike out new
highways, new roads through the social wilderness,
which the thronging feet of happy people may wear
into great world paths by which all people may come
to peace and prosperity.

Just remember that we are a race of pioneers ; that
there is no active blood in our nation that is not de-
scended from the pioneers; and then examine the
tendencies of today in the light of that thought, and
see if our people are not feeling the unrest to be on
the pioneer path once more and discover newer and
better regions of life and its pursuits for all men.

That, undoubtedly, is the direction in which we
are going to explore next — the direction of social
advance.

But we are cautious about it. We know that ev-
erything we have achieved in the 300 years of our
occupancy of this continent is not bad. We know per-
fectly well that we could not have worked and thought
and sacrificed without accomplishing something wor-
thy to be built into the noblest temple of social justice
our breed could ever rear. So we are cautious about

147

FOKD nffiALS

it: in trying to get rid of what is faulty and wrong,
we do not desire to injure what is useful and good.

It was not the pioneer who destroyed the wealth
of game and forest and soil; it was the thoughtless
hordes that followed — ^those who stayed at home until
hardy men had struck out the paths and subdued the
dangers. And the true pioneer will not bring disaster
to what is good in the new regions which he seeks to
subdue to justice and righteousness.

No one can contemplate the nation to which we
belong without realizing the distinctive prophetic char-
acter of its obvious mission to the world.

We are pioneers. We are the pathfinders. We
are the road-builders. We are the guides, the van-
guards of Humanity.

The American people represent the human ex-
tract of that which was the best in all other countries,
the pioneers of all pioneers, and we are therefore
destined to lead the plain peoples of the world in any
path we lay out; they are confident that we will lead
them into no slough, no miry swamp of disaster.

Is not that a most solemn responsibility for us to
bear? Ought it not to guarantee that such confidence
will not be misplaced? •

When the American Pioneer strikes out the path,
the world may know that it will be safe for all the
fathers and mothers, yoimg men and maidens, and all
the little children of humanity — 2l safe road for man-
kind.

148

Human Nature and the
Social System

THERE are two positions from which one may
consider the economic conditions under which we
live, and the one you chose will determine the attitude
and emphasis of any thought or action taken with ref-
erence to those conditions.

You may say that it is the economic condition
which makes mankind what it is ; or you may say that
it is mankind that makes the economic condition what
it is.

It is worthy of notice that wherever a situation
is desirable, mankind usually claims the credit of
creating it. But wherever a situation is faulty and
self -destructive and full of injustice and pain, man-
kind has a tendency to charge that up to "nature."
So you will find a large proportion of partisans claim-
ing that it is the economic system which makes men
what they are. They blame the faults of our industrial
system for all the faults which we behold in mankind
generally.

And you will find other men who say that man cre-
ates his own conditions; that if the economic, in-
dustrial or social system is bad, it is but a reflection
of what Man himself is; his social conditions being
determined by his own nature.

It may be true, of course, that these things inter-
act ; it probably is true. But it would be hard to gain-
say that the point of beginning, the casual motive
power, is in man himself.

What is wrong in our industrial system, for ex-
ample, is a reflection of what is wrong in man him-
self. But there is no doubt that after he has created
this wrong system, it begins to react upon him in puni-
tive or other influential ways. That is, character acts
upon conditions, and conditions upon character — ^an
endless interaction.

149

FORD IDEALS

It ought not to be hard to admit this. In fact, it
seldom is hard when we remove the matter far enough
from our own concerns. Teachers dislike to admit
that the faults of the educational system are their own
faults writ large. Physicians dislike to admit that
the faults of the present systems of medicine are their
own deficiencies organized. Manufacturers hesitate to
admit that the mistakes of the present industrial meth-
ods are, in part at least, their own mistakes system-
atized and extended. But take the x[uestion outside
of a man's immediate concerns, and he sees the point
readily enough.

The workman has no trouble whatever in seeing
that the faults of modem business systems are not
and cannot be anything other than the faults of busi-
ness men themselves ; because business men make busi-
ness systems. The business man sees just as readily
that the faults of labor organizations are the faults of
workingmen themselves.

And all of us together — the whole of human so-
ciety — make the social system.

Now, if you allow relentless logic to take its course
with this form of statement, and begin to speak of
reforming the social system, then you find yourself
confronted at once with the problem of making a
profound and complete change in human nature. And
that is a pretty big job. It has never been accomplished
wholesale.

It is just at this point that simon-pure idealists
mount their cloud-horses and soar into regions where
we cannot follow them. And it is also at this point
that our so-called "practical" men propose programs
that fairly clank with materialism.

Why is it that so many fine idealists lose all con-
tact with reality? And why is it that so many hard-
headed practical men lose so completely their con-
tact with idealism?

If some method could be devised by which ideal-
ists could be anchored to an anvil and a sledge ham-
mer, and hard-headed practical men enlightened and
refined by a dash of Vision and an infusion of a
venturesome and divine belief in the supremacy of

ISO

HUMAN NATURE AND THE SOCIAL SYSTEM

righteousness, then we should see both these types
yield more useful service to their kind.

We should be slow about drawing conclusions
before we have all our data.

No doubt, with a less faulty human nature than
ours is, a less faulty social system would have grown
up. Or, if human nature were worse than it is, a
worse system would have grown up; though probably
a worse system would not have lasted so long as the
present one has. It is only its good points that have
kept ours in force so long.

But, things being as they are, there are very few
who will claim that mankind -deliberately set out to
create a faulty social system. Granting without re-
serve that all the faults of the social system are in Man
himself, it does not follow that he deliberately organ-
ized his imperfections and established them. We
shall have to charge a great deal up to ignorance, shall
we not? We shall have to charge a great deal up to
a certain innocence as well. Take the beginnings of
our present industrial system, for example. There
was then no indication as to how it would grow, nor
as to the points in which it would show its greatest
imperfection. Everyone was glad to see it begin.
Every new advance was hailed with joy. No one
ever thought of "capital" and "labor" as hostile in-
terests. No one ever dreamed that the very fact of
success would bring insidious dangers with it.

And yet with growth every imperfection latent in
the system came to light. A man's business grew to
such proportions that he had to have more helpers
than he knew by their first names; but that fact was
not regretted, it was rather hailed with joy. And yet
see what it has since led to! — an impersonal system
wherein the workman has become something less than
flesh and blood, a mere part of a system.

No one believes, of course, that this dehumanizing
process was deliberately invented. It just gr^w. It
was latent in the whole early system, but no one saw
it and no one could foresee it. Only prodigious and
imheard of development could bring it to light.

But there is yet another consideration which the
first set of facts does not include. Take the industrial

151

FORD IDEALS

idea; what is it? The true industrial idea is not to
make money. The industrial idea is to express a
serviceable idea, duplicate a useful idea, by as many
thousands as there are people who need it. To pro-
duce, produce; to get a system that will reduce pro-
duction to a fine art; to put production on such a
basis as will provide means for expansion and the
building of still more shops, the production of still
more thousands of useful things — ^that is the real
industrial idea.

"Yes, but what about the workingmen ?" Ah, that
brings us to the point. When the system grows by
its own momentum to such proportions that it begins
to press upon fundamental human rights or to violate
fundamental human instincts, the social question arises.

And what is the social question? Simply the
question of how this industrial system can be so ad-
justed as to recognize human rights.

The industrial idea did not start out with the in-
tention of violating human rights. Nevertheless that
is what its extreme development tended to do. There-
fore the clash, which is called the social question.

Here again we approach the problem: Which is
first, human nature or its social and industrial en-
vironment? It becomes clear that once a system and
human nature come into conflict, human nature and
human rights represent the stronger force. Man-
kind is still creative enough to change the system to
conform with human imperatives of Right.

This also has a bearing on the changeability of
human nature. Those who are sometimes discour-
aged by reflecting upon the impossibility of changing
human nature wholesale and for the better, thus
changing the social system for the better also, should
carry their reflections a little further. They should
reflect on the impossibility of any system, n6 matter
how important, changing human nature enough to
make it content with violations of its needs and rights.
Let any system of government, industry or business
curtail or contravene fundamental human rights, and
it is not human nature that changes — it is that system !

So that, after all, the inflexibility of human na-
ture may be our most hopeful fact.

152

HUMAN NATURE AND THE SOCIAL SYSTEM

We all know, we all feel, that the only way by
which human nature at large could be influenced to
condone or support a bad system of any kind, would
be to render that bad system profitable to humanity at
large.

Now, we know that no bad system can be profitable
to humanity at large. A system universally and un-
exceptionally bad would simply collapse. It would
be like trying to maintain a sound currency system in
a nation of counterfeiters ; it would simply be impos-
sible. The coimterfeit has its fleeting value simply
because the mass of money is sound. And imfair,
greedy, inhuman, wicked systems last as long as they
do only because the opposite majority qualities give
them room for profitable play.

No doubt the faultiness of human nature is the
cause of the faultiness of our social system. But
equally without doubt the faultiness of our social
system is not the intention of humanity, else the faults
would not be so universally denounced and opposed.

Our ignorance is responsible for the faults being
there, but it is our incorrigible desire for public and
social righteousness that makes it impossible for the
faults to remain there forever.

Mankind is not perfect by any means. But man-
kind has not yet given its collective vote to the Devil.

153

The Modern City —
A Pestiferous Growth

THE modem City, with its suppression of all that^
is sweet in its natural environment, its enforce-
ment of artificial modes of living, its startling dis-
parities of leisure and employment, its hideous ex-
tremes of self-conscious wealth and abject poverty, is
probably the most unlovely sight this planet can of-
fer ; certainly it represents the most imwholesome con-
dition that challenges our thought today.

For the City concentrates within its limits the Es-
sence of all that is wrong, artificial, wayward and
unjust in our social life. It is, as it were, the spot
where the internal social impurities break out in a
festering sore.

Much discussion has been devoted to "the prob-
lem of the City," but for the most part it h^s shuttled
back and forth between a liking for community life and
a liking for the companionship of nature, between
the City lover and the country lover — ^and, of course,
that is not the question at all.

A City is a camp that has become stagnant and
which grows by' accretion. A City is a camp that
has ceased to march, a community that has called a
halt.

There will be no argument /in this page against the
desirability of a settled life. Nor will there be any
assertion of the superiority of that phase of society
where the people followed their flocks as their flocks
moved hither and thither seeking pasture.

It was doubtless a milestone of progress when men
began to plant vineyards, for vineyards have to be
tended, and tending them keeps the vine-dresser resi-
dent in one place.

But to recognize the advantage of settled com-
munity life is not to put in a plea for the modern
City, for it is doubtful if the modern City can be

154

THE MODERN CITY — A PESTIFEROUS GROWTH

considered as in any sense a community. Oh, we
call it a community, of course; .we talk a great deal
about community spirit, and the like; but anyone
who knows the modem City knows that it is not a
community — it is any number of communities, few of
them sympathetic one to another.

The modem City is broken into as many com-
munities as there are interests in it, and the modern
City is the great meeting place of all our social antag-
onisms, both those that are engendered by differences
in taste and culture and those which grow out of
economic causes. The result is that such communi-
ties as we have are antagonistic, competitive, mutually
exclusive.

The modern City is a classic illustration of what
ensues when we fail to mix the arts.

The three great arts are Agriculture, Manufacture
and Transportation.

The City automatically excludes agriculture as one
of the arts possible to its inhabitants ; it does this be-
cause the land whereon it stands is too crowded for
the soil to exercise its natural function, and where it
is not occupied by buildings it is overlaid with pave-
ment.

Manufacture was the center around which the
City grew. It may have been a very simple form of
manufacture at first, like the making of flour out of
grain, or the making of shoes out of hides, or the mak-
ing of cloth out of wool.

But wherever a productive machine is set up with
a roof over it and operatives around it, there the City
begins.

There are two bases for the community, one a
necessity of nature, the other a necessity of progress.
Man was not made for solitude. He is gregarious.
Not only "hath he set the solitary in families," as
the Scripture has it, but families also group with
other families, and as the individual finds his ful-
fillment in the family, so the family finds its fulfill-
ment in the community.

Then, again, progress is not solitary. We can do
few things alone. Directly we undertake to achieve
worth-while, results in the physical world, we dis-

155

FORD IDEALS ^

cover that we need help. We discover also that men
delight to work together, that they are formed for
^ creative co-operation.

So that it is a far different thing to condemn the
I City than to condemn the community. The commimity
I is natural. The City is not.

It is the one-sided, lopsided development of in-
dustry, as industry is represented by the manufacture
of articles of use and commerce, that is, primarily re-
sponsible for the modem City — ^that, and the neglect
of the other two arts, agriculture and transportation.

In our day,- however, transportation is beginning
to catch up. It is still far from what it ought to be,
but it is immeasurably better than once it was. And
as a result, the City is beginning to feel the influence
of an art that will be one of the chief forces in its
undoing.

At first it seemed as if transportation would have
the effect of further augmenting the City, but now
it is effecting a spreading out of cities and popula-
tions. The suburban car and the automobile have
rendered confinement within the City unnecessary for
large numbers of people. And one of the most hope-
ful facts is that, whereas only the well-to-do once
found it possible to get away from the city, now the
^ workingman finds it not only possible but advantageous
to live in the country, and thousands of them are
dorhg it even while they work in the City.

And as transportation facilities become better and
more numerous, this movement to the country will be
increased.

The "problem of the City" is a bundle of the most
baffling problems we know. It not only includes prob-
lems of health, morals, administration and economics,
but problems which go deep into the very nature of
man.

The solution of this problem has eluded our best
minds for decades and decades. In spite of all the
expenditure of money and thought, all the sacrifice of
labor and spirit, "the problem of the City" grows more
acute instead of easier.

And what is the answer to this?

Plainly, so it seems to some of us, that the ulti-

156

THE MODERN CITY — ^A PESTIFEROUS GROWTH

mate solution will be the abolition of the City, its
abandonment as a blunder.

There are a number of movements all converging
to this end — some of them in utter unconsciousness
of this end — ^and not the least of them is a certain
theory of taxation which has seized upon the minds
and imaginations of the people. Nothing will finally
work more effectively to undo the fateful grip which
the City habit has taken upon the people, than the
destruction of the fictitious land values which the City
traditions have set up and maintained.

We shall solve the City Problem by leaving the
City.

Get the people into the country, get them into
communities where a man knows his neighbor, where
there is a commonality of interest, where life is not
artificial, and you have solved the City Problem. You
have solved it by eliminating the City. City life was
always artificial and cannot be made anything else.
An artificial form of life breeds its own disorders,
and these cannot be "solved." There is nothing to
do but abandon the course that gives rise to them.

There is nothing impossible or unusual in this.
We have seen in our own day cities spring up in a
month. Well, if our people should be made free of
the soil in their own country, you would see whole
cities shrink to nothing in the same length of time.

Nothing can long exist that is not self-sustaining.
The City is not self-sustaining. No American City —
^and we are the best fortified in the world in this re-
spect — could survive, without suffering, a single week's
interruption in the traffic in supplies from the farm.

The farm is self-sustaining. The City can serve
the farm with regard to conveniences, but not with
essentials. Essentially, the farm is complete within
itself.

The City has exercised its illicit charm to draw to
itself the very people on whose devotion to the art
of agriculture it depended for its livelihood. As a
result of this overgrowth of the City at the expense
* of the farm, the City is now finding it hard to live.
When the City is driven out to get food, it must go
to the farm. And that is where it is going now.

157

PORD IDEALS

The balance of life — in all its aspects — cart only
be preserved by a natural balance in the attention given
to all three major arts — ^Agriculture, Manufacture and
Transportation — without which, or in the neglect of
any of which, nothing goes very far.

And the best way to obtain this balance, as we are
beginning to learn, is to have the same people prac-
tice more than one of them.

As has been previously stated in these pages, there
is no soimd reason whatever why one immense group
of men should be confined within factory walls all the
year round simply because they happen to live in the
City, and there is just as little reason why another
large group of persons should be confined to their
farm-acres all the year roimd just because they hap-
pen to be farmers.

Agriculture would be better served if the man-
power of the manufacturing interests were devoted to
it a part of the time every year, and manufacturing
would be better served if the man-power of the farms
could change occupation during the season when the
ground is resting. Aijd the life of everybody, the
physical and economic life, would be benefited. Be-
sides which, small manufacturing centers would dot
all our countrysides, and wide farming areas would
encircle our present dense communities, relieving
them of <:ongested abnormality, and the country of
its unnatural loneliness and separateness.

The mingling of the arts will help restore us to
economic balance and racial sanity.

1S8

Catching the Boss's Eye

IT IS most unfortunate that we are so strongly under
the influence of the idea that to catch somebody's
eye, to attract admiring attention, to get full credit
for what we do, is the one element which we must not
omit from any effort we make; that to do a piece of
work and not get the credit for it is little less than a
calamity.

Not very long ago it was urged in an article in-
tended to stimulate the ambition of young men, that
they should endeavor strenuously to do something that
would catch their boss's eye.

The surprising point about this advice is that it
was given by an employer himself. Had it been writ-
ten by an aspiring young workman, it would be easy
to account for ; but how a boss could utter such coun-
sel is beyond ordinary power to explain.

If all our productive operations were manned by
men who were straining to catch the boss's eye, in-
dustry would become a sort of vaudeville, a game of
catch-as-catch-can, a race for recognition.

Of course, there are certain factors in this desir-e
for recognition which must be reckoned with before
we can deal intelligently with it.

It is beyond dispute that our modem industrial
system has warped this desire terribly out of shape
and rendered it almost an obsession. There was a
time when a man's personal advancement depended
entirely and immediately upon his work, and not
upon anyone's favor ; but nowadays it depends far too
much, as we all know, upon the individual's good for-
tune in catching some influential eye.

It is perfectly clear that as long as this situation
exists, 'men will strive to meet it ; that is, men will
work with the idea of catching somebody's eye; they
will work with the idea that if they fail to get credit
for what they do, they might as well have done it
badly or not have done it at all.

159

FORD IDEALS

One result of this, as far as the work itself is
concerned, is that it becomes a secondary considera-
tion. The job we are doing, the article we are pro-
ducing, the special kind of service we are rendering,
turtis out to be not our principal work at alL No.
Our main work is our personal advancement. This
thing we are doing nqw is not being done for its own
sake, this service we are doing is not being done be-
cause it is a service, but because it is a platform from
which we may practice the art of catching somebody's
eye, the art of skillfully attracting credit-bringing at-
tention to ourselves.

Now, we submit, this habit of making the work
secondary and the recognition primary, is unfair to
the work. It makes recognition and credit our real
job, while the job we are paid to do is used merely as
a kicking-off place.

And it also has an unfortunate effect on the worker.
It encourages a peculiar kind of ambition which is
neither lovely nor productive. It produces the kind
who imagine that by "standing in with the boss" they
will get ahead. Every shop knows this kind of man.
And the worst of it is there are some things in our
present industrial system which make it appear that
this kind of game really pays. Foremen are only hu-
man, and it is natural that they should be flattered
by being made to believe that they hold the weal or
woe of workmen in their hands. It is natural also,
that being open to flattery, their self-seeking sub-
ordinates should flatter them still more to obtain and
profit by their favor.

The trend of industry is and ought to be farther
and farther away from a condition which gives any
individual the power of life and death — for that is
virtually what bread-and-butter power is — over an-
other. We don't want a race of overseers who fancy
they control human destiny ; and we don't want a race
of workmen who think they have to cringe and cajole
to get recognition of their merits.

'The desire for recognition is natural. But it is
far from being the highest desire. The real work-
man knows that his work is his unanswerable witness.
Far higher than the desire for recognition is the cre-

160

CATCHING THE BOSS'3 EY^

ative desire, which finds its satisfaction in work well
done whether anyone sees that it is well done or not.

But of course, some modem industrial conditions
tend to smother that kind of workmanship. Wherever
the emphasis is on quantity at the expense of quality,
wherever the emphasis is on profits at the expense of
service, wherever the commercial side of production
is emphasized at the cost of the human and service-
able side, then the workman finds himself in a sort
of scramble for selfish benefits whether of money,
rank or job, and he can hardly help becoming infected
with the regenerate tendency.

Now, everyone will agree that the person who is
over-anxious about getting credit for what he does
is not an impressive person, to say the least. But he
may not be entirely blamable, either.

He may be a product of that false philosophy of
life which teaches that a man is successful only in-
sofar as he gets credit for being so ; and believing that,
he may perhaps also have the experience of credit
imjustly withheld from him, and so he grows over-
anxious. One false extreme has simply worked an-
other false extreme in him. He is to be pitied and
led out of his obsession. Certainly, he is not to be
dealt with in a way that would deepen his sense of
injustice. The sense of personal injustice is one of
the most painful burdens a man can bear about with
him.

Just where to draw the line between a laudable
desire for recognition and an overwhelming thirst
for credit is not easy to do; the one is normal and
the other is abnormal. But we should say that the
line of demarcation exists somewhere in the individ-
ual's attitude toward the work he is doing.

If his inclination is to do his work well whether
he foresees special credit or not; that is, if he has a
pride in his work quite apart from its possible rela-
tion to other men's opinions, then it would be probably
safe to say that his desire for recognition would be
normal.

But if his work means no more to him than an
emblem with which to attract attention, if when with-
out any hope of recognition for the particular job on

161

FORD IDEALS

which he is engaged, he slurs it over and neglects it,
then it is apparent that his desire for recognition is
not bom of high workmanly pride, but of selfish per-
sonal interest of a rather small caliber.

It would be pleasant to declare that good work
always is seen and recognized, but it would scarcely
be true. There is far too much work produced for
all of it to be judged accurately. But it would be
absolutely true to declare that a good workman is al-
ways seen and recognized. His work may escape ob-
servation; he himself cannot well do so. All the
carefulness, dependability, honest pride and power
he builds into his work is somehow built back into
himself. It is reflected back upon him. And, of
course, that kind of shining cannot long be hidden.
For it is a matter of character then, not merely of
articles of manufacture.

The matter of personal advancement is one which
is not considered as carefully as it ought to be. And
much of the misconception concerning one's credit
for one's work grows out of the kind of idea of ad-
vancement which he may hold.

A great evil was begun when the sphere of ad-
vancement was placed outside of the job instead of
within it.

Nowadays advancement means getting out of one's
job into another job, if one can. It doesn't mean be-
coming a better workman at what you are doing; it
means becoming a workman at something else, at an-
other rate of pay, and with another degree of respect
attaching to your rank.

Of course, when this kind of advancement means
ako more of the means and comforts of life, more of
the opportunities which one would give to one's fam-
ily, nothing short of cosmic suppression could prevent
men from striving for it.

Thus the competitive element is injected into life.
And we are strongly of the opinion that when these
things, the means and comforts of life, the desirable
opportunities 'which one would give to one's family —
when these things are left at the peril of the bread-
winner's success or failure in a mad competitive scram-
ble for this favor called "advancement," then our

162

CATCHING THE BOSS's EYE

system of life is sadly in need of humanizing readjust-
ment.

Under the present strife and strain men are not
free to consider their work alone, they are driven to
consider the methods — fair and unfair — ^by which
they may attract attention, win favor and gain ad-
vancement.

If men were assured that their livelihood and re-
spect as members of society were assured from the
beginning, then we should have a sounder foundation
on which to appeal to them to make their advance-
ment within the limits of their work.

But this subject of advancement deserves atten-
tion by itself. Suffice it now to say that if a man has
faith to trust his future to the quality of his work,
the chances are very high that his faith will be re-
warded. The strength of faith is that it does not look
for the reward ; it does not demand what one deserves,
it only asks that one be deserving.

By doing the thing for which you know you may
get no credit, you are doing something which will
never be lost to you — ^you are building certain qualities
which cannot be hidden.

One of the commonest faults observable in men
is that they overreach for credit. And, of course,
where one overreaches one does not receive. After
all, we must leave a little of our lives to Destiny.

163

Patriotism an Inclusive

Emotion

LOVE of country is a sentiment inherent in men.
There is a sacred element in the spirit of patriot-
ism for this reason. No matter how hard the land
may have been to the dwellers thereon, no matter how
harsh the governmental conditions imposed, no matter
how bitter the memories which thoughts of native
land evoke, no matter how unfavorably the place of
our nativity may compare with the land of our adop-
tion, there is still an ineradicable love of country which
is a vital part of us from the earliest dawn of our
consciousness until the last shadows begin to close
in upon us.

It is inconceivable that there could exist, outside
the pages of fiction, a man who, regardless of griev-
ances, was without a special love for some branch
of the human race, some division of the earth's sur-
face, some city, state or bit of homestead.

All our love of the earth begins in love for our
own land. All our love for Humanity begins in love
for our own people. All our love for Freedom begins
in love for our own institutions.

As an illustration of the depth of the patriotic
sentiment, look at the Irish. With their memories of
their native land deeply colored by suffering, how
they cling to Erin stilH How they laud her as the
fairest ,among the isles !

Or take the Jew. He has been without a flag and
a cotftitry these twenty centuries, yet how his heart-
strings twine about old Jerusalem, the glories of her
past and the greater glories prophesied for her future !

It is not merely because the land feeds us and
caresses us and gives us pleasant lives that we love it.
Men have most deeply loved the lands where they have
suffered most. Patriotism in its purity is not a selfish
sordid sentiment.

164

PAmonSM AN INCLUSIVE EMOTION

Of course, every virtue has its counterfeit, every
noble principle has its superficial imitation. The more
sacred the principle the more readily is it seized upon
by designing persons to lend an air of genuineness to
their questionable purposes. This needs no proof.
We see it with reference to every lofty sentiment, not
patriotism only.

The principal fallacy to which — ^not real patriotism,
mark you — false patriotism succumbs is the fallacy of
exclusiveness. Because we love one country we must
suspect the motives and defeat the purposes of all
other cotmtries — that is the fallacy.

It is commonly reported, of course, that those who
remember that they are members of the Human Race
as well as of their own nationality, are promoting the
doctrine that a man ought to love all countries, his
own no more than another.

Aside from this being merely theoretical, it is im-
possible. No man ever has or ever can love another
people as he loves his own, another land as he loves
his own, or other institutions as he loves his own.

He may wisely acknowledge the worth and beauty
of the other land, the greatness and usefulness of the
other people, the wisdom and character of the other
institutions — ^but this is not patriotic love. He may
even see that the other land is more desirable from
many points of view, that the other people are more
highly developed and more efficient, that the other in-
stitutions are more advanced ; yet he will but love his
own the more and covet for them the good character-
istics of the others. We cannot get away from these
facts. They are written in our very hearts.

All love is given us for purposes of inclusion, not
exclusion, because love is an expansive emotion. This
is a truth which everyone will readily acknowledge.
We have a respect for the women of other races be-
cause we respect the mothers, wives and daughters
of our own. We have a heart for the welfare of all
children because we have a heart for the welfare of
our own. Aad so on. We are able to understand,
sympathize, respect, solely because we know from
our own experience what the situation is. That is
why we respect an alien's patriotic love for his own

165

FORD IDEALS

country. We know that sentiment ki ourselves ; there-
fore, we respect it in him.

But reasoning from the analogy of the social af-
fections a distinction should be made : there is a love
of attachment and a love of respect. Our domestic
affections form personal attachments. But there are
people on the other side of the city, in another city,
or in another cotmtry, with whom we should be very
loth to form personal attachments — with whom, in-
deed, nature would prevent us forming personal at-
tachments — ^yet whose rights as men we cherish as
strongly as we cherish our own. Isn't that true?

You don't have to be willing to live in the same
house with a man in order to cherish his rights as a
man and citizen. By virtue of his membership in the
human race you are "for" him in the protection of
certain fundamental rights whicji as a human being
he possesses, and which neither a diflference in speech
nor allegiance can change. We know men as men,
not as nationals. We know them as human beings.
That is our primary knowledge of men, as members
of our kind.

There is a prof oundly natural element in patriotism.
But something tragically artificial marks all national
antagonisms. It is natural that a man should love his
own people and his own spot of earth ; it is unnatural
that he should hate another people or another spot of
earth simply because it is not his. Love of our own
country does not involve hatred of other countries.
The man who tries to prove his patriotism by the ex-
tent of his hatred is a suspicious patriot.

In other words, patriotism is not an exclusive emo-
tion — it does not shut out ; it lets in. And though we
cannot love others as our own, we can still love the
rights of others, their peace, their prosperity and the
security of their children. The moment patriotism
takes wings and enters the spiritual realm, that mo-
ment it blesses all people.

If there is any one quality in the Genius of Amer-
ica to whose existence we can point with confidence,
it is the quality of heightened regard in which we
hold the rights of all peoples on the earth — ^an intema-

166

PATRIOTISM AN INCLUSIVE EMOTION

tionalism of sympathy and understanding and good
wishes.

The United States never has and never will ber
come productive soil for the seeds of international
hatred. We will never rise against lands or peoples
to do them harm; we will only rise against the ag-
gressive Errors of which lands and peoples have be-
come the self-deluded servants ; and we will even min-
imize the chances of having to do that, by being in
the world the friend of Light and Freedom.

The United States was never more avowedly the
Servant Nation of the world than now. And never
did the Servant status hold nobler honor.

The nations whose histories are embalmed in an-
cient books, whose ruins dot the desolation of desert
lands, fell before the subtlest temptation that can ever
lure a nation — ^the temptation to Mastery. To bear
world rule, to make vassals, to be world conqueror —
this is the rock on which nations have made ship-
wrecks of themselves. They forgot the eternal Wis-
dom which taught: "He that would be greatest
among you, let him be as one that serveth."

The United States has never wanted to master any
nation. The utmost expenditure of money and elo-
quence and influence and false incentives of every
kind, has utterly failed to inoculate our people €ven
slightly with the virus of imperialistic ambition.

Even after our part in the Great War, with re-
sults that must be grateful to every lover of Liberty
and Order, we find ourselves strangely untainted by
the animus of militarism. We did what we had to
do, we did it as well as we could, but it was not such
business as we would care to be doing all the time.

There is one source of pride to every American
and that is, though we broke all our records of mil-
itaristic preparation and achievement, though we
gained a name for courage and initiative, yet with the
spoils of the world laid down before us we have kept
faith with our traditions and have refused one iota of
reward. The nation paid in blood and sweat and
sorrow — for what? For the privilege of serving the
world without recompense.

We ought to think more of our own United States

167

ford' ideals

as the Servant Nation of Mankind, the great, strong,
trustworthy, righteous nation whose joy is to serve
all the peoples in the things which pertain to peace and
progress.

In proportion to our population, our area, our
wealth, and the isxtent of our history, there are fewer
of the means of destruction to be found within the
boundaries or under the control of the United States
than of any other nation. Why? Because we would
rather serve than enslave, we would rather help than
hurt, we would rather live in a family of nations than
in an imperialistic system where the strongest des-
perado among the nations ruled.

Love the United States ! Why, even if the United
States were but an ideal, but a dream, but an Utopia
written in books, but not yet realized by man, we
would love it! Unrealized, it would be like heavfen.
How much more, then, does every human heart on the
earth love the real United States? And if we are dis-
trusted and disliked anywhere it is because some
among us, forgetting who and what they are, have said
or done things which made us appear in a light less
than our own.

We shall keep our people in prosperity and our
neighbors in peace and the world in sanity and equi-
poise by going quietly about our mission of serving
all mankind in the things which endure.

168

False "Success Philosophy"

HIRTY years ago every boy in the United States
was educated in the idea that it was possible for
him to become President of the United States, that
he ought to aspire to that position, that to achieve it
would represent his success; and, of course, there
was a great waste of human energy; we only needed
four or five men for that job. It would be interesting
to know how many of our Presidents were told in
their boyhood that they might attain that, office.

We do not waste so very much time on that sort
of prospect for our boys nowadays.

One reason may be our increase in regard for the
Presidency. We think of it now as a place of Destiny.
We judge any man a fool who would seek it as a
personal distinction. We have seen too much of the
responsibility it involves to make it the sign and sym-
bol of any man's individual success.

But perhaps another reason is that our idea of
Success^ is also changing.

There has been a great falling off in the "Success
philosophy" recently, as you may have noticed. It
was rather overdone for a long while. Its founda-
tions were false; its motives were false; its emphasis
was false. Moreover, it is doubtful if all the "pep"
and "ginger" and "hustle" which it prescribed has
increased the Success total of the nation one degree.

No doubt we were in error in much of our "Suc-
cess" teaching; not in insisting that everyone ought
to be a Success, but in defining what it was.

It goes without saying that any kind of Success
which would put us all in administrative offices, and
N leave none of us out on the farm or out in the shop,

would be rash.

It is wrong to advocate anything which, if uni-
versally applied, would ruin the world. That is the
difficulty about militarism: it says that a stiff bit of
war now and then is a mighty fine idea; but immedi-

169

FORD IDEALS

ately you apply that principle universally, what have
you? A universal shambles! On the other hand,
when you apply pacifism universally, what have you?
Universal peace! A universal shambles would soon
totally destroy all life. But universal peace inter-
feres with jnothing that does good.

What would be the result if this thing which we
are advocating were to be applied everywhere in ev-
erything and to everybody? — ^that is the question we
ought to ask ourselves.

And if we are advocating something which, if uni-
versally adopted, would prove destructive; or some-
thing which depends for its Success on a large sec-
tion of the people being excluded from its benefits,
then we may be sure ft is a fallacy.

The great universals — ^those things which if ap-
plied everywhere to everybody would be beneficial —
are religion in the moral world, order in the social
world, and fundarnental industry in the physical
world. These things never turn destructive, no mat-
ter how widely nor how thoroughly applied.

The trouble with much of our "Success" doctrine,
then, was this: if everybody had become successful
in the way it advocated, this would have been very
far from a successful world. It would be a most
tragically unbalanced world. Not that failure is
needed to balance Success — that is not the idea at all ;
but Success must have certain imiversal qualities, or
it is not Success at all.

Several weeks ago we discussed the mistaken idea
that one had to catch the boss's eye in order to obtain
advancement. This matter of advancement is related
to what we are discussing now.

The principal reason the majority of men- wish
to advance is that it means more material reward for
them, more creature comforts, more opportunities for
themselves and their families.

When you put down in cold print that here in this
human society of ours there is a majority of jobs
which do not yield men these desirable things, and
that there is a smaller number of jobs which do yield
them, and for this smaller number the whole mass of
men is scrambling, it doesn't seem right, does it?

170

FALSE "success PHILOSOPHY"

When a man gives all of his day and an equal
proportion of his strength and ability to his work, and
still does not receive as many of the comforts of life
as another man who also gives his day and his strength
and ability to his job, it seems that something is out
of order.

Of course, it is easy to say, "Well, let him get more
skill and get into a job that pays more ! Yes, but sup-
pose he does. Suppose everybody does. Makie your
theory of advancement universal, and you have a few
"good jobs" crowded and a host of necessary jobs
empty ! That kind of Success would be suicidal even
for those who attained it, not to mention the general
life of society. There are just two questions to settle
in this relation: Is a man who contributes the same
proportion, time, strength and skill as another entitled
to the same proportion of the good and necessary
things of life? That is, should the rule be, "From each
according to his ability; to each according to his
need" ? There is a great deal to be said for that view.

And the second question is : Are those jobs which
do not reward men with the good and necessary things
of life, good and necessary jobs? Must we always
have sections of human duty which stigmatize men
with a diminished reward? Or is every honest em-
ployment of equal dignity and usefulness in the gen-
eral scheme of things and therefore entitled to a dig-
nified reward? These are questions which ought to
receive close attention. The opinion of the sponsor
of this page is that every job should be a necessary and
useful job, and on that ground should reward its
performer — ^no matter what its nature may be — with
the good and necessary things of life.

That is to say, it is a great pity that advancement
has come to mean advancing out of the job. If all
the able men, men able to advance, should advance
out of their jobs, the useful production of the world
would stop. We need miners. What a fallacy it is to
say that when the miner becomes a lawyer he becomes
a "Success." If every miner capable of being a
lawyer should "advance" to that profession, what
would become of mining?

171

FORD IDEALS

We must get over the snobbery of thinking that
the men in the professions are the only men who
could get there.

We must cease the injustice of thinking that the
men who remain in agriculture, mechanics and man-
ual labor, remain there because they haven't the ability
to get out of them ! We owe a great debt of gratitude
to the men who stay in these callings because they
like them, because the work satisfies their natures.

It is due to our ignorance that we have been de-
luded by a false "Success" philosophy into believing
that if these men had possessed any "brains" they
\yould have got out of productive employment into un-
productive worl^.

Too many people believe that Success consists in
getting your bread and butter by dickering or talking
instead of by producing.

There are two kinds of advancement: one inner,
the other outer. The inner advancement consists in
improving the quality of the man himself, his char-
acter, his experience, his skill. This ought to be the
first concern of every ambitious young man. Instead
of being keenly on the lookout for another job, he
should be keenly on the task of learning how to put
out better work. ^

As to the outer advancement, it is comparatively
easy in this busy, restless, changing country of ours
to get a chance at a better job. The test is in filling it.

It is a pitiable mistake to think that all you have
to do is to get the title, get the office, get the authority,
and you are made. No. Attaining this outer court
of Success is merely approaching the examination
rooms where so many are found wanting and are
turned back.

It is no trick at all to get a chance at a more re-
sponsible job than you have now ; the trick will come
in holding it And then the advantage of interior ad-
vancement will become apparent. You know, the
directors of great enterprises are not simply in search
of good-looking yotmg men who can adorn a title and
imitate the air of business men. A title is never a
bit bigger* than the man who holds it — and some

172

FALSE "success PHILOSOPHY"

mighty big titles shrink to mighty little proportions
through the lack of ability of those wh©- hold them.

What a young man wants is a sure investment —
and merely getting a chance at another job is just a
chance, that's all.

But when advancement begins within the man him-
self ; when he advances from half interest to strength
of purpose; when he advances from hesitancy of
decision to decisive directness; when he advances
from immaturity to maturity of judgment; when he
advances from apprenticeship to mastery in the line
of work he has chosen; When lie advances from a
mere dilettante at labor to a worker who finds a gen-
uine joy in work; when he advances from an eye-
server to one who can be entrusted to do his work
without oversight and without prodding — why, there
is no use making any question about that man's ad-
vancement; he is advancing; he is advancing himself
and his work, and that is all there is to it. He is
making himself irresistibly worth while advancing.
And the consequence is that the boss who does not
advance him outwardly to the limit of his inward ad-
vancement is a fool who has no conception of his own
interest.

After all, about the only doctrine of the old "Suc-
cess" philosophy that is true forever is that, in all
essential things, a man's destiny is within his own
control. His outer world corresponds pretty accu-
rately to his inner world.

173

Competition and Go-operation

THERE was a time when we heard a great deal
about the comparative merits of competition and
co-operation, but somehow the interest has seemed
to die away from such discussions during the last few
years; we have had something definite to do, some-
thing which we all had to unite to do, and in the
practical requirements of the times we forgot mere
academic talk. ,

It is possible, of course, to say a great deal in
favor of competition as a principle; possible also to
say a good deal in condemnation of it as we see it in
practice.

We may mean one thing when we use the term
competition," and then be vastly surprised to see
that the thing which really passes for competition in
the world is not what we meant at all.

Ordinarily, the competition which we have in
mind during our discussions is a niuch higher grade
activity than the actual competition of the work-a-day
business world.

There is a vast diflference between the competition
of our philosophical moods, and the unprincipled
throat-cutting and jabbing which actually goes on.

Our generation has lived to see' the most com-
petitive lines of business become closely organized
trusts, simply because competition — ruthless and con-
scienceless competition — ^became the death of com-
petition. The most powerful and relentless competitor
simply killed competition altogether. He did it by
destroying the power of his competitor to compete.

It is when competition is destroyed through that
fashion that we begin to realize how beneficial it has
been. We frequently make laws by means of which
we try to bring back the old-time competitive condi-
tions. And directly we get them back into practice,
we begin to see that even they were not altogether
desirable.

174

COMPETITION AND CX)-OPERATION

We know enough now to say that the competition
which ends in the powerlessness of the majority of
competitors and in the kingship of one, is not the kind
of competition that anyone with insight or foresight
could commend as the rule for society as a whole.

That is to say, the kind of competition which,
raised to its highest power, results in the defeat of the
many and the overlordship of a ruthless few, is there-
by proved to be fallacious. For when you get a prin-
ciple which cannot be tmiversally applied without do-
ing infinite damage, you simply do not have a tmi-
versal principle, that's all. This destructive kind of
competition is not capable of universal application.

If you will examine the kind of competition which
merits this description, you will find that it lacks many
of the qualities which must be found in that generous
form of rivalry out of which progress comes.

In the first place, it is personal. It hinges on the
aggrandizement of some individual or group. It is a
sort of warfare. It is inspired by a desire to "get
someone, which is what "getting the better of him
usually means.

It is wholly selfish. That is to say, its motive is
not pride in the product, nor a desire to excel in
service, nor yet a wholesome ambition to approach to
scientific methods of prodiKtion, but simply a desire
to crowd out all others and monopolize the market
for the sake of the money returns, and substitute a
product of inferior quality.

That is the competition which has strewn the path
of life with ruined hopes, broken hearts and stained
names — ^the competition which burned with fierce fires
of lust for power and gain and prestige.
^ It always ends in tragedy — ^the tragedy of winning
under such conditions, and the tragedy of losing. No
success can be called a true success which is bought
at the cost of another's undeserved pain. It is open
to the man who strives after success to make himself
sweat and suffer as much as he dares in order to reach
his honest goal, but to get there at the cost of other
men's chances in life is far too large a price to pay.
And it is a price which will one day be exacted of
him who compels it.

175

FORD IDEALS

That is the test : — extend your form of competi-
tion out to its last success, and what does it do ? Does
it draw hosts of men to you in glad co-operation ? Or
does it drive hosts of men into the darkness as de-
spairing wrecks?

It will do no harm for the ambitious young man
to measure his plans by this test. Young men ought
to be planning, not according to the lower sort of rules
which exist on certain planes of business today, but
according to the higher rules which are bound to be-
come operative wheii Business becomes Service and
not mere selfish rivalry.

To compete for money or markets, for themselves
alone, and not with reference to a superiority of
product or service, is to take the downward track in
business.

Now, there is a form of competition, which is
really deserving of a better word to describe it, and
which is an honest rivalry to improve conditions gen-
erally by improving the articles of commerce and the
conditions under which they are produced and
marketed.

When a man succeeds in this, he discovers that he
has not played a shut-out game at all. He discovers
that he has not ruined anyone in the process. He
can go to sleep at night without a troubling conscience.

For his success has not spelled defeat for any-
body ; it has spelled opportunity for everybody around
him. And instead of exalting him at the expense of
other men's lives, it simply opens the door for the
widest co-operation 4)etween himself and his fellow-
men.

He has not worked for personal glory. He has not
worked for mere riches. He has worked to achieve
the highest quality of product and service, and in his
cup of success there are no bitter dregs at all — at
least none of those dregs which come of taking unfair
advantage or causing the ruin of other men.

So there you have two forms of competition and
their ends. One ends in a monopoly of the most
autocratic and dangerous sort — all our great trusts
were built by means of the financial bludgeon. The

176

COMPETITION AND CO-OPERATION

Other ends in greatly increased opportunity and won-
derfully extended forms of practical co-operation.

The trend of everything which is lasting and good
in the economic world is toward the co-operative prin-
ciple, not necessarily along the express lines advo-
cated by certain theoretical sociologists, but in har-
mony with the principle that we are all fellow-work-
men on the same essential task.

If cut-throat,* personal, selfish competition were
the natural and practical method of working, why is it
that it cannot be applied within the group, instead of
only between great groups ?

That is, why is it that the workman within the
shop is not encouraged to compete against the shop,
to beat the interest of the industry in which he is en-
gaged, to count his organization his enemy? That
would be competition brought right down to the in-
dividual workman — why isn't it done?

Because such competition would ruin all produc-
tion in a very short time. Competition made uni-
versal would be universally destructive. It would
be like the soldiers of two armies turning each man
on his comrade — it would be fighting, but it would
get nowhere.

No. In order for the destructive competition of
the larger groups of interest to continue, the men
within each group must be co-operative; they must
give up competition among themselves and work for
the good of the whole.

Well, then, if this wide substratum of co-opera-
tion is necessary to the competition of the higher
financial and speculative groups; and if the com-
petition of the higher groups, when introduced to all
the industrial groups that make production possible,
would simply destroy all productive processes, it must
be perfectly clear that the basis of our progress is
co-operation and not combative competition at all.

The principle that you cannot apply all round is
a pretty doubtful one to follow at any time.

The cause of the curse of competition, whether we
view it as the strife of powerful financial groups
which are gambling in the products of honest labor,
or as the strife of the obscure individual to benefit

177

FORD IDEALS

himself at the expense of the man who works next
to him, is our false standard of reward. We have
made that standard to be Money or Recognition.

Rich man and working man both compete in the
same hurtful spirit when they are under this wrong
view of matters. We want to catch somebody's eye
or the world's eye. We want first of all the money
which this brings, when, if men only knew it, the
quickest way to both recognition and reward is just
the way of service and no other.

If the world saw among all classes more com-
petition for excellence, many of the evils of the time
would disappear.

For the conditions from which we suffer and of
which we complain are not the fault of the Creator,
nor of the earth, nor of nature, nor of the round of
the seasons; they are just the result of twists in hu-
man nature which has not yet learned the art of liv-
ing, of so handling and distributing and using the
wealth of the earth as that all shall be supplied.

Modem competition is more like the mad scramble
to get out of a theater at the cry of "Fire !^ than like
anything else one can think of. If we would all be
ready to do the best thing for every one as a whole,
we should all come through safely and with rightfully
earned wealth. We need to do the universal thing,
and keep doing it. And the greatest and most inex-
haustible of all the universals is — Excellence! He
who strives to excel never fails, and in his success^ he
never hurts a single soul.

]78

Land Is the Basic Fact

IF LAND is the bottom economic fact, it is not be-
cause land gives us a place to stand in the sun,
but because it is the source of our physical sustenance.
It is not room that is valuable, but productive power.
Having room upon the earth is the privilege of every
homeless wanderer, but having food is another matter.
No human skill can produce food. It is the func-
tion of utilizing the natural forces to do that. And
as these forces do not function apart from the earth
itself, land becomes the fundamental of property, and
food the fundamental of wealth.

It is one of the significant facts of human history,
though one never sees it referred to, that the earth
has always proved equal to its task of providing the
entire living creation with the faculties to obtain its
food.

There has never been such a calamity as a world-
wide famine. Local famines have sometimes occurred,
and in the days before commerce and transportation
such local famines had all the awfulness of a uni-
versal famine. But it has always been the case that
if one section failed from natural or other causes,
other sections were plentifully able to fill up the lack.

The fertility of the earth is such that certain sec-
tions of it could feed the whole if necessary.

A genuinely universal scarcity of food has never
afflicted the earth. Nature has never failed.

But we appear to be entering an era when human
manipulation is seeking to produce the same results
which, were they produced by Nature, would be
deemed the height of human misfortime.

It is an astonishing fact, this. Simple-minded
people would think that men would not dare to pro-
duce artificially the phenomena of widespread famine,
and do it for gain. There is something terribly de-
fiant of all retributive forces in the universe, in such
a course.

We are now learning that so abundant is the yield

179

FORD IDEALS

of Earth that even during the great war, when it
seemed that four-fifths of the world had been drawn
into the work of destruction, there was still enough
food for all and to spare.

True, we felt a scarcity at times, but it was not a
scarcity due to insufficient production ; it was a scarcity
due to emergency diversion.

Great quantities of food were diverted, not because
there was much actual lack, but to reassure those who
feared a future lack and whose morale was being
broken by that fear.

This diversion began at the home. The American
wife and daughter began to save here and there, and
the aggregate was enormous.

As long as we were "doing without" of our own
free will, as long as we knew that our deprivation
was not caused by the greedy injustice of others, but
by a humane program for helping the world, we did
without gladly. The American housewife joked over
her makeshifts and substitutes. They were not forced
upon her by profiteers, but by dictates of humanity.

It makes a very great difference why you do a
thing. If you fast for three days on account of your
health, doing it willingly, it is a very interesting ex-
perience and costs you very little suffering. You are
really eager throughout the time, interested in the
experiment.

But let a man miss one or two meals because of
his poverty, and the deprivation is very, very bitter.
It isn't only the loss of the food, but the loss of the
sense of self-support, and this pulls him down far
more quickly than mere physical fasting, could do.

Yes, it makes a great difference, why we do a thing.

It turns out upon investigation that much of the
food we saved during the war period has accumulated
into very large surplusage of war and other stores;
so much so, indeed, that a fear has been expressed
that the loosing upon the general market of these
quantities of foodstuffs would result in a calamitous
reduction of food prices.

This very fear is evidence enough of the huge
stores of accumulated food.

But the fear is evidence of something else.

180

LAND IS THE BASIC FACT

There was a time when the whole food situation
was regarded from the point of view of the con-
sumer. Men grew rich out of many things, but not
out of food. The farmer did not grow rich, nor did
the miller, nor did the baker. Food was free of the
shackles of greed.

But insensibly all that has changed. Within our
own generation we have seen the beginnings of the
financial exploitation of the food of the people.

It began in wheat "corners" and "pools," which
used to be so public and spectacular that the news-
papers gave all details. So full and free was the in-
formation concerning these market coups that the
people protested against gambling in their very bread.

Well, the protest only had the effect of stopping
the individual daring of exploiters and the publica-
tion of their acts. Nowadays the same thing is ac-
complished, but far more disastrously to the country,
and no one hears anything about it. All the food is
cornered all the year round by all the exploiting in-
terests, so that it is impossible for the poorest man
to point to an edible on his table that is not taxed to
the limit by a gigantic trust.

Sometimes our attention is riveted to this or that
commodity, such as wheat or meat; but it doesn't
matter as to details ; the fact is the whole Food Sup-
ply of the people has been placed under an exploiter's
tax.

When you find that meat is too expensive because
it has increased 100 per cent in two years, you take
to some perfectly adequate substitute like rice.

And when you look into the channels through
which the rice comes to you, you find it under the
control of the same forces that made meat impos-
sible to you. You find, moreover, that due to these
"modem methods of merchandising," of which so
much untruth is told, your rice costs you 75 per cent
more than it did a year ago.

It is certainly a great game that drives people to
substitutes, and then corners the substitutes. The
same forces that made butter impossible in hundreds
of thousands of homes, has control of the oleomar-
garine supply.

181

FORD IDEALS ^

Now, if there were not enough food, human na-
ture would accept the fact with a certain degree of
equanimity.

But there is enough. There is more than enough
right now. And there is very much more than enough
in sight.

But there's the "market" — ah, the delicate, high-
strung, sensitive market! — that must be protected.
And, pray, what is the "market"? Why, it is the oc-
ploiters! Just the food gamblers!

It is amazing how much nearer the truth we get
when we strip away the verbiage and state matters as
they are.

If you want to see how far we have come from
considering the people as having the first interest in
the food supply, all you have to do is to observe the
fear which is felt everywhere about giving the people
a chance at the surplus food stocks. It would hurt
the "market" !

Maybe it would; but would it help the people?
That is a side of the matter which the exploiters never
consider.

The Food Question is the chief public economic
question. It doesn't much matter if our ballot is free,
if our bread is at the mercy of profiteers.

We can chant about Liberty and Equality all we
please, but it will not mean much if an invisible gov-
ernment of food gamblers is able to levy extortionate
tribute on our dinner tables.

Fortunately this matter has. attracted the atten-
tion of Congress; unfortunately the whole emphasis
has been on the food "business."

The only Food Business that can ever justify itself
to the htmian race is the Business that raises Food
in sufficient quantity and distributes it under such
conditions as will enable every family to have enough
of all that it needs.

It may be that one way we shall take to break the
food trust will be to raise such overwhelming quan-
tities of all kinds of food as shall make manipulation
and exploitation impossible. We shall probably do
that by means of the new modes of power-farming

182 '^

LAND IS THE BASIC FACT

which are coming into vogue with such rapidity in all
parts of the United States, and elsewhere in the world.

And then, perhaps, we shall witness a revival of
the small flour-milling business in our communities.
It was an evil day when the village flour mill disap-
peared. Co-operative farming will yet become so de-
veloped and perfected that we shall see associations of
farmers with their own packing houses in which their
own hogs will be turned into ham and bacon, with
their own flour mills in which their grain will be
turned into commercial foodstuflfs.

Why a steer raised in Texas should be brought to
Chicago and then served in Boston is a question that
cannot be answered on good business principles so
long as there could be raised near Boston all the steers
that city needs. This centralization of food manu-
facturing industries, entailing as it does enormous
costs for transportation and organization, is one very
serious cause of the era of prohibitive prices in which
we find ourselves.

183

Ideals Versus Ideas

AMERICANS are the most idealistic people in the
world, yet of all human beings they are the most
impatient of being called idealists because they fancy
that somehow the name involves frills and fads with
which practical people have nothing to do. They
fancy that idealism is emotion and sentiment. They
are under the impression that it is feminine.

Well, the rose by any other name would smell
just as sweet, and idealism may exist without the
name. We may as well call it progressiveness, or
wide-awakeness, or foresight. Idealism does not nec-
essarily involve emotion or sentimentality. It takes
its color, of course, from the temper and experience
of * the person who possesses it, but so do politics, re-
ligion and business.

To be an idealist is simply to be able to see what
does not yet exist in the minds of others.

Things have two existences, an ideal existence and
an objective existence. Or, to say it more simply,
things are ideas before they are things; the idea is
before the thing itself, and the thing itself cannot exist
apart from its idea.

The busy world around us existed in ideal before
it existed in material.

Someone thought of everything you see, before it
really appeared.

There never was a rubber eraser on the end of a
lead pencil, until someone saw with the eye of his
mind a rubber-tipped pencil. After seeing it in the
ideal world, he proceeded to make a copy in the so-
called "real" world.

And that is the history of everything with which
mankind has had to do.

If you go back still further, it may be that this is
also the history of the world and the stars; the cre-
ative power first saw them as ideas, and then realized
them in matter.

184

IDEALS VERSUS IDEAS

Every inventor is an idealist, because he is work-
ing on something that has not yet appeared.

Every prophet is an idealist, because he is living
in a world or in a social condition which has not yet
come into existence.

And, in a way, every one who looks backward and ,
lives in memory, every aged person who lives in a
world of people long since vanished and amid ac-
tivities long since ceased, is an idealist. That is, the
idea occupies a larger place than the "real."

Except for idealists, there would have been no
United States of America. Our government and in-
stitutions and liberties were spim out of the invisible
essence of men's minds just as literally as the spider
spins its web out of the substances of its body. The
Fathers of the Republic had no pattern to go by, save
the pattern of the ideal government which existed
in their minds. They transferred that pattern out of
their ideals and put it into constitutions and laws ; the
people began to mould their lives in accordance with
these ; and, lo ! the new political entity was bom.

Take the League of Nations; it is nothing but
an ideal. It does not function yet. It only lives in
men's minds and ideas. Yet how real it is ! By watch-
ing the growth of that absolutely new appearance on
earth, we can observe the method by which things
that nevefr existed before are bom out of the world
of ideality into the world of reality.

Therefore an idealist is nothing strange.

The human mind is a channel through which
things-to-be are coming into the realm of things-that-
are. Were it not for ideas and idealists, the race
would still be wandering around in the eastern deserts.

But there is a difference in idealists, and perhaps
this gives us a clue as to the disfavor with which
some of them are regarded.

There is, for example, the idealist who has no ideas.
There are many such.

The difference between ideals and ideas may be
hard to define in theory, but it is clear in practice.

An idea is a gangplank thrown across the gap
between the ideal and the real.

The air is full of many magnificent ideals that

185

FORD IDEALS

cannot step ashore into the real world because there
are no ideas for them to walk upon.

If you have an ideal, that is good. If you have an
ideal, and also ideas as to how to work it out, that
is better.

Idealists without ideas are often made the butt of
jokes^ That is wrong. The very existence of the
ideals, even in a hazy form, shows the pressure that
is being exerted from the invisible side of life for the
bringing of better ways. Every ideal,' particularly
every moral and social ideal, indicates the pressure of
better conditions which are trying to break through
and become the rule of our life. But they cannot
break through imtil roads are built for them, and
these roads are the ideas wlych will work them out
into practical use.

As far as actual life-pressure is concerned, the
idealist who has vision without ideas is living on a
far higher plane than the practical man whose ideas
were never enlightened by a single ideal. The mind
of the idealist at least has wings. ,And then, again,
there is the idealist whose vision is so distant from
what we have or can have now, that he is derided as
a deluded dreamer. Still, he may not be. Some
minds have longer-sight than others, and it behooves
the short-sighted mind to be modest in the presence
of the other.

The vision may seem the height of foolish im-
possibility today; half a century hence it may be the
commonplace of every day.

There are idealists who see the things which will
appear next year or ten years hence. They are the
more practical kind, because their ideals are accom-
panied with workable ideas. And then there are
idealists who see further than the best of us can sense;
but this is no reason for declaring that they do not
see truly.

The American is a practical idealist. That is, he
is gifted with ideals which can be readily realized.
He respects ideals that can be immediately brought
down to reality.

It must be confessed that the progress of our
J4ealists is not evenly balanced.

IDEALS VERSUS IDEAS

We easily conceive new and better methods in
mechanics and business; we teem with a practical
idealism which can be harnessed to the interests of
the workaday world ; and yet it must be said that we
are not so successfiil when the ideal happens to be
social or political.

That is to say, our social and political progress has
not equalled our mechanical and commercial progress.

Why ? Is it because we have fewer social and
political ideals ? Or is it because we are not so capable
of translating social ideals into practical ideas, and
political ideals into practical political ideas?

Is it the American genius to work in iron and
steel, and not in the substances which determine the
social structure?

We would be loath to admit this. And yet the
facts stare us in the face.

Let us not be like England. For centuries, she has
been mistress of the seas. She has organized and
ruled an empire so vast that the sun never sets upon
her domain. She has reaped the harvest of com-
merce from every quarter of the globe. She has in-
fluenced the literature of the world. She has given
igany of the pattern laws of the world's liberty.

You would think that a country which could so
organize the greater part of the world would have the
most perfect home social conditions to show for it.

Yet, England's social fabric threatens to fall to
pieces. Few cotmtries are as upset as she is today.
Few populations have such a list of injustices and
oppressions to show.

Thus it becomes clear that a nation may be very
capable in many ways and yet neglect the greatest of
tasks, the making of a happy, prosperous life for her
own people.

What will the United States gain even if she wins
the commerce of the world, and cannot create just
social conditions at home?

What glory is it to any nation that one class rises
in wealth and power, while all the other classes are
made to feel an increasing burden of costs and un-
, certainty?

There is plenty of social idealism in the world.

187

FORD IDEALS

Indeed, sometimes it would appear that that is the
only kind of idealism which exists.

Yet there is a great dearth of practical ideas of
social betterment. There are hosts of theories. In
some parts of the earth those theories are being tried
by earnest believers in them, yet they are not proving
successful.

The need of the time is a social idealism which
will also provide ideas by which the ideals may be
worked out ; not only hazy desires for a better world,
but practical plans for the building of a better world
out of the one we now have. The world we now live
in is the world we must transform ; we cannot destroy
it; we must live with it until we leave it better; and
practical ideals are our only hope of making it better.

188

What Is Education — Cargo
or Motive Power?

SOME people are proud of their good looks. Others
are proud of their social standing. Still others
are proud of their wealth. Most people are proud of
their ancestry, because it was good and honest. But
it would be very easy to find a large class of people
who are proud of what they l^now, proud of the knowl-
edge that they have gathered; and they would not be
confined to the so-called educated classes either.

Knowledge is such a vague term that it is well to
understand just what may he meant by it.

The fact that certain fluids will take stains out of

-a tablecloth, is knowledge. If the housewife knows

that, it may come handy to her. But you may search

through thousands of books in the big library and

never find that special part of knowledge mentioned.

The farmer's boy knows at which pool the trout
is to be Ifound, and that is knowledge, but it would
never win him praise from a college.

The weather-beaten land-looker can tell by a glance
at the sky what the weather will be, but he could not
qualify among the scientists who are wise in these
things.

There are many kinds of knowledge, and it de-
pends on what crowd you happen to be in, or how the
fashions of the day happen to run, which kind of
knowledge is most respected at the moment. There
are fashions in knowledge, just as there are in every-
thing else.

When some of us were lads, knowledge used to be
limited to Bible knowledge. There were certain men
in the neighborhood who knew the Book thoroughly,
and they were looked up to and respected for it.
Biblical knowledge was highly valued then.

But nowadays it is doubtful whether deep ac-
quaintance with the Bible would be sufficient to win

189

FORD IDEALS

a man a name for learning. Although it must be
said that knowledge of that Book would indicate a
well-stored mind, it would not win much respect
among the wiseacres of the day, becatfse fashions in
knowledge have changed.

Knowledge is something that somebody once knew
and left in a form which enabled anyone else, who
wanted to, to know it.

If a man is bom with normal human faculties, if
he is equipped with enough ability to use the tools
which we call "letters" in reading or writing, there
is no knowledge within the possession of the race that
he cannot have — if he wants it!

The only reason every man does not know every-
thing that the human mind has ever learned is that no
one has ever yet found it worth while to know that
much.

^Men satisfy their minds more by finding out things
for themselves, than by heaping together the things
which somebody else has found out.

You can go out and gather knowledge all your life,
and with all your gathering you will not -catch up
even with your own times.

You may fill your head with all the "facts" of all
the ages, and your head may be just an overloaded
fact-box when you get through.

The point is this : Great piles of knowledge in the
head are not the same as mental activity. A man
may be very learned and very useless. Any college
professor will tell you that. And then again, a man
may be unlearned and very useful, very wide-awake
in his mind — and any professor of psychology will
tell you that, too.

The object of education is not to fill a man's mind
with facts; it is to teach him how to use his mind
in thinking.

And it often happens that a man can think better
if he is not hampered by the knowledge of the past.

If Columbus had paid attention to "facts," if he
had held them in reverence, if he had believed that
all knowledge was in the books and there was none
to be had outside the books, he would never have set

190

WHAT IS EDUCATION — CARGO OR MOTIVE POWER? '

sail. Columbus did not study geography ; he made it.

It is a very human tendency to think that what
mankind does not yet know, no one can learn. And
yet it must be perfectly clear to every one that the
past learning of mankhid cannot be allowed to hinder
our future learning. There is almost everything to
learn yet. Mankind has not gone so very far, when
you measure its progress against the knowledge that is
yet to be gained, the secrets that are yet to be learned.

One good way to hinder progress is to fill a man's
head with all the learning of the past; it makes him
feel that because his head is full, there is nothing more
to learn. Why, you could take a thousand men, fill
each man's head full of knowledge — so full that he
could learn no more — ^and even then no two of those
men would be learned in the same things. Each would
be calling the other ignorant. Merely gathering knowl-
edge that other men have acquired may become the
most useless work a man can do. The only fair
standard by which accumulated knowledge may be
judged is this : Here is a lot of knowledge. ^Are you
capable of learning it? If you are capable, you are
an intelligent person. If you are not capable, you
are not. If this or that subject were submitted to you
to be learned, you could learn it. Left to yourself,
perhaps, you would not learn it, not because you
are incapable of learning it, but simply because it is
not the kind of knowledge that your life or genius
requires.

Here is a man who knows a great deal about sea-
shells. There is a whole science of sea-shells. This
learned man is so interested in sea-shells, and has
gathered so much knowledge about them, that he has
written large volumes on the subject. But how many
even of our learned men know anything about sea-
shells ? How many want to know ? And yet — ^here is
the point — ^they are capable of knowing, they would
learn mighty quickly if a knowledge of sea-shells were
of any use to them.

All of us learn quickly the things we are inter-
ested in, the things which we need in order to do our
work in the world.

Everybody is a specialist. The baker is a specialist

191

FORD IDEALS

in doughs and yeasts and ovens. The molder is a
specialist in sands and molds and iron "heats." The
horseshoer is a specialist in hoofs and bellows and
welding compounds. Our mothers used to learn more
from the "feel" of cloth than could be written in
many pages. Everybody is a specialist.

Now, just how much knowledge must be held in
common by everybody, is also a matter of fashion.
It is largely a matter of the class of people you want
to associate with. If you trot in one class you will
discover that you are expected to be able to talk
about art, and music, and poetry and similar subjects.
Thousands of people are chattering about those things
who don't know anything about them at all, but they
have learned the phrases, and they pass for "educated."
A scholar of wide fame said just a little while ago —
"It is now possible in our best society to express
opinions about a book without having read it, or to
gabble about art without knowing a single fundamental
principle."

People do this because it is expected of them and
because it is the fashion. Most of the fads of society
are intellectual fads, which change like the style of
hats.

Of course, if you want to gather knowledge like
pebbles and exhibit it, all right. There is one form of
human vanity. But to flatter yourself that you are
learned, while the man who does not follow your fad
is unlearned, is to add a vicious flavor to your self-
flattery.

There is a young fellow, standing before you. His
skin is clear, his eyes are bright, he understands what
he sees, and his mind is awake. He doesn't know
everything. As educational fashions go nowadays
he may "know" comparatively little. That is, his
head may yet be unburdened by a load of facts out of
books.

No, he doesn't know everything. But as you look
at him, as you note his comprehending gaze, as you
mark the cool glance of his eyes, this thought comes
to you: "He doesn't know everything, but there is
nothing he could not know if he wanted to; and

192

WHAT IS EDUCATION^ARGO OR MOTIVE POWER?

when he chooses his work in life, he will learn it
clear through to the end and beyond."

He doesn't have much knowledge, but he has a
lot of brains.

And, listen! — if you are ever given a choice be-
tween brains and knowledge, choose brains.

With brains you can get any form of knowledge
you need. But, better than that — with brains you
can use any kind of knowledge that you have. With-
out brains, no amount of gathered knowledge will
ever amount to a straw.

The best thing a book does for a man is to make
him think. All that a school can do for a man is to
teach him how to think.

It isn't what you get out ^of a book, but what a
book pulls out of you, that makes books useful^

A man is like a well. There is a lot in him, if he
can only get it out. Sometimes ^ book, or a conversa-
tion, or a course of instruction, acts on him like prim-
ing on a pump — it brings out of him what is in him.
And that is all that Education means.

A man is like wood or stone. Some kinds of
stones you can bring to a high degree of polish. Some
kinds of wood, too. But many indispensable stones
are rough and cannot be brought to a polish. So
with some kinds of wood. All men do not take a pol-
ish. Webster did; but Lincoln didn't. And it is a
big mistake to say that the polish counts for all. It
is the texture that counts. And the texture of a man
.is his vitality, his energy, his character, his courage
and his rock -bottom brain power.

193

When in Doubt — Raise Wages!

THE first step to take in a situation like the presr
ent is to raise wages where necessary. Simply
raise wages. There may be other steps necessary to
make, there may be other improvements to be insti-
tuted, but this is the thing that ought to be done at
once and widely — raise wages. Nothing that anyone
can do in the time at our disposal can meet the situa-
tion so thoroughly, nothing will go so far to restore
confidence and establish a sense of the justice of our
social intention, as just to raise wages.

But this is the one step which the speculative and
profiteering world seems determined not to do.

"Why not do something else?" they say. And
so we begin to see all sorts of substitutes offered for
the simple solution of raising wages.

There can be little or no doubt that many of the
"investigations" which come up like mushrooms in
times of great public complaint, are mere substitutes
for the real and practical remedy, which is the in-
crease of wages.

If investigations had ever proved of practical as-
sistance to the producing class, if they had ever really
corrected the basic abuses, we might view them with
more hopefulness. But what have they ever accom-
plished? Have they ever made any appreciable dif-
ference in the life problem of the working man ?

Investigations have, as a rule, been substitutes for
the direct cure. When public impatience approaches
the breaking point, then someone seeks to allay it with
an "investigation." The result usually is that the
point of the investigation is changed, and before the
work is over it has been cleverly maneuvered into a
political boom for or against somebody. It develops
a "hero" or a "goat," and the real problem is left just
where it was before.

There is just now a "food investigation" gathering
force in all parts of the country. No one can say

194

WHEN IN DOUBT — RAISE WAGES !

aught against it. It is high time we knew all the
details of profiteering in food. It is high time some-
one discovered and exposed the faults in our system
which permit even the people's bread to be put at the
mercy of gamblers.

But, does anyone honestly expect that the investi-
gation will have more than a nominal and temporary
effect ? • Does anyone believe that prices will ever
again be what they were ten years ago ? No.

We have been on the upgrade on food prices for
ten years. If memories were not so short, it there
were some sort of accounting in the household, it
would be shown that food began to advance a decade
ago and that we were in the pinch of high prices even
before the European war began. Did anybody oifer
to investigate then? No. We saw to it that certain
wage advances were made to meet the rising costs.

Then, fortunately for the speculators, the war
came on and proved a handy alibi for the next four
years. But two months after the war had ended, the
price of food in the United States had advanced 25
per cent over war prices.

The country began to murmur, then to protest,
then to threaten. There was but one obvious thing
to do — raise wages. When a man is overboard, he
needs a life preserver. You can investigate the acci-
dent afterward. When a nation is actually in dis-
tress over the food problem, when a people have to
omit the other requirements of life in order to con-
centrate their attention upon the matter of getting
food, the first need is to relieve that situation, relieve
it immediately. You can investigate afterward.

Any difficulty with the food supply of a people,
especially where the difficulty is a money difficulty, is
equal to an emergency — a war emergency, if you will
— and should be met by provisions for the people's
safety. "Public safety" includes a safe margin of
food obtainable without dangerous anxiety on the
part of the people.

The concealed logic of most "food investigations"
would run somewhat on this line: "We must do
something. If we raise wages, that will enable the
people to buy food, but it will reduce our profits. If

195

FORD IDEALS

we force a reduction of prices, that will hit our profits,
too. The best way to do is to have an "investigation"
and this will educate the people as to the reasons for
high prices; if skillfully conducted it will frighten
out the little profiteers, and the big profiteers will be
whitewashed and, in effect, licensed to continue."

Now, it makes all the difference in the world from
whose standpoint you view the matter. The only
safe point of view for any lover of the security and
prosperity of his country to take is the point of view
of the consumer, of the workman's wife who goes
to the store with a greatly shrunken dollar, of the
workman himself who finds that his utmost labor
will scarcely provide a living. These, in the last an-
alysis, constitute the food problem and it must be
investigated from their standpoint and relieved in a
way that will relieve them.

Obviously the man with a family is not going to
worry about potatoes being $2.50 a bushel, if he has
the $2.50. Obviously he is not going to be anxious
about the high cost of living if, after paying for his
living, he has the same proportionate amount of
money left over to put aside against a rainy day.

To come down to the human side of the question
as it affects our producers, the problem never has
been the high cost of living but the inadequate rate of
wages. They pay willingly if they have it. But they
don't have it. Wages have not kept pace with cost
increases. The result is very serious in our most
vital interests. You cannot pinch the American home
without injuring the heart and efficiency of the nation.

Raise the wages first so that the people may live
without anxiety during the period of your investiga-
tion, and then proceed with your examination of the
whole food system. But do not, as you value your
coimtry's security and happiness — do not substitute
an "investigation" for definite first afd.

Everybody knows what the result of an investiga-
tion will be.' There will be, first, a great uproar con-
cerning hoarded food. This will not touch the greSit
hoards of the chief food makers, but only the local
stocks. Already there have been seizures in some
of the large cities of the country, and the figures

196

WHEN IN DOUBT — RAISE WAGES 1

that have been given out look very imposing in the
newspapers, but they shrink to triviality when divided
by the population of the city in which the stocks were
found. The discovery of a million dozens of eggs
in a city of 1,200,000 population simply means that
that city is one dozen eggs ahead per person — a, week's
supply.

Then it will be discovered that the little local re-
tailers have profiteered a cent or two on trust products,
and they will be severely criticised for it, although it
will never be published that the little local retailers
are making less imder the high price regime than be-
fore. That is a curious fact: the fortunes and div-
idends of the big profiteers show upward curves of
increase; the little fellows are barely scraping along.
But punish the little fellows!

And then it will be discovered that the cost of
producing, preparing and marketing food has really
increased. It will be possible to show that the farmer
has received a well-merited, though not extravagant,
share of the increase, and that certain material costs
help to account for part of it; but there will still be
the fact that at the top an increased profit arises, and
that no one engaged in the food business has really
suffered.

Everybody "got theirs," as the expression is, but
they have gotten it from the man whose family eats
the food. And that man too commonly has not kept
even within economizing distance of the rise in food
costs.

The figures make it clear. Wages have increased
in this country about 50 per cent. This increase is
practically eaten up by the increase in rents alone, not
to mention clothing, medical attendance and^uel. But
when you measure a food increase rimning all the way
from 75 to 200 per cent, it becomes apparent whether
wages have kept pace or not.

If it were planned to produce a peasant class here
in America, if there were a conspiracy among the
money-kings to force the American people down from
the standard of living to which they have lifted them-
selves and create a race inured to poverty and dep-
rivation, it could not be better attempted than just

197

WHEN IN DOUBT — ^RAISE WAGES !

the way we are going now. No wonder the preachers
of discontent and violence are seizing upon the oc-
casion to say that now that the war is over, the Amer-
ican people are being beaten down to the level of the
lower class British workman or the French and Ger-
man peasant.

The emergency remedy — regardless of what the
ultimate cure may be — is just this : some profits must
be turned into wages. We are learning that it is no
longer possible for one man to keep the profits. A
profit-making business is the creation of profit-mak-
ing men, and the only way the obligation of the busi-
ness to the men can be recognized and met is by a
scheme of profit-sharing. Whatever form this may
take, it means higher wages.

There is food here. There are people needing it.
There is money enough to|transf er the food from those
who have it to those who need it. We shall have to
see that the money reaches the points which this food
transaction has stinted.

Having done this, you may then investigate with
all the thoroughness possible, without the suspicion
of making it a substitute for the right and needful
thing.

198

Humanity Is Our Basic Wealth

THE principal interest in this country is not busi-
ness, markets nor profits; it is not agriculture,
manufacturing nor transportation; it is not science,
education nor any form of material progress : the com-
modity of principal importance in this country is just
— People. Without people the other interests would
have no meaning. Without people they would not
exist. It ought, therefore, to be plain to any mind
that in relative importance People come first, and
these others second.

We pause here for a moment to permit the wise-
acres to cry, "Platitude!" Any truth that is incon-
veniently plain, too plain to be relished and yet too
true to be ignored, is shelved by the cry of "plati-
tude." But somehow it doesn't stay shelved.

People sometimes say, "Yes, yes, we know all
about that. Don't keep repeating it. Everyone agrees,
but don't make the truth a nuisance by insisting upon
it."

But does everyone know, and does everyone agree ?
Certainly there is little evidence of it in the situation
which confronts us today.

Here we are faced by a condition of affairs which
may hold for the world greater danger than even the
war held; we are at a time when the mistaken policy
of greedy economic powers may set loose tendencies
from which humanity might never recover — start
lesions in the social organism that could never be
healed. And yet do we ever hear that the place to
begin our cure of the illness is with the People?

No, we hear plenty of wise talk about protecting
the market, protecting the expectations of those who
bought low to sell high (how remarkably tender this
coimtry has become of the gambling game of the
speculative profiteer!), protecting this or that bad
business condition due to mistaken theories that ought
to be destroyed so thoroughly that they shall never

199

FORD IDEALS

deceive the business world again — we hear anything
and everything except what can and should be done
for the relief and protection of the People!

Our wise men seem to believe that the People are
like the earth, a foundation that cannot be moved, a
platform on which any kind of business or market
program may be safely staged. But, the constant
danger of surprise is just here — the people are not
a stable mass on which anything whatever can be
built ; they are not the unchangeable quantity that the
soil of the earth is; they are subject to change, to
independent action.

Decrease of confidence is worse than decrease of ,
profits.

And worse even than the lowering of the climax
of business records is the lowering of the morale of
the People.

We can recover from almost any deterioration in
this Country except a deterioration of the People.

Why, ^ook at it a minute. What have we been
doing the past 10 years? We have been trying to
get a better class of people. American business saw
very clearly a few years ago that its success depended
on the elevation of the human standard in every in-
dustry. We started educational and Americanization
work. We supplied higher living standards. We en-
couraged an increase of intelligence and self-respect
and a higher level of material needs. And we sup-
plied the increased wages necessary to maintain these
desirable htmian qualities.

What has happened to that clear vision? Surely
something has happened to it. In the present condi-
tion of national affairs we have scarcely thought of
the People at all. We have thought of Things, Things,
Things. We can afford to maJce a big sacrifice in
Things if that will prevent a deterioration of the
American standard of human values.

Take the housing condition, for example. Isn't it
true that we hear more of the need of the landlords
to charge more rent than we do of the need of the
people to be housed? The financial element is dis-
cussed to the almost entire exclusion of the human
element.

200 '

HUMANITY IS OUR BASIC WEALTH

There is a very, very serious lack of housing fa-
cilities in all our industrial centers and it is working
social deterioration to an observable degree. There
is too much crowding for health and morals. There
are too many "come downs" from dec^ent living quar-
ters to unbearable ones— quite too many for the self-
respect of thousands of families who were just be-
ginning to taste the delights of clean, roomy, modem,
wholesome living conditions. There is too much
crowding among immarried work-people, thus doing
away with the moral and physical hygienic value of
personal privacy and freedom.

In fact, if there were a deliberate conspiracy to
lower the whole line of American standards of liv-
ing, it could not be accomplished more surely than by
just bringing about such a lack of housing accommo-
dations as we are now suffering.

Of course, it will be asked, "Why are there fewer
houses? Are there so many more people in the
world?" There are fewer people in the world. The
lack of housing can be traced directly to the greatly
increased appeal of industrialism to the people during
the past five years. There are fewer people in the
world but they have suddenly become newly distrib-
uted ; there are more people in the cities. The housing
problem is a problem of cities and of such- smaller
towns as have industrial interests.

Industrialism happens to be the cause, in this way :
first, the war rate of wages enabled many families to
move into better houses — which is very desirable, of
course, though it is a reflection on the conditions
which existed before the war when families lived in
unfit conditions. Second, the families who formerly
occupied a house between them, were enabled by war
wages to take a whole house; and this tended to de-
crease the number of available houses. And third,
there was a great influx from the agricultural dis-
tricts to the city factories. This was a movement so
vast in its proportions as to constitute a migration —
hundreds of thousands moving from the country into
the city lured by the prospect of high wages for war
work.

In one city of the United States which before the

201

FOKD nSALS

war always had a comfortable housing margin, there
are now 25,000 families wondering where they can
live. There are no houses to rent. Such houses as
may be rented are held at rentals which in themselves
constitute a serious hardship upon needy people.

Out of this condition has arisen a great volume of
complaint and discussion. Here and there an indi-
vidual employer has adopted the role of house-builder
for the sake of his own employes, but in the main the
condition remains unchanged.

There is vast complaint against rent profiteers and
some attempts have been made to regulate the rapacity
of their greed, but none has been successful. Again
there is a great defense made of landlords. And so it
goes on and on, everything discussed and nothing
done, every interest protected and the People left to
get along die best way they can.

That is the danger. After all, it is not a question of
houses. It is not a question of rent. It is a question
of People.

Transfer your interest to the food question and
the same rule applies. It is not a question of profits.
It is not a question of saving speculative values in
storage house stocks. It is not a question of steadying
the market. It is a question of People.

Simply change the complexion of the emergency.
Suppose it were a disease sweeping the land. Every-
body would then see that it is a question of People.
No one would stop to consider anything else. Of
course, the element of social fear is more active in
great plagues; we do what we can for the victims in
order to save ourselves from contagion. With house-
less families, it is different; we do not fear we will
"catch" their homelessness. With hungry People it
is different, too ; we do not fear we will "catch" their
himger. Yet in permitting these conditions to exist
we are encouraging an epidemic of low morale and
discontent which may breed social dangers from which
none of us can escape. If our sense of social safety
were as well developed as our sense of physical safety,
our concern for affairs today would be greatly in-
creased.

If this were a war emergency, what would we do?

202

HUMANITY IS OUR BASIC WEALTH

Why, we would think of nothing but meeting it. All
through the war everyone said, "Money doesn't mat-
ter. Money is of no use whatever unless we use it
to clear up this intolerable condition."

Well, the case is not different now. Money is of
no more use now than it was then, unless it be used
to prevent the slump in American living ideals which
the present food and housing conditions will bring
about.

The great fact is this: This is a situation which
can be met, an emergency which can be relieved by
money. The food is here. The material for housing
is here. Money will make both available. After the
emergency is met it will be time enough to take steps
to prevent its recurrence. In the meantime infinite
damage is being done to our first wealth, our most
precious wealth, the one element which gives our na-
tional resources any value at all — ^the People. If
money can prevent a blow being delivered to their
ideals and confidence, money must be used to do it.

Not as a dole. In higher wages first, so that each
family can meet its owil needs and prevent any de-
terioration of health, or courage or self-respect. And
in investment next — each man '^of means building
houses by the hundred until the last homeless family
shall be under its own ample roof.

There will be just as much money in the country
afterward as before. It will simply have been used
to meet an emergency, that's all. But what is better
than money, there will be a strong American People,
maintained in their strength, in their initiative and in
their respect for themselves and reverence for our
country.

203

Managers and Men Are

Partners

WHEN a man has a business the responsibilities "^
of which he cannot carry alone, he looks for a
suitable partner. He realizes without any special
thought or argument that if he is to secure certain
desirable qualities in his partner he must be ready
to give assurance that those same qualities will be
present in himself. That is to say, expecting loyalty,
he will stand ready to be loyal. He recognizes that
partnership' in business, to be most successful, must
be something more than a mere financial arrangement ;
he recognizes that it involves certain co-operative re-
lations, and that if these are not properly adjusted the
partnership will be a failure.

A partner is not one who takes part of the pro-
ceeds of the business, but one who contributes part
to the success of a business. Partnership is a positive
relation.

Now, sometimes the partner contributes capital;
sometimes skill and experience; most commonly he
contributes only his labor. It is the latter form of
partnership, commonly called "employment," which
concerns us now.

It is not usual to speak of an employe as a "part-
ner," and yet what else is he ? Whenever a man finds
the management of a business too much for his own
time or strength, he calls in assistants who take part,
or partnership, in the management with him. Why,
then, when a man finds the production part of a busi-
ness too much for his own two hands should he deny
the title of "partner" to those who come into the
factory and help him to produce?

Every business that employs more than one man
is a partnership, whether it is legally so termed or not.
We may deny it as much as we please, we may resent
what it implies, but nevertheless it is a fact. The mo-

204

MANAGERS AND MEN ARE PARTNERS

ment a man calls in assistance in his business, even
though the assistant be but a boy, that moment he has
taken a partner. He may himself be sole owner of
the resources of the business, sole director of its op-
erations, but only as he remains sol^ manager and
sole producer can he retain the title of "independent."

No man is independent as long as he has to de-
pend on another man to help him.

The employer-is not independent; he cannot go
down into his factory and with his own two hands
produce sufficient to maintain the business. He is de-
pendent on other men coming in and helping him.

The employe is not independent; with his meager
facilities he cannot produce articles up to modem re-
quirements. He is dependent on other men who have
created improved means and methods of production,
who have cultivated the market, who have the gift of
organization and administration which enable him to
use his acquired skill.

As our present social life is organized, the one
without the other is helpless, as is proved by every
dispute that stqps the wheels of production.

It is useless for one group or the other to take
airs to itself as if it were the one indispensable unit.
Both are indispensable, and one can unduly assert its
importance not only at the expense of the other but
at its own expense as well. It is utterly foolish for
the groups to think of themselves as groups at all —
they are partners ; and when they pull and haul against
each other, they simply injure the organization in
which they are partners and from which they draw
their support.

Now, so much for foundation truth. Not every-
one, df course, will agree with this view of the rela-
tion between so-called "capital and labor." But it is
very significant that in these times no responsible man
will openly disagree. This question: if the employe
is not a partner, what is he? — is a hard question to
evade. It is a much harder question to answer if
you desire to regard the employe as not belonging to
the business.

The fact is, we are up against the problem of hu-

205

FORD IDEALS

man relations today, and we are up against it in a
serious way.

Not that the problem of human relations is a hard
one, but it has been neglected so long that it seems
mpre difficult than it really is. Human relations,
especially in industry, have become the subject of first
importance today not because of any fundamental
change in life, but because they always were of first
importance only heretofore we failed to recognize it.

Yet we had many warnings. It was always easy
to settle the material part of any undertaking. Wood,
iron, sand, brick, machinery— these were never a
problem. A brick was used in a conspicuous place or
in an obscure place as the user desired, to be cut or
broken or crushed without compunction, as the ne-
cessities of the case required. Bricks were always
bricks. Many times the material part of an under-
taking was arranged beautifully, but just as it seemed
that the whole business was to start off smoothly,
something went wrong with the human equation.

That is the only difficulty in the country today.
The material world is just what it was, but some-
thing has happened in the human world.

Now, if an)i:hing went wrong with machinery
or the mechanical processes of production, we would
immediately know what to do. We would deal with
machinery according to the law of machinery, with
production according to the laws of efficient produc-
tion. We would not expect machinery to exhibit
qualities that belonged to the animal world, nor would
we regard production from any standpoint but its own.

Well,. if we are to establish human relations on a
dependable basis we shall have to recognize that these
working partners of the business are human. If you
confuse them with the machinery, you will discover
they have the power of will. If you try to confuse
them with material processes of any character what-
eVer, you will find that men live by mental and spiritual
values.

American business could well afford to devote the
next six months to a thorough overhauling of the
standard of human relations throughout every line
of activity.

206

MANAGERS AND MEN ARE PARTNERS

You may talk about material and efficiency and
profits from now until the end of the world, but if
you omit the human equation, all your plans are due
for a fall some day.

There is coal and ore aplenty in our mines; our
fields supply us with the best and yield an immense
surplus; business awaits us in overwhelming volume
both at home and abroad ; if we are held up anywhere,
it is in a lack of a spirit of partnership between those
who plan and those who execute the work of a great
business.

You don't use force against, machinery when it
does not work; you adjust it. What folly it is to
think that force will take the place of righteous ad-
justment in human relations!

The difficulty has been that in the swift and en-
thusiastic development of American industrial enter-
prise, the first and only thought of both employers
and employes was given to the business. Perhaps it
is to that fact that American business owes its pres-
ent standing in the world, that Americans of every
degree have given it their undivided effort and atten-
tion.

But now that the material side of business has
reached a growth that makes description impossible
and dwarfs all the records of human achievement, it
is becoming painfully apparent even to the dullest
vision that we shall now have to catch up on the
human side.

Some of us saw this before others did. But it is
evident now in the general condition of society. There
is a definite demand that the human side be elevated
to a position of equal importance with the material
side. And it is going to be done. It is just a ques-
tion whether it is going to be done wisely, in a way
that will conserve the material side which how sus-
tains us, or unwisely and in such a way as shall take
from us all the benefit of the work of the past SO
years. Business represents our national livelihood, it
reflects our economic progress, and gives us our place
among other nations. We do not want to jeopardize
that. What we want is a be^tter recognition of the
human element in that business. And surely that can

207

FORD IDEALS

be achieved without dislocation, without loss to any-
one, indeed with an increase of benefit to every human
being.

And the secret of it all is in a recognition of hu-
man partnership. -Until each man is absolutely self-
sufficient imto himself, needing the services of no
other human being in any capacity whatever, we shall
never get beyond the need of partnership.

We have always been partners whether we ac-
knowledged it or not, and it has been our refusal to
acknowledge it which has created an atmosphere of
antagonism instead of one of harmony among us. It
is unnatural to deny what already is, and the denial
brings other evils with it.

Partnership means a unity of endeavor, a loyalty
of effort, a sense of belonging and being necessary^
freedom of suggestion and initiative in the business,
and a sharing in the profits according to one's con-
tribution toward making these profits. If the employer
wants his men to be his partners, he must stand ready
to be their partner. If he expects them to contribute
to his business achievements, he must expect to con-
tribute to their success, too. Partnership means con-
tributing to, as well as taking shares from.

The fact is that we would not need complex and
confusing systems if we only had the proper spirit.
The very essence of right human relations is in hav-
ing the right spirit. Nothing is impossible of satis-
factory solution and adjustment when men confer in
the right spirit, and the right spirit is simply this —
the spirit of willingness to do the right thing.

20.S

New Paths to Fame

IT ALL depends on what you are made of and your
point of view, whether such times as the present
appear to you as the end of all opportunity or the be-
ginning of the new years of surpassing openings for
invention, initiative or just plain productive industry.
There never was a better time to be young than just
now. In spite of all the apparent upset and unrest
and change, these times are richer in material for
new combinations of grit and power than any which
this country has seen during the past 50 years.

It is when humanity is solidified, and every proc-
ess is hardened by custom, and ways of doing things
become set and fixed, that it is difficult for the young
man to create something of his own and get a new
idea started on its way.

But in times like these, when nearly everything
seems ready to take new forms, when so many prob-
lems are pressing for solution, everybody is hospitable
to new ideas, the times are kind to new enterprises,
and people look with hopefulness upon an)i:hing that
promises relief and benefit.

The pity is that there are not more good ideas to
take advantage of these favorable circumstances.

It may not at once be clear to the young man why
the times should be so propitious. But it can be made
clear by a simple illustration. It is a common remark
that opportimities were many "when the country was
new." It means that before the life of the nation
became limited to certain channels there was a certain
freedom of initiative, there was a clear field to be
laid out any way desired.

Well, in a better sense than ever before, the coun-
try is again "new."

In pioneer days the man with initiative had al-
most nothing to work with. There were few people,
little available material, limited fields -for develop-
ment. But what a difference nowadays! Here are

209

FORD IDEALS

over 100,000,000 people. Here are rich stores of
materials and inexhaustible resources, and there is
no limit to expansion.

The country is "new" again with every advantage
ready to the hand of the man with vision enough and
courage enough to go in and mould plastic conditions
to his idea.

There never was more to be done; there never
was a wanner welcome for the Doer ; there never was
so much backing ready waiting for the man with a
serviceable idea. The future of America is being
made right now, and the shining names of the next
half century will be names which today sCre wholly
obscure.

This does not mean that we are predicting the ap-
pearance of great men of genius in the country. The
need is not so much for genius as for vision and
courage.

There is a good deal of misunderstanding about
"great men," anyway. Great men are only men who
do great things, and it frequently occurs that they
themselves are only ordinary men who have shown
extraordinary devotion to their own idea and their
own job.

It isn't genius we want so much as ordinary ability
used for all it is worth. Ordinary ability is all the
world needs ; the concentration of ordinary ability on
the problems awaiting solution.

As to great men in the special sense, they are
usually in waiting before a national or world emer-
gency. The emergency reveals them. The recent war
created no great men, it only revealed them, called
them forth.

But with successful, useful men the case is dif-
ferent. They are the result of the reconstruction
period that follows an emergency. They are the men
who take advantage of the new combinations of cir-
cumstances. With conditions to* be rebuilt, they take
the opportunity of getting in on the ground floor. And
the ground floor was never so large, opportunities
were never so numerous as they are now.

This is not the time to preach success ; this is the
time to put into practice all the success doctrine you

210

NEW PATHS TO FAME

have ever heard. The present moment is supremely
the moment of action.

We need a revival of old-fashioned American am-
bition to get ahead.

The gouging and gambling, the profiteering and
plunging which characterize some of the business of
today, do not spring from the American spirit of "get-
ting ahead." They are destructive, illegitimate, false.

American ambition is first to DO something,
achieve some great and useful service, and then to
reap the reward.

We ought to return to the old-fashioned system
of encouraging boys to go out and make their- mark,
and to deserve well of their fellow-men. In other
days boys were instilled with the confidence that
nothing was too high for an American boy to aspire
toward. And it is just as true todj^y as it was then,
indeed, if one may say so, it is truer, for where there
was one path upward in those days there are a hun-
dred paths now. The young man of today is so much
better off that it may be worth while to indicate it in
detail. There was a time when the path to distinction
and service in this country was almost exclusively a
professional path. A boy could study law and gradu-
ate into politics. Indeed, to wear one's hair a little
longer than other men's, and to make speeches in the
legislature was once considered the height of success.
And then through politics, he could branch into what-
ever business happened to open up.

There was little or no emphasis laid on the in-
dustrial path. Few people ever thought of Work —
plain work — as a path upward. No. It must be pro-
fessional, genteel, dealing with the abstract ideas of
politics and government, or with some other science.

Today, however, all that is changed. The first
thing the majority of American boys think of as a
successful career is not some statesman making a
speech, but some artisan making a useful commodity,
and making it so well and in such quantities that every-
one buys and uses it.

Some people are inclined to say that this is a
descent to "materialism" — this emphasis on making
things.

211

FORD IDEALS ^

But anyone with his eyes open can see very clearly
that the major part of our trouble today is just a lade
of this kind of "materialism." If we had more houses
for people to live in, if we had more railroad cars to
carry them what they need, if we had more means
of enabling the farmer to farm more land with less
help, if we had better and more productive systems
of mining coal and other raw materials — ^why, that
would pretty nearly solve all the troubles that afflict
us now.

The world is full of ideas as to what ought to be
done — ^but of what use are these ideas until a man
comes along who will actually do the things and set
it going?

You don't have to be a statesman to help the world
nor a philosopher, nor a poet; you have only to think
out something, perform something which will make it
easier for the world to live.

To take an illustration from the problem of the
day : — the man who could multiply houses with rapid-
ity would be a world blessing just now. We make
ever)rthing quickly but houses. We manufacture ma-
chinery in a new way, we fabricate ships differently
than was ever done before, but we build houses in
practically the way they have always been built.

If, for example, someone should discover an art
which would enable us to build a house out of the
earth excavated for its cellar, what a boon to human-
ity that would be ! Nor is the idea so far-fetched as
it may seem. One reason why the war-torn portions of
France are being restored to the people so quickly is
that the French dwelling is usually constructed out of
materials found on the premises. The French family's
house is literally dug out of the earth.

Go to the root of all the so-called "capital and
labor difficulty" today and what do you find ? Simply
the lack of houses for people to live in, and the conse-
quent high prices of such houses as there ^re. Or a
lack of food, and high prices of such food as there is.

All the difficulty, you will observe, is due to the
lack of production of such articles as mankind can
produce. Houses are a product, so is food, so is every
other article man needs in his living.

212

NEW PATHS TO FAME

Well, then, the way to serve the world at this stage
of its trouble is not to enunciate new laws, nor give
it a new art or literature, but simply give it the things
it is suffering for — houses, food and the various arti-
cles of use.

We don't need statesmen to solve the difficulties
of our country at this time: we need workers. We
need men who will tell us new and better ways to pro-
duce what we lack. We need fresh eyes to examine
our old methods and cut them down where they are
cumbersome and wasteful. We need men who are
young enough and free enough to cut loose from the
old and settled ways, and break new paths for the
world's energy to use.

This is the call that awaits ambitious young Amer-
ica. Time was when the utmost encouragement you
could give a boy was to say, "You may be President
some day." But now we can say to him, "You may
be the man who is to discover the new way of housing
the people." "You may be the man who is to revolu-
tionize the methods by which food is produced."
"You may be the man who will teach us how to make
a pound of coal do the work of ten and still retain all
of the coal for heating purposes."

213

Let Every Man Think
for Himself

CONFERENCES are often good and sometimes
useful, providing the right peopFe confer. Even
when conferences do not end in agreement, they at
least end in a clearer understanding of what the parties
claim. But a clearer understanding does not neces-
sarily make for agreement, because where there is no
desire to agree, an understanding of your opponent's
claim simply enables you to attack it with straighter
aim. This was illustrated in the recent Senate in-
vestigation of the steel strike; each side claimed that
its contention was proved by the other side's state-
ment. The better they understood each other, the
further they were apart. So that a good deal more
than mere conference is needed in important dis-
agreements. Conference is simply the bringing to-
gether of the several elements of the dispute. If the
elements be like oil and water, they will not mix. If
they be like fire and powder, there will be a blow-up.
Conference may issue in conflict as well as in co-
operation. It all depends on the things involved, and
on the spirit which the conferees bring.

The difficulty with most conferences is that they
are too small. An individual or a small group wants
to be taken as the embodiment of the grievances, as-
pirations, wisdom and determination of a whole class,
yet everyone knows how difficult it is for another to
act for him in vital matters. We select a little hall
holding 200, and we try to pack into it the men who
claim to represent every phase of opinion in the
United States upon a certain emergency question, and
the result is we make speeches and debate and resolve
and pledge — and leave the mass of the interested par-
ties unenlightened and unbound in any way.

It may be argued that everybody cannot go to the
great national conferences. But maybe there would

214

LET EVERY MAN THINK FOR HIMSELF

not be so much need of the big conferences if there
were more little ones — informal, casual ones between
man and man.

Industrially, there should be such an intimate
knowledge of all the conditions by both parties, and
the spirit of fair adjustment should be so constantly
operative, that a stoppage of work for the purpose of
fighting each other by argument should be as unnec-
essary as a stoppage of work to keep the roof from
leaking.

A whole lot of conferring is made necessary be-
cause a whole lot of conferring has been neglected.

Things have come to a pretty pass when workmen
can only speak to their employer through the medium
of a government committee, and when employers can
only speak to their men through the medium of agents
whose entjre interest — financial, professional and so-
cial — is bound up in the continuance of a quarrel and
the fomenting of misunderstanding.

The blame for it is to be found in the day-by-day
neglect of daily communication between employer and
employe. '

The employer who knows his job never lets a bad
condition come to a head any more than an engineer
who knows his job allows his engine to break down
before he repairs it.

The employer who knows his job does not permit
bad conditions to remain a day after they are dis-
covered, any more than an aviator would allow a leak
in his gas tank to run longer than was required to fix it.

When an improving eye is kept constantly on the
business, when an employer knows all that his men
know about the business, when a spirit of partnership
reigns so that both parties feel free to commimicate
one with the other, then the matters which tend to
grow big and demand big conferences to settle them,
are nipped in the bud and never allowed to work harm
either to the conditions of the business or the rela-
tions between the men engaged in it.

There is always great satisfaction expressed when
a conference goes ahead to settle something. But
there will be more ground for satisfaction when con-
ditions become such that no conferences are needed.

215

FORD IDEALS

Conference indicates that the parties have grown
so far apart that something extraordinary is required
to bring them together. Absence of conferences will
indicate that the parties are in communication and
agreement all the time, which should be their normal
state. There are, however, certain naturally opposed
interests which cannot be exclusively identified with
any class, which ought to be more or less in sincere
conference all the time.

First, there is the conflict between Individual In-
terest and Collective Interest.

We are learning that, even though we may possess
the power to satisfy our utmost desire, it may be very
unwise to use it, because individual interesb sometimes
gets into the way of collective good. We can live to-
gether in society only as we recognize the balance that
should exist between rights and duties. What we call
"rights" are usually our individual rights; what we
call "duties" are usually the rights of others.

Men sometimes say they are "claiming their rights"
when what they are really doing is infringing on the
rights of others.

There should be a subconscious conference always
in session within a man's heart, and its subject should
be the maintenance of a balance between the individual
and the collective good.

Sometimes individual good is collective harm; in
which case it must be modified. For it cannot be in-
dividually good in an enduring way if it is collectively
harmful, since the individual, too, is part of the col-
lective interest and will suffer in this degree from his
own wrong-doing.

Neither should the collective good be pushed to
the extent of harming the individual. That is the
trouble with most robust theories of the state — ^they
make the collective interest everything and the in-
dividual little or nothing.

Freedom and progress depend on keeping the
balance between these two, making each contribute
to the best interests of the other.

Many of the problems which vex our life today
could be boiled down into the simple statement that
individual good is trying to increase itself at the ex-

216

LET EVERY MAN THINK FOR HIMSELF

pense of the collective good. It cannot be done. For
a time it may seem to be possible, but it cannot be
done. The moment one or the other interest becomes
selfishly dominant, the law of compensation is dis-
turbed and that moment the source of both begins to
dry up, and both suffer.

Again: there should be constant conference be-
tween the Present and the Future. We sometimes
forget that there is a tomorrow coming. In some
respects our forefathers forgot that generations were
to follow them; their inability to foresee the future
led to much waste of energy and material.

The tendency is to use up today and all its stores
recklessly, heedless of the generations to follow. Here
is where individual and collective interests appear again
in conflicting attitudes. Individual desire is to con-
serve something for the next generation; the father
tries to prepare the future for his son, just as he tries
to prepare his son for the future. But collectively we
are almost entirely indifferent to the future. It is with
the utmost effort that any legislation can be secured^
which conserves the natural resources of the country
against criminal wastage, and saved for the future.

So that where there are opposing tendencies, there
ought to be continuous balancing of ends, that there
may be no destructive overreaching.

To revert to the industrial situation again : where
there is a distinct difference between the individual and
the collective good, there ought to be a. balancing of
their claims in each man's mind.

The best kind of conference takes place in the
mind of the man who calmly balances both interests
and judicially assigns to each its share. If one in-
terest absorbs all, then the reaction that comes from
the other interest is fatal. Never did any interest go
up at the sore cost of another legitimate interest but
it came down again in loss and .sorrow.

We are swayed too much by the speeches of others
who are paid to speak, by the writings of others who
are paid to write; we are swayed too little by the
judicial thought of our own and other sincere minds.

There is a danger of outside conferences taking
the place of our own thought.

217

FORD IDEALS

Let every mail think for himself. Let every man
call a conference of his own powers, his Common
Sense in the chair, his desires and his knowledge of
things as they are pleading the c^se before him. Let
every man be his own judge. There is safety in the
quiet thought of the people, safety and constructive
progress.

It is a patriotic duty — ^patriotic not only to the
Country, but to all Humanity — in these days when to
demand is to have, to consider carefully what the end
of any course must be. All of us have common sense
enough to know that a system of "everything coming
in and nothing going out" is just as disastrous as the
opposite course.

Every man must seek the solid footing on which
he can stand secure for life, and that footing is the
same for every one of us; a decent return to the
world for our living, and a decent return from the
world for our labor.

218

Universal Training-
Yes, for Usefulness

IT MAY be said once for all that there can be no
objection whatever to "universal training." The
sooner we recognize that fact and get down to con-
structive details, the better it will be for the country
and the people of the country. If there is anything
of which our nation shows an increasing daily need it
is "universal training," and enough energy is wasted in
debates upon the point to start the whole program
and give it a strong push toward success.

We have a sort of "universal training" now. Our
system of elementary education is that. We require
that every child shall be trained in the use of figures
and letters. We do this in order that the native in-
telligence of the people may be developed and then
liberated into usefulness. Education is mostly the
giving of the "know how" to minds that are capable
of doing, once they know.

We are insisting on that in our industries, too.
Ability to read and write is an important factor in
obtaining safety in our industrial operations. Safety
can be ^taught; much of it can be taught by print;
but if the factory personnel cannot read, of what use
is the print ? So we establish schools in our factories
in order that men may be taught to read and write,
and thus be brought into contact with printed in-
formation. A mind without command over figures
and letters is like a country without postal or tele-
graph service: communication is very slow and dif-
ficult.

We have entered upon campaigns in which we
try to bring "universal training" to a city or state
with regard to health. There are certain diseases, like
tuberculosis and typhoid, which may be as totally ex-
terminated as rattlesnakes have been. But it cannot
b^ done until all the people co-operate. And in order

219

FORD IDEALS

to co-operate they must be instructed. And so we
enter upon campaigns of instruction, and we can
measure the results very accurately. When we mobi-
lize public co-operation for any of these activities, we
see the success of it almost immediately.

The principle of "universal training," then, is quite
firmly established in our common life.

The difficulty and dissension arises when we try
to determine just what form that universal training
shall take.

Some men say, "We ought to train everybody to
shoot," and so they make the slogan read thus: "uni-
versal military training."

Shooting is admittedly not a productive art. We
don't use it in our daily business. Millions of people
get along very nicely without ever firing or even own-
ing a gun. Indeed, there have been great campaigns
of education against the use of guns. We teach boys
that to use guns on birds is a very destructive sport,
which costs the nation dearly in loss of bird service
to our crops. We have laws prohibiting the use of
guns on birds whose plumage attracts the milliner.
If you fire a gun in your village street, the village
marshal will apprehend you and the village justice of
the peace will fine you. The skillful use of firearms
may be an admirable accomplishment, but the con-
sensus of public opinion in our families, in our neigh-
borhoods, in our cities, in our states, is that the fewer
guns there are, the safer it is. Indeed, our social sense
is so much against guns that if you are caught carrying
one without a special permit the authorities will con-
sider you a questionable character.

But without further arguing that — it has been
threshed out quite fully on both sides — ^the way to
determine what form our "universal training" should
take is to ascertain in what particulars our people most
need to be trained. That we all need to be trained in
the use of our faculties goes without saying; and we
have the schools for that. That we need to be trained
in respect for law is also agreed ; and we have public
opinion and the laws for that.

But there are other needs for training which most
people are always talking about, but which they sel-

220

UNIVERSAL TRAINING — YES, FOR USEFULNESS

dom consider as proper subjects for "universal
training."

We Americans are too individualistic. That is a
rather smooth and inoffensive way of saying we are
selfish. The selfish man is always an individualist.
If the individualist isn't always personally selfish, the
effect of his attitude is the same.

We need universal training in teamwork. That is
one of the arguments the militarists put forth, that
military training teaches teamwork. True. But any
work which engages large numbers of men in a com-
mon object will train them in teamwork. Militarism
is teamwork with a destructive object. Isn't it possible
to get the same degree, yes, even a higher degree of
teamwork with a constructive object?

It would be a splendid thing if young men could
be drafted into the public service for a year, for
discipline in serving the general good — "soldiers of
the common good," is a phrase someone used. Service
for someone beside ourselves is the most broadening
experience we can have. It surrounds our natural
individualism with a wide circle of "otherism." When
^ man lives only for himself, thinks only of himself,
he is in danger of human dry-rot. So, then, imagine
that we had a system of conscription by which young
men should be drafted for a year of training and
service.

Their training would consist in all the things a
young man ought to know. The authorities had to
do all that when they called the army in 1917, but
they had not time to do it thoroughly. They were
calling those young men for another purpose than to
make them more valuable to their country. But under
real "universal training" for constructive national
service, these young fellows, taken at an age when they
can either be bent for life or straightened up for life,
would be trained to be fine bodies. And then they
would be trained to be fine, alert, steady minds. And
then they would be trained to be useful, willing serv-
ants of society at large.

•The nation is suffering from a house famine. Sup-
pose we had an army of 500,000 or a million men who
could do for the homeless of the United States what

221

' FORD IDEALS

small detachments of our army are doing for the
homeless of France and Belgium.

Sometimes the health of the nation suflfers, and
thousands of deaths and measureless sorrow could be
prevented if only we had an army of public servants
who could go in and do the things necessary to halt
the plague and abolish it from the stricken section
forever. Most of the work of this kind that is being
done now is dependent on the voltmteers of science
and the yolimteers of humanitarian sympathy. Why
could it not be done by conscripts of the nation whose
conscription would be a noble and ennobling initiation
into the greatness of public service ?

We leave for greed and private interest to do many
of the things which we ought to do for ourselves as a
collective interest. If we did them we should not only
have, as a nation, the profit of them when accom-
plished, but we should also have the training and ex-
perience of having performed a constructive act as a
public service.

More than that, we need "tmiversal training" in
economic facts. The over-reaching ambitions of spec-
ulative capital as well as the unreasonable demands of
irresponsible labor are both due to ignorance of the
economic basis of business. Nobody can get more
out of a business than the business can produce, and
yet nearly everybody thinks he can. Speculative cap-
ital wants more ; labor wants more ; the source of raw
material wants more and the purchasing public wants
more — and the poor business that tries to satisfy them
all succeeds in satisfying none, and in the end destroys
itself.

The family has to be trained that it cannot live
beyond its father's income, and presently even the
children know that ; but the public never seems to learn
that it cannot have more than it produces.

If we had "tmiversal training" in the facts of eco-
nomic balances, we should keep our affairs on a more
even keel most of the time. There would b^ none of
this utterly false belief that only a state of war can
keep the balance between the various parties to pro-
duction. That theory is nothing but militarism with-
out a uniform; it is introducing into economic life all

222

UNIVERSAL TRAINING — ^YES, FOR USEFULNESS

the destructive fallacies which make war the colossal
stupidity which it is.

There are dangerous interests in our country which
are very active in trying to propagate a "universal
training" in economic tmtruth. The world has just
been treated to the spectacle of one whole nation prac-
tically ruined so far as its economic organization is
concerned, because the forces of unrest and ignorance
had actually succeeded in getting a real "universal
training" of the people in wrong notions of things.
No doubt the people were sincere, but even sincerity
does hot change the facts. And in this cotmtry the
same danger threatens, that the people will be trained
in a theory of economic life which is false, and which
they may not discover to be false until they work it
and suffer ruin from it — ^unless, of course, a better
"universal training" intervenes to prevent that.

Our whole "Americanization" work ought to go
deeper than proficiency in English, knowledge of our
governmental structure and loyalty to the Flag; it
ought to deal with the deep foundations of moral, so-
cial and economic sotmdness. Well-grounded in the
nature-of-things-as-they-are, the American people
would be so "universally trained" in the truth that
they would be defended against the attractive half-
truths which are current everywhere^ today.

223

Strike Profiteers Are the
Cause of Strikes

WHEN two unreasonable parties refuse to reach
an agreement, their quarrel should be confined
to themselves alone; it should be prevented from do-
ing harm to others. But when two reasonable parties
cannot come to agreement, it is time to Ipok behind
the scenes for a third party whose interest is to keep
them quarrelling. This applies to labor disputes as
well as other disputes. Sometimes both employer and
employe are unreasonable and do not seek agreement
but conquest: in which case their unreasonableness
ought not to be permitted to cause inconvenience or
loss to the public. But there have been occasions
when both employers and employes were reasonable
enough to be able to reach an agreement, and were
prevented by hidden influences.

It should not be forgotten for a single minute that
though a strike may mean loss of money, time and
peace of mind to all directly concerned — ^to working-
man, manufacturer and pubUc — ^it does not necessarily
mean the same loss to everyone.

There are interests that make money out of certain
kinds of strikes. If these strikes did not pay some-
body, there would be fewer of them.

An analysis of the matter shows that there are
three kinds of industrial disputes.

First, there is the justifiable strike — ^the strike for
those proper conditions and just rewards to which
the workingman is in all fairness entitled.

The pity is that men should be compelled to use
the strike to get what is theirs by right. No American
ought to be compelled to strike for his rights. He
ought to receive them naturally, easily, as a matter of
course.

These justifiable strikes are usually the employer's
fault. Some employers are not fit for their job. Em-

224

STRIKE PROFITEERS ARE THE CAUSE OF STRIKES

ployment of men, direction of their energies, arrang-
ing that their reward shall be in honest ratio to their
production and to the prosperity of the business — ^that
is no small job.

An employer may be imfit for his job, just as a
man at the lathe may be incompetent. The lathe man
gets into trouble with his work, and so does the in-
competent employer with his. Justifiable strikes are
a sign that the boss needs another job — one that he
can handle.

The unfit employer causes more trouble than the
unfit employe. You can change the latter to a more
suitable job. But the former must usually be left to
the law of compensation.

The justified strike, then, is one that need never
have been called if the employer had done his work
as he ought.

But there is a second kind of strike — ^the strike
which may be named The Strike With a Concealed
Design. In this kind of strike the workingmen are
made the tools of some hidden manipulator who seeks
his own ends through them. Whoever this manipu-
lator may be, his designs will not stand the light.

To illustrate this kind of strike: Here is a great
industry whose success is due to having met a public
need, to its efficient and skillful methods of produc-
tion, and to its known record for just treatment of
its workingmen. Such an industry presents a great
temptation to speculators. If they can only gain con-
trol of it they can reap rich benefit from all the
honest effort that has been put into it. They can de-
stroy its beneficiary wage and profit-sharing, squeeze
every last dollar out of the public, the product and
the workingmen, and reduce it to the plight of other
business concerns which are run on these low prin-
ciples.

Their motive may be the personal greed of the
speculator, or they may wish to change the policy of a
business whose example is embarrassing to employers
who do not want to do what is right by their employes.

But how gain control? — ^that is the speciilator's
problem. One of the simplest ways is The Strike
With a Concealed Design.

225

FORD ' IDEALS

It works this way: The industry to be attacked
cannot be touched from within, because its men have
no reason to strike. So another method is adopted.
The business in question may keep many outside
shops busy supplying it with parts or material. If
these outside shops can be tied up then the great in-
dustry may be crippled, and that is what the specu-
lators want.

So strikes are fomented in the outside industries.
Every attempt is made to curtail the factory's source
of supplies. It is a simple game when once tmder-
stood, and the public has no idea how often it is
played.

Now, if the workingmen of the outsjde shops knew
what the game is, they would refuse to play it, but
they don't know ; they serve as the tools of designing
capitalists without knowing it. There is one point,
however, that ought to rouse the suspicions of work-
ingmen engaged in this kind of strike. If the strike
cannot get itself settled no matter what either side
offers to do, it is almost positive proof that there is a
third party, a hidden hand, interested in having the
strike continue. That hidden influence does not want
a settlement on any terms. Its whole profit is in the
trouble and in the continuance of the trouble.

If such a strike is won by the strikers, is the lot
of the workingmen improved? After throwing the
industry into the hands of outside speculators, are
the workmen given any better treatment or wages?

Who is most likely to work with the workingman
along lines of progress and prosperity: the manufac-
turer whose home is where his plant is, whose reputa-
tion among his neighbors is dear to him, whose inter-
est in his employes is bom of acquaintance and daily
fellowship? — or the outsider, the speculator, the
profiteer, who does not know his men from iron
spikes and whose only interest in the industry is to
squeeze dollars out of it until it is dry?

That is the pity of some strikes which linger on and
on after settlements are possible — ^the deluded strikers
are fighting the battles of cunning speculators and
do not know it.

Then there is a third kind of strike — ^the strike that

226

STRIKE PROFITEERS ARE THE CAUSE OF STRIKES

is provoked by the Money Interests for the purpose
of giving Labor a bad name. The American Work-
man has always had a reputation for sound judg-
ment. He has not allowed himself to be led away
by every shouter who promised to create the millen-
nium out of thin air. He has had a mind of his own
and has used it. He has always recognized the funda-
mental truth that the absence of reason was never
made good by the presence of violence.

In this way the American Workingman has won
a certain prestige with his own people and throughout
the world. Public Opinion has been inclined to re-
gard with respect his opinions and desires.

But there seems to be a determined effort now
being made to fasten the Bolshevik stain on Amer-
ican Labor, by inciting it to such impossible attitudes
and such wholly tmheard of actions as shall change
public sentiment from respect to criticism.

It is quite in keeping with the higher disorderly
elements that they should employ the lower disorderly
elements for the purpose of destroying the morale and
reputation of the American Workingman. All the dis-
order does not originate with the workingman. Much
of it comes from higher up.

The American Workingman's most valued asset
is his reputation for cool-headed, balanced judgment
and respect for law and order. If he loses that, what
does he gain ?

But — and here is the point — if he does lose that,
the powers that would exploit him and reduce him
to the lowest form of wage-slavery, would be the gain-
ers. Losing his good name, the American Working-
man loses all ; his enemies are the gainers.

It is time for us to ask some questions: If the
workingman does not make money out of strikes, who
does?

It is time for every striker to ask himself : Who
stand to make money out of this strike ? Who will get
the chief benefit if we break down this industry ?
Whose game are we playing, anyway?

The man who makes profit out of strikes, be he
billionaire manipulator or self-seeking labor leader, is
a menace to the nation, a traitor to the well-being of

227

FORD IDEALS

humanity, and the personal assailant of every work-
ingman.

In the second and third kinds x)f disorder which '
have been described here, the concealed speculator
orders the strike ; the dishonest labor leader plans it ;
the rowdy element fans it into violence — ^and the hon-
est misled workingman pays for it, and continues to
pay!

Anyone who knows the American Workingman as
he really and naturally is, must be convinced that he
does not want to be the tool of evil designers who
are not his friends, and who cannot build prosperity.
Some people make prosperity ; other peojde sap it'; the
latter devitalize and destroy it.

There ought to be high wages everywhere — ^as high
as the business will warrant ; and any business that is
serving the world and is efficiently managed will war-
rant it. There ought to be profit-sharing too, that
each man may be a partner and not merely a "hand."

But it is not the boss who makes high wages ; it is
the men. If the boss stands in the way of men getting
what they earn, he is not fit to be boss. The day has
come when such a man will not be able to keep work-
men in his shop.

Once the boss picked out his men. Now men are
able to pick out their boss.

Big wages are not philanthropy. Big wages are
plain business rights.

The speculators who are always ready to stir up
labor trouble are not interested in high wages. They
are usually interested in hindering the man who pays
high wages.' They want to hurt him, to drive him out
of business. The American Workingman will not
play that game, once he understands it.

228

Unrest Is Not Disorder

PEOPLE whose business is to talk and write are
sometimes more active with their imaginations
than M^ith their eyes; their dramatic instinct sends
them off on fancies which do not exist, and they ad-
mire the role of prophet more than that of reporter ;
but men who can see, see straight, and tell exactly what
they see — ^men who are, that is to say, superlatively
good reporters of plain facts — are very useful citizens
today, and if there were more of them there would be
fewer hectic headlines in our papers and fewer fever-
ish flashes in our thoughts of the times.

It is a fact which needs special emphasis just now
that there is less actual disorder in the country than
there is said to be.

Great outbreaks are heralded which do not occur.
Great dislocations of business are threatened which
never take place. Great strikes are said to be "going
on," whose strength had failed weeks ago and the
major part of whose supporters had returned to work.

There is far less disorder than is reported, as the
most casual investigation shows. Everybody seems
to be talking of this or that outbreak, but it is always
somewhere else; and everybody, while he talks, goes
on about his work. "Everybody" is said to be off on
a strike crusade, and yet a survey of the situation
shows that pretty nearly everybody came down to
work this morning and intends to keep coming.

The fact is, there is less disorder than unrest, A
vital distinction exists here. Unrest indicates one
thing, disorder another. And this is not said in pallia-
tion of the situation at all, but only in the interest of
strict analysis.

Disorder would mean that our people had some-
how lost their heads, that all the important parties to
our common American life had developed a sudden
fateful stupidity which marked the end of our fa-
mous American common sense. Disorder indicates a

229

FORD IDEALS

brain-storm, the utter collapse of intelligent resource,
the breakdown of every sense of responsibility, the
destruction of all devices developed by the energy an4
efficiency of our civilization. Disorder simply means
the disintegration of the times. ^ ^

But unrest may mean something far different. It
may mean only that our people are sensing a new pres-
sure, glimpsing a new light, are conscious of a new
coming time.

Unrest may be a herald, as well as a warning.
Unrest may signify the revival of new life in the
people. It has all kinds of hopeful significance once
it is hopefully viewed and used.

Not that one would intimate for a moment that
as long as it is only imrest we see, and not disorder,
we need not worry much. That is not the point at all.
The very fact that the people of the United States are
even f eding the stirrings of imrest as they contemplate
their social status is far more important than would
be the fact that another people, not so intelligent and
well-supplied and, sensible, were engaged in widespread
disorder.

Now, no more foolish way could be taken with
this fact of imrest than to imagine that we shall be
doing quite enough to satisfy its immediate causes and
allow root causes to remain.

There is a short-sighted prudence among the em-
ploying classes of the United States which may be
colloquially stated thus : "Let's feed them a sop, not
enough to make them greedy for more, just enough
to satisfy them, and let us do this after they have
hajd to fight for it so that it may seem to come hard.
It will never do to admit that we could have done this
for them before, but would not."

Such an attitude can have only one basis — ^the be-
lief that there is a master-class and a servant-class
among us, and that the only way the master-class can
keep its mastery is by dealing shrewdly with the
servant-class, as ignorant dependents.

Let us be rid at once of that survival of feudalism
among us.

Let us get rid at once of the idea that unrest can
be thoroughly dealt with by a system of hand-outs,

230

UNREST IS NOT DISORDER

on the theory that the dog, never bites while he is
eating.

Let US wipe out of American business phraseology
such phrases as "keeping them contented," as if they
were children, and "three squares a day keeps the
Bolshevist away," as if our people were mere animals.

The whole philosophy is degrading to anyone who
believes it or who acts upon it. It is not degrading
to the American workingman, because he does not
agree with it for one instant.

As long as we adhere to the program of piece-meal
settlements, granting a concession here and doing a
favor there, "for the sake of keeping the working-
class quiet," we are simply dealing in postponements,
not in settlements. Now, we know what the demands
and program of the disorderly elements are — ^they are
tmreasonable and destructive in the extreme; and it
would make absolutely no difference whether those
demands were granted, or whether they were with-
held and the destructive program carried out — ^the
result would be exactly the same. To grant a demand
which no equitable system can carry is just as fatal
as to refuse it and have industry destroyed by violence.
Industry would be destroyed either way. There are
some things which cannot be done no matter how much
we may wish to do them. We may wish to feed 1,000
people, but if there is only one bushel of potatoes it
cannot be done. The demand of the disorderly ele-
ment is practically that everybody be requested to
raise fewer potatoes, and yet that everybody be given
more potatoes. One end of the program kills the
other. It is all unreason and confusion. If every-
body does less work and everybody gets more of the
product of work, how long can it last? And where
will the unproduced _and unearned part come from?

But the meanings of imrest must not be confused
with this. The unreasonable demands of the disorderly
forces are simply the coimterpart of the unreasonable
attitude of those who believe that a safe and work-
able system can be arrived at by a master-class hand-
ing out favors to a servant-class.

Unrest may mean something far more intelligent,
more constructive and more just.

231

FOBb IDEALS

It would surprise many employers of labor to
learn that the unrest among their men does not pri-
marily concern money. That is to say, the central
thought of the major part of our citizens who are
becoming concerned about our social and industrial
problems is not "more money at any cost," but
"justice."

Certainly justice will mean more money in many
places. Certainly no industry can' be said to be justi-
fying itself which survives at the expense of its em-
ployes and thrives upon their losses.

But there is this to say : if justice were done and
it so happened that justice did not mean more money,
there would be a great wave of real, not temporary,
contentment sweep over the working world.

If it were shown and proved that wages as they
exist everywhere today were strictly just and equit-
able, forming an unimpeachable balance between pro-
ducer and consumer, there would be instant satisfac-
tion with the wage scale.

Why? Because what men miss most is not the
extra money in their pay envelope, but the sense of
justice in their hearts. They want to live in a world
that is playing square with them. They want to be
at peace with their fellow-men. True, they want pros-
perity, but they do not want it at the cost of injustice
to others.

The hardest burden of poverty is not its depriva-
tion, but its bitter reflection that the other side of
poverty is the injustice of successful greed.

So, while the disorderly elements want nothing so
much as to ravage the firm's bank account, the true
rank and file of the laboring world wants a system of
labor and reward that is equitable and just in itself,
no matter what its figures may show. It wants a
world fotmded on rectitude. It wants to know that
the square deal rules. It wants to know that it is
neither being taken advantage of, nor is taking ad-,
vantage of any other.

It is a phase of the human spirit we are dealing*
with, and whenever we fail to see that, we rim afoul
of elements which are most vital to social and in-
dustrial stability.

232

UNREST IS NOT DISORDER

Here is where all conferences and committees fail.
They meet each other, one to force the other forward
and one to force the other back. They are combatants
from the start. They talk about dollars. One side
tries to get the other side's dollars away from it by
disputing that side's ownership of the money ; equally
disputatious and material-minded they simply shut
out any high considerations. And the result is what
anyone might have foreseen.

We must get a higher meeting grotmd. We have
got to get together to consider what complete industrial
justice is, regardless of which side will be most af-
fected by that justice when it is arrived at. We must
keep it high and above all our petty selfishness and
ambitions. We must, indeed, have but one ambition
— ^the noble ambition to be one of the creators of in-
dustrial justice.

And if we find that justice means adjustment of
working conditions, of wages, the admission of work-
ingmen to profit-sharing and to a part in the manage-
ment as it affects them, then we must consider who
will contribute the difference made by changed hours
and wages, and we must consider how these changes
can safely be put into effect without disturbing the
business in its standing.

All this can be arrived at with great friendliness
and common sense between employers and employes
if they only seek the higher unity and not their own
limited interests. And if so be an employer, having
been once a workingman himself, sees the need of
adjustments and makes them before his men ask him,
so much the better — ^his act means a great increase in
confidence and a new feeling that the world still has
a square deal left in it.

This is the way to find a settlement that will stand.
Not a contract which may be broken, but an agree-
ment of minds and hearts in a new social industrial-
ism which will endure simply because it is founded on
conviction and not on limited interest.

233

Employment Is Greater Than
'"Employer" or ''Employe"

IN THE discussion which goes on about "capital"
and "labor** we forget something. We leave out
the very thing that it is all about. We talk a great
deal about employers, and a great deal about employes,
and say practically nothing about the industry which
brings them both together. We hear a great deall
about the differences between these two groups, but
we almost entirely overlook the foimdation that is
holding both of them up while they dispute. If the
business they are arguing about should suddenly fall
to pieces and disappear, the argument would be over ;
both parties would find themselves floimdering in the
midst of chaos.

So it may be a worth-while contribution to the
general subject if we just make room somewhere be-
tween "employer" and "employe** for that very im-
portant element. Employment.

Let us begin as near the beginning as we can.
Everyone — except the hermit of the woods who lives
on berries, roots and game, whose business in life be-
gins and ends with himself — olives by serving some-
one else.

He can dig, or plant, or build, or teach, or lay out
plans, or heal, or amuse, or give general help vrhere
labor is required. And those who need his services
in digging or planting or building or teaching or heal-
ing or amusing, or whatever it may be, go to him for
that service and he lives by it. That is his business.
The more widely known he becomes for what he can
do, and the more customary it becomes with the peo-
ple to call upon him, the more solidly is his business
established. That is, the more accurately he can speak
of his "trade" as distinct from himself.

That business, that established custom by which
people come to him for his services and by which he

234

EliPLOYMENT IS GREATER THAN EMPLOYER' OR EMPLOYE^'

renders them, becomes his foundation in life, just as
the farm becomes the farmer's foundation. His busi-
ness has a life of its own. It is known by its name.
It has a reputation. It can be injured. It can be
killed. It is a created entity which is almost human
in its response to demands or conditions.

Now, it makes no difference to the principle in-
volved whether that business is a cobbling shop em-
ploying only its owner, or a great factory employing
40,000 men. The business is the medium through
which the livelihood of its members comes; it is the
medium through which their service is extended to
the world in exchange for a livelihood from the world ;
and any disturbance of the medium results inevitably
in serious hindrance to the service both ways.

This idea is, of course, a very simple one, and that
is the reason why it is so difficult to make clear. The
simplest, most obvious facts are hardest fo value
properly, because they are so easy to undervalue. They
are the small bolts and nuts of thought, apparently
trivial in themselves, but their loss is important enough
to cripple the whole machine.

If there were ten of us living off a farm of 100
acres, the fundamental economic fact for us would be
that^farm. We should be just plain fools to stand
around and argue while the farm went to waste. If
we did that, and the farm did go to wrack and ruin,
the argument would be over; we simply should have
argued ourselves into the lack of an3rthing worth
arguing about.

A shop or a business is exactly the same. It is the
living of those engaged in it. It is the place where we
win our food and raiment and shelter. Th^re may be
something wrong with the relations that exist between
individuals there; there may be grave differences in
the degree of justice with which the distribution of
rewards is effected; still it is true that the business is
the grotmd we all depend on, and it is worth a much
larger part of our consideration than many seem dis-
posed to give it.

Ruin a business, disorganize it, scatter it abroad,
and you will have no further worry about "capital"

235

FORD IDEALS

or "labor" — it will then become a question of saving
our economic lives.

Now, the nucleus of a business may be an idea.
That is, an inventor or a thoughtful workman works
out a new and better way to serve some established
human need; the idea commends itself, and people
want to avail themselves of it. In this way a single
individual may prove, through his idea or discovery,
the nucleus of a business.

But the creation of the body and bulk of that busi-
ness is shared by everyone who has anything to do
with it. No manufacturer can say "I" built this busi-
ness if he has required the help of thousands of men
in building it. It is a joint production. Everyone em-
ployed in it has contributed something to it. By work-
ing and producing they make it possible for the pur-
chasing world to keep coming to that business for the
type of service it provides, and thus they help estab-
lish a custom, a trade, a habit which supplies them
with a livelihood. All this has a certain practical
bearing on the discussions which are prevalent today
and which sometimes threaten to damage the good
points along with the bad.

When two men are in mid-lake in a boat, their
common interest, no matter what their personal dif-
ferences may be, is in the integrity of that boat. They
may differ and argue and contend as much as they
please regarding what seat each ought to occupy, but
if they break the boat or swamp it, the seat question
ceases to exist — and possibly the men too.

It will not make much difference how we decide
to divide the golden egg, if during the squabble we
destroy the goose that lays it.

"What ought the employer to pay?" and "What
ought the employe to receive?" are minor questions,
the basic question beiiig, "What can the business
stand ?"

Certainly no business can stand an outgo that ex-
ceeds its income. When you pump water out of the
well at a faster rate than the water runs in, your well
goes dry. And when the well rtms dry, those who
depend on it go thirsty. And if, perchance, they
imagine they can pump one well dry and then jump

236

EMPLOYMENT IS GREATER THAN ^EMPLOYER" OR EMPLOYE"

to some other well, it is only a matter of time before
the same shortsighted policy will dry up all the wells.

Just now, when there is such a widespread insistent
demand for more justly divided rewards, it must be
recognized that there are limits. The business itself
sets the limits. You cannot distribute $150,000 out
of a business that only brings in $100,000.

Instead, therefore, of men saying that the "em-
ployer" ought to do thus-and-so, the expression ought
to be changed to, "the business ought to be so stimu-
lated and managed that it can do thus-and-so." Be
cause, only the business does it. Certainly the em-
ployer cannot do it if the business will not warrant it.
But if the business will warrant it and the employer
will not do it, there is a way to secure it without en-
dangering the business.

As a rule the business means the livelihood of too
many men, to be tampered with. Nothing could be
more criminal in the economic realm than the as-
sassination of a business to which large numbers of
men have given their labors and to which they have
learned to look as their field of usefulness in the
world and their source of livelihood. It must be said,
however, that this form of assassination has been more
frequently practiced by speculative capitalists than by
workingmen.

So that in making the adjustments which a new
industrial order will require, it will be better if the
employer stops looking at the employes as he asks
himself, "How little can I get them to take?" and it
will be better if the employe takes his eyes off the
employer as he asks, "How much can I force him to
give?"

It will be infinitely better if both turn their eyes
upon the business and ask, "How can this industry be
made safe and profitable, so that it will be able to
provide a sure and comfortable living for all of us?"

If the two groups would take their eyes and minds
off each other and turn them to the industry as the
only possible means of obtaining what both of them
want, there would be an advantage gained.

First, there would be the advantage of forgetting
personalities. It is when we talk about labor and

237

FOIiO IDEALS

capital that we find class lines appearing, and class
prejudices, and class antipathies. The two opposed
groups look too much at each other as men, and
imagine too many wrong things against each other.

Second, there would be the advantage of both
groups converging and centering on one common in-
terest ; and there is no question whatever that the so-
lution of our problem will never be the find of any
one group, but the creative construction of both groups
working together. When we cease to talk about "capi-
tal" and "labor," and begin to talk about Industry,
then both capital and labor are talking about the same
thing — ^that on which they both equally depend for
their living.

Let workmen stop imagining this and that about
the boss and let bosses stop imagining this and that
about the workmen; let both of them get back to nor-
mal thoughts by thinking more of the job.

The job is the place where capital and labor, pro-
ducer and consumer, financial and industrial and pub-
lic interests meet on common ground. All that any of
them will ever get, they will have to get out of the
job.

And it may well be that, thinking less of employer
and employe, which are terms of division today, and
more of Employment, which is a term of tmity, we
may reach a good understanding, a fuller justice and
a deeper contentment much earlier than we have
expected.

238

Profit and Cost in a
Day's Work

How much profit does a workman reap from his
day's labor? How much ought he to reap? Does
a "good living" come tmder the head of profit, or is
it properly a part of the cost of producing a day's
labor? How far can human energies be measured and
human values standardized in order that the cost of a
day's labor may be standardized? \

Questions like these occur in one period or another
of every man's thought about a system of economics
which shall be niore solidly based than any which
serves us now. ^ ^

But a more than academic interest attaches to
these questions, for they are the real, even if tmspoken,
basis for much of the irritation and confusion which
exists in the industrial world today.

The A^orkingman is beginning to understand that
he is in business. His raw material is human energy.
His product is a day's work. All other business men
seek a profit above cost of production, why should
not he?

The difficulty thus far has been in making out the
cost sheet. How much does it cost to produce a day's
work? — that is the question for which there seems to
be no satisfactory basic answer.

It is perhaps possible accurately to determine —
albeit with considerable interference with the day's
work itself — how mngh energy the day's work takes
out of a man. But it is not at all possible accurately
to determine how much it will require to put back
that energy into him against the next day's demands.
Nor is it possible to determine how much of that ex-
pended energy you will never be able to put back at
all — ^because a "sinking fund" for the replacement of
the body and vital strength of a worker has never been
invented.

239

FORD IDEALS

It IS possible, however, to consider these latter
problems in a lump and provide for them under a form
of old-age pensions; but even so, we have not thus
attended to the question of profit which each day's
labor ought to yield in order to take care of all of
life's overhead, all physical losses, and the inevitable
deterioration which falls upon all earthly things.

Moreover, there are questions having to do with
the pre-productive period, which would have to be
solved. Here is the man, let us say, ready to begin
his service to society by turning out days' work
throughout his life. How much did it cost to rear and
educate him to his present age and usefulness? Ancl
how can that be figured as part of the cost of the
energy he puts forth as he works today? Now, if it
were the case of a machine, you would know what
to charge. The machine cost a certain sum ; it wears
out at a given rate; it would cost such-and-such an
amount to replace. It is a simple matter to figure the
actual cost of the machine and its productive work,
and add the profit.

Can we do that with men? Rather, can men do
that for themselves, so that selling a day's work they
will have as intelligent an idea of the cost of that
day's work and the profit it ought to bring as any
manufacturer ought to have of his product?

The problem becomes more complicated when you
consider the man in all his aspects. For he is more
than a workman who spends a certain number of hours
at his work in the shop every day.

If he were only himself, the cost of his mainte-
nance and the profit he ought to have would be a simple
matter. But he is morethan himself. He is a citizen,
contributing by his cultivation and interest to the wel-
fare of the city. He is probably a householder, living
under conditions which represent more than mere
maintenance, in that they represent the graces of so-
cial life. More than that, he is probably a father with
a more or less numerous progeny, all of whom must
subsist and be reared to usefulness on what he is able
to earn.

Now, it is obvious that to regard the man alone,

240

PROFIT AND COST IN A DAY's WORK

refusing to reckon with the home and the family in
the background, is to arrive at a series of facts which
are misleading and which alone can never suffice even
for a temporary solution of the questions that con-
cern us.

How are you gjoing to figure the contribution of
the home to the day's work of the man? You are
paying the man for his work, but how much does that
work owe to his home ? How much to his position as
a citizen? How much to his position as the pro-
vider of a family? The man does the work in the
shop, but his wife does the work of the home, and
the shop must pay them both; on what system of
figuring is the home going to find its place on the cost
sheets of the day's work? It finds its place there
already in a sort of haphazard way. If a man cannot
support himself, his wife, his children, his habitation,
his position in society — why, he doesn't stay at the
job, that's all. It isn't a matter of cost and profit to
him ; it is the matter of a "living."

Is a man's own livelihood the "cost" ? And is his
ability to have a home and a family the "profit" ?

Is the profit on a day's work to be computed on a
cash basis only, measured by the amount a man has
left over after his own and family's wants are all
supplied?

Is the livelihood of five or six persons beside those
of the actual worker to be charged up to "profit" ?

Or, are all these relationships to be considered ^
strictly under the head of "cost," and the profit to be
computed entirely outside of them? That is, after
having supported himself and family, clothed them,
housed them, educated them, given them. the privil-
eges incident to their standard of living, ought there
to be provision made for still something more in the
way of savings profit, and all properly chargeable to
the day's work? These are questions which call for
accurate observation and computation.

Perhaps there is no one item connected with our
economic life that would surprise us more than a
knowledge of just what excess burdens the day's work
actually carries.

241

FORD IDEALS

It carries all the worker's obligations outside the
shop; it carries all that is necessary in the way of
service and management inside the shop. The day's
productive work is the most valuable mine of wealth
that has ever been opened.

Certainly it cannot be made to' carry less than all
the worker's outside obligations. And certainly it
ought to be made to take care of the worker's simset
days when labor is no longer possible to him, and
should be no longer necessary. And if it is made to
do even these, industry will have to be adjusted to a
schedule of production, distribution and reward which
will stop the leaks toward the pockets of men who do
not assist production in any way, and turn all streams
for the benefit of those who do. In order to create
a system which shall be as independent of the good-
will of benevolent employers as of the ill-will of selfish
ones, we shall have to find a basis in the actual facts
of life itself.

It costs just as much physical strength to turn
out a day's work when wheat is $1 a bushel as when
wheat is $2.50 a bushel. Eggs may be 12 ceijts a
dozen or 90 cents a dozen — it makes no difference in
the units of energy a man uses in a productive day's
work.

One would think that the real basis of value would
be the cost of transmuting human energy into articles
of trade and commerce. But no; that most honest
of all human activities is made subject to the specu-
lative shrewdness of men who can produce false short-
ages of food and other commodities, and thus excite
anxiety of demand in society.

It is not in industry that the trouble lies, but in
those regions beyond, where men lie in wait to seize the
fruits of industry and create false scarcities for the
sake of arousing an anxious demand for things which,
normally, are and ought to be accessible to all who
engage in daily productive pursuits.

We must begin with the land; we must continue
with the day's labor; and we must keep so close, so
jealously close to both these fundamentals that we
shall be suspicious and fearful of all that robs the

242

^ PROFIT AND COST IN A DAY's WORK

land of men, and robs labor of its primal importance
in material life.

We shall think out, and try out, and establish
more enduring economic systems as we go on about
our work, than we shall ever be able to do sitting idle
with our heads in our hands trying to "think" a new
world system out of our brains.

The day's work is the hub around which the whole
wheel of earth-life swings. It must be kept central,
both in our thinking and our action. Any system that
shtmts the day's work ,off to one side as unimportant,
is riding to a fall.

243

Who Is the Producer?

WHO is the Producer? It is really an important
question in these days of revised thinking, be-
cause there is growing up a new class-conscious aris-
tocracy which calls itself "the producers," and is very
exclusive of everyone else. It is, of course, a good
sign that emphasis is being placed on production and
that a new appreciation has come for the producer;
and perhaps it is natural that a kind of class pride
should grow up which would limit the right to wear
that honorable name; but all this makes it the more
necessary that we should be clear in our minds as to
who the Producer really is.

The most common description of the Producer
would lead us to believe that he is the man from whose
hands comes the finished product. We are easily de^
ceived on this point. This man, we say, makes horse-
shoes. He produces something useful. He is thus
a valuable member of society. We can see his work,
we can see him perform it, we can see h(3w it serves
the immediate needs of the community. Therefore,
we have no hesitancy in awarding him the title of
Producer.

But behind that man are others whom we do not
see. There is the miner who dug out the iron ore.
There is the mule-driver who transported the ore to
the mine shaft. There is the engineer who hoisted it
to the top. There are the men who handled it in the
smelter. There are the other men who sailed the ships
that carried it to the steel mills. Then in the steel
mills it passed through the hands of many men who
transformed it into steel ; and there were railroad men
and truckmen who carried it to the place where ma-
terial was needed. Finally there was the blacksmith
who with his brawny arm and practiced eye shaped it
into the article that was needed — a rod, a brace, or a
horseshoe.

244

WHO IS THE PRODUCER?

When you actually trace any article of use through
the numerous hands that worked upon it, and then
attempt to divide the price of the article among those
various men, you not only get an idea of the vast co-
operation which production involves, but also how
quantity production is the only method by which a low
price to the purchaser and an adequate wage to the
producer can be maintained.

During this process of tracing, you would also
come upon another fact which is often overlooked;
you would become aware of a very considerable body
of workers whose hands did not directly touch the
product. at all, but whose whole work was in serving
the Producers duYing the time they were actually en-
gaged in the work of production. We are not now
speaking of the various forms of service rendered to
the Producers outside the shop, but that service which
is rendered them inside the shop.

Take the shop sweepers, for example. They never
touch the product of the shop. To the careless eye
they are not producing anything at all. They are
mere "extras," so to speak. Many would indignantly
deny them the title of Producers.

Yet they serve the processes of production in an
indispensable way. Sweeping the shop has a direct
bearing on the production of the special article which
the shop exists to make. For example, an accumula-
tion of waste would hinder production in two ways;
first, the waste itself would get in the workers' way;
second, to get it out of his way the worker would have
to leave his job and go sweeping.

Now, when the sweeper goes through his appointed
section of floor space with his broom, he is clearing
the way for the worker, he is allowing the workei
to continue straight on with his job, unhindered.

Again, the sweeper serves the worker in a still
more indirect yet important way: cleanliness of the
shop brings sanitary benefits with it, and so the
sweeper serves the worker's health, and through it,
production, by cutting down lost time due to illness.

Perhaps the most subtle service the sweeper ren-
ders is a psychological one. A clean shop has an in-

245

FORD IDEALS

fluence on the men. They become more clean-cut in
their own work. Wherever you see a shop cluttered
up with a mass of waste, or with material dumped
around anywhere in disorderly fashion, you will find
that the workmen's minds become cluttered too; they
partake of the general disorderliness. Now, the
sweeper has worked for weeks and months and has
not touched a single process of what we call produc-
tion, and yet he has served the Producer and aided
production.

If the man whom we call the Producer had been
compelled to stop and do his own sweeping, he would
have drawn the same rate of pay for handling a broom
as was given him for the skilled use of a tool. It
would have been a waste of skill. The sweeper re-
lieved him of that necessity, and so made it possible
to keep the mechanical skill where it was most needed.

And because the sweeper is thus a contributor to
production through rendering service to the more di-
rect Producer, it is believed that he is entitled to a
wage that recognizes his value. That is why the min-
imum wage, which always ought to be high enough
to support a very creditable standard of living, should
include the sweepers also, or any other similar workers
whose efforts contribute to the general work of pro-
duction.

Are we going to deny the name of Producer to
those whose services are a part of the immediate pro-
ducer's services?

That is just what is sometimes done. Ther^ is a
sort of an aristocracy of skill growing up. There is
an exclusiveness which would shut out the contributors
to production from the status and rewards of Pro-
ducers. It is rather strange to see these divisions
arise, and to see how the urge of human pride always
makes for separateness afnong men. There are others,
of course, beside the sweepers, who serve the immedi-
ate Producers of articles of use. The man who plans
the work, who makes it possible for the Producer to
begin the job at once instead of waiting to lay it out
and plan it ahead — ^he, too, has his part in production.

Then, before any of these came upon the scene at

246

WHO IS THE PRODUCER?

all, there is the man who had vision enough and faith
enough to win the necessary means to start the work
going in the first place: the man whose credit or
whose idea was good enough to secure capital and
machinery and a place to work. Surely it will not
be denied that he, too, had his part in Production —
that he served Production and the Producer, too.

The difficulty has been in the past very similar to
that which confronts us now, namely, a tendency on
the part of one group to minimize the importance of
the other group, as if that were the only way to se-
cure its own importance.

Our enormous and insistent demand for the fin-
ished product has, in these days, given an exaggerated
prominence to the man who does the finishing. The
last man to handle the article is the first man the pub-
lic sees, and thus he is the one who is most often
given the title of Producer.

The man who "turns it out" is the man whom mod-
em opinion acclaims as the real creator.

And yet it must be clear to all that this man could
not "turn it out" unless a whole series of processes
had produced it to his hand almost ready to be "turned
out."

When all is said and done, it is the organization
that produces, and no individual worker. And by
"organization" is meant not only the specific shop
which makes the specific article, but the whole in-
dustrial process, from those which deal with the raw
materials of the earth, to those that give the finishing
touches which prepare the worked material for the
market and for use.

They are all part of the plan. It may be that some
of the processes could be shortened up a little ; it may
be that profiteers push in here and there to collect an
tmwarranted tax on the completed article as it passes
along the channels of commerce ; but aside from these,
which can easily be remedied, it will be found that the
actual shaping of the article occupies a place about
midway in the whole process of Production. It is not
the whole. It is indispensable, of course; but it is
not warranted in assuming a lordly dominaiy:e over all
the others.

247

FORD IDEALS

Certainly there is no place in a just and well-reg-
ulated world for any labor that does not in some meas-
ure contribute to Production. This is not to take a
sordid view of life, but only to insist on usefulness in
the things which we support. Every man who eats and
wears clothes and enjoys creature comforts, does so
at the expense of someone else's labor. Now, he ought
to yield an adequately useful return for what he re-
ceives — ^that is the pi;incip)e.

248

All Are Members of the
Consuming Glass

A CORRESPONDENT suggests that in classifying
society into groups, such as the Producing, the
Consuming and the Public groups, or the Capital, the
Labor and the Public groups, there should have been
added the Government group, thus placing the struc-
ture on four solid legs, instead of leaving it the "three-
legged stool" of recent popular expression.

The suggestion illustrates the fundamental falsity
of dividing society at all, for it is an undivided organ-
ism. If we set it off into classes and interests, we do
so simply as an aid to our thinking, as children first
use blocks to learn arithmetic; we never imply that
society is really thus divided; we never imply that
life is such a hard and fast matter that every man
is shut up into one caste or class.

That is where class-consciousness usually fails as
a motive, and that is why the propagandists of a
class-conscious strife are doomed to failure — ^you can-
not cage an individual in any one class. Even.while
you are tagging him, he eludes you and glides into an-
other class, if only for an hour. In a free country like
ours, a man usually does — ^at least he always may —
belong to all classes at once, except perhaps artificial
and tmwholesome classes like that which we call "the
leisure class." To belong to the "leisure class" simply
means that down in the mine and at the forge and in
the shop there are men working for themselves and for
idlers whom they never saw; it is to be a sponge, a
parasite, a sign of economic disease.

There is one class in which none of us escapes
membership, and that is the Consuming class. By the
law of nature we are all consumers. It means our
very life. Rich or poor, learned or ignorant, it does
not matter— every living organism consumes the ma-
terial of life, and for us this means mostly food for

249

the body and the material necessities of residence on
the earth.

Every man, be he the greatest producer ever
known, is a consumer the first thing in the morning
when he sits down at his breakfast table. Whether
he produced what he consumes, or whrther someone
else produced it, does not matter — sitting at that taUe
and eating, he has joined the Consuming dass. The
total produce of the world is a little less because he
sat there.

And then he goes to his work. He enters the shop
and takes up his task, and by that act he has passed
into the Producing group. No jolt and no jar attended
the transition, no change in his fundamental interests
occurred, he is not on one side of the fence while he
is eating his breakfast and on the other as he plies his
job — he is just a human being trying to support him-
self and dependents in a world maze.

Membership in the Consuming dass is onnpulsory
if life is to go on, but evidently membership in the
Producing class is not, for there are some — a very few
comparatively — ^who go on consuming all day long,
week in and week out, during a whole lifetime, with-
out ever putting back a single valuable contribution
into the general supply. "They are living on their
money/' we say. But they are not. They are living
on the grain which other men raised, the dothing which
other men spun, the commodities which other men
made — and their "money" is one of the uKxlem
fetishes by which they are enabled to do this. Mcmey
is always a sign of production, but its possession is not.

But rettUTiing to the normal man who has no de-
sire to escape his duty, and who is willing to replace
by production the stuff which he takes for ccmsump-
tion, what is his relation to these two conditions? The
fomenters of labor strife say that he should be a
"bull" when it is a question of how much he shall be
paid for production, and a "bear" when it is a ques-
tion of what he shall pay for what he constunes. In
other words, make the loaf of bread cost more to bake,
but sell it for less because the man who was highly
paid for baking it will presently come around the front
door and buy it for his family.

250

ALL ARE MEMBERS OF THE CONSUMING CLASS

This, of course, would be a very favorable arrange-
ment for the baker, if it could be kept up; but un-
fortunately for that dream, there is an inviolable re-
lation between the cost of consumption and the cost
of production; even in the physical body, when re-
pair and replacement cease to equal waste and use,
old age comes and death is not far. Decrepitude and
collapse come to business from the same cause.

There is, doubtl^s, a difference in the interests of
the individual as Producer and that same individual
as Consumer, but the difference merges into the same
interest at last, namely, to gain enough as Producer
to meet the demands made upon him as Consumer.

Some would-be guides talk as if all this could be
easily arranged if the Producer took what he pro-
duced and let it go at that. The matter is complicated
by another class which comes into existence between
the production and the consumption. The producer
is not buying of himself as producer, but of someone
else who has acquired his product. This gives room
for a mixture of motives — to get as much as he can
as producer and give as little as he can as constimer.

This double attitude is assisted by the man's belief
that he is dealing with two sets of persons whose in-
terests seem opposed to his — ^his employer, who he
thinks is trying to get out of him more labor than the
wage is worth; and the merchant or trader, who he
thinks is trying to get out of him more money than
the article is worth.

The man doesn't see that — ^banish human greed
from the equation — ^he is dealing only with himself
after all, and that if he robs commodities at one end
of the process, they rob him at the other; and so
equality is established, though in a very unsatisfactory
sort of way.

Now, there are advisers who insist that the way out
of this condition is for the Producer-Consumer to add
to his "class membership" and become Trader, too.
For that is all that the abolition of the commercial
class could mean. But as very few men could subsist
on the commodity which they produce (the commodity
usually being only a part in some larger process of

251

FORD IDEALS

production), and would have to stop producing in or-
der to hawk their product in the market and gain the
wherewithal to procure a subsistence, the process
might end practically in the same place as the present
one does — ^but probably it would end in a much lower
degree of efficiency and in a much lower state of gen-
eral comfort.

In our capacity as workers we are interested in
just rates of reward; in our capacity as consumers
we are interested in just rates of exchange; in our
public capacity we are interested in the general wel-
fare, not of ourselves alone, but of all men.

So, when our correspondent suggests that we add
the Government group, it means just this: we add to
all our other "class memberships," a new member-
ship which carries power and authority with it.

The Government is not a group of men who con-
trol a group of the Public and a group of Producers
and a group of Consumers; the Government is the
Public, the Producers and the Consumers united to
produce a political life which shall be the safeguard
of all their rights and their just interests:

Perhaps the time has come for Government to con-
sider taking over the control of economic conduct as
well as those other phases of conduct which are indi-
cated in existing laws. Certainly a Government that
has power to say what shall be the standard quart or
bushel, should also have power to say what shall be
the standard day of work and the standard rate of
reward.

The world is now moving around in a dazed sort
of way simply because some extremely simple ques-
tions have not been answered — questions relating to
the cost of a day's work to the man who gives it, and
the rate of reward he ought to have to put him on
an equality with other men who also are rewarded.

There is natural wealth enough, there is human
energy enough ; one is also persuaded that there could
be foimd enough human good will, if mankind only
knew what to do. The race is waiting for someone
to show it the simple way out, that all interests may
be brought into harmony, and the friction of unjust
conflict abolished.

252

Every Man Needs Elbow Room

WHEN ^ man deals in theories it is very easy for
him to exaggerate, because a world that is spun i
out of fancy can be more easily rearranged than a
world of throbbing, driving life. Men find it easy to
rear Utopia in their dreams, and make changes over-
night that would dislocate the whole human race if
they were decreed in a real world. But when we are
dealing with real days and actual conditions we find
that our very life is so bound up in the conditions
which surround us — ^as the life of the body inheres in
its organs — ^that sudden and total changes, which are
fortunately impossible, would be fatal, if they were
possible. The danger of our dream-worlds is that
they influence us too greatly in discounting the real
world in which we live. On the whole it is not a bad
world, as practically everybody will admit. It is not
perfect by any means; it will stand much retouching
here and there, much adjustment and improvement;
but on the whole even the most ordinary mind is able
to see that what we have is infinitely better than it
might be, infinitely better than some of the systems
which are now being proposed by men whose minds
would Be clearer if they worked for their living.

Every man with red blood in his veins will agree
that whatever else we may desire, we do not desire a
world that will leave no elbow room for individual
initiative and ambition.

No man would wish to place his son in a school
where the lad would not be required to meet things
that would test his qualities and develop his powers.
He would not want his son coddled. He would want
him to take boy's luck with the rest of the boys, learn
by the friction generated by rubbing against hard
tasks and other people's natures. He would want for
his son such a discipline as would render him a self-
reliant man.

And, when we take time to think of it, that is just

253

FORD IDEALS

the kind of world we ask for ourselves. We don't
want to be supported by government, clothed by legis-
lature, and apportioned our work and reward by com-
missary ; we don't ask to live in houses furnished us by
the state, fed on fixed ration, and educated according
to certain schedules fixed for the various classes of
society.

What the normal man wants is a free field and no
favorites, a chance to show what is in him, and take
the measure of success and reward that he is able to
win. For that is Freedom in the economic sense.
Some people talk as if economic freedom meant lib-
eration from the necessity pf toil, but as food itself
means toil, and as food is a necessity, that view is
clearly wrong. Freedom means an opportunity to go
out with other men, working with them in co-opera-
tion, and alongside them in friendly competition, so
that every man shall have the chance to demonstrate
his ability.

That is what gives life its zest, and any social
program that takes that zest out of life is foredoomed
to failure even before it is tried. Indeed, it never
will be tried, because the healthy zest of human na-
ture is against it from the beginning.

What Y^e want for our boys is what we ask for
ourselves — free opportunity on the field of endeavor,
a fair chance to measure powers with other men, and
may the best man win !

Now, when we have tried this opportunity for a
number of years it is inevitable that we settle into the
classifications which our abilities, our use of our op-
portunities, and our general value to society, fix for
us. That is the only classification possible. Each man
eventually finds his own place. He finds his own
work. He is rewarded according to the contribution
he makes to the general welfare.

There is nothing arbitrary about it. It is not done
by lel^slation nor by th^ pressure of group interests.
It is purely natural in its operation. Cotton goes into
cloth and iron goes into dredges; there is no dis-
crimination ; there is only classification by fitness.

But the contest of life leaves a certain proportion
of human beings very low in the economic scale, and

254

EVERY MAN NEEDS ELBOW ROOM

this constitutes the largest item in our social problem.

This residuum near the bottom has heretofore
been waste material to a very large extent. We have
been just as wasteful of mien as we have of certain
materials. For generations we have been throwing
away what we called the "waste" of mines and the
"rubbish" and "garbage" of cities. But we have now
awakened to their value and are making them useful
and therefore valuable. In the same way we have
been counting certain classes of unskilled individuals
as waste. Humanity's scrap-heap has at times been
very large. But modem industry has turned all this
waste humanity to new and increased usefulness, thus
making these classes of men more valuable to them-
selves and society.

It was not so much a miatter of "man's inhumanity
to man," as it was society's lack of managerial ability
to use the naturally less useful classes, which led to
the sad spectacle of "a human scrap-heap." Modem
industry went to that scrap-heap and found good use-
ful stuff, and today even the unskilled man can feel
that he is playing his part in the making of the world.
The man of initiative, ability, and energy has always
been able to take care of himself. He has asked no
favors and has agitated no new form of society. The
problem has always been the other man who must be
hdped to help himself.

That man is receiving more of the material of
self-help today than at any time in human history. He
counts for something. He is necessary to the work
of the world. Productive processes have been so
standardized that his steadiness is as good an asset as
genius, and his labor as prime an investment as capital.

And still more will be done for him. He has not
only been given a place in the world ; he will be given
a share in the wealth he helps to create over and above
that share which comes to him as wages, He will par-
ticipate in the "extras"; he will be enabled to count
his connection with his job not only on the basis of the
day's wage, but of the year's bonus and dividend. All
this is made possible not by a soft sentimentalism, but
by new methods of production and new genius for

255

FORD IDEALS

management which have given value to the work of
these formerly discounted groi;ps of men.

There is a theory that profit-sharing is imprac-
ticable because it is not balanced by loss-sharing, that
a full partnership between capital and labor would
involve a sharing of the risks as well as the benefits.

The theory is faulty at several points. Whatever
profit a business shows is produced by labor in con-
junction with efficient management, and labor is there-
fore clearly entitled to a share. Moreover, the losses,
whether caused by ill-management, depression or other
conditions which are still beyond control, are certain
to be shared by labor, whether it will or no.

But why expect losses at all? Why should a
business which supplies a legitimate need of the
people, ever suffer from lack of work at a profitable
figure? Eliminate the speculative element, contribute
efficient management, give honest labor on an honest
product at an honest price, and you have established
business on a substantial basis, at the minimum of
risk.

Labor and management are partners — if both be
efficient, the results are as certain as human affairs
can be. Management furnishes the method, labor
furnishes the medium; both together spell service;
service is the basis of reward ; and upon the basis of
honest reward, prosperity is built.

With capital making the first move toward fair-
ness and equality, there is bound to be a receptive
spirit on the part of labor, and a revision of some of
the old prejudices and misconceptions. After all, we
are only human — ^all of us ; and a real man can always
sense the note of sincerity, or its absence, in another's
proffer of friendship.

The sincere desire of the manufacturer to be just
to his men and to the public must result in a tide of
loyalty rolling in to meet, augment and solidify the
new spirit which is coming into industrial relations.

256

The Need of Social Blueprints

ALMOST anyone you maychance to meet will tell
i you that "something ought to be done" and will
assure you that it must be done very soon. But you
will' travel a long way before you will meet anyone
with a plan that has a single point of practicability.

Many plans, so-called, are not plans at all; they
are pleasant pictures of conditions as they may be
after all the planning, all the preparatory work and
all the constructive labors are done. A plan is not an
oil-painting of a complete object ; a plan indicates the
"how" and the "where" and the "what" of every joist,
joint and pillar. You cannot build a house from a
charming photograph ; you will need a blueprint.

Every thoughtful man has an idea of what ought
to be; but what the world is waiting for is a social
and economic blueprint.

There is something deadly exact about a blue-
print. It is not a speech; it is not a propaganda; it
is not a burst of enthusiasm; it is a simple thing of
lines and signs which tells you what to do and just
where to do it. It speaks of only one quality — orderly
work.

Now, this is why good intentions are of so little
value to the practical solution of the problems that
confront us. Good intentions, of course, are very
good — ^as intentions. And doubtless good intentions
must eidst in every good plan. But everyone has had
enough experience with well-meaning people to know
that good intentions are often sterile.

It is very surprising to learn how much of the
distrust of people in plans for the advancement of
justice in human relations is due to the failure of so
many ill-planned and badly managed good intentions.
Human history is full of the wreckage of high and
noble intentions for social good and human better-
ment, which failed simply because they had the vi-
sionary quality without the creative quality.

257

FORD IDEALS

And one result of this is the almost universal as-
sumption that whatever is good, generous, just and
warmly htunan, is prevented by those very qualities
from, being practical. There is an unspoken belief
that if a plan is to be practical it must disregard hu-
manity to a greater or less extent. Consideration of
others and success for oneself are believed to be in-
compatible.

Another result is the assumption that "creative
work" can only be undertaken in the realm of vision.
We speak of "creative artists" in music, painting and
the other arts. We thus limit the creative fimctions
to productions that may be himg on gallery walls or
played in concert halls, or otherwise displayed where
idle and fastidious people gather to admire each other's
show of "culture."

But, if a man wants a field for real vital creative
work, let him come where he is dealing with higher
laws than those of sound, or line or color; let him
come where he may deal with the very laws of per-
sonality and society. Creative work ! We want artists
in industrial relationships. We want masters in in-
dustrial method, both from the standpoint of the pro-
ducer and the product. We want those who can mold
the political, social, industrial and moral mass into a
sound and shapely whole.

We have limited the creative faculty too much and
have used it for too trivial ends. We want men who
can create the working design for all that is right and
good and desirable in our life together here.

Now, it is pretty clear that the creative plan, when
it comes, will propose surprisingly little that is new;
it will consist largely in a readjustment of the old
things.

We shall not outgrow the need to work. Some
people are talking as if the "good time coming" is
going to eliminate labor altogether. Some people ap-
pear to think that the only thing that is wrong with
our present system is that people have to work for
their living.

Well, we may be sure on one point: work is not
what ails the world. The world would be infinitely
worse off than it is, both physically and morally, if it

258

THE NEED OF SOCIAL BLUEPRINTS

were not for work. One of the danger-spots of the
present time is that so many men are trying to evade
work as if it were a disease. There is a class of men
who regard the white collar as a sign of emancipation
from work. An idea like that, if true, would soon
bring the white collar into disgrace.

There are too many men dickering in real estate
and not enough men digging in it.

There are too many agitators, who do not work
at all, telling these groups who cannot think for them-
selves that they are to be commiserated because they
have to work.

Think of it! here in America, the one country in
the world where it has always been held honorable
that a man should work with his hands — in this coun-
try honest work is sought to be made the badge of
servility !

Say what you will, the man who works with his
hands has the best of it — other things being equal.
And what we all want in this country is that the work-
ingman shall have the best of it all around. This can-
not be done by abolishing work, for work cannot be
abolished ; but it can be done by abolishing those lim-
itations and false practices which have kept from the
worker the reward which ought to be his.

Profit-sharing, additional annual bonuses, stock-
sharing and dividends, a close and sympathetic inter-
change of counsel between the production and man-
agement parts of the business; or, to state it another
way, between the strictly business and the strictly hu-
man aspects — these constitute a promising beginning.
The htunan part must serve the business part, else
there would be no great center of useful work which
would provide the living of all employed there; yet
the business part must also serve the human part, else
the service which the business can render to human
well-being would be cut in half.

The principle which must become clear to the mind
of this and the coming generation is that good inten-
tions plus well-thought-out working designs, can be
put into practice and can be made to succeed.

There is nothing inherently impossible in plans to
increase the well-being of the workingman.

259

FORD IDEALS

If there has seemed to be, it is only because the
world has heretofore thrown all of its thought and
energy into selfish schemes for personal profits.

If the world will give as much attention and in-
terest and energy to the making of plans that will
profit the other fellow, such plans can be established
on just as practical a basis as the others were — with
this additional advantage : the latter kind of plan will
last longer than the other kind, and will be far more
profitable both in human and financial values.

What this generation needs is a deep faith, a pro-
found conviction in the practicability of righteousness,
justice and humanity in industry.

If we cannot have these qualities, then we were
better off without industry. Indeed, if we cannot get
those qualities, the days of industry are numbered.
But we can get them. We are getting them.

There will come men whose highest joy will be
to diffuse benefits instead of accumulating heaps of
personal profits which they will never use. There will
come a race of men to whom money will mean only
the opportunity to develop still bigger benefits for the
men and their families who carry the world on their
shoulders.

If selfishness can only be curbed, if the long-range
values can only be shown in their desirable lights, if
men who are in authority could only see the wisdom
of exchanging the low gratifications of mere gain for
the finer gratifications of human service — why, theft
there would be no end to what might be done.

The Good is the only practicable. Anything less
than that is not only impracticable in any sense what-
soever, but it is vanishing too.

260

Party Politics

THE open season for politics is upon us. The
voice of the candidate is heard in the land. "Key-
notes," which are strangely out of key with the
thought and needs of the people, are being piped in
various quarters. And the offices of authority and
influence, which are soon to be opened for a con-
firmation or a change of policy, have not the smallest
opportunity to go seeking for men to fill them, they
are always besieged beforehand by men of all degrees
of fitness and unfitness; so that the attaining of an
office has come to be a more thrilling political motive
than the filling of it.

There is nothing, to say against politics as such,
but only against its governing motives when these are
wrong. The only motive that can keep politics pure is
the motive of doing good for one's country and its
people.

Originally, politics belonged to the citizens of the
state. They inaugurated the issues and they proposed
the policies that should be applied. Politics was simply
the application of the community mind to the com-
munity problem. As such, politics may have been
unwise sometimes, but not unclean. A community
may not always know what is best to do for itself,
but whatever it does is done with good intention. It
is contrary to experience to say that the people are
the depository of political wisdom; political wisdom
exists in small quantities at any time; but it is abso-
lutely true, and it is our duty always to insist upon it,
that the people are the depository of political power,
yi/^herever political power is permitted the people in
its fullness, there is likely to be fewer errors; and
when errors are made there is likely to be a readier
and more pliant reversal of them, than where the peo-
ple are permitted only partial power.

But politics in our day is not so much a popular
matter as a professional matter. Instead of being

261

VOID IDEALS

always the exact effect of the whole community's
thought upon public questions, it is often only the
community choice between two limited programs pre-
pared by professional partisans who themselves have
personal aspirations to serve or whose Welfare is
linked up with the personal aspirations of others.

There was a time when parties represented very
accurately the divisions of public conviction upon pub-
lic questions. It is questionable if they do so now,
to as great an extent. In any event, there is a less
rigid adherence to party on the part of the people;
there is an easy passage back and forth as one party
or another seems to represent the popular mind.

This of itself indicates that professional partisan-
ship and not popular influence constitutes the mechan-
ism of politics. Parties come more and more to mean
the men who are in charge of the partisan machinery,
the political corporation, so to speak, of this name or
that. They constitute a hierarchy which exists within
itself, with very slender sanction from below.

This upper and inner circle is a sort of unofficial
supreme court. It passes on issues and policies and
candidates. Its purpose is to "sell" itself to a ma-
jority of the voting public by setting forth the most
attractive candidate or the most alluring promises.
When the "party" goes into power, it is really a very
few men who go into power. The party is the support
this inner circle was able to win at the polls.

It is very easy to see that this view is correct if
you will consider how many times and for how long a
time the people have had to knock at the door of party
councils to induce the "leaders" to consider some is-
sue and some reform which the people deemed press-
ingly necessary. We have had some experiences along
that line that make very curious spectacles indeed.

Imagine a party, supposed to be the channel and
outlet of the people's thought, having power enough
in its upper councils to refuse to consider the people's
* thought and insist upon determining within what lim-
its the people shall think and vote. Politics as a par-
tisan profession has always been the barrier and enemy
of politics as the natural upflow of the popular mind
on public questions. It has frequently occurred that

262

PARTY POLITICS

by an apparent agreement between the leaders of both
arties, the people who adhere to the parties were nar-
rowly limited as to the matters they could vote upon.
Whereas politics in its real sense makes for the fullest
expression, in its partisan sense it has been the strong
instrument of suppression. The "slate" has been a
boundary which the people have been forbidden to
pass.

i It is apparent, however, that a change is beginning
to come. Not that the partisan and professional poli-
tician has changed his spots — which even an optimist
could not expect — ^but an alarming aloofness from
partisan political authority is being exhibited by the
people.

The people plainly have the "leaders" guessing.
The "leaders" were never more a close corporation
than they now are, but they can no longer count the
people as one of their safe assets. The people have de-
veloped something more than independence of mind,
it even approaches contempt for a class of self-styled
leaders.

The people have apparently left the "organization"
high and dry, and politics in the ordinary sense fails
to get the rise out of them that it used to get.

And yet, anyone who would believe, as a result of
this condition, that the people are simply indifferent
and will leave the whole question to the party corpora-
tions, does not know the American people. They are
not indifferent. They are not going to surrender their
citizens' rights to anyone. They are going to exer-
cise them, but just how, upon what issue, or for what
candidate, has not yet appeared.

The people are interested in wider views than the
politicians are ready to entertain.

As a result of our political system, the people have
had a very costly experience in recent years. The war
gave them a new education in national and interna-
tional affairs. They are thinking in broader terms
than ever before. They are not thinking in terms of
one state, or one party, or one nation. They know
now that all humanity is interrelated. They know that
any prosperity we buy at the cost of adversity to an-
other people is sure to react upon us. They know

263

FORD IDEALS

that we cannot build our little paradise here or any-
where else, and remain regardless of the world around.
The internationalism of humanity, of liberty, of eco-
nomic balance, of supply and demand, of service and
reward, have all been very plainly observed by our
people. And there is no indication that the leaders of
the partisan coimcils have been nearly so observant,
or that their education has been broadened by the
events through which the world has passed.

It is too late now to talk of nationalism or inter-
nationalism. That question was settled when we en-
tered the war.

Something bigger than a "party ticket" is asked
by the people this year. Something that carries more
assurance than the "party platform" of other years.

"Getting power" or "keeping power" have nothing
to do with the vital and fundamental needs of the
nation at this time, both in its internal affairs and its
international relations. We want a program, Amer-
ican and humanitarian, which the American and hu-
manitarian elements of all parties would be bound to
support and put through. Such a program would
leave little room for partisan fights, but it would clear
the stage for the next step of progress which already
has been far too long delayed, and enable us to pro-
ceed with the work of reconstruction.

264

Honest and Dishonest
Propaganda

WE HAVE^ seen a great deal of propaganda dur-
ing the last five years and have had ample oppor-
tunity to appraise its wisdom, sincerity and effective-
ness. The fact that it still continues to be used for
one purpose or another, with an assurance that the
human mind can be wheeled into position and marched
this way or that as the propagandist desires, is be-
ginning to get on the nerves of the people ; they are
reaching out beyond the propaganda for the facts, just
as in a lawsuit the jury reaches out beyond the con-
tentions of the lawyers to get at the knowledge which
the witnesses may have.

Like the great financial "drives," this new busi-
ness of propaganda has become so very obtrusive that
it is compelling a rather critical scrutiny. There was
a time when all you had to do was to start a "drive,"
threaten the non-contributors with an unpopular
stigma, and millions rolled in. But even the "drives"
are falling down. And the simple reason is that you
cannot "drive" people to think any more than you
can "drive" them to give.

Legitimate propaganda during the war period is
very simply described. The nation was agreed that,
being rightly in the war and on the right side, it had
to win. It did not have to be urged to a desire to win.
The desire was there. Propaganda did not create it;
propaganda did not increase it. All that propaganda
did was to tell the people how they could help to win.
It was a distribution of information, not a storm of
argument; it was knowledge and education, not mere
exhortation.

And that is the mark of legitimate propaganda at
all times — ^the facts. A fact is like granite — it stays.
Winter will not freeze it, summer will not melt it,
rains will not wash it away. Men may neglect it for
a long time. They may stumble over it and curse it

265

POBD IDEALS

many times. But after a while they begin to build
with it. The man with a fact need not worry about
the indiflFerence of the multitudes; let him tie up to
his fact. In due time it will find its place. But he
must be careful that it is a Fact, and not merely a
notion of something he thinks could be made a fact
if he could get enough people to agree with him.
Agreement doesn't make facts. But facts make agree-
ment. People who don't agree with facts get bumped
by them. But it is not your place to do the bumping —
the fact takes care of that.

What kills propaganda is the obvious purpose be-
hind it. One little admixture of self-interest and
your eflFort is wasted. You cannot preach patriotism
to men for the purpose of getting them to stand still
while you rob them — ^and get away with that kind of
preaching very long.

You cannot preach the duty of working hard and
producing plentifully, and make that a screen for an
additionsd profit to yourself.

There has been too much of this kind of psycho-
logical crime committed in the world these past f€W
years — the crime of bringing men to act from the
highest and sincerest motives of self-sacrifice, and
then using that high spirit for the lowest purposes.

We are going to pay the price of that sort of
trifling, for there is nothing thp*^ *^eals so slowly and
hurts so long as wounded faith.

Just now the country is being flooded with propa-
ganda designed to improve the state of mind in which
the people find themselves with regard to industrial
and economic questions. This new propaganda con-
tains much truth, a great many things which the people
need to know, and knowing which they would be
saved from some very grave errors of thought and
action.

But for the most part it is propaganda from a class
to a class, and it has a design behind it which arouses
suspicion.

The workingman is not going to take his views of
duty from a man or a class whose privileges or profits
depend on the workingman taking that point of view.

Employers or capitalists or close corporations of

266

HONEST AND DISHONEST PROPAGANDA

international speculators who think they can mobilize
the mind of the common people and issue orders to
it, or who think they can hire a few writers and speak-
ers and solve the whole troublesorfie situation with
nicely selected words and phrases, are either very ig-
norant of human nature or are unbalanced by an
exaggerated sense of their own importance and
wisdom.

The plain people have stood in line a long time
and have been lectured and ordered about. As lone
as they were persuaded that it was for the good of
their country to be thus regimented, they agreed to it.
But the wastes and shameless profiteering which ac-
companied the war have brought them a disgusting
sense that in sacrifice as in other things there may be
class lines too; one mass may do all the sacrificing,
while one class reaps all the gains.

Propaganda issuing from a recognized class whose
interests are all bound up in the preservation of the
old order of things, is not only a waste of effort, it is
a positive irritant to the people to whom it is ad-
dressed. They resent it, and there is hot blood in their
resentment.

Undoubtedly the employing class possess facts
which their employes ought to know in order to con-
struct sound opinions and pass fair judgments; and
undoubtedly the employed class possess facts which are
equally important to the case and which everyone
ought to know.

It is extremely doubtful, however, that either side
has all the facts.

And^ this is where propaganda, even if it were
possible for it to be entirely successful, is defective.
It is not desirable that one set of ideas be "put over"
on a class holding another set of ideas, but that out
of both sets of ideas the true, constructive and har-
monizing truth may be brought forth.

If you are going to rely on ideas, that is the way
you must get them.

But there is something better, more immediately
effective than the propaganda of ideas just now, and
that is the Act that illustrates the Idea.

The best propaganda an employer can use is to

267

FORD IDEALS

do right now for his own men what he knows he can
and ought to do.

We have been waiting too much for "social
changes." We might make a start with shop changes.

We have been talking too much about the "con-
flict of the classes." We might make a start toward \
abolishing classes in our own sphere of influence.

The best propaganda you can ever have is the
reputation of being square, humane and thoughtful
.of others all the time. There are some things you
can never tell men, nor persuade them of by speech
or literature. But if the things are there, the men will
know it — ^you may be sure of that.

There is a great fever and flutter in certain high
financial circles, and much speaking and discussion,
about getting in closer touch with the men, introducing
the human element, and so on.

It is all very good. But you will have to take it
out of speeches and committees — ^you will have to get
it into your own heart first. You have got to do
something that no one but yourself can do. That is,
what you do must be personal and it must cost you
something. It is too late in the day for mere "jolly-
ing" and "gladhanding." Men are ready to meet you
half way, but it must be something more than a senti-
ment they meet ; it must be the real thing ; actual, mani-
fest, worthy.

Society isn't something thrust down upon us by
some. law; we make it ourselves. Social conditions
are not made for us from outside, like the weather;
we make them ourselves ; they are the net result of the
daily relations between man 'and man. We give them
high-sounding names, but this is all they really are.

Every shop can become a center of a new social
order simply through the introduction of a new so-
cial spirit — 2L new social spirit evidenced by some act
which costs the management something and which
benefits all. That is the only way you can prove your
good intentions and win respect for your attitude.
Propaganda, bulletins, lectures, everything that can
be hired done or made by machine fades into insig-
nificance beside the persuading, compelling power of
a right act sincerely done.

268

Grow Along With the Business

WE WHO have found our place in life and have
become matured, are sometimes inclined to for-
get that the young men who are coming after us are
troubled by the same urge and the same questions
which troubled us. Every young man who is sensitive
and intelligent enough to realize that the life before
him must be made is almost certain to pass through a
period of painful searching before he finds the place
which he feels will give him his opportunity. He
knows he must work, but where ? at what ? He knows
there is a place for him somewhere, but how can he
find it?

We are likely to forget this pain of youth. We
are likely to forget how earnestly we sought counsel of
older folks, and ho^ inadequate and unconvincing the
counsel was when we got it. And yet young men, in
spite of all their apparent difference from what we
were when we were young, are really treading the
same paths. The world of affairs has changed a great
deal, but man has not.

It is not the intention of this article to give any of
the ordinary advice to young men. There are certain
things which were true a thousand years ago and will
be true a thousand years hence if civilization endures
that long, and which everyone- knows — ^knows, that
is, as far as being aware can constitute knowledge;
but there is a knowledge by experience which drives
the outer knowledge home and clinches it like a nail.
And this experience cannot be provided for another
or substituted. The best we can do in that matter is
to prevent as far as possible the needless and bitter
experiences which come from folly.

But perhaps it would serve a useful purpose if we
answered the young man's question as to whether the
new industrial conditions of the world have had an
effect on his chances to achieve success in a special
way; that is, whether the intensive organization of

269

FORD IDEALS

our life has not operated to close up some of the
former avenues of advancement.

There is no use whatever in dealing with stale
platitudes in Such a matter or in giving the yotmg man
a general counsel. Certain matters must be admitted
at once. There has been a change, but in what does
it consist?

It is true, that more young men than ever before
make their start in places prepared for them. To the
young man with no influence, this looks like a disad-
vantage at the very outset. But he is exaggerating its
importance. For one thing, those boys who drop into
nice specially prepared places do not always make
good; indeed, a very small percentage of them do.
No man of affairs ever had enough sons or relatives to
run his business. The men who are in the important
places of American business concerns are not the men
who began in soft berths; they are the men who
showed themselves more capable than those who were
bom or lifted into those berths.

It may also be admitted that the young man who
enters industry today enters a very different system
from that in which the young man of 15 or 25 years
ago began his career. The system has been tightened
up, there is less "play" or friction in it ; fewer matters
are left to the haphazard will of the individual; the
modem worker finds himself part of an organization
which apparently leaves him little initiative.

Yet, with all this, it is not true that "men are mere
machines." It is not true that opportunity has been
lost in organization. If the young man will liberate
himself from his false ideas of this matter and regard
the system for what it is, rather than for what it is
not, he will find that what he thought was a barrier
is really an aid.

Factory organization is not a device to prevent the
expansion of ability, but a device to reduce the waste
and losses due to mediocrity. It is not a device to
hinder the ambitious, clear-headed man from doing
his best, but a device to prevent the don't-care sort
of individual from doing his worst. That is to say,
when laziness, carelessness, slothfulness and lack-in-
terest are allowed to have their own way, everybody

270

GROW ALONG WITH THE BUSINESS

s&ffers. The factory cannot prosper and therefore
cannot pay living wages. When an organization makes
it necessary for the don't-care class to do better than
they naturally would, it is for their benefit — ^they are
better mentally, physically and financially. Ask your-
self how much wages we should be able to pay if we
trusted a large don't-care class to their own methods
and gait of production. Now, the young man ought to
get that idea very firmly in his mind, and he ought to
look at the entire question seriously and observe the
system itself intelligently to see if this is not just the
way it works.

On the other hand, if the factory system which
brought mediocrity up to a higher standard, operated
also to keep ability down to a lower standard — ^it
would be a very bad system, a very bad system indeed.
Even a system, be it ever so perfect, must have able
individuals to operate it. No system operates itself.

More brains are needed today than ever before,
but perhaps they are not needed in the same place as
they once were. It is just like power; formerly every
machine was run by foot power; the power was right
at the machine. But nowadays we have moved the
power back, concentrated it in the power-house; it is
no longer necessary to generate it by muscular power
at the machine. Thus also we have made it tmneces-
sary for the highest types of mental ability to be en-
gaged in every operation at the factory, and by doing
this we have enabled men of very ordinary mental
equipment to profit by the plans of men of larger
mental ability, and the consequence is that everybody
is producing more and enjoying more than ever before.

Everyone who knows anything and "knows that
he knows"— this last is very important— begins at
the beginning ; that is to say, he begins wherever he is
fit to begin. Where are you fit to begin? "Well,"
says a young fellow, "I suppose I would have to be-
gin at the bottom." Good! It is the best place to
begin and the easiest place to get away from.

But, remember this, you are not there to stay tm-
less you ought to. It is really your duty to progress
in order to make room for the man behind you.

But you must not think that the factory exists for

271

FORD IDEALS

the express purpose of promoting you. As long as
you are there, your business is to promote the business
of the factory. Then, as it advances, you go with it.

Every business that is growing is creating new
places for capable men. It cannot help but do so. A
settled business that is just holding its own, where
someone must die or resign before there can be ad-
vancements, is necessarily slow in promotions. But
growing businesses are not.

This does not mean that new openings come every
day and in groups. Not at all. Ambitious young fel-
lows often wish that chances would occur at a rate
which would be simply ruinous. But it is the fellow
who can stand the gaff of routine for a long time and
still keep himself alive and alert in it, that will be
remembered and chosen. It is not sensational bril-
liance we seek in our business, but sound substantial
dependability day after day. Not skyrockets, but
men whose sounder qualities can be depended upon.

More young men lose out through impatience than
any other cause. Big enterprises of necessity move
slowly and cautiously. When you become impatient,
you had better lay it away for a year or two. At about
the same time that you saw a certain thing ought to
be done, and were irritated because it was not done,
your superiors saw it too, and began to readjust af-
fairs so that it could be done. That takes time. Don't
lose your own chances by jumping out just when your
advancement might have been absolutely secured by
patient industry. Industry is just doing the same thing
time after time with an effort to do it better. The
young man with an ambition for his own future ought
to take a long look ahead and leave an ample margin
of time for things to happen.

Z7Z

Revolutions Not Promoters

of Progress

THE Root problem, after all, is human nature.
But to say that is to lay oneself open to the charge
of platitude. There is an almost instinctive human
dislike of any reminder that it is humanity, and not
something outside of humanity, that is responsible for
conditions. Even our wise men would rather talk
learnedly about the effects of faulty human nature, as
we view those effects in society, than about faulty
human nature itself. However, there is a very good
object to be secured in compelling people to think
deeply enough at times to penetrate as far as them-
selves, as far as their own secret natures, and as far
as their individual responsibility for conditions.

We don't want to standardize human nature — we
could not if we would. It is the endless variety of
individuality that makes society endurable. But what
all of us would like to do would be to standardize hu-
man moral dependability. We should like to be sure
that to a certain essential degree we could absolutely
depend on human nature "staying put." We are not
sure of that now. We are not sure that we ever shall
be sure of it.

We can depend on the ability of certain elements
which affect human nature. Man's need of food, sleep,
clothing and family life will influence him to a consid-
erable degree; but even in spite of these he will still
remain an unknown moral quantity.

When you form blocks of granite into the shape
of a house, you are pretty sure that the granite is
going to stay. But when you form men into an orderly
society, you are not at all sure how long that form
of society is going to stay. Unlike material of the
house, the material of society changes under yoi<»*
hands. There is no forecasting whether it will turn
into adamant or sponge. It is now solid, now fluid,
now hot, now cold, now orderly, now exulting in vast

273

FORD IDEALS

Whatever may be the conditions in which we find
ourselves at present, this is absolutely true of them:
they were caused by people ; they are being continued
by people; they will change when people change, and
not before. We cannot control the weather, nor every
plague, but we can control — rather, we could control
if we would — our social weather, with its storms, its
uncertainty, its destructiveness and its unequal
seasons.

One of the strange phenomena of the present is
the ascendancy of the destructive type of mind.

The world at large seems to be infatuated with the
idea that if something is pulled down, something is
thereby built up ; if something is destroyed, something
is thereby created.

There is in every country a party which believes
that if it could destroy the orderly institutions of that
country, it would thereby create a new era of social
justice.

Every community has a group which believes that
if only the channels of orderly justice and decency
could be smashed, a new brotherhood of man would
rise automatically out of the ruin.

Would-be philosophers preach the doctrine of the
necessity of revolution ; never was any progress made,
they say, except through violent revolutions. But
everybody knows that every revolution was a mistake
and disgraced or postponed the liberties it sought. The
most revolutionary thing in the world is an idea, and
a conquering idea does not need to imprison, punish
or kill a man to make itself powerful.

In the name of Order, disorder is counselled; in
the name of Liberty, the dictatorship of a few idle and
non-productive agitators is urged; in the name of
Brotherhood, profound and venomous hatred between
the classes is fomented. Surely, human nature is the
sum of all, contradictions!

What every thoughtful man should fear about a
possible revolution is not its occurrence, but the course
it would take after it was started.

The difficulty about revolutions is the impossibility
of controlling them — ^an impossibility shared even by
the men who start revolutions. They get out of hand.

274

REVOLUTIONS NOT PROMOTERS OF PROGRESS

They -rage like forest-fires. Very often they destroy
even those who instigated them.

Revolutions are not orderly, social forces march-
ing to the establishment of a new and better order.
They are an outlet of hellish hatreds and unbridled
passions, massive thefts, the death of moral and social
responsibility, a most horrible debauch of all that is
rottenest in human nature.

Humanity does not know of what stuff it is made
until the restraint of society is taken off, and the mask
is taken off, and human greeds and jealousies and
ignorances and passions are given full sway.

The revolutions of which we may read comfortably
in the books are not at all the revolutions the people
went through. The real thing is the collapse of every
element that justifies mankind considering itself as a
high animal.

However, it is not alone to the disgruntled njan
that we must look for these destructionist influences.
We are far too prone to talk as if the "Reds" were
the only ones engaged in destroying social order and
the solidity of social institutions.

Not at all. Any man, rich or poor, in business or
in politics, who does anythihg that undermines men's
faith in the essential justice at least of society's in-
tentions, is thereby destroying society as rapidly, as
menacingly, as criminally as any "Red" could do it.

What you find at one extreme of society, that you
will find at the other. Rich criminals make poor
criminals. Lawless millionaires make lawless miners.
Lawless statesmen make lawless citizens. It works
out inevitably this way.

If you have profiteers in the big brownstone build-
i^^gs, you will have hold-up men in the streets.

If you have a "to hell with the People" spirit in
your higher offices, you are going to have a "to hell
with the Government" spirit in the lower sections of
your cities — and don't you forget it! What's sauce
for the capitalistic gander is sauce for the laboristic

It is not too much to say that the whole impetus
of this present plague of lawlessness came from the
top. Its whole reason for being comes from what
we so wrongly call the "upper classes." These more

275

FORD IDEALS

favored classes were lawless first. And their law-
lessness is coming back upon them with redoubled
retribution, for the very fact that it is they who are
now pleading for law and order is the reason why the
plea is laughed at. Yes, law that the people may be
kept in order, but no order so strict as that the priv-
ileged ones shall have to obey the law! — ^that is the
mocking answer.

When they are trying the criminals of the Great
War, they ought not to overlook the profiteers.

The profiteer is the most dangerous of all the
"Reds" that have ever appeared on earth. He is more
dangerous than kings — for .we can get rid of kings.
He is even more dangerous than militarists — ^militar-
ists turn out to be very fallible men when their helmets
and gold braid are removed. But the profiteer is al-
ways there, playing inside all the lines, making money
out of soldiers' deaths and the distress of nations —
the dirtiest money that ever fotmd its way into a

The profiteer ought to be charged specifically with
(a) defrauding the Government, (b) treason to the
Army, (c) giving aid and comfort to the enemy, and
(d) fomenting disloyalty in time of war.

It is pretty hard to gainsay the now common argu-
ment that a society which harbors the profiteer is
itself in need of reform.

The profiteer is one of the excuses — one of the
good excuses — which the "Reds" offer for their pres-
ent attitude. And if the "Reds" would only center
their attention there and help us get rid of the
profiteers, that would be doing a regenerative and
constructive act.

The crimes of the profiteer after the war, the in-
crease of his already too big gains by speculating with
the food of the people, certainly point him out as the
one influence which more than any other has driven
people into enmity toward our present form of society.
This is where the destructive spirit was bom.

Why would it not be a wise move to attack the
destructive spirit at its source? Why not go after
those men whose actions destroy the people's faith in
the ' possibility of justice? They ought to be made
to pay the penalty, and not society.

276

The Obstructionist

THE destructionist groups, which have been 'mak-
ing so much noise of recent months and causing
the government so much difficulty in dealing with
them, represent a type of individual which we always
have with us. If they are apparently very noisy now
about destroying the more settled and time-proved
institutions, it is only because these institutions hap-
pen to be to the fore. When the subject was some-
thing else, the attitude was the same.

That is to say, the man whose only remedy for
governmental flaws is to destroy the government, is
the same type of man who goes to breaking dishes on
the floor in a fit of anger. He would rather smash
his pipe than clean it; he would rather strike his son
than counsel him ; he would rather damn his opponent
than understand him.

Whenever men of this type are placed up against
any problem which needs intelligence and patience for
its solution, they react at once to their temperamental
cure-all, destruction. They are the kind of men who
rip a collar to pieces because a buttonhole will not
readily open. In a world of their own these men
would not be bothersome, for in a world controlled
by them there would be nothing to destroy. The very
lack of the product of other men's constructive patience
would force them to grub for the means to live; it
would leave them no time for their peculiar disorder
to assert itself. There is mighty little of the de-
structive element in a state of society which strains
everybody's energies to make both ends meet.

Destructive temperaments are largely the product
of a condition of plenty and leisure. "Men kick when
they wax fat." Destructiveness is a pest which can
live only in cultivated fields. Let it destroy that on
which it lives, and the destructiveness dies too, like a
mania which has sated itself.

The world is large and there is much merit in a

277

FORD IDEALS

recent suggestion that a fertile island under control
of the United States should be set aside for those who
apparently abhor government, an island where, with-
out duress or hindrance but with unlimited encourage-
ment, they could work out their own theories to logical
conclusions and see with their own eyes the end
thereof.

However, it is not the destructionists that society
needs to fear today, but another and larger class which
we may call The Obstructionists. The absolute de-
structionists are few and futile. They never really
destroy except in the physical sense, they never really
change anything; at best they are but the tools of
those whose principles are constructive.

But the Obstructionists are many and influential.
The friends of destruction form the red-hot center,
but there is an outer rim of people who escape the fire
but remain within range of the heat — a more numer-
ous group than the others, but very harmful.

One of the differences between the two is this : the
destructionist is always conscious of his position and
purpose, but a man may be an obstructionist without
knowing it. It may show itself in him not so much
a temper as a bad habit.

If we could assemble the wastes, the leaks, the
costly hindrances against which the world must make
headway every day, the sum of them would stagger us.
They are all the result of intentional or thoughtless ob-
structionism.

Take the coal situation : everybody connected with
it in any way whatsoever has come in for his criticism,
and yet thei;;e is an element we never hear about that
affects every coal user. The little thieves that rake
the coal cars at every stop — ^how much do they add to
the price of coal?

Very considerably. A car is shipped containing so
many tons. It arrives containing a less weight. Short-
age claims are made and the railroads have to make
up the difference. These shortages amount to very
large sums of money. Who pays it? Ultimately the
coal user. The railroad, to protect itself against the
shortages caused by thievery, adds the cost to the price
of carrying the coal. The man who uses the coal

278

THE OBSTRUCTIONIST

pays for the average amount of coal the thief takes,
in order that he may get the amount of coal he ordered.
Probably never a single coal thief ever dreamed that
he was an element in the situation at all, but he is.
He is an obstructionist.

Little dishonesties, multiplied by twenty-five or
thirty million citizens, are a far costlier drain on the
country than the large dishonesties of a few powerful
rich men. Yet it is more convenient to blame the
prominent few than the obscure multitudes.

In fact it is a fetish with the people that everyone
may be wrong but them. And it is one of the signs
of a true leader of the people that he dares rebuke
them, that he does not praise them as all-wise and
perfect.

Obstructionism is the real trouble of the country
today. The attitude of a large portion of our people
seems to be to sag back in the breeching. The only
use of a breeching is to hold the wagon back ! When
the breeching is most in use, the wagon is going down
hill ! Let this be a word to the wise.

The yard-master down at the freight yards is also
a very important factor. If he is still playing the old
game of waiting for a bribe before he will move
urgently needed cars in or out, he is an obstructionist.
One day's delay on a car may mean the loss of 10,000
days of work. A day's delay on material may mean
the loss of an important contract. No one can com-
pute the loss which has been forced on the people of
the country by incompetency or unwillingness among
men who are responsible for the movement of ma-
terial and cars throughout the land.

But it is the same wherever obstructionism prevails.
Even an office boy may have his part in slowing up
the business day, or snarling it at some important
point. The stenographer may unconsciously disar-
range a whole series of transactions. The janitor re-
sponsible for the lighting or heating of an office or
factory may help the organization press forward into
the collar, or assist it to sag back in the breeching.

Someone may say, "Why talk of breeching in a
day of gears? Only farmers and horsemen will un-
derstand what you mean by breeching."

279

FORD IDEALS

Well, this is the reason: life, after all, is run by
man-power. You may dispense with horse-power
both in man and beast — for the ordinary use of hu-
man energy for purposes that might as well be an-
swered by machinery, is just taking your horse-power
out of men's bodies, that is all.

Man-power, not muscular power, but man-power,
is still the staple of all achievement.

Men harness themselves to a task. The power
they put forth in it is their interest, their efficiency,
their hope. When these are present in full force, men
press forward into the ccdlar ; when these are lacking,
men sag back into the breeching, for our jobs are only
the harnesses we have put on in order to accomplish
something. If we sag back on the job, we hold back
the load, we don't deliver the goods.

We have machinery to take the place of man's
muscles; we have no machinery to take the place of
his willingness and interest. Man is like a pulse, he
beats strong and full, or slow and weak, but it is the
pulse that determines all matters at last. There is no
substitute for men, there is no substitute for human
co-operation and industry and willingness to put things
through. ,

We suffer for lack of that man-power which it is
peculiarly the gift of man to put forth — the power
of self-motivation, the power of going at it and stick-
ing to it and getting it done. Too many of us have
become wheelbarrows which must be trundled along.
We need to become self-starters, and so move ob-
structions out of the way, instead of becoming an
obstruction ourselves.

280

Would the Farmers Strike?

PERHAPS you overlooked it in the day's news,
because the most important occurrences are not
always deemed worthy of emphasis in the newspapers.
But the fact that the farmers of the United States
have considered the "strike" as a method of solving
their own difficulties, and have arrived at the con-
clusion that they have no moral right to strike, is one
of the most significant decisions made in this genera-
tion. And the conclusions which the. farmers draw
from their own attitude and belief are of very great
importance to the labor question in general. Every-
body at one time or another has asked himself the
question, "Suppose the farmers should strike — what
then?" Serious men have been appalled by the mere
suggestion.

But wiseacres, who apparently do not know what
is going on, have put it aside as impossible. "Why,
the farmers are not organized," they say. Which
shows how little they are informed.

It was at a national meeting of the organized
farmers of the United States — ^The National Grange,
the Patrons of Husbandry, the American Farm Bureau
Federation, the Cotton States Board and the Asso-
ciation of Farmers' Union Presidents — whose aggre-
gate membership covers the country and whose in-
fluence is unimpeachable, that the decision referred
to was made. If the farmers had so far forgotten
their relation and duty to humanity at large as to put
their private or class rights above the Public Right, it
would not be impossible for them to start a curtailing
movement that would make the wiseacres turn pale.

This national meeting adopted a memorial from
which we quote one paragraph:

'What would be the verdict of the people if the
farmers of the United States should go on a strike
and should refuse to supply the wants and needs of
those who are not in a position to produce food and

281

FORD IDEALS

clathing for themselves? The farmers would be con-
demned from one end of the country to the other, and
the fact would be pointed out that the owners and
tillers of the land had no right, either moral or legal,
to bring about such a calamity. If the farmer has no
such right, those who handle his products have no such
right/'

That is basically sound — ^both in economics and
morals. It is especially notable because in the last
sentence it links all industry with farming, and this
is a point that we often forget.

We are accustomed to say that the farmer pro-
duces our food. That is a partial statement. He
produces our clothing too. Where do the wool and
the cotton and the leather and the flax come from?
Why, they come from the farm!

Farming produces railroading too. Would there
be any railroads without farming? The farmer feeds
the trainmen, and the moving of crops is the basic
reason for the railroads' existence. Farming pro-
duces manufacturing too. It may be the coal beneath
the boilers that keeps the factory wheels turning, but it
is the farmer's products that keep the workers going.
Food is the fuel of human effort.

Now, whenever railroad men, or mechanics, or
miners go out on strike, they go out on the food which
the farmer furnishes. The farmer is the commissary
of everything, good and bad. And he has a right to
his word when the very products of his toil are used
to create conditions which make it harder for all the
people to live.

The three great arts are linked together — ^Agri-
culture, Transportation, Manufacture. They all serve
each other. But the origin and sustenance of all is
Agriculture.

The farmer feels this more keenly than anyone
else, because he still lives amid conditions that make
for sanity of mind. He lives under the sky, he deals
with the soil, he knows the flawless and beautiful order
of nature's laws; and he sees also that the anarchy
of himian society is not constructive but steadily de-
structive.

Yes, he could strike too. The farmer could strike

282

WOULD THE FARMERS STRIKE?

hardest of all. Why doesn't he? Because he feels
d6ep and sacredly in the core of his heart that when
mere man grows so impudent as to attempt to hold
up the God-given processes of nature, it would con-
stitute the last rebellion of mankind on the physical
plane. Whether he would say it in just those words
or not, this is what the farmer feels. If he struck
he would be a traitor to Nature.. The shining sun,
the falling shower would rebuke him. Seedtime with-
out seed would denounce him, and harvest-time with-
out harvest would curse him.

No, the farmer is not going to trifle with the
Powers that are above and around him. He is Priest
of the Soil. He would not profane his earthly altar.
America should be thankful for the strength of the
moral imperative among American farmers! Now,
the question is, "Has any other man who handles the
fruits of the soil the right to do what the farmer has
no right to do?"

Has the miner the right to refuse coal that the
wheat may be baked into bread? Has the spinner a
right to refuse labor that the cotton and^wool may be
spun into clothing? Has the railroad man a right to
refuse his skill that food and clothing and the means
of living might be transported to those who need
them? Clearly, if the farmer has no right to with-
hold, the others have not.

To say these things is to challenge many popular
fallacies. Our economic past has been so filled with
greed and selfishness and absolute wrongdoing that it
is difficult for some to believe that to deny the right
to strike is not also to deny the right to high wages,
proper working hours and conditions.

Let it be said right here that labor has a right to
high wages, a right to proper hours, a right to proper
conditions, a right to a share in the profits, a right to
a voice in the conduct of industry. These are moral
rights ; they are inherent. Whether they are acknowl-
edged or not, whether they are granted or not, they
still remain rights, because they are fundamentally
human rights — ^they are just, they are good, they are
humane, they are practicable, they produce social good
and prosperity.

283

FORD IDEALS

But that these rights entitle anyone — ^to quote again
from the Farmers' memorial — "to starve the people
of the cities," in order to force, by the suffering of
the innocent, a proper respect for rights on the part
of the employing class, is drawing an unwarrantable
conclusion.

"How are we going to get our rights without
striking?" Here again we rim up against one of the
snags of our industrial system. If an employer won't
do right, how is he to be made to do right ?

Well, how would it do to educate the employer to
a knowledge of how he could do the right thing and
make it pay? And the men can do that, if the em-
ployer is not bright enough to see it for himself. (An
employer who cannot see these things for himself is
not fit to direct his workmen.) Men have been di-
viding themselves ofif into classes for the sake of
hindering and hurting each other, when they should
have endeavored to draw themselves nearer together
for the sake of educating each other in different points
of view. The employer knows things that the employe
doesn't know, and the employe knows things that the
employer doesn't know — and all about the same eco-
nomic conditions too. The sensible, direct way would
be, not to begin to try to starve each other out because
they don't know the same things, but to come to-
gether and share their light, and all get the broader
point of view, and go on together in partnership of
production and profits.

A strike is war. War is imnecessary. War is an
irrecoverable loss to both winner and loser. Let us
delay both war and strikes and use the simpler and
more effective means of meeting man to man, face to
face, as fellow-laborers who desire to find the right
basis. For it is only the right basis that can continue.
Anything that is not right, whether it temporarily
favors the employes or the employers, cannot last —
because it is not right.

And anything that is not consistent with our duty
to ourselves, our work and the community, is not right.

284

Who Is Their Boss?

THERE has been an interesting evolution in the
questions which the people have put to office-
seekers. Years ago we asked candidates what they
were seeking office for. This was the consequence of
a period of school instruction by which the American
boy was taught to admire the fame and glory of public
office. Merely to achieve an office and a title was
considered to be "success," and naturally men did not
scruple as to the methods by which the success was
achieved. Their principal occupation after election
was to repay at public expense the political trainers
who groomed them for the race and counted them in.
In the general disgust which has followed this seek-
ing of office for glory's sake, the people are beginning
to ask candidates for what they were working. The
people exalted the standard of Fame Through Service
rather than fame through office.

There is now, however, a new question. It doesn't
go directly or exclusively to the motives a candidate
might think he has, but to the masters he has. The
question to ask of candidates today is not only, "Why
do you want this office ? What do 5^ou think your mo-
tives are in seeking it?" but rather, "Who specially
wants you to have it? Who i^ your master? For
whom are you working?" The basis of the new ques-
tion is this : Power goes with office, regardless of the
strength or weakness of the incumbent. There are
concealed interests whose whole existence depends
on such a hold of the higher offices. Indeed, it is the
higher offices of our government that are most neces-
sary to the continuance of certain interests and priv-
ileges. It is therefore of vital importance to them
that they retain their control, and there is no surer
way of doing this than by guarding all the approaches
to our highest offices so that only a certain kind of
men are permitted to arrive there.

The question, "For whom are you working?" is

285

FORD IDEALS

therefore a most important one for every electorate
to ask and every candidate to consider.

But here is the amazing thing — some candidates
don't know who it is they are working for! They
fancy they are working for themselves. They some-
times believe they are working for the people. But
they do not always know who their real masters are.
There are lawyers in America who do not know who
their .ultimate clients are : they know the person with
whom they do business, they do not know in whose
ultimate interest the business is done.

Likewise there are financial institutions in Amer-
ica and elsewhere which apparently are independent
concerns, managed by and in the interests of the men
whose names appear as officers and directors. But
sometimes even these men do not know whose game
they are playing. They are but the "fronts" of in-
terests which are neyer known to the public, and which
keep their identity concealed that they may the better
play interest against interest.

Strange as it may seem, not every man knoWs^
for whom he is working. There are highly placed
men in these United States who would get the sur-
prise of their lives if they followed back the clues
which would lead them to their real masters.

When a man is in honest business he wants his
name to appear at the front of the business. The
young man opens a shop or a store and he is proud
to have his name in front. He puts out a useful and
honestly made product and he is proud to have his
name known in connection with it. But the biggest
business interests in the world, those who play back
and forth with the riches and the destiny of nations,
never want their names to be known, ndr their organ-
ization, nor their power. They break themselves up
into numerous corporations in each of which only a
trusted agent will appear, while the remainder of the
men will apparently be the real masters of the busi-
ness, and sometimes actually think they are.

That is why it is said that not every man knows
who his master is. And it behooves every man to
find out ; especially those men who commit their lives
to the searching test of public service.

286

WHO IS THEIR BOSS?

This concealed international control of the world
flourishes because people do not believe it exists. They
don't see how it can exist. They imagine no selfish
group could hold together strongly enough to manage
the world. But if they knew the special international
elements involved they would readily see how possible
it is. Some day a world-wide exposure will be made
and many things explained which have always puzzled
the plain people, and we shall see that much which we
have charged up to the "mystery of life" has really
been the deliberate efifect of a deep-wrought, unified
international but private program.

In politics the effect of this control has been to
take out the local and human element. That is, can-
didates are no longer selected for their individual at-
titude with reference to public problems, but for their
relationship to this invisible hierarchy.

Few states select their own senators any longer,
save in very exceptional instances. The national
group, taking care of its end of the international
group's business, knows the kind of man it wants,
chooses in each state one of the men it has kept in
training, and creates the conditions under which the
people elect him. It appears that senators no Jonger
represent their states; they seem to represent "in-
terests" which are interstate and international.

The same is true of almost every office. Repre-
sentatives to the state legislature are becoming less
and less district representatives, and more and more
the representatives of state and national "interests"
in their districts. Representatives in Congress also
tend to become less than formerly the representatives
of the people who voted for them, and more the rep-
resentatives of the interests who groomed them and
nominated them. Even governorships are going the
same way.

It simply indicates that instead of Government
rooting down into the people, it is heading up into an
international control that picks out of the midst of
the people the men who will serve it.

And some men serve it unconsciously. They do
not always know the source of the business that has
been thrown their way. They do not always know the

287

FORD IDEALS

source of the interest which is shown in them. They
do not always see the vision which others have of
their future usability in office. And so they go on,
fancying they are being carried on the pleasant crest
of cumulative success, when really they are being
picked out because their inclinations or obligations may
render them useful at some time. It is a wonderful
system and its ramifications have no end. Cities are
networks, states are networks, nations are networks,
and the whole net is drawn by interests who have no
nationalistic interests whatever. They are apart from
the world, living upon the world, using the world as
their counting table. The whole system is founded
on self-interest. Everyone allied with it gets some-
thing out of it. The little fellows get a little, the big
fellows get more. Usually the little fellows get an
income and a taste of public honor. The big fellows
get the big public honors. It is what the public has
within its gift that keeps the system going. The sys-
tem never sacrifices anything for principle; it has no
inspired reformers ; seldom are its servants big enough
to be called, States; the whole system exists to curb
and destroy the wisdom and foresight of true states-
men.

Who is master of all these men who want the high
offices within your gift? Do you know? Do they
know?

Who has chosen them ? Who has groomed them ?
Who is supplying the means by which the bait of their
personality is dangled before the public?

Is there any diflference in them? Can you see in
the lot of them one man who really stands out in all
his records and ideas as a free man, untangled by any
favors? '

That is the mark of distinction. Where all can-
didates are equally acceptable to the concealed inter-
ests, it simply is proof that they own the field.

288

The American Shop

IF YOU ask an employer what kind of a shop he
has, he should be able to make the proud reply,
"An American Shop." If you ask an employe in
what kind of a shop he works, he too should be able
to say, "An American Shop." There are all kinds of
names for shops; there is the closed shop and the
open shop— terms which are redolent of strife and ex-
clusion ; there is the piece-work shop and the straight
wage shop; there is the shop that is booming along
all the time because of the quality of its workmanship,
management and output, and there is the shop which
hoT)bles along like a cripple, hardly able to live ; there
is the shop where human principles rule, and the shop
where men are treated as impersonally as if they were
but raw material. But the main difference that exists
between shops is just this : either they measure up to
the American ideal, or they do not.

There are many employers who indulge in great
talk these days about "100 per cent Americanism." It
would be a good thing if they were required to ac-
company their boast by a statement of the profits they
took from the government in the recent war. It would
be found that the percentage of their profits was
equal to or in excess of the percentage of purity they
claim for their Americanism.

The flag that flies above the shop is not the only
index of Americanism a shop can have ; the policy that
is practiced inside tells the story. We all reverence
Our Flag as the symbol of a great free people, but
we cannot reverence all the uses to which profiteers
have put it.

America needs the American Shop. It needs it
not only to meet the vast economic problems which
confront us in the production of an adequate quantity
of goods; but also to solve the problems which have
grown out of past injustices on the part of both lead-
ership and labor.

289

FORD IDEALS

It is pretty well conceded, even by the most slow-
minded employer, that the question of production
cannot be settled until the question of the producer is
settled. The principal and controlling factor in all
our difficulties is the human element. Indeed, all our
difficulties, of whatever nature, are human difficulties ;
they are^the signs of humanity in trouble.

What would be some of the characteristics of a
true American Shop? In personnel and policy it
would be representative. There is no room for na-
tional, racial or religious prejudices in an American
Shop. Its purpose is industry, and that ought to open
wide its doors to all the industrious. The need of
men's labor, and the need of men themselves to labor,
is universal. Work is the burden laid on us all and no
man shirks it without doing harm to himself and the
whole social body. No race is superior, noN-ace is
inferior, neither is any individual so superior or in-
ferior as to escape the necessity of work. In the
arctics and in the tropics, among civilized and bar-
barous peoples, the rule of "work to live" is operative,
and men are found obeying it. There are no class dis-
tinctions in industry. The only nobleman an enlight-
ened estimate can recognize is the citizen who is
carrying his own end of the common burden and do-
ing a little more in order that society may be carried
along prosperously and harmoniously.

By being representative in policy is meant that
the American Shop will be conducted with a view to
all the rights and benefits of the men engaged there
and that portion of the public which it serves. It is
too sadly true that in the past most shops have been
conducted with a view to the benefit of one individual,
one family or one group of investors. But we have
come upon a new vision in industry. We have caught
sight of the power of industry to make men as well
as the commodities of commerce. When we consider
how much of our waking time is spent in working, it
is a thousand pities if the time so spent does nof con-
tribute to the workman himself, in his moral, social
and intellectual life, as well as to his physical needs.
Work is sanative; it is educative; it is preservative.
It produces results in the man himself as well as in

290

THE AMERICAN SHOP

the material that passes under his hand. But, if it
only saps the man, if it makes him less a man, if it
withdraws him from a sense of belonging to and serv-
ing society, there is something wrong. An American
Shop will protect the rights of all engaged in it. One
of the greatest errors into which commercial greed
and selfishness have led us is the acceptance of a
policy that no rights are to be granted until it is ab-
solutely impossible to withhold them any longer. This
has led to a sense of industrial disturbance which has
seriously affected the foundations on which we live
at peace with one another. The American Shop will
grant rights because they are Rights, in the sound
faith that whatever is right is practicable, and if not
practicable under the present system, then under a
revised system which common sense and justice shall
erect.

This simply means that the principles upon which
we live together as a nation and out of which we have
reared our great free institutions shall operate in in- .
dustry also. It is the transcription of the Declaration
and the Constitution into industrial terms. It is the
act of making our political liberty complete by adding
thereto economic liberty also.

Our nation has been slowly made, but it had a
great advantage in starting right. Little by little it
has modified its Constitution, not to change the spirit
of it, but to enlarge its application and to render it
more effective in achieving its original objects.

And in this way our industrial relations must be
remade. We have certain sound foundations now.
We believe that labor is what all must engage in for
self-development, for social service, and to promote
the evolution of humanity. We have no fatuous idea
that we shall ever be free of the necessity of work.
Baked bread will never grow on trees, nor will Nature
ever provide us with homes and schools ready built.

If practices and attitudes have crept in which are
not in harmony with the truth that we are all human
beings of equal needs, then these will have to be rie-
vised and corrected. All of us are fallible. The one
and only superman has not come, but we are in a
super-stage of society wherein the general level of

291

power and visioo is devated to a degree that a previous
age would have considered miracaloas. Therefore we
are better fitted to work ont oar proUems by our-
selves, in the American Way. And what is the Amer-
ican Way? WTiy, by all of us starting out with the
agreement that wisdcmi is not the exdusive possession
of any man or party. All that we have in this coun-
try is the outcome of many points of view merged into
a woricaMe program. We have all shades of c^inion
in this country, each of them strongly endorsed and
propagated. But the country itself merges all shades
into one distinctive American whcrfe.

The American Way is constructive. It grows out
of ideas, not out of violence. It works by education,
not by disint^^tion. Nothing permanent is accom-
plished by forces pulling apart, because in this coun-
try everything that is accomplished comes by various
opinions pulling together toward a desired end.

There is no diflFerence of opinion in this country
as to what we desire our common life to be. All
agree on the desired object. The difference comes in
the methods of attaining it. But even this difference
is educational. Radical and conservative interact upon
each other, modify each other, until presently they
come together for united achievement. That is the
American Way, and the results of it stand.

The American Shop should reflect the Republic in
its highest ideals. Liberty, unity and fraternity should
be its bond and its method from the front office to the
last man at the last machine at the end of the shop —
and then out beyond to all the families which the shop
serves, and to the public which is the benefidary of its
work and planning.

292

The Small Town

WE LIVE better in small communities than in
large ones. Individually and in small groups
we are human, but in great masses our human quali-
ties seem overruled. Cities have no souls because
their whole tendency is toward soulless conditions.
In small communities the better qualities of our nature
have a chance; they have a much better chance of
setting the standard ; but in large communities it is the
looser standards and the more heartless qualities that
set our fashions and our customs.

Every social ailment from which we suffer today
originates and centers in the great cities. But you
will find the smaller communities living along in uni-
son with the seasons, having neither extreme poverty
nor wealth, and none of the violent plagues of up-
heaval and unrest which afflict our great populations.
There is something about a city of a million people
which is untamed and threatening, while 30 miles away
are happy and contented villages that read of the
ravings of the city as if it were an unexplainable
phenomenon. A great city is really a helpless mass.
Everything it uses is carried to it. Stop the transport
and the city stops. It lives oflF the shelves of stores,
but the shelves produce nothing. The city cannot feed,
clothe, warm nor house itself ; its industries are de-
pendent on the raw materials brought to them, often
from a thousand miles.

City conditions of work and living are so artificial
that men's instincts sometimes rebel against the un-
naturalness of them. Groups of men soon learn how
to dislocate the city's life and they take a malicious
pleasure in doing it. Designing mpn know how to
upset a city's sense of security and thus force for
themselves concessions which the rest of the people
have to pay. The city, especially of late years, has
been at the mercy of any one of a dozen groups, all
of which in turn use their dislocating and disturbing

293

FORD IDEALS

power to compel the other people to satisfy them.
The strike of any industry is a strike against the rest
of the city. If it be more than a local strike, it is a
strike against the rest of the country. All strikes, in
their last analysis, are against the people. ^

If we lived in smaller communities it is conceivable
that we should still sometimes rebel against being shut
up within four walls all the year round. It is a strain
upon our natures to work indoors all the time. There
is a part of the year which calls all free men out-of-
doors, the time of the year when indeed men must go
out-of-doors to labor if food is to be provided for the
people.

Now, if we lived in small communities where the
human touch would not be lost in the mass; if we
had a good and useful manufactory set up beside the
nearby stream which would supply us with water
power and where we could work during the indoor
months; then, when springtime came and the land
called to us, we could go.

And we could go in the consciousness that we were
not quitting work, nor curtailing production, nor dis-
locating the economic processes of society, but doing
the thing most needful at the time.

The city not only produces conditions which tend
to make men reckless of their duty to bear their share
of the work of production, but it also makes it im-
possible for men to give vent to their grievance, what-
ever it may be, in any way except by idleness. Every
protest they make by the strike method is sheer loss.
Leaving out of the question the other damage it does in
increasing the feeling of uncertainty and undepend-
abjlity, the-tiistress it causes, and its general contribu-
tion to the prevailing condition, a strike is sheer eco-
nomic loss.

If a body of men became dissatisfied with their
work in the railway yards or the shop and left their
jobs to go out and work in the fields for a while, there
would be no economic loss. What they withdrew from
transportation or manufacture they would simply con-
tribute to agriculture. Their productive capacities
would at least be employed in a useful field, and result
in benefit to some one. But as it is now, the strike is

294

^-'

THE SMALL TOWN

an appeal to idleness and loss as prime weapons in
coercing society. The men just stop. And as a re-
sult, a world that is already behind in everything it
needs, is thrust behind thousands and millions of days
of labor more, simply because a few men have learned
and applied their hindering power.

Industrial disturbances, we are learning, are not So
much due to wages or hours or any other tangible
condition, as to "human nature." Just plain human
nature. A workingman in a certain institution com-
plained of his job. He was carefully taken around to
other jobs, some of them less important, some of them
more important than the one which irked him. He
was given a trial on all of them. But still he chafed.
Finally he said, "Well, I guess I won't work at all for
a little while."

Now, all the industrial conferences in the world
could not make a reputation dealing with that case.
None of the usual elements of the labor problem af-
fected that man; it was just "human nature," a sort
of schoolboy carelessness. He had been drawing good
wages and therefore felt that because he had money
in his pocket he had a right to withdraw himself from
production, even though the world was suffering for
lack of the article on which he worked.

Maybe the man was tired. Maybe he wanted a
change. If we were organized in small communities,
with the town manufacturing establishment next door
to the food-producing fields, such a man would have
had his summer work out-of-doors, and he would
have had interest and stamina enough for his indoor
manufacturing work. He would have had, in other
words, a balanced work-ration.

It is useless to say that everybody ought to go on
the farm and stay there, for if everybody did that,
farming would soon decline as a satisfactory occupa-
tion. It is just as useless for everyone to flock to the
manufacturing towns, for if the farms be deserted, of
what use are manufactures? A city cannot live on
its own manufactures.

But when a reciprocity exists between farming
and manufacture, the manufacturer giving the farmer
what he needs to be a good farmer, and the farmer

295

FORD IDEALS

and other producers of raw materials giving the manu-
facturer what he needs to be a good manufacturer;
and then when Transportation comes in to act as the
messenger between Manufacture and Agriculture, we
have a system that is stable and sound because it is
built on service and employs these three principal arts.
If we lived in smaller communities where the tension
of living were not so high, and where the products
of the fields and gardens could be had without the
interference of so many profiteers, there would be
less unrest.

Many of our problems, at least the fiery edge of
many of our problems, may be analyzed down to
"nerves." But "nerves" are very real none-the-less.
Only when the condition is largely "nerves" it would
help us if we were to recognize that fact, and' not
charge the condition to some other cause that is not
responsible.

There is no reason why life should be lived at such
a nervous tension. Moreover, money is not a cure
for "nerves." The cure is in a saner way of living,
under more natural conditions. Economy of produc-
tion will probably always mean large groups of men
working together. But that need not preclude them
working irl close proximity to the open fields where
they may be in touch with the most basic industry,
the production of food.

When we begin to use the water power of the
smaller streams and establish our workshops through
the country districts, we shall then see men working
and living under natural conditions, with an annual
opportunity for out-of-door work; we shall see the
necessity of transporting coal done away with and
manufacturing villages free of smoke; and we shall
also see men healed of their restlessness which always
causes and seldom cures their trouble.

296

Man's Laws and Nature's Law

WE ARE told that 60,000 laws were made in this
country last year. This seems to be quite a num-
ber for one people to bear. But probably the most
of them were improvements on old rules, and a con-
siderable proportion of them were probably called
into being by the new conditions that have arisen.
Most of our so-called laws are only rules which we
lay down to facilitate action, like the rules of the
road which are based on a knowledge of the acts which
most often cause trouble. By establishing such rules
we promote safety and ease of progress, we give every
man a very definite idea of his rights, we provide a
standard by which he may know what to expect from
others.

It has become quite fashionable, rather it was a few
years ago, to make sport of the laws. Unequal and
incomplete laws which lent themselves to the jugglery
of lawyers and the evasion of the powers that prey,
became the butt of popular ridicule. Sometimes, too,
the action of the agencies appointed to administer the
law gave rise to the opinion that there was one law
for the rich and another for the poor. Or, if not that,
then so many more laws into which the rich man could
wriggle because he could pay for it, that finally he
could tangle justice in its own web and go free.

There are three kinds of laws, and their intention
is, each in its degree, to save us from the next higher
one, if only we let it.

At the bottom of the ladder is man-made law. It
is a hiunan product. It is subject to all the fallacies
and faults which inhere in human efforts. There prob-
ably never was an absolutely perfect human statute.

Still, to confess that does not indicate that human
law is worthless. Human law is an attempt to crystal-
lize the fruits of our experience into rules by which
others may benefit by our experience without having
to pay the price that we had to pay. Men found that

297

FORD IDEALS

certain ways of doing things wrought hardship, in-
justice and danger. They found that certain Hnes of
conduct terminated in certain conditions. They found
that if the community pursued a certain course with
reference to social relations or material possessions,
certain distressful results ensued. So, instead of
running the risk of everybody upsetting the order of
life while he was learning by his own mistakes, the
community simply made rules in which its experience
was embodied and which saved it from a continual
suffering of the same kinds of disappointment and
pain.

Now, if men do not heed man-made laws, if they
escape the first barrier which society itself has reared
across false paths, then there is another barrier — ^they
will come in conflict with economic law.

Economic law is that law which is written in the
nature of things. Not in the nature of the human
soul and mind, but only in things. We know very
little about it as yet. If we knew very much we could
write our knowledge down in man-made laws and so
prevent society tumbling headlong every little while
over some economic law which will doubtless seem
very clear and simple once we discover what it is.
Many learned men have composed books on political
economy, and many other learned men have composed
other books on the same subject to show that the
former books were wrong.

This law isn't written in books at all; if it were,
we should all know it. It is written in things, and as
a matter of fact the world has been too busy getting
the things to pay much attention to the law of them.
Fundamental in that law is the system of the earth,
the seasons. Without sowing, no reaping. Wild sow-
ing, little reaping. Without work, little product. We
have compressed part of the law into a saying that
"you cannot get something for nothing." That ap-
pears to be one certain rule of economic law. You
might evade and befool man-made law, but economic
law operates infallibly. But it isn't limitedly personal
in its operation. Sometimes a few powerful men
violate the law by idle and unproductive speculation,
and then a great number of people who did not violate

298

man's laws and nature's law

it at all are made to suffer. That is where man-made
law will come in again when we know economic law:
we shall prevent by law any man doing things the
consequences of which will be adverse to people who
are innocent of wrongdoing.

If you take it more limitedly still, we may say
that a yoimg man may disobey and positively deride
his father's advice that he ought to be industrious.
Well, he may be able to escape his father's law, but
if he isn't industrious the economic law will get him,
and it is a great deal harder to deal with.

There is still a higher law which gets all without
exception — it is the moral law. You may violate man-
made law, and no one be the wiser and, apparently,
no one the worse. You may violate economic law
and still be carried through by the momentum of so-
ciety's economic soundness. But the moral law you
can never evade. You cannot even break it!

That may seem extremely odd, and perhaps un-
true. You may say, "T"he moral law says, *Thou shalt
not lie.' Very well, I here and now deliberately utter
a lie. Have I not broken that moral law which you
say cannot be broken?"

No, you have not. The law stands there in its
eternal integrity. You have not broken it, but you
have broken something in yourself against it. In con-
flict with the moral law all that we can break is our-
selves. If we steal, we break some bulwark of self-
respect within us — inevitably break it. If we lie, we
break some tissue of integrity within us. If we de-
ceive our fellow men, we break down the subtle some-
thing that advertises us as trustworthy to those about
us. If we are always motivated by narrow selfishness,
we ground the living current which connects us in
social sympathy with our fellows.

Every virtue we practice is a battery filling us with
power, for there is power in straightforwardness. It
gives power to the eye, the voice, and to the subtle
effluence of personal influence. And everything that
is not virtuous, but indirect, unclean and shifty, takes
power from the eye and confidence from the voice and
steadiness from the purpose; the electric substances

299

FORD IDEALS

which flow from an lU-Hved life advertise its low
estate.

Many men have escaped man-made law, they have
escaped economic law — so far, at least (nobody need
be too cocksure about this, for the end of the test has
not come), but no man ever lived without receiving
sentence in himself upon every violation of the moral
law. It gets us all, for sentence or reward. High or
low, none escape. It is godlike in its impartial opera-
tion. It cannot be postponed, nor fought to a higher
court, nor bribed. No one else can take the sentence
for us — ^the law is there, and no man ever so much as
shook it a hair's breadth. It has the final word, and
its word is final.

Now, with these things in view, ought not' our
regard to increase for the purpose of man-made law ?
Man-made law is an attempt to prevent men going so
far as to become liable to the penalties of the higher
laws. Eventually the transgressor in every field will
^ be dealt with by some law. Some transgressions are

so great that they are dealt with by all three laws at
once. But it is safe to say that if all had regard to
the experience of society as boiled down into our
written statutes, there would be far fewer candidates
for the higher and harder degrees of discipline and
retribution. Man-made law is really the expression
of wiser ones' desire that those who come after
should not pay too high a price to learn what might
be learned by the experience of others.

300

The Fact Shortage

THE question of spending money in politics is like
the question of earning money in business, it is a
matter of honesty. Money may be dishonestly spent
just as it may be dishonestly acquired, and a great deal
of it is being dishonestly spent all the time, even out-
side politics. All waste is dishonest, especially the
waste of that into which another's labor has entered,
or that out of which a good use might be obtained.
Thus all appeal to the extravagant tastes of the people
is also dishonest, the tempting of buyers with gewgaws
that merely "get the money" and never give it equiv-
alent in use. Everything that wastes material, debases
taste, encourages a flashy, thoughtless, spendthrift
habit, is dishonest.

Now, spending money in politics is partly a matter
of taste, partly of conscience, partly of law. Ordinary
personal modesty ought to prevent a man spending
his own money to gain a prefermeht for himself. A
good colonel would not think of buying promotion to
the rank of general ; he would desire to win that rank
by the method of merit. A lawyer would not be fit
for the bench who would consider buying his way
there ; as a lawyer he would get more satisfaction out
of the honor by having it bestowed upon him through
the unbiased judgment of others as to his worthiness.
Honors that do not confer Honor are of all things
the emptiest; they are like hired cheers or subsidized
tears, abhorrent to the normal man.

Yet money is made to be spent and there was prob-
ably never a time in the world, especially in this na-
tion, when so many men were anxious to get into the
spending orgy. Men have a sort of blind faith that
if they throw enough dollars into the machine of
destiny it will come out just what they desire — a
presidency, world church unity, complete American-
ization, or whatever it may be.

By all means let money be spent by those who have
money to spare, but let the spending contribute to the

301

FORD IDEALS

general wealth of the people, let it meet some actual
need, let it go to accomplish something more than
further glutting the mails with political propaganda,
or serving selfish purposes.

If all the money thus far spent on the Presidential
campaign by candidates who will never see more than
the exterior of the White House had been used to
meet the great Fact Shortage from which the country
suffers, th^ benefit to the country would have been
greater than if all the aspirants landed in office.

This is a suggestion which may be worth consid-
ering by men who are wondering what to do with
their money. Granting that a number of. men who
can never be President, nor hold any other office com-
mensurate with their dignity, are truly desirous of
serving the Nation, this suggestion is offered for their
candid consideration — Why not spend some money in
relieving the people from the Shortage of Facts? It
is positively startling to discover how little reliable
knowledge is to be had on any of the real problems
that confront us — ^not the speculative problems deal-
ing with untried forms of social life, and new proposi-
tions of industrial adjustment, but the concrete prob-
lems having to do with wheat, sugar, coal, houses, and
the like.

Sugar is scarce. Sugar is high. Is it scarce only
in the retail store, or in the world ? Is it high because
it is really scarce, or because its flow is being held
back to boost prices and thus bring more profit to
speculators? Do you know?

Opinions are useless. Guesses solve nothing. De-
nunciation does no good. The one thing that is worth
a thousand opinions and guesses and would accomplish
the work of the most terrific denunciations is the Fact
About Sugar.

The fact is obtainable. Some people say, "The
Government ought to get that fact." Perhaps so, but
whatever the Government has done or omitted to do,
it is certain that the demonstrated, unchallengeable
Fact has not been given to the people. There is no
one really "informed" on the question; everybody
seems to walk in a haze, as if men had as little con-
trol over the work of their own hands as over the

302

THE FACT SHORTAGE

weather. The sun shines or it rains; sugar goes up
or down — people regard both with the same sort of
helplessness to change them. Now, sugar is not a
principle. It is not a theory. It is not a mystery.
It is grown, refined and distributed. It is absolutely
possible to know whether it was grown. It is abso-
lutely possible to know whether it was refined. It is
absolutely possible to know where it is now, why it
is kept there, and what and who determines the price.
These are not deep scientific problems; they are not
mysteries nor veiled philosophy. They are Facts which
can be found out. For an amount less than some
candidates have expended in their campaign propa-
ganda, they could be brought to light — and the man
who would spend his money that way for the unselfish
purpose of giving the people some bedrock facts to
work upon, would recommend himself for a position
of service to the people much more than any speech-
making or self-advertising campaign could ever do.

Perhaps the time has come when we shall demand
of candidates preliminary specimens of the work they
would do if elected, the thoroughness and persistence
they would bring to the big questions.

Does anyone know how much coal is being mined,
or whether next winter's needs will be met?

Does any one know what the wheat acreage is for
this year, and whether in event of the promised crop
shortage, as some say, the unsold portion of last year's
crop will still prove sufficient, as others say? There
are two sets of statements made upon that question —
which is the true one? or is the truth somewhere be-
tween them? It would not be impossible to find out.
It would cost money, but not as much as some cam-
paigns are costing.

From one point of view it is a splendid advantage
for the country to have fifteen or twenty men who
openly admit their ability and desire to be President.
It is splendid that so many men are willing to serve
the entire nation. And the incident of their failure
to win nomination or election is not sufficient reason
for laying aside so laudable a desire. Let them go on
and serve — let them get to work, spending their
money, using their executive ability and proving their

303

FORD IDEALS

separation from the exploiting class, by meeting the
present , Shortage of Facts.

It would be a genuine benefit to the nation if, in ad-
dition to the candidate showing before the nomina-
tions a piece of worlc of presidential size and impor-
tance, the defeated candidate after the elections should
go ahead and demonstrate some of the services he had
it in mind to render had he been elected.

National service is not restricted to men in office.
It would perhaps not be too much to say that much
of the valuable service rendered the nation, aside from
purely executive decision, has been rendered by men
out of office. There is a sense in which a man out of
office is freer to get at the truth than the man in office.
It should not be so, but often it is. If there is any-
thing being "put over" on the American people to-
day in the matter of clothing, food, fuel and special
necessaries of life, it is being done under cover of
darkness, and the darkness is nothing but lack of
knowledge whic6 is a lack of Facts. The only light
that is needed to drive conspirators against the people
ihto oblivion is the light of Facts. Merely to have
the thing known, to have the method exposed, to have
the Fact itself exploited is to accomplish what courts
and investigations and threats could hardly do.

If there is any conspiracy against the easy access of
the people to procurable necessaries of life today, that
conspiracy proceeds under cover of such phrases as
"scarcity," "increased costs," "the war," and so on,
which mean little or nothing, mere words that serve
as "blinds." If there is no scarcity, if the charges are
increased out of all proportion to the increase in costs,
if the condition is not due to the war but to the ma-
nipulation which profiteers learned from the war, Facts
will explode the whole delusion.

The exploiters of the people fear the Facts, which
is one more reason why the aspirant to office should
show he is not in fear of the exploiters by showing
the Facts, which service would also prove him to be
free of the charge of exploiting. The Fact is worth
money. Facts would put the public in control of the
situation. The main shortage is a shortage, not so
much of necessities, but of Facts.

304

Should Married Women Work?

THE question of women in the work of the world
comes up to claim attention every little while,
even though it had a year or two of rest during the
war. It has been a very persistent question, and al-
though its first character was industrial, its significance
is now becoming social. In earlier and freer forms of
society there was never any question about women
working; they simply worked because the work was
there to do. Sometimes it was work which we^now
class as men's work, but with a different meaning, for
in a former period all work was directly connected
with the production of food or the simpler necessities
of life, while nowadays we refer to "work" more as a
means of getting money. Anyway, the women who
were the mothers and grandmothers of the present
mature generation were not trpubled by the question —
they solved it before any one thought to ask it; they
worked.

Women appeared in industry at a later period, that
is, women working for money at labor disconnected
from their homes. There was objection to this, first
by the people themselves who fancied it was some-
what beneath women's dignity to work for wages at
anything but housework. or nursing; and then the later
objection from organized labor that women were in
danger of usurping men's places, or effecting a gen-
eral reduction in wages. These fears were genuine
at the time, and illustrate how little the accuracy with
which some tendencies are forecast. The tendency
has been for women to go up to men's scales of wages,
as indeed they should where they are producing work
of equal value. Even the labor unions, some branches
of which very stubbornly resisted the entrance of
women into certain trades, have opened their doors
for membership on equal terms to women.

Nowadays there is seldom a question raised as to
the propriety of women supporting themselves by paid

305

FORD IDEALS

labor. In even the wealthy families the idea of rearing
a daughter in idleness is rapidly dying out, although
there is always, of course, the consideration of a choice
of labor.

In fact, it may be regarded as settled, and no ques-
tion at all, that the girls of the family may renounce a
life of idleness and become self-supporting, or con-
tributors to the support of the home, without being
even the slightest the less womanly for it, as some of
the forefathers thought they were. The self-support-
ing type of young woman has added a new strain to
American femininity, a strain of wholesome self-re-
liance, clear-eyed vision of the facts of life, and a
general sanity of reaction. She has not been made
masculine; rather, the sounder qualities of womanli-
ness have been brought out in her. The so-called
"new woman" really represents womanhood released
from artificial effeminacy.

But now comes a new angle to the question. Or-
dinarily upon her marriage a woman stopped working
for wages. Her sphere thenceforth became the home,
not that she worked less, but her husband became the
bread-winner while she became the home-maker. To
assume the work of keeping a house is not exactly a
retirement from work, as every woman knows.

This was a division of labor which seemed in har-
mony with the fitness of things, and which we are
convinced will remain the normal condition in spite
of instances or periods of aberration.

We appear to be in one of those periods now, and
hence arises in many quarters the question. Should
Married Women Work? Employers are frequently
asked for their views upon it. Social workers are
very outspoken upon it. More than that, thousands
of the very women involved in the matter are wonder-
ing whether they are really the pioneers of a new era.
or whether they are merely the signs of a period in
which many standards are temporarily disturbed. It
seems pretty true to say that however numerous may
be the present day instances of married women work-
ing, they are not the pioneers of a new condition of
things in which it will be thought right and proper

306

SHOULD MARRIED WOMEN WORK?

that all married women should work outside the home
for wages.

Certain factors are irrcmovably opposed to such a
practice becoming established. There is the idea of
Home, for one. A Home is a place inhabited, not an
apartment to which two working people come tired
from their labor, to rest from a day's work. A Home
is a place inhabited by the spirit of home-making
which spirit somehow requires the pretty constant
bodily presence of the home-maker, who is supremely
the woman.

Then there is the idea of Family. Certainly the
intrusion of even one child breaks up the plan of the
wife going out to work. And, not to repeat the coun-
sel which has been given on this subject from the
earliest times, who can separate between the idea of
Home and Family?

There are, of course, exceptional circumstances,
but as a rule, where the man of the house is able-
bodied, he should be the sole representative of the
family in the industrial world, at least until his chil-
dren grow up. He should make the living and his
wife should make the home.

It is unpleasant to relate that while some married
women are forced to work for their living, there are
far too many who work merely to gratify those ex-
travagant tastes which a normal family income cannot
support.

To say it plainly, the great majority of married
women who work do so in order to buy fancy clothes.
And not the clothes that they need, not necessary de-
cency and tastefulness of covering, but extravagance
of decoration. It is not to keep the home together that
they work, but to maintain an outside appearance en-
tirely out of keeping with the kind and quality of their
home. It is amazing to see the peacocks that emerge
from commonplace cottages, and to see the ridiculous
excess of finery which can only be accounted for by
an excess income represented by the wife at work. Is
there anything more pitiful, more disregardful of the
real dignity and beauty of life than that a woman
should choose menial labor through the day in order

307

FORD IDEALS

that, though tired, she may shine in cheap imitation
silks and plumes an hour or two at night?

People sometimes argue that if these married
women work, they at least contribute to production.
It is a question whether they do or not. Indeed, it is
very doubtful that they do. For, whatever their labor
may contribute, 'the use they make of their wages is
to encourage a number of nonessential industries that
cater to cheap tastes, and thus they destroy by their
money what they create with their labor.

There are doubtless cases, heroic cases, where the
married woman goes out to labor to gain some substan-
tial benefit for the home which otherwise would not
be had. There is no danger of these cases ever being
confused with the others. Little more is needed than
a glance at the face of a wife who works to see
whether her reasons are high and serious, or whether
they are selfish and trivial.

These serious ones who know all that they are
leaving, and who are really the victims of a situation
instead of the exploiters of a situation — ^these are the
ones to whom everyone would listen if they should
give their own hearts' thought about the advisability
of married women working. There is no doubt as to
what they would say.

As a broad rule, a great deal can safely be sacri-
ficed to preserve the spirit of Home. There are many
impressively dressed women whose homes are not im-
pressive. The b^st setting any woman ever had is her
own home.

The cost of living is not so high as the cost of
pretending to live better than one really can. The
cost of anything real is not quite so high, in compari-
son with the values- possessed, as is the cost of pre-
tense. Least of all should any sacrifice of substantial
values, such as the Home atmosphere, be made for
mere pretense.

308

The Story of Jones

THE story is told of a man named Jones who, with
others, was shipwrecked. They were hoping to
be saved by main strength at the pumps, keeping the
hulk afloat. To stimulate their energies, they began
to ask one another what they were pumping for, and
one by one each man named the dearest object in his
life. One man was pumping that his aged mother
might not be deprived of her only son; another, that
his wife might not be a widow ; another, that his chil-
dren might not be left fatherless. At last the question
came around to Jones — "What are you pumping for,
Jones ?" And Jones replied, "I'm pumping for Jones."

In a ^way Jones was right, and in a way he was
wrong. Every stroke of his arm at the pump was for
others as well as himself. Every gallon of water he
ejected from the leaky hulk bought an added chance
of life for his companions as well as himself. Every
strain of his muscle which he thought was solely for
Jones, was for Smith and White and the rest. He
could not keep his part of the deck afloat without
helping to keep the whole ship afloat.

They all came safely ashore, but the man who
saved least was Jones.

A man may work as selfishly as he pleases; he
may rule out of his mind all thought or intention or
desire to do something for someone else, but he will
find in the end that Nature has tricked him; he has
not been permitted to live for himself alone ; his very
wprks of selfishness have been made to serve others :
he has only deluded himself, robbed himself of the
higher and more satisfactory rewards which come
trom including the good of others in one's own good.

Suppose a man should deliberately set out to be
absolutely selfish, the benefactor of none and the bene-
ficiary of all. He could not do it. There is no possible
system upon which he could organize his life in total
selfishness. He could not keep a cow, without serving

309

FORD IDEALS

the cow by ttulking her. He could not raise enough
grain for his own need without serving the seed in its
life destiny and opening the very soil of the earth her-
self to a fuller expression and value. He could not
breathe without delighting the cells of his lungs and
making his very blood glad. A man who would be
absolutely selfish would have no outlet but to lie down
and die, even then Nature would outwit him, for she
would take the very materials of his body and dis-
tribute them in one form or another to the plant world.

Everyone knows, however, that there are selfish
men in the world — that is, men who are selfish in their
intention. They don't mean to help anyone else. They
would not go out of their way to advance another's
good. They may even flatter themselves that they
are going through life on the narrow gauge line of
"Every man for himself, and the devil take the hind-
most." But they are simply the dupes of a fallacy.
The baker may bake bread and have no other motive
than his own profit. Yet others are fed by his bread,
but he IS- not himself fed by the sense of having
helped his fellow men. The farmer may till his land
with no thought in his mind but the money profit of
it ; the thronging cities are supplied just the same even
though the farmer has been cheated out of a finer
harvest than can be cut with a scythe. The surgeon
may go home hugging his fee, but he has saved a
home from disruption by the saving of a threatened
life. A manufacturer may invent and administer and
expand his business, with no other conscious object
than to amass a great fortune, but he is providing
jobs for workmen ; he is really working for his work-
men, although he does not realize it. He would get
a double profit if he only knew that secret.

We cannot do anything which brings us the right
to live, without extending some service which helps
others to live. Narrow people may think that they
can, but wise old Nature lets them play with the idea
even while it is being disproved. -

There was a man in a Michigan village who al-
ways voted against public improvements, especially
against adequate fire protection. The time came when
he constructed some valuable buildings which held

310

THE STORY OF JONES

an inflammable stock. Then he demanded of the
village, that as his enterprise redounded to the com-
mercial importance of that place, fire protection ought
to be provided for it. He wanted it only for himself,
but in order to give it to him, it had to be given to
all the residents. But that man did not have in his
own heart the satisfaction of knowing he had made
every other villager's home safer.

^ A man may be selfishly concerned for the pro-
tection of his own children from disease, but he can-
not quiet that concern without providing for town
sanitation, pure water, healthful school buildings and
public health rules — and when he achieves these for
the protection of his own children, he will discover
that he has given them to every other child in the
community.

Pumping is the weariest work in the world when
it is done for Jones alone ; and if it is for Jones alone,
the time will come at the shriveled end of his life
when he will wonder if it was worth the effort. The
things we seek for ourselves alone dry up and lose
their flavor sooner than any others. In 999 cases out
of a thousand — ^yes, in all but one case out of a mil-
lion, the person who is "tired of life" is not tired of
life at all, but tired of living solely for himself.

The action of life upon us, if we have the least
wisdom to react to it, is to draw us out of ourselves
into a sense of human unity. Here is a big,* crude,
selfish hulk of a boy. His motto is "Get." There is
something almost barbarous in his self-centeredness.
Human society is as yet an unborn idea with him.
Mankind, if he visualizes it to his mind at all, is but
a collection of beings who possess something which
he must get for himself by hook or crook. He is an
initial product of nature, the raw material of hu-
manity, a man in the rough.

Then Nature wakens him to love a girl, a girl who
attracts him — perhaps he does not define it — ^by her
unselfishness, by her regard for the rights and feel-
ings and interests of others. Ah ! he is no longer the
self-centered cub that he was ; he finds himself think-
ing day and night of some one else, and planning ways
to please her. Nature has divided him into two, en-

311

FORD IDEALS

larged and amplified him, widened the boimds of his
hurtianity.

But even that love may be tinged with the desire
to possess, so when he has won the girl, Nature sends
him a babe. He is now divided by three. Perhaps in
time he may be divided by four or five. He is no
longer working for himself, he is working >f or a fam-
ily. He sees other men through his own experiences
and gradually widens his sympathies and insight — ^his
sense of humanity-at-large.

That is the strange arithmetic of nature ; it multi-
plies by division. It is the good which we cut in two
and share with another that doubles in value and
brings good to us. A man cannot be unselfish without
serving himself best. "He that loseth his life shall
find it."

The young man meets this problem at the very
threshold of his active life. What work shall he
choose? What shall his life motto be? What shall
be the reward he seeks ?

He will find at the very outset that the work which
promises him most is that which serves most people.
If he sets out to serve himself, he will be his own pay-
master, and he will be restricted to payment in the
worthless coin of his own selfish spirit.

It is just there that selfishness loses. Gain it ever
so much, it misses the very element which gives value
to gain. Some gains are very bitter; they are like
heaped-up ashes ; they are flavorless and colorless be-
fore they are well in hand. They have not the stamp
of social approval on them, and lacking that stamp
they are coimterfeit and worthless.

Jones saved his carcass. He lost his character.
Thereafter it little mattered what he gained or lost
until he had retrieved that first imperishable wealth.

312

What It Costs for War

IT COSTS money ]to run the United States, but not
so much money a^ the people pay for that purpose.
. ... If a politician should say thaCt you would pass' it
over with the thought that he was only charging his
political opponents with extravagance. But that is
not the nature of the statement made on this page. It
has nothing to do with politics, nothing to do with
politicians, nothing to do with any propaganda what-
ever. On the basis of figures prepared in a department
of the Government of the United States — a discussion
of which appears elsewhere in this issue — ^the state-
ment is made that more money — much more money —
is paid by the people than is needed actually to run
the United States Government.

How much more ? About fourteen times as much.
That is to say, if you take the budget for the fiscal
year which ended May 1, 1920 — ^the whole sum being
$5,868,005,706 — ^you may leave the billion figures stand
($5,000,000,000), and then if you will divide the mil-
lion figures, the $868,005,706 which follow that big
"5," you will still have more than is actually spent in
the real work of government. You haven't diminished
the billions at all, you have scarcely cut the millions
in two, and yet the billions and half of the millions
represent the amount that is not necessary for the
conductive, civilized functions of government.

Some people are dazed when they see figures. This
is a form of blindness which permits the political and
economic sharpers to get the better of them. The
people would do well in their own interests if they
would become accustomed to figures. Just set down
on a piece of paper the sum, $5,868,005,706. And
then beneath it set down the sum $406,384,443. The
smaller sum represents all that is spent on the real
work of government. Do a little work in subtraction
and you will find that the difference is $5,461,621,263
— and this is the amount which we spend annually for

313

FORD IDEALS

what we call government and is not government at all.

What do we mean by Government ? Well, we mean
the public business of the nation. There is Congress,
the legislative body; we must have it and it costs
money, but its cost is hardly a drop in the bucket
compared with the cost of other nationd responsibili-
ties. Then there are the President, the White House
with its domestic and official staff, the Federal courts
and officers and penal institutions — sometimes dis-
tinguished by the terms executive and judicial depart-
ments. And then there are the various administrative
departments organized for the purpose of managing
the multitude of interests which every nation has —
law enforcement, foreign relations, the coinage, cus-
toms, public lands, relations between the states of the
Union. There is also the expense incident to the Dis-
trict of Columbia as a special bit of territory assigned
to the use of the Federal Government.

Now all this, from President down to United States
Marshall, costs only $181,087,225. These are the
primary functions of government. Compare their cost
with the total.

The Post Office, Land Office, Panama Canal and
other public departments are not included because they
are self-sustaining; the work which they do and the
service which they render bring in enough money to
pay their expenses. Instead of living by taxes they
live by fees for the service rendered, as when you
give two cents to have your letter carried.

Besides these there are necessary works, including
the improvement of rivers and harbors, the construc-
tion of public buildings, the reclamation of waste lands,
the establishment and maintenance of national parks,
which every prosperous nation desires to see carried
forward, and these cost the sum of $168,203,557.

Not to daze anyone with rnore figures, look now
at a comparatively smaller amount, namely, $57,093,-
661. It is the smallest amount yet used. And what
is it for? It is for all the research, development and
educational work which the government is doing. The
Department of Agriculture (and remember that our
farm products are worth more than 25 Billions an-
nually) ; our Bureau of Mines (and we produce each

314

WHAT IT COSTS FOR WAR

year metals and minerals vaUied at Six Billions) ; our
highly useful Bureau of Standards which keeps us
straight with regard to the real values and uses of
the more than 12 billions of dollars* worth of raw ma-
terials that enter into our manufactured products every
year; our Bureau of Fisheries; our government re-
search into problems of health, housing, fuel, gasoline
and every big pressing problem that vitally relates to
the life of the people — all this real work of advance-
ment and human benefit is supported to the extent of
$57,093,661. Just look at it as a matter of percentages.
Cast your eye again upon that first big total — ^$5,868,-
005,706. Now the sum spent on the official functions
of government, from the President to the most ob-
scure Federal clerk, represents a little more than three
per cent of that sum. The public works of the gov-
ernment, represented in rivers, harbors, national parks
and Federal buildings, account for another three per
cent; while research, education and development is
supported by the munificent proportion of one per
cent!

There you have seven per cent of your govern-
ment expenditures accounted for, or seven cents of
your government dollar.

Where does the other 93 per cent go ? Where does
$5,461,621,263 out of the sum of $5,868,005,706 go?
Out of Five Billion some odd dollars, how does it
come that only the "some odd" dollars go for straight
government expenses? Where does the Five Billion

go?

Listen! These are figures prepared in a govern-
ment department at Washington. They are not the
figures of any propagandist. You can get the figures
for yourself if you want them. And the figures will
show you this —

That 93 per cent of the expenditures of the United
States Government are because of, and in the interest
of, War!

The bills of our national housekeeping read this
way : Peace, seven per cent ; War, 93 per cent.

"Oh," says someone, "the war figures are so high
because we have just finished a war."

No! Recent and previous war expenses comprise -

315

FORD IDEALS

67.8 per cent, and the annual upkeep of army and
navy represent the other 25 per cent.

We are paying for w^rs — ^all the wars — ^the United
States ever fought. That is, we are not paying for
them, for we are not able ; we are only paying interest
on them. The Public Debt is very largely the debt in-
curred by war. But no one ever speaks of paying the
Public Debt. All that the country can do is to pay
interest on it.

There is no doubt that protection is one of the
functions of government, just as much as legislation
or administration is. But try to realize the proportion
which this item of protection has assumed — ^93 per
cent ! It would be worth it, if it were necessary. But
is it necessary in a civilized world ? — or can it be called
a civilized world in which such a tax on safety is
necessary? If every family were compelled to spend
93 per cent of its income to save itself from violence,
living on the other seven per cent, could that family
be said to be living in a civilized community?

Someone is benefiting by that 93 per cent. Some
influence has been brought to bear everywhere to cause
this great and continuous outpouring of wealth, gen-
eration after genenation, in a single direction to con-
tinue. The nations have, been tricked into a situation
which the nations themselves could break up — ^which
the people themselves would break up — if the enormity
of the fact were only made clear.

Perhaps if our government should spend more than
seven per cent on the civilizing and constructive func-
tions, these might in time bring so much enlightenment
and prosperity as to crowd out the other. There is a
strong movement afoot in that direction, and it may
be the movement which is going to show up war from
another effective angle and perhaps indicate those
whose interest is to foment war.

316

Paying for Greed's Mistakes

SOONER or later we pay for the follies of our
past. A great deal of the cry about our trans-
portation difficulties is due to our past sins in this
respect. This is not always understood: people are
led to believe that something suddenly has gone wrong.
Nothing of the kind has happened. The mistaken
and foolish things we did years ago are just overtaking
us and collecting their due. At the beginning of rail-
way transportation in the United States, the people
had to be taught its use, just as they had to be taught
the use of the telephone. Also, the new railroads had
to make business in order to keep themselves solvent.
And because railway financing began in one of the
rottenest periods of our business history, a number
of practices were established as precedents which have
influenced railway work more or less ever since.

One of the first things to be done was to throttle
all other methods of transportation. There was the
beginning of a splendid canal system in this country
and a great movement for canalization was in the
height of its enthusiastic strength, when the railroad
companies bought out the canal companies and let the
canals fill up and choke with weeds and refuse. All
over the eastern and in parts of the middle western
states are the reniains of this network of internal
waterways. They are being restored now as rapidly
as possible; they are being linked together; various
commissions, public and private, have seen the vision
of a complete system of waterways serving all parts
of the country, and, thanks to their efforts and per-
sistence and faith, progress is being made.

That was one folly which the advent of railway
transportation forced upon the country.

But there was another. This was the system of
making the haul as long as possible. Anyone, who is
familiar with the exposures which resulted in the for-
mation of the Interstate Commerce Commission, knows

317

FORD IDEALS

what is meant by this. There was a period when rail
transport was not regarded as the servant of the trav-
eling, manufacturing and commercial publics, but when
it regarded itself as a Moloch to be served by all these.
Business was treated as if it existed for the benefit of
the railways.

During this period of folly, it was not good rail-
roading to get goods from their shipping point to
their destination by the most direct line possible, but
to keep them on the road as long as possible, send them
around the longest way, give as many connecting lines
as possible a piece of the profit, and let the public
stand the resulting loss of time and money. That was
once counted good railroading. It has not entirely
passed out of practice today.

One of the great changes in our economic life to
which this railroad policy contributed was the cen-
tralization of certain activities, not because centraliza-
tion was necessary, nor because it contributed more
to the well-being of the people, but because, among
other things, it made double business for the railroads.

Take those two staples, meat and grain, for ex-
ample. If you look at the maps which the packing
houses put out, and see where the cattle are drawn
from; and then if you consider that the cattle, when
converted into food, are hauled again by the same
railways right back to the place where they came from,
you will get some sidelight on the transportation prob-
lem and the price of meat.

Take also the matter of grain. Every reader of
advertisements knows where the great flour mills of
the country are located. And they probably know
also that where the great mills are located is not rep-
resentative at all of the sections where all the grain of
the United States is raised. There are staggering
quantities of grain, thousands of trainloads, hauled
uselessly long distances, and then in the form of floui
hauled back again long distances to the states and
sections where the grain was raised — a burdening of
the railroads which is of no benefit to the communi-
ties where the grain originated, nor to any one else
except the monopolistic mills and the railroads. The
railroads can always do a big business without helping

318

PAYING FOR greed's MISTAKES

the business of the country at all ; they can always be
engaged in just such useless hauling. On meat and
grain and perhaps on cotton, too, the transportation
burden could be cut in half, yes, reduced by more than
half, by the preparation of the product for use before
it is shipped at all. If a coal community mined coal in
Pennsylvania, and then sent it by railway to Michigan
or Wisconsin to be screened, and then hauled back
again to Pennsylvania for use, it would not be much
sillier than the hauling of Texas beef alive to Chicago,
there to be killed, and then shipped back dead to
Texas ; or the hauling of Kansas grain to Minnesota,
there to be ground in the mills and hauled back again
as flour.

It is good business for the railroads, but it is bad
business for business. One angle of the transporta-
tion problem to which too few men are paying any
attention is this useless hauling away and hauling back
of material wHich should be hauled only once. If the
problem were tackled from the point of ridding the
railroads of their useless hauls, we might discover
that we are in better shape than we think to take care
of the legitimate transportation business of the country.

In commodities like coal it is necessary that it be
hauled from where it is to where it is needed. The
same is true of the raw materials of industry — ^they
must be hauled from the place where nature has stored
them to the place where there are people ready to work
them. And as these raw materials are not often found
assembled in one section, a considerable amount of
transportation to a central assembling place is neces-
sary. The coal comes from one section, the copper
from another, the iron from another, the wood from
another — they must all be brought together.

But wherever it is possible a policy of centraliza-
tion ought to be adopted. We need instead of mam-
moth flour mills at one comer of the country, a multi-
tude of smaller mills distributed through all the sec-
tions where grain is grown. Wherever it is possible,
the section that produces the raw material ought to
produce also the finished product. Grain should be
ground to flour where it is grown. A hog-growing
country should not export hogs, -but pork, hams and

319

FORD IDEALS

bacon. The cotton mills ought to be near the cotton
fields.

This is not a revolutionary idea. In a sense, it is
a reactionary one. It does not suggest anything new ;
it suggests something that is very old. This is the
way the country did things before we fell into the
habit of carting everything around a few thousand
miles and adding the cartage to the consumer's bill.

This idea is not advanced solely for its relation to
the transportation problem — although ft would bring
inestimable relief there — ^but also for its effect on our
life generally. Our communities ought to be more
complete in themselves. They ought not to be unnec-
essarily dependent on railway transportation. Out
of what they produce they should supply their own
needs and ship the surplus. And how can they do
this imless they have the means of taking their raw
materials, like grain and cattle, and changing them intd
finished products? If private enterprise does not yield
these means, the co-operation of farmers can. The
chief injustice sustained by the farmer today is that,
being the greatest producer, he is prevented from be-
ing also the greatest merchandiser, because he is com-
pelled to sell to those who put his products into mer-
chantable form. If he could change his grain into
flour, his cattle into beef and his hogs into hams and
bacon, not only would he receive the fuller profit of
his product, but he would render his near-by communi-
ties more independent of railway exigencies, and
thereby improve the transportation system by reliev-
ing it of the burden of his unfinished product.

The thing is not only reasonable and practicable,
but it is becoming absolutely necessary. More than
that, it is done in many places. But it will not register
its full effect on the transportation situation and upon
the cost of living until it is done more widely and in
more kinds of materials.

320

Administration Versus
Government

IT WOULD be a beneficial act if someone could get
it noised among the people that there is to be no
change in the Government of the United States this
year or next, but only a change in its administration.
One would almost be led to think, by some of the
statements that are being issued and some of the prom-
ises that are being made, that a most revolutionary
change is coming and that the country is to swing off
on a path entirely new and imtried before.

The Old Ship of State is going to nm as usual,
but there will be a new First Mate. And he will not
be able to upset the winds, nor reverse the ocean cur-
rents, nor change the position of the stars — ^the best
he can do will be to make things shipshape and steer
a safe course.

The Government is not going to change, but only
some of the chief men on duty there.

The Government of the United States is an estab-
lished institution ; it might be just as well to have that
understood. The Government, in its personnel, is not
the United States by any means ; it is only a committee
of citizens, so to speak, who have been selected to look
after the public affairs of the citizens of the United
States.

The affairs which they shall handle and the manner
in which they shall handle them are all set forth in
the Constitution of the United States. While we are
about it, it might be just as well if it were very clearly
known that underneath the Government of the United
States is the Constitution of the United States, and
underneath the Constitution is the great mass of 105
million Americans.

The Constitution of the United States is written
on paper. It was written a long time ago. The
original copy is kept under lock and key at Washing-

321

FORD IDEALS

ton. But even if that copy were destroyed, the Con-
stitution would not be lost, because it is written upon
the heart and mind of the people who compose our
nation.

The Constitution was not handed down from
heaven and no one has ever said it was a complete and
perfect instrument, although there is none nearer per-
fect in the world. It has this in its favor, however,
that under its provisions there has developed on this
continent a type of national life of which none need
be ashamed, for which none need be apologetic.

This paper is a social contract to which you and
105,000,000 other persons agree for the purpose of
regulating our lives together. We agree on our rights,
we agree on our duties, we write our agreement down,
we appoint men with certain powers to become cus-
todians of the agreement to see that its terms* are
observed and to perform other duties with reference
to all of us ; and there you have the Government, based
on the Constitution.

Several times in the more than fourteen decades
since the Constitution was first written, it has been
changed, not, however, to undo anything it had done,
but to do something it did not foresee. That is, the
details of the Constitution have been somewhat en-
larged; the spirit of it has not been changed.

Within the Constitution itself are described the
methods by which it may be amended. It is one of
the marks of the nobility of this document that it has,
as it were, an open side looking toward progress. Its
makers did not regard it as a fence, but as a founda-
tion.

So, whenever anyone feels that there is a defect
that goes deeper than government administration he
is free to suggest an amendment of the Constitution,
and if he can get a sufficient number of states to agree,
the amendment will be made.

But there are certain changes advocated today
which never could be made because to do so would be
to destroy the principle of the Constitution itself. It
goes without saying that if anyone should propose an
amendment which would destroy a man's right in
what his labor has produced, and if such an amend-

322

ADMINISTRATION VERSUS GOVERNMENT

ment should be made, something more would be done
than merely to add another article to the Constitution.
The very spirit of the instrument would be wounded
and killed.

There are some things which could never become
constitutional though you wrote them into the Con-
stitution a thousand times and confirmed them by the
thousand ratifications of all the states. The reason
is that they are not in the constitution of justice.

So, while the people are indeed supreme over the
written Constitution, the spiritual constitution is su-
preme over them. The French Revolutionists wrote
constitutions too — every drunken writer among them
tossed off a constitution. Where are they? All van-
ished. Why ? Because they were not in harmony with
the constitution of the imiverse. The power of the
Constitution is not dependent on any Government, but
on its inherent rightness and practicability. The power
of the Government^ however, is entirely dependent on
the Constitution, and because that parchment says
certain things about elections,- the administration of
the Government is this year being put before the peo-
ple for a new selection.

The administration of government is so vitally
connected with the people's welfare that it is amazing
to see how really little initiative interest they take in
the selection of the administrators.

No one will deny the statement that there is more
interest being shown in the Government today by the
would-be administrators than by the people in whose
interest the Government is to be administered.

There are, of course, several reasons for that. One
is that the people know that whichever old party is
appointed by the people's vote to the administration
of the Government, the difference will not be notice-
able. But perhaps the strongest reason is that the
desire of the would-be administrators to get into the
office is greater than the desire of the people to put
any of them in. That is to say, the election now ap-
proaching is like many another in that respect: those
who are seeking office have made up their mind as to
what they want, with far more decision and ardor

323

FORD IDEALS

than the people have made up their mind as to whom
they want.

The people are caught between two currents. One
current drives heavily in favor of the idea of gov-
ernment as an aid to the people in all their interests.
"The Government can do it," is the keynote. This is
true — ^however much it may be overdone, it is true.
Why should it not be true that the people acting col-
lectively — ^that is, through the Government — should
not be able to accomplish whatever they wish ?

Well, then, this faith in the Government is built up.
And then another current sets in — an administration
is put into office which, through incompetency or dis-
honesty, absolutely disappoints the expectation of the
people. Then follows that sinister propaganda which
spreads distrust of all government and suspicion of
all administrations.

This nation is founded on the Constitution, and
the Constitution provides for the government, but if
the Administration fails to administer the Government
for the people for whom it was set up by the Consti-
tution, thtn it is serving the dark forces which work
to undermine all confidence in the idea of government.

The people should be aroused to the truth that, if
the Administration does not serve them, it is not the
fault of government, and that if they wish the Gov-
ernment to serve them they must themselves make the
choice of those who administer it.

Election time — ^good old Constitution-protected
election time — ^puts the whole matter directly into the
people's hands. Conventions have nothing to do with
it. Parties have nothing to do with it. The people^
may have it all their own way, to put in whom they
will.

324

Loyalty Has Two Sides

IT MAY be useful, for a change, to commence a
discussion of Loyalty in Industry at the point of
the Loyalty of the Employer. There is always enough
being said about the need of loyalty in the employes,
and indeed that is a most important point. But the
other is important too. Loyalty, to be fruitful and
enduring, must issue from opposite sides. Loyalty on
the part of employes must be met by loyalty on the
part of the employer. Perhaps, in these times, it is
the part of the employer to be first to demonstrate
loyalty.

What are we to be loyal to? If we can settle that
question, or even throw a little light upon it, it might
do much to help us think straight.

What is it that brings employer and employe to-
gether in the first place? In modem industry they
first meet as strangers. Sometimes, so far as personal
acquaintance goes, they remain strangers. Yet it is
not long before they get a pretty definite idea of each
other. The idea may be wrong, but it is definite. The
employe may have a wrong mind-picture of his em-
ployer's intentions, because of the harshness and in-
justice of superintendents or foremen. It is one of
the biggest problems on the human side of manage-
ment to prevent the employer's real ideas for the good
of his men from losing all their vitality by the time
they have filtered down through the subordinates of
the organization.

On the other hand, the employer may have a wrong
mind-picture of the employes, because of the actions
and utterances of a noisy and obstructive minority.
Whatever may be said about "collective bargaining,"
so-called, and other related matters, one objection is
that there is too little "collectiveness" about it. A
spokesman who does not work in the shop, who does
not work in any shop, whose sole ambition perhaps is
never again to have to work in a shop, is usually the

325

FORD IDEALS

"bargainer," and it is from what he says or does that
many employers draw their opinion of the men in the
shop.

This, of course, is wrong, and it leads to many
misrepresentations and misunderstandings which
could be adjusted in a minute if the two parties ac-
tually knew each other and the conditions under which
each of them have to work. No thoughtful man will
deny for a moment that there are too many "go-be-
tweens" who are really "keep-aparts" ; they increase
the distance between the two interested parties.

Here is a man, perhaps a wage-earner, who gets
a mechanical idea which he develops and in which he
sees possibilities of great usefulness. He cannot put
it on the market alone — no man can do much alone —
and so he calls in men to help him, and he pays them.
If he is a success, his force increases, and with it his
own managerial problems increase, until he is so busy,
and the men in the shop are so busy and numerous, that
personal contact largely ceases. Those who knew
him when his office problems were so light that he
could lend a hand in the shop are usually loyal to
him personally. They know him ; they know him to
be one with them in his ideas and experience and
sympathies.

But after while the business itself grows so large
as to supplant the personality af the man. In a big
business the employer is just like the employe — he is
partly lost in the mass. Together they have created
a great productive organization which sends out
articles which the world buys because they are useful,
and which bring in money which provides a livelihood
for everyone engaged there. The business itself be-
comes the big thing.

There is something humanly sacred about a big
business which provides a living for hundreds and
thousands of families. When one looks about at the
babies that are coming into the world and carefully
tended, at the boys and girls who are being sent to
school and educated, at the young working men who,
on the strength of their jobs, are being married and
setting up for themselves, at the thousands of homes
that are being paid for in installments out of the earn-

326

LOYALTY HAS TWO SIDES

ings of the men — when one looks at a great productive
organization that is enabling all these things to be
done by those who are engaged in it and for their
families, one feels it to be like murder, a terrible crime,
to attempt or to risk anything that would jeopardize
in the least degree a business on which so many depend.

The employer is a man like any of his employes,
subject to all the limitations of humanity. The only
thing that justifies him in holding his job is that he
can fill it. If he can steer the business straight, if his
men can trust him to run his end of the work prop-
erly and without endangering their settled condition in
life, then he is filling his place just like anyone else.
Otherwise he is no more fit for his position than a
schoolboy would be on an important job of pattern
making. The employer is judged by his ability, just
as everyone else should be.

He may be but a name to the men — a name on a
signboard. But there is the business — it is more than
a name. It produces the living of everyone in it, and
a living is a pretty tangible thing. The business is a
reality. It does things. It is a going concern. The
evidence of its fitness is that the pay envelopes keep
coming.

Why not begin loyalty there? If the shop is keep-
ing your family, educating your children, buying your
home, providing you with a reasonable certainty of
employment and a money return that you can do
things on, you are entitled to regard it as something
which is definitely connected with your interest: its
welfare is yours.

As to personal loyalty, only the independent em-
ployer can be loyal to his men. The other kind of
employer may want to be, but the influences above
him on which he depends often prevent him. The in-
dependent employer, who does not have to bow to
capitalists above him, can prevent anything being done
that will decrease the return which his men draw
from the business. He can, indeed, freely devote him-
self to devising ways and means by which they shall
be enabled to draw more. Not only may he feel- this
to be a duty which he owes to his men, but he takes
a pride in it. High wages are the result of two ele-

327

FORD IDEALS

ments: the industry of the men, first. But this in-
dustry can be nullified by bad management. So the
second element is good management, and it is here
that the employer's pride may come to him. When
he adds good management to' his men's industry, and
this enables a great return to be made all round, the
business as a human concern is a success. There is a
great distinction between a manufactured article being
a success, and the organization that manufactures it
being a success. The one is a mechanical problem;
the other is a human problem.

The forces which are aiming to undermine Amer-
ican industry — ^and some of these forces have a very
high capitalistic origin, don't forget that! — ^aim first
for the breakdown of loyalty of any character what-
soever. They want it to break down.

It is a truth which every American workman ought
to know that 95 per cent of the agitation which they
see around them does not grow up out of the working
people, but it comes down through hired agitators
from the would-be capitalistic rulers who want to use
the workmen themselves to break down the very in-
dustries on which the workmen depend, in order that
then the workmen may be thrown on their tender
mercies.

You are not hitting the capitalist when you hit
industry; you are hitting the workman. Industry,
independent industry, is the only foe the capitalist
fej^rs. Employers and employes have a^ common in-
terest against the speculative capitalists. These in-
ternational capitalists know that if they can split
employer and employe apart, and so break up iitdustry,
they can control the field. And the pity of it is that
so many employers and employes are blindly playing
the game of their common enemy.

A man is loyal to the house that shelters him. He
doesn't see what is to be gained by knocking it down.
The same kind of loyalty to the industries that pro-
vide for us will block the game which the hired de-
structionists are playing.

328

What ShaU Prevent War?

THERE will be a "next war" just as certainly as
tomorrow will be a new day, if there is a more
deliberate organization for it than there is against it.
It is not a question of what thexpeople "want"; it is
a question of what they Will. It can be safely said
that the people seldom "want" war ; but just as seldom
do they Will peace. In 1914 when those who saw
the stupidity of war in this age went out into the arena
and tried to stop it, they found that there were no
tools to work with. The world had been systematically
organized for war; there were no instruments, no
weapons prepared for a peace offensive. Just as truly
as there can be no war without preparation, so there
can be no peace without preparation. Preparedness
is a necessary condition; it is just a question of what
we are to prepare for.

A small well-organized minority in favor of war
is more than a match for a large, tmorganized ma-
jority which is sentimentally inclined toward peace.
The world is ruled by organized minorities. In Rus-
sia there are 180,000,000 people; yet 600,000 Bol-
sheviks rule them.

It is not so despicable as it once was considered to
be interested in world peace. Previous to 1914 the
person who was interested in the peace of the world
was regarded as an amiable faddist; he would have
been counted more virile had his diversion been poker.

But the past six years has shown the world what
war is, and now everybody professes to believe that
it is unspeakably cruel and stupid. The most amazing
confessions have been made by those who were for-^
merly the most ardent militarists as to the uselessness
of it all. It is true that soldiers exhibited super-human
courage and devotion; it is true that nations proved
almost niiraculous capacity for sacrifice; the human
contribution lavished upon war was most glorious in
its pure unselfishness ; but the men who promised most

329

FORD IDEALS

for the achievements of the war are confessing one
by one that they were mistaken.

The criticism of war is not of the qualities which
are contributed to it — life, love, loyalty and every sac-
rifice — ^but that war, having these immeasurable riches
to work with, could do so little with them.

If any constructive program of humanity could
command a tenth, a hundredth part of the human
values that war can command, this world could be
completely transformed in little time.

The "next war" is being planned when the last
one ceases; that is, men whose principal business is
to fight make preparations for doing it again. It may
not be that they desire it, but they fail to see in hu-
man nature any direct "set" against it.

In one of the countries a force of 5,000 military,
naval and air experts is already at work on plans.
This does not mean that th^y intend to provoke war;
they are merely getting ready. Tt is pretty certain
that the old formality of a declaration of war is a
thing of the past. The next war will not be "declared."
There will be no exchange of notes and a sparring for
time. In the older days it was military etiquette to
permit the enemy to fire first. After many years this
was abandoned, but out of respect for the public
opinion of nations a "declaration of war" was made
in formal fashion. We all remember how those dec-
larations were made in 1914, and how our own dec^
laration was made after an all-night session of Con-
gress.

The next war will sweep down like a tropical storm,
unannounced by any trumpet of thunder or herald
of lightning. That is being planned by those who are
studying the future.

It is certain that if war is permitted again to deluge
the earth — and to permit it, all we have to do is to
fail to prevent it — the tactics of the Great War will
be as out-of-date as if it had been fought in ancient
times. War will be less an affair of men and more
an affair of machines. The individual soldier with
his rifle is almost a thing of the past. Even battle-
fields, vast armies confronting each other in the same
territory, belong to outworn methods. Invisible gases,

330

WHAT SHALL PREVENT WAR?

the suffocation of whole cities without noise, silent
horrors of every kind, stealthy assaults by very few
men armed with most potent powers, will be the new
order. The forces of nature will be used more and
more to supplant the muscular force of soldiers. Ray
warfare is already the theme of militar>' study and
experiment on a large scale. Light rays and heat
rays are being trained to become allies of Mars. The
old heroic manner of man fighting man will be largely
done away; warfare will become world murder, with
nature as accomplice — if nothing happens to prevent.

Germ warfare had already made its appearance
before the recent war closed its main phase, but it was
still in a crude stage. Wells were poisoned, cholera
and typhus germs were let loose, women who carried
disease were early recognized as capable of great use-
fulness against an enemy. But all this was very crude.

Things were done wbich the common people of
very few of the nations would have approved. No
nation, no government ever felt it safe during the re-
cent war to take its people into its^ confidence even on
matters that the enemy knew full well. All through
the war and even today the only people who do noi
know the whole truth about the war — not the diplo-
matic or political truth, but the truth about the actual
conduct of the fighting itself — are the people who
stood the brunt of it all.

The people don't know the truth about war con-
tracts, about war profits, about the connection of gov-
ernment ehiployes with private business, about the
"inside" group that really ran things — the people don't
know any of the truth, and no government has ever
dared to let them know.

There are people making money out of war today.
Millions are being minted out of blood and suffering
this very minute. There is enough war tinder lying
about to kindle the whole fire again — if nothing pre-
vents.

What is there to prevent? Nothing, except the
people's Will. But they must exert that Will.

You do not have to speculate about what the people
will do : you are one of them — judge by yourself. Ten
chances to one you yourself are thinking this moment

331

FORD IDEALS

that it is a waste of time to talk about war and peace.
"The war is over," you say, and let it drop at that.
But is War over? That is the question. Is War
over?

War is not over. It never will be over until peace
actually is more than a sentiment and becomes a
program.

Nothing but the Will to Peace of the people can
put an end to war. Nothing but that. You may have
everything else, but if you lack that, War is still
possible.

The world had a Peace Palace at The Hague; it
did not have the Will to Peace in the people ; therefore
war came. Suppose we have a League of Nations, a
World Court, a Parliament of Man. We ought to
have it. We have the opporttmity of getting it now.
But, without the Will to Peace, without a strong set
toward peace as an ideal, a League of Nations would
be of as little consequence as was the Belgian treaty.

Paper can only hold ink. But \ht Will of the
People for Peace can hold back every warlike force
in the world.

This is not an academic question. But no doubt
it is so regarded. It begins to seem as if peace will
have to make as hard a fight as if there had been no
Great War at all.

One point is important just now: the world this
moment is doing more for war preparedness than for
peace preparedness. Does that concern yoii now? If
not, it will later.

332

The County Fair

THERE is one American institution not provided
for in the Constitution of the United States which
could command the votes of all of us if it required
them — and that institution is the County Fair. At this
season of the year it begins to emerge in a gorgeous
array of colored lithographs, with promises of "better,
bigger, best" liberally sprinkled over them, and
adorned with scenes of grain field and pasture land.
The very air, as autumn comes on, is redolent of the
soil and the harvest.

Town and Country meet at the County Fair, or
State Fair, in a manner and under auspices that can-
not be equaled. And anyone who has observed the
efforts — ^the deliberate efforts — made of recent years
to divide Town and Country and provoke antagonism
between them, knows how necessary such a meeting is.

It is natural that the Country should be interested
in the Fair, because the Fair is first and foremost an
exhibition of Farming skill and progress. Men in the
same business like to compare results, and that is
how the idea of a Fair began. In Fair-Time the
year's work is mostly done; its results are fairly ap-
parent, and it is possible to pass a verdict on it all.
Choice grains, fruits, vegetables; the choice of flock
and herd and dairy — ^these are brought together for
the judgment of the farming community. The do-
mestic side of farming is represented too— choice
quiltings, embroideries, and the handiwork of the
women of the farm.

If you go to any one of the little one-day Fairs
held in the mountains of Vermont you will see this
institution in its pristine simplicity — a Fair where
there is nothing to sell, but where the choice of the
hills has been turned out to show. There is nothing
elaborate about it, but everything you see has come
from the hills. The exhibits are not large, but behind
each of them is the home-farm, and you can read

333

FOKO IDEALS

everywhere, in the legible writing of life, whatever
the hardships or whatever the successes have been.
There are Fairs and Fairs, and many famous ones, but
it is in the little Fairs of the Eastern United States,
where families still come behind ox-teams, and where
a crate of chickens brought for exhibition gains free
admittance for the whole family, that you see the Fair
as it was in the beginning.

But Fair-Time is money-time on the Farm, and
therefore was added a commercial element by which
the Farmer and the Manufacturer were brought in
touch with each other. That is to say, the Fair be-
came hospitable and widened its borders so that the
Town could come in and exhibit its year's progress
too. And so it comes that when we have wandered
up and down the long rows of well-washed sheep,
and have listened to the pleasant laughter of the chil-
dren where the little pigs delight them, and have
emerged from the noisy shed where the chickens are
displayed, and have passed in admiration past the big
box stalls where glossy horses nuzzle the caressing
hands of passers-by, and have breathed the aroma of
the fruit exhibit and observed the clever manner in
which the grain display has been arranged — we are
drawn away toward the clatter of the threshing ma-
chine, the ditch digger, the farm tractor, and other
impressive exhibits which warn each succeeding Fair
crowd that the day when the Farmer had to work like
his horse is past, and the day when the Farmer may
become an engineer is here.

The old single-beam plow, the old windmill, the
old method of harvesting by hand, all the old ways
which broke men's backs and burdened women's hearts
— ^they look very pleasant in pictures and they were
very romantic in fiction; but they were often cruelly
hard on flesh and blood. We shall never be able to
thank the old-time farmer for his devotion and his
toil.

But that day is passing, it is passing before our
eyes. Farming in the old style is rapidly fading into
a picturesque memory. The benefits of modem in-
vention and standardized manufacture are being
heaped upon the Farmer with a plenitude which makes

334

THE COUNTY FAIR

Up for its too long delay. This does not mean that
work is going to be removed from the Farm. Work
cannot be removed from any life that is productive.
But Power-Farming does mean this — Drudgery is go-
ing to be removed from the Farm, Power-Farming
is simply taking the burden off flesh and blood and
putting it on steel.

Farming, of course, has advanced. Time was
when men dug with their fingers the hole where the
seed was planted, and pulled the crop by hand. There
was an era of Hand-Farming.

Then came the time of Tool-Farming. The plow
supplanted the spade; the disk took the hoe's place,
and the harrow the rake's. The drill lifted the seed-
bag off the farmer's shoulder. The threshing machine
put the flail into the discard. The mower retired the
scythe and grain cradle. No one can deny that Tool-
Farming made great strides.

But it was still the Farmer whose muscle and
nerve made the tools go. The Farmer does not need
new tools so much as he needs Power to make the
tools go. And thus we are in the opening years of
the Era of Power-Farming. The motor car has
wrought a revolution in modern Farm Life not be-
cause it was a vehicle, but because it had Power.

That is what the noise of machinery on the Fair
Ground means. It means that Power-Farming is
coming in. Power-Farming is using motors instead
of men's muscles, machine speed instead of the droop-
ing gait of the tired man or horse. Power-Farming
is the magic of modern mechanics whereby the element
of Drudgery is extracted from Work.

So Town and Country meet at the Fair, the one
to see the fruits of the fields, the other to see the
fruits of the factories. Both serve each other. The
trouble is that they do not serve each other more di-
rectly. There are too many interests squeezing in
between them. There is too big a tax or toll exacted
on the exchange between them.

It would be a good thing if we could add a third
section to our Fairs — a section where large groups of
city people could meet with large groups of country
people, discuss their problems together, and make

335

FORD IDEALS

trade arrangements direct. Suppose 100 families liv-
ing on Block 9, Smith avenue, should say to Farmer
Johnson, "We want you to be our farmer. We, 100
families, will guarantee you a straight direct sale for
all your produce." What would be the result? Farmer
Johnson would get more from those people than from
the men with whom he now deals, and he could sell
to the city people for less than they have to pay now.
Both would make money, and neither would be at the
mercy of artificially created market conditions. Only
a "bad year," that is, an act of Nature, could affect
the arrangement.

Frank judges would probably say that of the two
classes who meet at the Fair, the farmer has the better
of it. He may look toward the Town and sometimes
envy the things which City Folk have and he has not.
But something must be allowed for illusion. Things
are not always what they seem. City Folk have many,
many things that are not desirable at all, and, strangely
enough, these are usually the very things which give
glamour to the city. The city has nothing worth while
that the Country has not, or cannot have if it will.
It is too bad tha,t the City shines so gloriously from
afar in the eyes of the young people of the Farm.
If they could only see the City as it really is, they
would thank the good fortune that brought them to.
birth on a Farm. Many and many a boy and girl
learns this bitterly.

So we are all going to the Fair. Old and young,
rich and poor, the city rube and the farmer, all are
going to the Fair. And you will notice one very sig-
nificant thing: the fruits, the grains, the fowl, the
cattle which are produced where Power-Farming is
practiced, are just as flavorous, just as nutritious, just
as "country" — in short, just as natural as Nature
herself ; only, they are more plentiful, and the Power-
Farming family will look much more natural, because
now they have more leisure for self-development, more
time to grow, more money to aid their happiness.

336

The Old Ways Were Good

ONE of the American poets has a line which runs
somewhat like this — "All of good the past hath
had, remains to make our own time glad." He prob-
ably had his own special thought about that fact when
he wrote the words, and being a poet it is quite likely
that some aspects of the truth, or illustrations of it,
did not occur to him. But the heart of any great ut-
terance, the quality that makes it live, is its element of
truth. And many a truth is uttered, the full meaning
of which is not comprehended by him to whom it is
given to utter it. There is a prophetic element in
truth — ^the future keeps fulfilling it.

If you begin even at so common a point as house
furnishing, the poet's line still holds good. There was
something about the old-fashioned furniture that not
only satisfied the demand of utility but also satisfied
the eye. The old chairs were not only strong and
comfortable, but because they were that they were
graceful also. They were pleasant to look upon as
well as rest upon. They became "old-fashioned" in
the eyes of a succeeding generation, and were displaced
by strange designs which were often neither useful
nor ornamental. But now, do you notice, they are
coming back, the old-fashioned rocking chairs, the
old-fashioned straight chairs, the old-fashioned sofas
and the old-fashioned tables. And for no other rea-
son than that they satisfy better than the new fash-
ioned ones.

This is perhaps more generally noticeable in the
return of fireplaces. It was once the fashion to board
up the fireplaces in old-fashioned homes and "paper"
over the space. Stoves were all the style. Stoves, of
course, are useful, but people like to see the fire.
Children love to see "eyes of fire" shining through the
sliding front doors of the kitchen cookstove. Adults
like the sight of fire in the old-fashioned "self-feeder,"
now rechristened the "base-burner."

337

FORD IDEALS

But none of these satisfy like the free leaping
flames of the fireplace, and it is becoming quite the
custom in many parts to build even the smaller homes
with fireplaces. Our contact with fire is about the
only natural contact we can keep in our city life. Fire
is elemental. Fire is common to the earth beneath
and the stars and sun above. We feel united again
to the natural order in the presence of domestic fire.
Simply to look at it — ^how it draws our gaze, how it
fascinates us into dreams and visions !

There is a passage in the Bible which says all this
in a few words : "I am warm ; I have seen the fire.*'
The very sight of fire, domestic fire, is comfortable
both to the spirit and the body. The fireplace is com-
ing back because it is one of the good things of the
past which the present is not willing to let disappear.

It is so with wheels. In the earlier days everyone,
or nearly every family, had its own conveyance. It
was so much a necessity, a family necessity, that no
one thought of it as a luxury. Animals were cheap,
conveyances were easily constructed.

Then with the invention of steam transportation
and the growth of cities, individual conveyances began
to decrease in number, so much so that in England
the term "gigman," or a man who owned a gig, was
descriptive of aristocracy. Until a few years ago
everyone, except a comparative few in the whole popu-
lation, traveled by train or street car. And although
the railway did a great deal toward diminishing the
greater distances, it tended to increase the lesser dis-
tances.. The intercommunication of the community
was decreased. People could not so easily get about
their immediate environment. It became difficult even
to cross the space of a city. Wheels for local convey-
ance became fewer and fewer.

But once more the world is on wheels, and it will
never get off them again. Individual and family trans-
portation is not only a nation-wide but a world-wide
fact. Instead of there being less wheels under per-
sonal direction in the future, there will be more and
better ones. What the past found good and necessary,
the present is finding good and necessary, and it will
be the same in the future.

339

THE OLD WAYS WERE GOOD

So, you could go through the whole round of daily
living and find the old things coming back. We are
even going back to the use of water power to a greater
extent than ever our forbears did. It may be that
we shall some time find many of the old-time domestic
arts return to the household. What an influence for
good it would have on trade at large if the households
of the land learned again what constitutes good qual-
ity in clothing and food. We are being clothed with
shoddy because we do not know how to identify good
quality in the goods we buy. Our mothers could run
their fingers over a piece of cloth and tell to the thread
what constituted it. They were good buyers because
they knew material qualities. But since the house-
hold arts have disappeared, we are at the mercy of
the adulterator in foods and fabrics and other manu-
factured materials. Who knows but that the spinning
wheel may yet return alongside the fireplace, the old
settle, and the family conveyance? Who knows but
that the family bake oven will return also? One thing
is quite clear, if there were more of the art of baking
bread in the land, the price of bread would more
nearly conform to the price of wheat than it does now.
But this phase of return to the old ways awaits a
period of invention which will put at the disposal of '
the housewife the same improvements which have
come to pass in other fields. We may yet see con-
trivances appear which will make the household more
a self-sustaining community than it now is. Con-
trivances that shall separate the work from the drudg-
ery will revolutionize the work of housekeeping, as
they have done in other fields.

One former practice ought to come back at once,
and that is the good old-fashioned habit of providing
for the winter. All-the-year-round industrialism has
had a tendency to make us an improvident folk in this
regard. The fervor of the old-time Thanksgiving
arose from the fact that men could see their winter
provisions ahead of them. They had a feeling of
snugness and security. The woodpiles were ample,
the cellar was stored with the substantial necessities
of life. There was no dread of the ordinary prevent-
able lacks of supply.

339

FORD IDEALS

It would seem that this practice is well worth re-
storing and preserving. It is an undeniable fact that
although we live in cities, although we have largely
left the agricultural field, we are still affected by the
seasons, just as it is true that although we have prac-
tically abolished night from our cities, we are still af-
fected by the night. Civilization has not abolished
winter in the least, only a few of its physical dis-
comforts.

We should be approaching the winter in a better
frame of mind if we could think of all the families of
the country as well provided against their winter
needs. If we could feel today, in looking abroad on
our country and the world, that like the bees and the
squirrels, the families of the earth had kept winter
in mind all through the allurements ta summer ex-
travagance, and had fortified themselves against the
slackness and needs of winter, it would generate a
spirit of thankfulness which would be entirely purged
of selfishness and would itself constitute a hymn of
happiness.

The old ways were not so foolish after all. They
met the old necessities, and the old necessities are with
us yet. Life is a business to be managed, and a great
many people are "poor managers." This is not be-
cause they cannot be anything else, but simply be-
cause they have not grasped the idea that life is to
be managed. The home is a little corporation in itself
and needs something of the wise foresight, the wise
repression of unprofitable impulses which keep other
institutions solvent and afloat.

The old industry, the old thrift, the old preference
of the necessary rather than the unnecessary, will help
bring back something of the old material security.

340

It Is Imperfect — But It Works

IF YOU take our present social system and set it
down as a diagram on paper, as the various re-
formers do with their social schemes, you will dis-
cover a curious thing — ^you will discover that the
present system of society is utterly impossible, it will
not work. Yet it does work! As you diagram it, it
would seem to contradict itself at every step, it would
seem to be the most unbalanced and ill- jointed and
incoherent entity that anyone could conceive. Yet
here it is, and it answers certain ends.

On the other hand, if you take Bolshevism or any
of the other various forms of socialism, and put them
upon paper in diagram form, you will iapparently have
before you the perfect scheme of a perfect society,
and you may be easily convinced that it will work. It
seems plain that it must work. Thousands of people,
viewing the diagram, are thoroughly persuaded that
it cannot help but work. Nothing remains to do but
start it! Yet, the curious and disillusioning fact is
that it does not work.

That is one of the strangest discoveries we can
make: the utterly impossible thing goes; the appar-
ently perfect thing fails. Make a diagram of social
and economic life in the United States, and you would
be ready to say, "Impossible!" Make a diagram of
Bolshevist social theory, and you would probably be
ready to say, "How practical, perfect and desirable !"
Yet life in the United States goes on securely, while
Russia, except, to a few grafters, is a nearer approach
to hell than was ever witnessed on this planet. Any
Bolshevist who has had a full taste of Bolshevism as
it is, will tell you so.

So many things are clumsy, stupid and imperfect ;
and so many offered substitutes are clever, logical and
alluring, that it grows to be a wonder why the im-
perfect thing lasts and why the apparently perfect
thing does not take its place.

341

FORD IDEALS

The reason seems to be a deep-set instinct of hu-
manity that paper-plans may be all right on paper,
but society is an organism, society is a process, a life,
a growth, which cannot be laid out on a blueprint, any
more than a soul can be diagramed.

There is little chance of an intelligent people
running wild with the ftmdamental processes of eco-
nomic life. Most men know they cannot get some-
thing 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 fronv anybody, are promptly denied
by the instincts of the ordinary man, even when his
mind does not form reasons against them. He knows
that they are wrong, and that is enough.

But that does not dispose of the other fact that the
present order, always clumsy, often stupid, and in
many ways imperfect, can work along as well as it
does. Admitting that it is not a perfect order by any
means, it still has this advantage over the others — it
works. To be sure, this is a fact in its favor, but it is
not a fact which cannot be true of any other order.
Doubtless this order will merge by degrees into an-
other, and the new one will work also, not so much by
reason of what it is, but by reason of what men will
bring into it.

The reason why Bolshevism did not work, and
cannot work, is not economic at all. It doesn't mat-
ter whether industry is privately managed or socially
controlled; it doesn't matter whether you call the
workers* share "wages'* or "dividends"; it doesn't
matter whether you regimentalize the people as to
food and clothing or shelter, or whether you allow
them to eat what they like, wear what they like and
live where they like. These are mere matters of de-
tail. The incapacity of the Bolshevik leaders is indi-
cated by the fuss they made over such details.

No, the reason for Bolshevism's failure is its de-
liberate ignoring of common morality and human na-
ture. Human nature is addicted to moral revolts, but
it never respects a system that depends upon the moral
revolt being constant. There are conditions under
which every man will steal, but not even the confirmed

342

IT IS IMPERFECT — BUT IT WORKS

thief respects the system that drives everyone to
thievery. Bolshevism has exacted the greatest sacri-
fice ever demanded of a people — the sacrifice of their
essential morality and the sacrifice of their former
freedom. It was a great price, a price worthy of a
great return. But there will be no return. Why?

There is no truth and sincerity, therefore there
can be no mental or moral strength. These things go
together. Bolshevism does not know it. You may
change social methods as much as you please ; as long
as the earth gives her yield, and as long as men are
sincere, a satisfactory form of life will be possible.
The trouble with perfect social diagrams is that they
assume the control of men who are destitute of the
moral sense, and who have no conception of the depths
and heights of common human nature.

That is the explanation of the operation of our
own social system as at present constituted. Wrong?
— of course it is wrong, at a thousand points ! Clumsy ?
of course it is clumsy; reminiscent of the Dark Ages
at a hundred points ! By all right and reason it ought
to break down. Why doesn't it? Because it is in-
stinct with certain economic and moral fundamentals.
That is the reason.

The economic fundamental is, of course, labor.
Labor is the human element which makes the faithful
seasons of the earth useful to men. It is men's labor
that makes the harvest what it is. That is the eco-
nomic 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, of course, -men's rights
in their labor. This is variously stated. It is some-
times called "the right of property." It is sometimes
masked in the command, "Thou shalt not steal." It
is the other man's rights in his property that makes
stealing the crime that it is. When a man has earned
his bread, he has rights in that bread. If another
steals it, he steals more than bread; he makes an in-
vasion of sacred human rights.

Now, there is just enough of the presence of these
two fundamentals to enable society to continue after
a fashion and to yield the fruits of life to an increasing

343

FORD IDEALS

number of people. The majority of people work.
Of course there are some who do not, but they have
been so small a minority that they do not affect the
whole. Property rights are acknowledged to a large
extent. Not to the full, perhaps, b^t sufficiently to
keep the social scheme intact and working.

"Not to the full," has just been said, but surely
nearer the full than to total denial of rights. The
scale will show that progress has been made more
than half way, at the very least ; yes, very much more
than half way; and, what is better, moving toward
the "full" all the time. You know, all there is to di-
vide is what we altogether create. What we together
create is distributed, that is, pretty well divided al-
ready; if it were not there would be no commerce.
The contention seems to be as to whether the rewards
have been divided. And regardless of differing atti-
tudes as to this, the fact remains that here too the
scale is rising toward the "full."

So that is what keeps our society afloat. Clumsy
as it seems when put on paper, it has that saving
essence within it — ^an essence compounded of industry
and morality. You cannot build society without mor-
ality any more than you can build a span of broken
planks. Indeed, what represents tensile strength in
the social world is just this thing we call morality-^
no society is stronger than its moral conceptions, and
when you seek the caliber of a society's moral concep-
tions you look at the security of the rights of property
among them — ^the rights of the individual in himself
and in the products of his labor.

344

A New Year

IT IS a New Year, but there will be an astonishing
number of old things about it. Its newness is un-
deniable, but its iamiliar lines are unmistakable. One
would find it not an easy task to separate the newness
from the oldness during the year. Yet the Year itself
is new. Every experience that shall befall us during
its 52 weeks, will also be new. It may be familiar,
known, but still it will be new. Life is made up of a
repetition of similar experiences, with now and then
an unfamiliar one to stand out as a landmark.

It is a new cycle of time. A new breath, as it
were, woven in the Loom, raw material of which to
make what we will. That — ^the time cycle — ^at least
so far as we are concerned, is new.

But it is raw material. The fully made-up year is
the finished product. What it may be like we have
just had the opportunity to see. A made-up year has
just passed out of the Time-factory, to take its place
among the other 1919 years of this era.

It is not a particularly flattering product, the year
we have just finished. Stand it up, turn it around, and
examine it, and it doesn't stand scrutiny very well. It
appears to be decidedly amateurish and very much
botched. In no single particular is it standardized.
There are spots here and there upon it which would
seem to indicate that moments came to the makers
when they really had an idea of making Something —
but then they seem to have resumed their aimless put-
tering again.

No ; as we look at the year upon which history has
just affixed the label "1920" we are not willing that it
should serve as a sample year. It isn't good enough.

The reason is, of course, simple to understand.
The human race has not been very long in the business
of Year-Making. There are only 1920 credited to
the production record of the Christian Era, and that
is a comparatively small number.

345

FORD IDEALS

"But after making 1920 years, a perfect year ought
to be turned out now and then/' might appear to be a
natural objection.

That brings us to the "labor turnover." The same
people have not been engaged in making the entire
1920 years. There is an immense turnover of human-
ity every generation. People appear on earth, pass a
few careless apprentice years, and then seriously try —
some of them — to do a man's work upon the making
of the Years. But hardly have they learned the rudi-
ments when a new shift comes, new and unaccustomed
hands take up the work. The years run on, they come
out precisely at the end of December on schedule time,
but they do not show on their human side the marks of
unity iand mastery.

The year is after all but a small bit in the mosaic of
the Age, and perhaps we shall be better able to judge
it from a perspective which enables us to see the whole
pattern; but even so, we are right in feeling that the
whole mosaic of the age would be better, if each bit
were better made.

Inevitably, next December, we shall have to deliver
to the Builder of the Age another year, and it is
natural to wonder what it may turn out to be.

What have we new about the year? Very little,
except the time. That has never been used before,
will never be used again.

But the old things that troop along into the N.ew
Year are very numerous. It is almost like the same
old family moving into a new house; very little is
changed after all.

It is the same old Earth, for one thing. And that
is a genuine benefit. We know what the Earth will
do. We know what we can absolutely depend on it
to do. That is a great saving of time, for, if this year
the human race had to begin all over again and by
careful and costly experiment find out the powers of
the Earth, the year would be almost empty.

But we know that the soil will radiate the sun's
warmth in spring, that moisture and heat will create
chemical conditions out of which man's food will
come; we know that the earth will produce lumber
and ores and material for clothing. We have learned

346

A NEW YEAR

all that. It is no longer a question of anxious un-
certainty. Take up a handful of soil; in it are the
elements of food, clothing, shelter for all mankind.

Then, we bring into the New Year the same old
necessity of getting busy in order to set the soil doing
for us the things we need. And it is remarkable, when
you begin to put the soil to work, how many men
you have to put to work too. If it is the era of "the
man with the hoe," somebody has to make the hoe.
And then somebody must take part of the product of
the hoe's work to the man who helped make the hoe;
and before you know it you have started the Great
Sisterhood of Arts in motion — Agriculture, Manufac-
ture, Transportation.

It may be a better Agriculture — exchanging the
hoe for a tractor; it may be a better Manufacture —
exchanging the burden from men to machines ; it may
be a better Transportation — cleaving the hand-drawn
or ox-drawn cart for the motor vehicle on land or in
air ; but in spite of improvements it is the same raising,
making and carrying of what we need. It is work
in its primary and essential forms.

We are also taking with us into the New Year the
old-fashioned rule that what a man earns is his own,
and no one has the right to take it unjustly from him.
It is a very good rule; without the stability it offers,
society would be as impossible as agriculture would
be if there were no certainty about the order of the
seasons or the operations of nature. Many men try
to change this rule; they want what another man has
earned, and they want to take it in the name of "so-
ciety." But people who have learned this funda-
mental wisdom and justice of the relation between
personal and property rights, never unlearn it.

It would be very hopeful, however, if we could
get some new things for the New Year. We begin
work on 1921 under strange conditions. The Earth
is just what it always was. Human needs, which are
the mainspring of all activity, are just what they
always were. Material and men, the essential com-
ponents of civilization, are both here in abundance,
and yet there is a stoppage of activity.

Why? Because, ^parently, something has hap-

347

FORD IDEALS

pened to-^what? To the soil? No. To men? No.
To material resources ? No. But something has hap-
pened to that quantity known as Money. They are
making it "less" in the country, "contracting the cur-
rency," they call it. They are trying to make money
more nearly measure up with the gold. Why? Be-
cause "they" have decreed that Gold is the basis of
Money.

There is not enough gold to go around. Even as
a measure of wealth, there is not enough gold to equal
in figures the actual wealth. There is not enough gold
in existence to pay the interest on the war debts ac-
cumulated by the nations during the last few cen-
turies. To make business wait on gold is like mak-
ing the passenger traffic of a main line dependent on
the facilities of a local branch with one small train
a day. If gold did the work it might be as acceptable
as anything else ; but it doesn't.

It would be a splendid thing if in 1921 some finan-
cier, whose business is making prosperity instead of
making money, should show us the way to avoid hav-
ing business tied up for money, when all the ele-
ments of business are here. Financiers have been
very skillful in devising schemes which draw all the
money to New York; now for a financier who shall
devise a scheme to keep the money in the local com-
munities where it is needed ! As long as we must have
money, let us have it under a system where it helps
instead of hinders, where it keeps men in their jobs
instead of letting them out. Such a plan would make
1921 a great year. It would help the millions who
are not financiers, but who are always undef the pres-
sure of our present financial system.

348

How It Will Be Solved

WHEN men grew tired of waiting for the wind
to blow, they invented something that would
take its place. For sails they substituted steam en-
gines. For windmills they substituted force pumps.
There was no objection to the wind, but there was ob-
jection to waiting for it. Men wanted something they
could start themselves. They could light a fire in the
steam engine and make things go. They could work
the pump handle and keep water flowing. They could
start things.

That is really the mark of human progress, when
men can start things going, without waiting for the
usual natural currents to create a movement. Some
men can think ; that is, they can start their mind work-
ing, they can determine when and on what problem
their mind shall go to work, quite regardless of mood
or liking. But other men can only receive thoughts ;
they are recipients, not projectors. Their minds are
open stretches over which plays now cloud, now sun;
they take what impressions they receive; their minds
are sensitive plates, not creative dynamos.

There has been a certain amount of control
achieved in the material world, but until the same de-
gree of control is achieved in the economic and so-
cial world, we can hardly be said to have made
progress.

Men no longer wait for the wind to blow, but they
"wait for business to start up again."

Men no longer depend on the wind-driven pump,
but they still wait for "things to take a turn."

That is, in everything but mechanical power we
are still in the primitive age of our fathers. We are
still dependent on the whim of the wind. If it blows,
we go; if it is calm, we stand still. We speak about
"business" with something of the same tone of the
inevitable that we use when speaking about the
weather. Panics come like rainstorms, depression like

349

^ FOKD n^ALS

cloudy days, prosperity like "a bright spell," for all
that human beings can do with regard to controlling
these things.

The question is constantly becoming more and
more pressing as to the amount of control that man-
kind can exercise over these matters.

As a matter of fact, the heart of the problem is
just in that point. It is a human cause, whether you
designate it ignorance or selfishness or what not — it
is human. If it be mostly ignorance, the cure is in
knowledge. If it be mostly selfishness, the cure is in
social-mindedness.

But the one point to be clear about is that the cause
is in himianity and not in outer Nature. If the Earth
had at any time failed, the basis of human society would
have been wrecked beyond repair. But there have been
seed time and harvest continuously, and though there
have been local crop failures, never has a failure oc-
curred that would have prevented the whole world
being satisfied if transportation conditions had been
equal to the need. The Earth has always yielded
enough to feed the people on it; the Earth goes on
doing it year by year. Even with Central China and
Eastern Europe starving, there is still enough food
on the earth to feed the entire human race.

Now, we may use very high-sounding names to
describe the activities which engage us during this
life, but the one term which describes them all is
**getting a living." And a living means food, clothing,
shelter. Food means agriculture; clothing means
manufacture ; all three mean transportation. The basis
of all is the Earth ; it has never failed.

And yet it cannot be denied that as long as man-
kind regards its economic welfare as the effect of
natural forces, now blowing toward prosperity and
now toward depression, there is sufficient appearance
of uncontrollable fate to give color to the supposition.
If things are let alone to go down to zero, they do
come back; and if things are left to rage along in a
riot of prosperity with no thought of the future, they
do come to a fall. There is just enough to justify man's
lazy supposition that "if it's to be, it's to be" and
nothing that he can do can change the result.

350

HOW IT WILL BE SOLVED

There are economic laws, but who knows what
they are? The bankers don't know. The men who
would frame the laws so that a gold dollar would
mean much more than a man's labor don't know. No-
body whose interest is merely himself, whose sense of
prosperity ends with his own position or business, can
possibly know what economic laws are. And that ac-
counts for the various rules set up for finance and
industry — wholly artificial rules — which pass as
"laws," but which break down with sufficient fre-
quency to prove that they are not even good guesses.

The basis of all economic reasoning is the Earth
and its products. If these are present, you have the
beginning. The process then becomes a simple use
of what is on hand in order that it may reproduce
itself in the necessities of life. To make the yield
of the Earth, in all its forms, large enough and de-
pendable enough to serve as the basis for real life, the
life which is more than eating and sleeping, is the high-
est service of any economic system.

Now, just there is probably where the sprout of
the next development is to be looked for. We can
make things — why, the problem of production is one
of the most brilliant instances of human ingenuity. We
can make any number of different sort of things by
the millions. The material side of our life is splen-
didly provided for. There are enough processes and
improvements now pigeonholed and awaiting applica-
tion, to bring the physical side of life to almost mil-
lennial completeness.

Then what's the trouble? Principally this: if we
had advanced to a type of life which was not mainly
material (although, of course, it would necessarily
rest on a material basis), then our interest would
naturally center there, and our only interest in the
underlying material and economic processes would be
to see that they worked right.

Just now, we are wrapped up in the things we are
doing without being particularly concerned about the
reasons why we do them. Our whole competitive sys-
tem, our whole creative expression, all the play of our
faculties are confined to one of the lower chambers
of life, which is the chamber of material production

351

FORD IDEALS

and its by-products of success and the going standard
of wealth. And it is regarded by some very short-
§ighted people as being to their interest that the pres-
ent system never shall be perfect because it would in-
terfere with the narrow scope of rivalry which is now
afforded. It is perfectly plain why the outlook upon
a standardized economic world should fill some people
with dismay because of its dullness.

No need as yet to fear the dullness of a world
which is in perfect economic adjustment, for man-
kind will never consent to perfect adjustment until he
finds in a higher sphere the same outlet he now finds
in the lower sphere. There was a time when part of
man's business was to make fires, and keep making
fires; making fires was a career to him. Then came
the time when higher interests claimed him, and he
wanted a fire that would bum of itself without both-
ering him. Finally he put his fire downstairs in a
furnace where he could not even see it and where it
need not trouble him more than once a day. Lately
he has been putting it farther away still, in a central
power house where it doesn't bother him at all. And
it is all the time becoming a more perfect fire. He
has grown. He now wants only the products of the
fire. He does not want imperfections in his fire to
distract attention from his higher interests.

Just so with mankind ; it will wholly solve the eco-
nomic problem when it gets an interest higher than
the economic problem. Any kind of life mankind may
live needs bread. Therefore, in order to prevent the
question of bread breaking into his higher interest,
he will come to the point where he will agree that the
whole bread question ought to be placed on a standard
base.

352

Lining Up on Your 0>vn Side

WE ARE on the very threshold of a new age. The
dates are unimportant, for in the advance of the
plan of the ages it is not the sharp-cut dates, but
periods of time, that are important. Old things pass
away in a fading-out process; new things gradually
dawn. Only on looking backward do the people
usually realize that "a great thing took place back
there." Surprisingly few of the real turning points
of the world come amid signs and wonders and people
standing in awe of what is passing. In the minds of
most, the War was the cataclysm, because it was noisy ;
but something greater than the War, though much less
clamorous, is in passage now.

It is neither for man to help or hinder, but hold
himself ready to do what is right, whatever may be
the circumstances. When the age begins to turn, we
are too late to stop it, for the causes thereof were set
in motion long ago and are now invincible. Nor can
we help the new age be born, because we are but
creatures of months, and the new age is generations
in process of formation. We can but will the Right,
not for our particular race but religion or nationality,
but the Universal Right, which harms none, and in
which each finds its own fulfilment. ^

One of the principal human duties that devolve
during periods of change is the duty of conscious al-
legiance. What do you, as a personality and in your
personality, stand for? And are you standing for it
by standing with others who are standing for it?
These are questions which are pressing home from
many directions today. The bugles of Time are
blowing "Assembly" and men are dividing themselves,
each according to the moral-note within.

It is not a question of allegiance to opinions or
programs or philosophies ; it is a question of allegiance
to moralities. A man may be hopelessly wrong in all
his opinions, but if he is morally right, he is of the

353

FORD IDEALS

Stuff of the continuing order of life. On the other
hand a man may be perfectly correct in his opinions
and knowledge, and yet everything he does may col-
lapse and die because of moral anemia. In this time
of change it is not a question of having the correct
economic theory, it is a question of being loyal to the
Right. Immoral or unmoral men never yet constructed
an enduring social structure, nor enforced a single
beneficial social change.

This coming to conscious allegiance is not always
a pleasant experience. Especially in this day when
everybody is obsessed more or less with the idea of
wanting to be a "good fellow," and when the flabby
philosophy of "Boost" has reduced us to spongy
masses of saccharine sweetness.

Men have been taught to put even their moral con-
victions in the background, indeed to possess no ob-
structive moral convictions, in order that a false show
of fellowship may be made.

This fellowship has now fallen apart. It was based
on nothing enduring. It had no meaning except a
desire to escape the penalty for being "different,"
^yhich so many people fear.

It is a time now when conscious allegiance costs
something, for it will mean division, and the very first
division must be between those who will be loyal to
moral conviction and those who will not. And this,
quite apart from the consideration of persons or ma-
jorities.

The country has had considerable experience lately
in the lining up of majorities on questions like Peace
and Temperance, and because the majority of the
people always believe, as a matter of principle, in
Peace and Temperance, it has been made to appear
that moral allegiance is always just that easy. It is
not. The line-up, impressive as it was, has brought
us neither Peace nor Temperance; and no such easy,
popular line-up ever will.

The majority of the people are naturally straddlers.
They are not in the world to pioneer but to be as
happy as possible. If pioneering in a cause brings
discomfort, they would rather not. If Truth and Er~
ror meet in combat before their gaze, they would

354

LINING UP ON YOUR OWN SIDE

rather wait and see which proves the stronger. They
may have a lazy faith that Truth at last will win, but
it may not be the time as yet, and they do not wish
to lend a premature support.

And yet majorities are essential, not to the truth,
but to the acknowledgment of the truth ; and minori-
ties are essential to the fructifying of majorities. The
majority is the sodden dough, the minority the yeast;
it is the yeast that changes the character of the dough
to something better. Majorities are the position to
be taken, as it were, and sometimes Truth takes it, and
sometimes Error.

The natural tendency to straddling inheres in most
people, and the exceptions to this tendency are not al-
ways praiseworthy. There are those who are merely
contrary, because they like it ; others are contrary be-
cause moral allegiance compels them. The majority
wants to know if this thing cannot be amicably settled.

No! It cannot be settled. There are some op-
posites in the world that shall never be reconciled.
There are some programs that shall never be har-
monized. There are some wars which must continue
until one side is exterminated. And that is what
frightens some people. They want to be happy ; they
want to live and let live; they do not want to be
bothered. They want leave to enjoy the world as it
is, and if there are those who would improve the
world, let them do so, but not in a way that interferes
with the present schedule.

It is not hard or hardened men that the world
needs, but men of moral hardiness who possess spir-
itual backbones. Men to whom the palliatory "per-
haps" comes too easily, who are so impressed with
the idea of "relativity" that they seek refuge in a
near-vacuum', are men who are lacking in moral gristle.
An Idea may be very valuable to them, but they are
of no value to the Idea. And the world advances only
as Ideas gather believing men about them.

It is a time of taking sides. There is a growing
pressure to that end. Whether men desire it or not,
the time is rapidly approaching when they will be
counted on one side or another. In this country, at
least, it may be expected that the majority will finally

355

FORD IDEALS

line up on the right side, but it will be an impressed
majority — impressed by the force without in alliance
with the still small voice within.

To take sides is not to exhibit prejudice. That is
where many people mistake. The men who are freest
from any taint of prejudice are those who have taken
sides with their convictions, and stand there as sen-
tinels and defenders.

If you want to know where the prejudice in the
world lurks, look where there is no taking of sides,
where everybody is trying to pretend that there is
nothing to take sides about. That is where you will
find most of the world's prejudice.
^ A man who has taken sides is thereby freed from

prejudice. His step is open, frank, straightforward.
His energies are free to flow naturally. But a man
who fears to take a side finds prejudice grow within
him like a cancer; it grows from the irritation of an
unexpected antagonism in conflict with an unexpressed
allegiance. It is suppression.

However, the movement has set in, and will be
complete before the old era completely passes and the
new begins. Everyone will have to take his own side.
It is not too early now for everyone to begin to ponder
on which side he really belongs, and whether, morally
belonging to that side, he has the moral hardihood to
give that side what belongs to it.

356

Change Is Not Always
Progress

STRONG efforts have been made to fasten upon
the public mind the belief that newness and
change spell progress. A state of mind has been gen-
erated in which the mere statement, "Oh, that is the
way they did it years ago,'* is considered sufficient to
condemn anything. A fever of newness has been ev-
erywhere confused with the spirit of progress.

For many years the learned men who were sup-
posed to know more than anyone else about social
tendencies, were of the opinion that there were mys-
terious seasons and wind currents in human life, and
that these accounted for almost everything, but that
these seasons were as unalterable and these wind cur-
rents as uncontrollable as those of the natural world.

This idea has largely passed away. Most of the
manifestations which we see in human life today have
been started and promoted by people who know ex-
actly what they want and how to get it. Many of the
so-called "social tendencies" are just as much invented
and controlled by human wills as is the organization
of a grocery store or an oil stock company.

Last year men wore hats of a certain color, a cer-
tain shape, a certain material. One year the tone is
brown, the next year green. One year the material
is velours, the next year felt. One year a slouchy,
rakish form is affected, the next year a shape at once
free and neat.

Why green hats last year? Was it just an unex-
plainable fancy of the public that it wanted the color
green to predominate that year ? Of course not. The
public had nothing to say until the hats came on the
market. And those who placed the hats on the mar-
ket had determined a year before what the people
should wear. It was a promotion scheme. If you are
in the right circles it is possible for you to get a pretty

357

FORD IDEALS

accurate idea of what the crowds on our streets will
look like for several years in the future. These are
matters of engineering, not of free taste and tendency.

The reasons, of course, are commercial. Hats are
no better than they ever were ; materially they are not
as good, except when special prices are paid. The
purpose is that a man shall buy several hats a year —
four or five. It is not planned that any of them shall
last over the year. In case, however, the quality does
outlast the year, the style is changed, and that, of
course, with people who are easily influenced, puts a
perfectly good hat out of commission.

So that the basis of more than one line of business,
involving vast quantities of material and human en-
ergy, is built not upon the durability of that material
and the serviceability of that labor, but only upon
the decree of some interested parties that this is "old"
and that is "new."

Next to the fiction that gold is wealth, this fiction
of "style" is one of the most potent devices for rob-
bing the public purse. Both fictions originated with
and are propagated by the same groups and for the
same purposes.

These remarks are only illustrative of what now
follows: There is just as deliberate a plan to flood
the popular mind with changed ideas, and thus bring
it into a condition where it will not think anyibing
that is not "new," and where it can easily be led away
from any truth that may perchance be labelled "old."

This course is most successful among those who
do not think — and whether these are a majority or a
minority is left to the reader's own observation and
judgment.

The effect, however, is harmful, and in time will
prove ruinous. The jack-in-the-box thinker is not im-
pressive simply because his utterance belongs to
today instead of yesterday. Ever)rthing we have is
yesterday's, even to the bread we eat — ^which is liter-
ally last year's; and even to the political ideals we
share — which are literally last century's, and earlier.
We are not such "smart folks" as we think we are.
The world today is full of the soimd of crashing fail-
ures built on fresh, upstart theories. The trouble with

358

CHANGE IS NOT ALWAYS PROGRESS

US today is that we have been unfaithful to the White
Man's traditions and privileges. We hav« permitted
a corrupt orientalism to overspread us, sapping our
courage and demoralizing our ideals. There has al-
ways been a White Man's Code, and we have failed
to follow it. It is natural for those outside the White
Man's tradition to inVent their destructive devices and
ideas, but it is unnatural for the White Man to fall an
easy victim to them.

Capital and labor are apart today, in spite of the
natural tendency of the White Man's Code to bring
them together, because an oriental idea has been
thrust in between them for the poisoning of both.

The White Man's Code has always been to "do
things"; the accomplishment of useful results is his
highest satisfaction. For that reason the White Man
has been throughout history pre-eminently the Doer.
But an orientalism has crept in under cover of a social
discovery, which has proved progressively destructive
of everything it has touched — ^the professions, man-
agement and industries.

Industrial leaders have been poisoned to the ex-
tent that some of them look on their industries as
"money makers," instead of plow-makers, or chair-
makers, or clothing-makers. That is the new code:
"Get the money." If you can get the money quicker
by destroying the business, then destroy the business !

Professional life has also been infected with the
same idea. Lawyers once had clients and doctors
patients: now they have "customers." It is a sad
drop, but it is precisely the condition desired by the
orientalists who are busy injecting "new ideas" into the
public mind today.

In industry, the man who still takes pride in his
day's work, who really looks for satisfaction in the
labor of his hands, is rated by his fellows as a "boob."
He is a "back number." Even the American boy
coming into life no longer believes that merit counts
for anything; he is inoculated by the oriental virus
which causes him to pull back, remain sullen and
stupid, and give as little as he can.

At Ellis Island where formerly the immigrant used
to come with shining eyes and hopeful heart, what

359

FORD IDEALS

do we now see? A horde of people who have been
systematically educated beforehand in the thought that
the United States is "a capitalistic country/' not to be
enjoyed but to be destroyed; and the very first lit-
erature put into their hands on American soil con-
veys the same idea. We read a great many touching
stories in fiction papers about the hopefulness and
longing of the immigrant. The immigrants we have
been getting for several years have no hopes nor
dreams : they have a program.

All of these things come from the same source — a
subtle orientalism that is breaking down the rugged
directness of the White Man's Code.

We ought to go back to it. The type that made
this country is still here, but its backbone needs stiffen-
ing. It needs to hear the call of its own race. It needs
to seal its ears against the false cry of "Peace, Peace,
when there is no peace." That which we used to re-
cite in the village school — ^* Eternal Vigilance Is the
Price of Liberty,'* is more than a saying, it is a Truth ;
and its truth is being proved now, when Liberty is
slipping away because of our lack of vigilance, not
only, but our impatience with anything that requires
vigilance.

The White Man's . Code has three main points :
Square Dealing; Fear of God and Absolute Fearless-
ness of Man ; Unrelenting Vigilance.

These three points, if practiced today, would cleanse
our country of every lurking foe. And the practice
of the last point would keep it clean.

360

In Bondage to a Reputation

IT IS not with the distinction between reputation
and character that this page deals today, although
that distinction may well be kept in mind during
its perusal. Reputation is what people think a man
is; character is what he really is. Usually reputation
and character go along hand in hand; what people
think a man is, he is very likely to be ; but not always.
There are just a sufficient number of differences be-
tween men's reputations and characters, to make a
sweeping statement impossible, except to emphasize the
distinction.

One distinction not often thought of is this: the
people make a man's reputation ; the man himself makes
his character. Reputation is repute. Repute is just
what the people think over and over again; a repeti-
tion of thought, a multiplication of opinion. It is clear,
then, that reputation is something the people give to
a man. He himsjelf, of course, must be sufficiently
active or interesting or important to give the initial
impulse to their thought; but, after all, it is their
thought that paints his public portrait.

The public makes mistakes. It must have its devils
and its angels, and its devils must be very bad, even
as its angels must be very good. The hankering of
the public after a good man to believe in is very pa-
thetic. Being too wise to have anything to do with
God, they set up a statesman, a philanthropist, a pub-
lic benefactor of any kind, and then they begin to
weave about him a romantic robe of dreams until he
becomes a cross between Santa Claus and Gabriel.

No man is ever so good as the public wants its
good idols to be; and no man is ever so bad as the
public wants its bad idols to be. The reason is that
the public gives repute, and not the man himself.

Reputation is, of course, an important point, but
it is not of first importance. A man who is always
careful of his reputation usually has not much to spare.

361

FORD IDEALS

Reputations are such partial things anyway. Here
is a man who has a reputation for ready wit. An-
other, during some retentive period of his mental life,
stored up much knowledge of the sort which quickly
turns to attic lumber — he has a reputation for learn-^
ing. Another, because of, some act performed in a
moment of indignation, gets the reputation of being
quick-tempered or courageous. Another, a normal
man, not self-centered, but living free in mind and
body, does for a friend, without thinking of it, an act
involving danger to himself, but effecting the other's
salvation. He awakes to find himself a hero. There
is nothing funnier than finding oneself a hero. One
has read of heroes, admired them, dreamed one's boy-
ish dreams of emulating them, but we supposed that
heroism was something very grand to fe^l. We thought
the hero felt heroic, felt as heroic indeed as the hero
looked upon the stage. But he doesn't. The hero
discovers for himself the immense difference between
reputation and the inner sense thereof.

It is only part of the man that is involved in the
reputation, good or bad. G. K. C. has a reputation
as a writer; but he is more than that. M. J. P. has
the reputation of being a good mender of boots, pro-
fessionally a cobbler; but he is more than that. Rep-
utations are such partial things.

But it is only when reputations become something
to trade upon that they begin to bind men.

There are some men who regard their reputations
as assets, who ought to regard them as liabilities, and
they are "good" reputations, too, in the moral sense.
It is a mistake to think that it is the "bad" reputation
that is always the liability. Not at all. Good repu-
tations sometimes hang like millstones around a man's
neck; they are, in reality, the millstones on which his
epitaph is already carved. A man has a reputation
for cautiousness. Well, cautiousness is only a partial
virtue. Sometimes a man ought to be cautious, and
sometimes greatly daring. Sometimes he ought to
walk across the street and sometime^ he ought to run.
To commit himself to follow either course all the time
would be equal to a prison sentence.

Other men have a reputation for what is called

362

IN BONDAGE TO A REPUTATION

"common sense." Common sense is; as the term im-
plies, the common possession of common people. It
is very valuable. The majority of people are actuated
by common sense. They are conservative. The ma-
jority mnst be conservatk/e. That is the majority's
business — ^to have and to hold, to protect and conserve
the good of the past. If it were not for the conserva-
tive we should have nothing at all. He is the brother
who stays at home and keeps the family farm in shape
while his other brother roams afield, sometimes as a
prodigal. In the end, all radicals come home to the
conservatives ; that is where conservatives justify them-
selves.

But, see what a hindrance a reputation for com-
mon sense may become. A man says to himself, "I
have always been known as a man of common sense.
I have always done what most people do, with an ele-
ment of protective caution thrown in. People do busi-
ness with me because they know I am *safe and sane.'
Yet, here I have a vision which I know is safe with
a higher safety and sane with a higher sanity than any
of my neighbors know, and I am moved to follow
this vision — ^but if I do, bang goes my reputation for
common sense!"

In siiich an instance, a reputation is the death war-
rant of a man's growth. He is not living up to his
real self; he is lizHng down to the self that he was
twenty or thirty years ago. He is simply refusing to
outgrow the features of the portrait called "reputa-
tion" which public opinion has sculptured in the gal-
lery of public imagination. For that is all public opin-
ion is, and that is all fame is, and that is all reputa-
tion is, just public imagination.

Too many men are afraid of being fools. It is
granted, of course, that public opinion is a powerful
police influence for those who need it. Perhaps it
may be true that the majority of men need the re-
straint of public opinion. In this class of cases, pub-
lic opinion keeps a man better than he would other-
wise be — if not better morally, at least better as far
as his social desirability is concerned. But doubtless
there are cases, and many men feel the truth of it,
where reputation keeps a man from being as good and

363

FORD IDEALS

as useful as he might be, because in service he would
be led into the "unusual, don't you know."

Well, it is not a bad thing to be a fool for righteous-
ness' sake. The best of it is that such fools usually
live long enough to prove that they were not fools,
or the work they have begun lives long enough to prove
they were not foolish; and so the fool for righteous-
ness' sake is revenged on Reputation after all.

Heaven help the man who has been poisoned by
regularity! Not that Belonging to the regulars, and
being regular in everything from agriculture to re-
ligion is an evil thing — not at all. If a man delib-
erately chooses and selects a place among the "regu-
lars" for the good he can do them, very good. The
regulars need their servants and prophets, too. Many
men are justified in saying, "I cannot do that, because
it would injure the influence which I now possess in
this special channel of work." There are men who,
for the sake of moral usefulness among men, must make
deliberate sacrifice of certain otherwise desirable things,
and to these rightfully belongs their meed of honor.

This is not the class of men to be warned. These
are not victims of regularity; they are missionaries to
it. Others, however, who believe that the present form
of regularity is the eternal pattern, who are in nervous
fear of being so regular that they succeed only in being
stupid, to them there might be given a stimulus to forego
the bugaboo Reputation, and let their native decent
impulses expand to fill the pattern they were meant
to fill.

364

Depression, First Step
Back to Normalcy

TIMES of piping prosperity are often bad for busi-
ness. Strange as it may sound, this statement will
appear very plain and true upon a little consideration.
We may say what we please about the business condi-
tions which have hit the country during the last two
months, but the real damage was done when everybody
said that everything was lovely and the goose hung
high.

By the same token, this period of depression through
which we have been going has been good for business.
The best thing that could have happened — it did not
happen too soon. Business is on a better basis today
than it was three months ago ; it will be on a better basis
next month than it would have been had not a halt
been called.

These are simple ideas, but they are worth turning
over.

You can see the good effects of poor business by
just looking at the stores, the corner stores, and the big
downtown concerns. It was not long ago that the ordi-
nary frugal buyer was somewhat in contempt. Clerks
caught the contagion of the profiteers, and it was "Buy
it or leave it*' almost wherever you went. The morale
of salespeople slumped at a terrific rate, and that is a
pretty serious thing for business.

Not so very long ago the coal merchant sat in his
office with the air of a king dispensing favors. His
attitude in many cases was, "I don't know whether I
will sell you or not — I'll think it over." It was bad
for him and for his customers. When any business
man in any line of business becomes independent of the
public, or even thinks he is, it is a calamity for his
business.

In some industries all that has remained for sales-

365

FORD IDEALS

men and managers to do during the last few years has
been to take orders and deposits, and adopt the air of,
'*We may let you have it in about six months — ^if you
deposit enough now." Orders came without effort.
Customers were doing all the clamoring and worrying.
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 sell-
ing to him.

Now all 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 so good and sound and 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 puyic no longer
had to be "catered to." There was even a "public-be-
damned'* attitude in many places. /

It was intensely bad for business, all that kind of
prosperity.

But there has come a change. The era of rampant
prosperity so-called died down. The reckoning-up time
came. Customers no longer besieged the doors. Indeed,
customers have a memory, arid they remembered that
in the heyday of trade they were treated rather cava-
lierly. Many merchants are discovering today that he
was a wise man who was just as anxious to serve and
please his customers when trade was brisk, as he is now
when trade is a little slower.

The best point of all is that this period of slack-
ness is showing up the damage which false prosperity
did to business ethics and efficiency. A good business
is one that can sail along comfortably in the face of
adverse gales. Since 1914 almost any fool could do
business. There was more business to be done than
there were business devices with which to do it.

It will be generally conceded that the period of so-
called prosperity had a very deleterious effect on sales-
manship. Salesmanship is more than taking orders, but
that is about all it has amounted to during the last six
or seven years.

366

DEPRESSION, FIRST STEP BACK TO NORMALCY

When the rush of prosperity began to dwindle and
then to cease, and it became necessary to pull in the
collar rather than hold back in the breeching, then was
the test. It was found in many cases that salesmanship
had softened. The easy-chair and order-taking habit
had demoralized it. It could not stand for the rough,
hard work of going out and being refused, and being
refused again.

So, it has been a blessing for business, all round,
this period of depression; it has shown up the flabby
spotS^. It has disclosed those people who were content
comfortably to watch the wheels go round, but were
not very handy in getting out and making the wheels
go round.

We were getting to a place where no one cared about
costs except the consumer — and he didn't count. Not
only did no one make a move toward reduction of costs,
they actually dreaded to think of the time when it would
have to come. Business lay abed, like a boy who hates
to get up and go into the cold barn to do the chores.
Business was soft with too much good living.

Nothing has happened in our history to render out
of date the business philosophy of Benjamin Franklin.
Poor Richard's Almanac is still the best business com-
pendium. The old American virtues of thrift and in-
dustry have no successors or substitutes. Business suc-
cess is still a matter of making friends by service, and
not a case of cornering necessitous people in such a way
that they will have to come to you.

Free trade still exists in the local sense. Trade will
always remain free regardless of monopoly or combine.
Trade gravitates toward the man who has the desire
and the will to please and serve those who need what
he can give. When a man gets bigger than his business,
when he begins to think that he has got things coming
his way, and therefore may relax, he is in a bad state.

Every successful business is troubled with that sort
of disease — complete satisfaction and relaxation. It
should be ruthlessly exterminated. If this disease
strikes the principal leader of the business, he should
retire or be removed as quickly as anyone else would be.
That kind of success is very bad for business.

Young men have been asking for a number of years

367

POtD IDEALS

whether there was any possible chance for them to start
for themsehres in a world which is apparently so com-
pletely organized. Sometimes the answers were encour-
aging, sometimes not.

But now they can see for themsdves. It is any
man's game now who will play it according to the old-
time rule of "value received." A business man is a
servant, and when he gets too rich, or too high and
mighty for that, then something happens, and some one
else gets a chance. And that is occurring on a large
scale now. Business is weeding out the over-ripe ones.

Thus it comes, reasonably enough, that a period of
bad business is really a good thing for business, because
it drives business back to its sounder fundamentals of
honor in n^otiations, quality in merchandise, and will-
ingness in service.

It is a splendid lesson for the younger group of
business men. They will keep their heads better during
the next rise of commercial prosperity. They will be
taught to trust more confidently in those principles of
business which are as indispensable in brisk times as in
slow times.

And, on the whole, it has been an easy lesson. It
might have been much more severe. It will have been
worth all it cost to all classes of society, if only we have
sense enough to remember it.

We have been influenced too much by the grab-bag
philosophy. We are making careers, and that is incom-
patible with the practice of "getting while the getting
is good." Such getting is not good for long.

368

Flattery Used as Bribery

AMONG the dishonest ways of getting along is the
practice of working on the self-esteem of men by
praising them to such a point that they feel inclined
to favor you. Some crooks chloroform their victims to
rob them; others just suffocate their good judgment
with praise. The first method has at least the virtue
of directness ; the second, even at its best, is suspiciously
on the other side of frankness.

We have developed in this country a habit which
must be modified by honesty, and that is the habit of
back-slapping and indiscriminate boosting, the glad
hand and the oily compliment. These never did go
down with men of hard horse sense, but they had a
considerable and pernicious influence on young men,
because young mennaturally thought that this was the
standard way to do things.

Now, this is a situation which more mature business
men have observed with something of impatience and
something of misgiving. It must not be assumed, how-
ever, that they regretted to see a more human tone come
in business relations. Nor must it be assumed that they
protest because their ideal of a business man is one who
is strong as steel and just as cold, who cannot be bent,
nor even melted except in the hottest fires.

There is just the danger, that returning from the
orgy of back-slapping and artificial good-fellowship
which has marked the last few years — the era in which
the "smooth" person "got by" — ^we shall revert to the
opposite extreme of coldness and brutality. Not at all.
Extremes are always to be avoided. But whatever the
attitude, sincerity is desirable about all things. And
it is just the lack of sincerity which made so much of
this praise-mongering to be nauseating to plain men.

There are two great barriers to the free intercourse
of minds, to absolute transparency of conduct, and they
are, first, a designing attitude toward another; and
second, that which the designing attitude breeds, namely,

369

FORD IDEALS

suspicion in the mind of the man against whom the de-
sign is laid. They are both unwholesome mentally, and
disruptive socially. They constitute the major part of
the silent warfare of life.

Now, all men like praise. If a man says he doesn't,
he should examine himself again. He may not like to
be praised to his face. He may be irritated by the
fawning form in which praise is offered him. He may
be angered by his knowledge that the offered praise is
insincere and has an ulterior motive. He may be sick-
ened by the hoUowness of it. A man who had done
something very well was once pained by the praise he
received. He said, "They all praised me for the wrong
thing." They had not considered his work enough to
see the real point in it. And what he wanted was not
the sticky sweetness of personal compliments, but dis-
criminating and appreciative consideration of his work.

All men like their good work to be praised — ^but
that is quite a different thing. There is something
normal and wholesome about friends being able to meet
frankly in consideration of a piece of work.

So, if a man says he dislikes praise, he must define
what he means. When a man is able to praise his own
work to himself, to behold the work of his hand and
take pleasure in it, he is taking praise, just as much
as if he eagerly drank in compliments spoken by
another. ^

Now, the evil of life consists in all these wholesome
and pleasurable sensibilities being misused to selfish
ends. No matter what* department of human nature
you look into, the evil you see comes from selfish mis-
use. And so men have brought in evil through the gate
of praise.

If you see that a man's weakness is flattery, and you
take advantage of that to manipulate his judgment and
his will, you are following, precisely the same tactics
as the man who sees another's purse conveniently ex;^
posed, and takes it.

If you see that a man is built of such malleable
material that a friendly, complimentary advance dis-
arms him and lays him open to your power, and you
deliberately thus disarm him for the accomplishment
of your design, whatever it may be, good or bad, you

370

FLATTERY USED AS BRIBERY

are working along a dangerous line;' you are exalting
yourself to a place which no human being is entitled to
assume toward another for reasons of profit. It is a
serious thing to descend to this kind of strategy or
trickery even for the best purposes.

No one takes these tactics without sacrificing a great
deal of sincerity. And besides, they are not necessary.
There is nothing that this sort of strategy can accom-
plish, that frankness, honesty of purpose and even blunt
truthfulness of statement cannot better accomplish.
The straight open way is healthier for the mind of the
man who is making the advance, and it cements a better
relation with the man who, is being advanced upon.

Now, inasmuch as there are still in the world many
hold-overs from the last regime, who still trust in the
strategy of the tongue, it is just as well that young
ipen, especially young business men, should be on their
guard. Instinctively, the majority of them are. There
is something inside the normal human being — ^a sort of
spiritual submarine detector — which warns of the ap-
proach of hollow words. Many lies are told : very few
lies get across. Many deceptions are planned ; compara-
tively few succeed. The interior detector sounds an
alarm in most people. They are protected.

But there is among young men a native kindness
which prevents them revealing the impostor to himself.
When it is said that very few lies get across, that is
true ; but the liar does not know it ; people whose detec-
tor warns them do not always tell him what they think.
They sometimes act as if they believed the lie — and so,
insincerity creeps in from the other side, too.

The young business man will more fully trust the
older man who does not flatter him and who does not
follow his flattery with presumptions on the young
man's favor. Thousands of people are that way : they
pay a compliment, and they believe that constitutes an
admission ticket to special privileges. Deny them the
privilege, and they go away saying quite opposite things
about the person they hoped to "work." It is the mean-
est kind of cadging, this passing of compliments, and
then waiting until the complimented man is so commit-
ted by the reception of the praises that he cannot say
"no" without embarrassment. That is the meanest

371

FORD IDEALS

kind of trickery. But young men who have been
tricked that way soon learn the technique of it and are
on their guard.

A certain delicacy of character would teach the
self-seeking person that it is a vast presumption to offer
praise to anyone, and the only consideration that can
justify it is its sincerity and unselfishness. Otherwise,
it is a profanation of one of the finest forms of human
relationship.

If a young man in business is wise he will pay less
attention to those who flatter his self-esteem, and more
to those who stir his energies. A good, well-balanced
critic who is looking to the success of the work and not
to the feelings of the men who may be at the head of
it, is the best kind of friend for a young business man
to have. And if the young business man is keen he will
see that such a one's interest and attention is the most
real, yet the most delicate form of friendship and
praise. It is strong. It is based on frankness. AND
it will be there though failure and unfavorable criticism
overwhelm the project.

Divide between your flatterers and your friends, and
you already have a chart by which to sail.

Inflated Prosperity the Real

"Bad Times"

ONE of the common habits people fall into is to ex-
plain everything by the term "business." We
explain depression by saying that "business is bad."
We explain far-reaching changes by saying that "busi-
ness is undergoing a readjustment." We look hope-
fully toward the time "when business will pick up

agam."

The mistake is rather childlike, as if we should de-
clare that the thermometer governs the weather. To
be sure, the thermometer is "down" when it is cold, and
"up" when it is warm, but the thermometer is acted
upon by other forces ; it does not act upon them.

Business is a barometer. It registers various condi-
tions. But it is not the master-force in the world. It
is a sign of life and creative activity; more than that,
it is the sign that for the moment the interaction of
all the social elements has reached a degree of harmony
sufficient to give all men the happiness of being busy
and the satisfaction of being supplied. So, when it
happens that business is "down," like the thermometer,
it does no good to put it "up" by artificial jneans. The
thing to do is to change the general condition, whatever
it may be, and business will reflect the result as surely
as the mercury rises with the first mild days of spring.

Many other adjustments must occur before we get
the "business adjustment" which people believe is the
one thing necessary.

And these adjustments are now in process. That is
a point we ought to bear in mind: these adjustments
are now going on.

People often say "things are at a standstill." No,
they are not. If we could see the whole economic
process, not merely the one point where it makes contact
with us as individuals in our jobs, we should see that
nothing is at a standstill, but that everything is moving

373

FORD IDEALS

and changing — even now, when everything seems to
be dull.

• What We call "hard times" are economically the be-
ginning of "good times/' That is, a period of depres-
sion is not the tail end of the old era ; it is the introduc-
tory period of a new era. Now, that idea is worth get-
ting, for it shows us as by a light just how foolish we
mortals are in the matters which most vitally affect us
in our economic interests.

We think that this business slump is the end of the
old period ; it is really the beginning of the new. If we
had been wise we would have recognized that the fever-
ish prosperity of last spring and the preceding winter
were the real "bad times" of which we should have
been afraid. Wise men told the people that, but did
anyone heed ? Only a few. That feverish, flashy pros-
perity during which money was spent in fast and
furious manner, and everybody was independent and
felt that he could walk out of his job any time he
wanted ; that complete let-down of all common sense in
expenditures and manufacture and labor — ^that com-
prised our hard times ! But we did not know it.

That period had to end. That was the ruinous pe-
riod. All the damage was done then. And when it did
end, then readjustment immediately began. The slow-
down and stoppage was the first sign of healthy recov-
ery from the fever of irresponsible folly. The slow-
down was not the disease; it was the convalescence.
We were sick, sick during what we thought was the
heyday of our economic golden age ; so sick, that in our
delirium we mistook dangerous economic conditions for
"prosperity."

Whatever disaster may be falling now is not a con-
sequence of present conditions, but of former condi-
tions. From this time forward, indeed from the time
the fever left us, the general economic condition has
been on the mend.

When people are able to see that the time to be
fearful is in times of irresponsible prosperity, in the
drunken revel of profiteering — then, we may hope for
the prevention of periods of what we call "hard times."
The only way you can eliminate the periods of conval-
escence is by eliminating the periods of illness. And

374

INFLATED PROSPERITY THE REAL "bAD TIMES"

the only way to eliminate economic illness is not to con-
fuse it with economic convalescence, as the people have
done for a century.

The whole matter is so intertwined that you cannot
speak of it under such terms as "money," business,"
"credit," or the like. These only represent a special
angle of the general whole. The crucial readjustments
that take place at times like this are not fiscal at all,
but human. The whole secret of economic recovery
is stated in human, and not banking terms.

When a crowded excursion ship is lurching too
heavily on one side, threatening to capsize, what is the
remedy? Readjustment of the burden. If all the peo-
ple have rushed to the port side, have half of them
return to the starboard side. This equalizes the burden.
It is evenly distributed, and thus more easily carried.

Something like that has happened to the economic
ship. Too many people crowded over to one side. The
City constitutes but a small part of the world. The
Manufactory constitutes only one part of the work of
the world. Yet everybody wanted to crowd into the
City, and to enter the Factory. And the result was that
an artificial congestion arose, and we called the fever
of that congestion by the delusive name of "prosper-
ity." All sorts of unnatural things came out of it.
Unnatural ideals of life. Unnatural exaggeration of
the value of money. Uhnatural disproportion between
qualities of materials and the price asked for them.
Unnatural notions of what constituted "a good standard
of living."' Unnatural waste of materials in cheap and
gaudy "luxuries," which were only toys. The whole
condition was unhealthy in the extreme, but because
there was a hectic flush upon its features, men thought
it was the color of "economic health." It was the con-
suming fever of economic dissipation.

You see, therefore, what line some of the readjust-
ments had to take. People had to do a lot of readjust-
ing themselves. What is the meaning of the "For Rent"
signs in our cities and the deflation of the rent
profiteers' balloons? Simply this : people are readjust-
ing the inequality of the population between country
and city. Thousands of people are going back to the
real country, which lies outside the cities.

375

FORD IDEALS

The people who are now going back to the country
are an advance guard. The time is coming when, if
industry needs them, it will go to the country and get
them, erecting pleasant little workshops beside the local
streams, and begin industry anew under natural condi-
tions. It is natural for people to like industry, to want
to work in industrial institutions; but it is unnatural
that a million people should have to be packed in the
narrow area of the City in order to gratify that desire.

We must not think, therefore, that those who are
leaving the cities are the defeated ones. Not at all.
Heaven forbid that our standard of success should ever
be in the present type of city life! Those who are
going back are the vanguard of a new movement which
will continue ^ until a proper adjustment has been
reached.

So, all these wholesome things are occurring now.
The whole situation is mending fast. No one will doubt
that the people are in a much more wholesome frame of
mind than they were a year ago. And there can be iio
prosperity, without this sound state of mind on the part
of the people. The first essential of prosperity has
therefore come back already: the fever has left the
public mind.

376

Choosing and Being Chosen

MOST of the wisdom of the world was in the copy
books. The lines we used to write over and over
again, the homely old maxims on which we practiced
to obtain legibility of our p's and q's, were the essence
of human wisdom. They were the first-aid packages
which the philosophers made to assist men who might
need help out in the midst of the field of life. Most
of the books that have been written since the copy books
are only commentaries thereon ; they say with more and
harder words what we used to read in our first lessons.

It isn't learning, it is wisdom or plain sense that
helps one through. Any man can learn all that he needs
to know. No one ever learns more than he wants to
know. We never learn anything unless we want to.
Sometimes you will find a man with what appears to be
a lot of useless learning, and you discover that he accu-
mulated it not because of his interest in its special
departments, but because he thought that acquaintance
with a multitude of subjects added to his prestige. He
accumulated knowledge as he accumulated neckties or
golf sticks.

The whole secret of a successful life is to find out
what it is your destiny to do, and then do it.

Now, that idea has several sides. When we speak
of what we "do'' we usually mean what it is we "do"
for a living. "What are you going to do when you are
a man?" we sometimes ask the children; it means at
what occupation are they to be engaged.

Well, we all have to work. But most of us have
something else to "do" as well. If all that a man has
to "do" in the world is the mechanical operations he
performs during working hours, then it would follow
that if machinery should be invented to perform that
operation for him, he would have nothing to "do."
One of the really useful figures of his time used to say
that his work was of quite a different character than
appeared to observers ; the observers thought he was a

^77

FORD IDEALS

cobbler; but he said he mended shoes only to pay the
expenses of his proper work.

We toil because we have to square our debt with
the earth — we have to pay for the wealth she lends us
in every material thing we use. But what do we do
with the life that we thus buy? That is the true form
of the question as to what we "do."

But there is something besides our toil — ^there is
also our work. Our toil is what we have to do to bear
our part of the work of production in which mankind
is engaged, and the fruits of which are essential to our
well-being. That is our toil. But our Work is that
which we would do all the time if we, could. Happy is
the man whose toil and work are one. There are many,
however, not so happily situated.

Most of us are doing two things: that by which
the body is kept alive, and that by which the higher part
of our nature lives. We go to the job to pay expenses,
and then we indulge ourselves in what we like to do,
and maybe were meant to do.

That is the secret of all the "amateurs" in the
United States. Amateurs are not always what we think
they are. They are often more intelligent and skillful
than the professionals. We shall have to change our
ideas of the meaning of amateur] formerly it meant
those who knew very little and were unskillful; those
who had a liking for an art or a science, but merely
dabbled. That idea will have to go in favor of the
truer one, that the "amateur" differs from the profes-
sional only in this, that the professional gets his living
by it and the amateur does not. In some respects the
amateur is better off, for he has two fields — ^that by
which he pays expenses, and that in which he finds
expression.

It is amazing to find how many people in the United
States have evolved financial systems. Here, there,
ever)rwhere are men who have occupied their spare
hours with the great subject of money. Farmers, store-
keepers, mechanics, country editors, could collectively
roll up a mass of research and speculative literature on
this subject that would literally swamp the received
authorities in the region of finance.

All this has a meaning. It means that the people

378

CHOOSING AND BEING CHOSEN

are being prepared for something in the money realm.
When you^'find receptive minds in all classes of society
being moved by the same master note, you may be
sure something is coming. All this mass of thoug^ht
by plain people is the prophetic soil whence shall come
the one whose mind can gather up all the fruitage of
the others and bring the epochal change to pass.

In truth there are no discoveries. Nothing is ever
entrusted to one man alone. We know now that no one
man invented printing; the idea was seeking incarna-
tion and found its way into life through several men
at about the same time. Columbus was not the only
discoverer of America : other men's thoughts had been
set this way. Destiny takes precaution that no purpose
shall fail through the unfaithfulness of one man; and
so the new truth is entrusted to several. It is this which
leads to so many bickerings in the matter of discoveries;
it is hard to prove who was "first" ; the idea was abroad
"in the air," and it came through to the minds that were
receptive, that were keyed to its quality.

Now, when you look at this from another side it is
a mighty encouraging thing. Some day there may come
to you the duty to do a disagreeable task, to take up a
cause which will yield you no reward, which will at first
envelop you in misunderstanding and abuse, which will
make you look like a fool before men. You will shrink
from it naturally, yet if you are the person selected
for the task, some way it will make itself known to you
as a serious proposition regardless of your likes and
dislikes.

The appointed task may be less to your likes than
you expected. A man's real work is not always what
he would have chosen to do. A man's real work is what
he is chosen to do. There is all the diflFerence between
choosing and being chosen. Sometimes our choices are
our destruction.

But when you are sure of what you have to do —
and un'^elfish sincerity, simple willingness to do what
is right are the only compasses by which you can be
sure — ^then you may also be sure of this: you are not
the only one.

Others have been notified and called out, too. But
maybe not to initiate the work. Maybe just to form

379

FORD IDEALS

the silent background, the receptive soil for the effects
which your work will bring about. No man ever stands
alone in any cause, if it is a righteous cause. When be
calls, his voice will be heard and answered. He will be
made aware by a thousand means that what he trem-
bled before as a stem, forbidding task, is really the
silent interest of many people.

There is a great deal of nonsense spoken about "the
lonely heights." They are not lonely, though they may
be silent The loneliness comes when a man settles
within himself whether he is to be a mere form, follow-
ing a conventional routine, or whether he is to listen
and obey the voice of changeful life. It is lonely for
him while he is deciding. If he decides to do what duty
bids him, then he is no longer lonely ; he comes at once
into the fellowship of all liberated souls. The only
liberated souls are those dedicated to perpetuate obedi-
ence.

Most of us will never get fame. Ii) a way this is
to be regretted, for if we could get it we should know
how well-off we are without it. Most of us will never
shine as the captain-leader of great movements ; but the
real success and achievement of life is to be one of the
foot soldiers of those great silent movements which,
like the motion of the sea, keep humanity from stagna-
tion

380

Can You Stand Friction?

PITY the poor fellow who is so soft and flabby that
he must always have "an atmosphere of good feel-
ing" around him before he can do his work. There are
such men. They produce with a sort of hothouse fer-
vor while they are being coddled, but the moment the
atmosphere chills and becomes critical they become per-
fectly helpless. And in the end, unless they obtain
enough mental and moral hardiness to lift them out of
their soft reliance on "feeling," they are failures. Not
only are they business failures ; they are character fail-
ures also ; it is as if their bones never attained sl suffi-
cient degree of hardness to enable them to stand on
their own feet.

There is altogether too much reliance on good feel-
ing in our business organizations. People have too
great a liking for working with the people they like. In
the end it spoils a good many valuable qualities.

Don't misunderstand ; when the term "good feeling"
is used, it means that habit of making our personal likes
and dislikes on purely affinitive and emotional grounds,
the sole standard of judgment.

Suppose you don't like that man. Is that anything
against him ? It may be something against you. What
has your like or dislike to do with the facts, anyway?
If you are a man of common sense you must know that
there is many a man whom you dislike, whom you must
admit is better than yourself.

When you were a lazy young fellow you probably
disliked the boss who tried to keep you busy. When
you were a careless, wasteful young sport, you probably
disliked the wise old head who took you aside and told
you how many kinds of a fool you were. When you
got into business and settled into a rut, you probably
disliked the progressive fellow who came along with
some live- wire competition and make you get out and
hustle again.

But what do these dislikes show ? Simply what you

381

FORD IDEALS

were. That ought to be enough to make you careful
to remember that your dislike always tells more about
you than it does about the other fellow. Your dislike
may be wrong about, the other fellow; it is perfectly
unmistakable in what it says concerning you.

Now, if you are one of those easy-going^people who
prefer to have a certain type of persons around you —
just that type and no other — ^it is a sign of which you
ought to take notice. There is a dangerous psychology
in having only agreeable people around you; it is too
much like a man reclining on cushions all the time.
Some men like to have around them women who "un-
derstand" them, and men who agree with them, and
friends who will always defer to them, and a public
that will always say "Bravo" no matter what is done.

The worst of it is, a man can have just these things
if he wants them. But they leave him without gristle
and marrowbone in the end.

You can have far too much harmony, especially in
business. You can go too far in picking men because
they harmonize with you in your nature. You can
have so much harmony that there will not be any of
the thrust and counter-thrust which means life, any
of the competition or friction which means effort and
progress.

It is one thing for an organization to be working
harmoniously toward one object, but it is another thing
for an organization to work harmoniously with each
individual unit of itself.

Some organizations use up so much energy and time
maintaining a feeling of harmony in themselves that
they have no force left to work toward the object for
which the organization was created.

The organization is secondary to the object. The
only harmonious organization that is worth anything
is an organization which is all bent on the one main
purpose — not to get along imth itself, but to get along
toward the objective. A common purpose, honestly
believed in, sincerely desired — that is the great har-
monizing principle.

Now, if John Smith does not like James Jones,
what does that matter? The main question is, does
James Jones know his business? Can he advance this

382

CAN YOU STAND FRICTION?

program toward its objective? Away with personal-
ities! This trivial, unexplainable temper which turns
to likes on one hand and to dislikes on the other; this
apparently unreasonable and irresponsible influence of
attraction and repulsion — these are stray mental phe-
nomena Nwhich may have reasons and meanings in
some spheres of our being, but the man who allows
such feelings to be the sole jtrdge of men and the sole
determinant of his comfort in working with men, is
certainly laying out trouble for himself.

The whole matter of harmony has been over-em-
phasized. Not only over-emphasized but wrongly
based. Everybody has the idea that harmony means
the various units of the organization getting along well
with each other, after the manner of guests at a party.
But that is not the basis of the harmony that achieves :
the only basis for effective organizational harmony is
a common belief in a common cause.

A certain amount of friction is a good thing every-
where — not antagonism, for that is waste; not jealousy,
for that is infantile stupidity; not a selfish and un-
principled cutting under of another fellow — ^but frank,
open understanding that on this job at least we stand
for what we are and nothing more.

Everybody knows of businesses where fellows are
being "held up'' through friendship. The staff thinks
that So-and-So is a good fellow, or the boss likes him,
or he maintains a sort of position because he "is easy
to get along with.*' But what about the business?
For everybody thus being held up, someone is doing
the holding up, and the business is burdened to hold
up both of them.

An organization can be so perfectly "harmonious"
that it has lost the power and the courage to prune
itself of its own dead limbs.

An organization can be so perfectly "harmonious"
that its only salvation depends on someone coming in
and making it work with people it "doesn't like," and
making it do work that it "doesn't like" — in short,
making it amount to something by doing what it doesn't
like.

Don't do all the things you like to do ; and do most
of the things you don't like to do; and then you will

383

FORD IDEALS

become a character strong enough to step out and ac-
complish things with men whom you don't like and
who possibly don't like you.

The young man, especially the young business man,
had better put this "like" stuff away from him entirely ;
it is as enervating as lolling among cushions all day.
The wise manager will get most of his work done
through men whom he doesn't like and who may not
like him; all that is necessary is for him to know and
respect their ability and dependability.

Men who know will agree with this: there is a
stronger bond between men who respect each other
for their strong qualities, than there is among men
who "like" each other for their merely amiable qual-
ities.

How would you measure a man's value? You re-
ply, "By what he is worth." Not by what you think
of him, that is, not by how you react to his personality
in liking or dislike? "No." Very well. If that is
the rule you follow, you will not be likely to do an
injustice to your fellow-man by misjudging him, nor
to do an injustice to yourself by fortifying the always
human tendency to unreasonable prejudices.

If you feel yourself getting soft and ineffectual,
get out where there will be no sympathy, no under-
standing, no admiration, but just plain challenge to
do what is in you. That will brace you up.

384

If You're Settled
You're Sagging

THE pull of gravitation upon us is mostly felt in
the desire to find some routine that will almost
run itself, to organize a business that will operate itself
automatically and for an indefinite period, to strike a
single comfortable rut and to keep it. This is the
downpull which men ought to resist, especially in these
changeful times when the future is offering itself to
foresight, and will be the servant of those who are
able to detach themselves from the familiar and ad-
venture with the new.

In the horse age we used to see this tendency rep-
resented in animals who were accustomed, to a certain
daily round. The doctor went to certain houses, and
his horse became accustomed to stop there, and would
always turn in whether reined in or not. The milk-
man went his round, and his horse behaved as if dis-
pleased if any change was made in the daily program.

Men fall into the same half-alive habit. Seldom
does the cobbler take up with the new-fangled way of
soleingf shoes, and seldom does the artisan willingly
take up with new methods in his trade. Habit con-
duces to a certain inertia, and any disturbance of it
affects the mind like a trouble. It will be recalled that
when a study was made of shop methods, so that the
workman might be taught to produce with less useless
motion and fatigue, it was most opposed by the work-
men themselves. Though they suspected that it was
simply a game to get more out of them, what most
irked them was that it interfered with the well-worn
grooves in which they moved.

There are business men who are going down with
their businesses because they like the old way so well
they cannot bring themselves to give it up. One sees
them all about — men who do not know that yesterday

385

FORD IDEALS

is past, and who woke up this morning with their last
year's ideas.

It could almost be written down as a prescription
that when a man begins to think that he has at last
found his method, he had better begin a most searching
examination of himself to see whether some part of
his brain has not gone to sleep. There is a subtle
danger in a man thinking that he is "fixed" for life.
It indicates that the next jolt of the wheel of progress
is going to fling him off.

The only business that has a promise of security
is the business whose manager has hardihood enough
to change it, even though he may love it ever so much,
when his common sense tells him that a change is
coming. It is a hard thing to do, but the hard things
are usually the right things to do, and a man is better
for following his vision instead of his "likes.'*

And what makes it hard?. It will not be hard for
the man who comes to do it for the first time — ^why
is it hard for the other? Because he has softened
down into the old methods; he has allowed them to
mold him, instead of himself molding them; he has
become a creature of his method, instead of its con-
troller.

The past has a strong hold on us through its de-
tail. We cannot break with the past, but we can scrape
off the clinging seaweed of its details. We can break
down the whimpering laziness of mind which resents
the intrusion of new methods. We can acknowledge
each day as a new day and not a mere repetition of
yesterday.

Life is not a "battle" except with our own tend-
ency to sag imder the downpull of the habit of "get-
ting settled." If to petrify is success, all one has to
do is to humor the lazy side of the mind ; but if to
grow is success, then one must wake up anew every
morning and keep awake all day. Great businesses
become but the ghost of a name because some one
thought they could be managed just as they were al-
ways managed, and though the management niSy have
been most excellent in its day, its excellence consisted
in its alertness to its day, and not in slavish follow-
ing of its yesterdays. It is not likely there will ever

386

IF you're settled you're sagging

be many really new thingsi to do, but it is certain that
most of the old works will be performed in a new way.
Fundamentally, agriculture will always mean produc-
ing foodstuffs and clothstuffs from the field; trans-
portation will always mean conveying materials by
wheel across the surface of the earth or by bottoms
across the surface of the waters; manufacture will
always mean armies of men working raw materials
into articles of use.

Everything we now point to boastfully as evidences
of our progress consists simply in doing some old
work in a new way. Most of that progress consists
in getting light from filaments instead of tallow, get-
ting wheel-movements from fire instead of ox-muscle.
Most of the history of material progress can be writ-
ten as a story of the successive ways by which wheels
have been made go round. There is nothing new ex-
cept in the way it is done.

Society is always in danger from two classes, those
who fear change, and those who crave it. The first
class tends toward decay, the second toward destruc-
tion. Change is not to be sought for itself alone, but
in following to best advantage the obvious beckoning
of the times.

There is always something outside ourselves that
gives the signal; a motion of advance that comes over
the earth like the coming of spring, and those that
are alive respond to it; those who prefer to continue
their hibernation in the old methods, fall out of step
with the advance. They remain comfortable enough,
no doubt, but they no longer count.

It pays a man always to have ideas in advance of
what he is doing; that is the only valuable capital.

Changes are coming in every field, and the ^cause
of the jagged interval between two periods is men's
hesitancy to give up the old and plunge into the new.
The old leaves fall to make room for the new. The
old methods are suddenly found to be inadequate be-
cause new combinations are arriving. The sleepy side
of our minds complains that we are being shaken out
of our old life ; the vividly alive side of* our minds
would show us, if we would permit it, that we are only
being shaken into our new life.

387

FORD IDEALS

It is not given to every generation to pass through
a period of change. Life ran placidly for our fore-
fathers for long stretches at a time, and in the older
countries a certain method of life became so fixed that
it left century-long traces on city and countryside. But
in these latter days the intervals of change become
shorter and shorter. The pace is quickening. Period
follows period out of all reckoning with, the old cal-
endars. We have seen an almost complete revolution
in the past 15 years, and now we are on the eve of
another; and as soon as that will have come, another
will be visible on the horizon. The world is moving
with breathlessly eager haste to some new position, and
we cannot stop it. We can only stop ourselves from
following along.

Life is not a location, but a journey. Even the
man who most feels himself "settled" is not settled,
he is probably sagging back. Everything is in flux,
and was meant to be. Life flows, and is not in the
same stretch of country for very long. Even the solar
universe, we are told, is flying along like a flock of
shining birds always occupying a new position in space.
We may live at the same number of the street, but it
is never the same man who lives there.

These facts may be resented or welcomed : the man
who acknowledges them in a practical way in the form
his service takes will always find himself in service;
the others will be retired. Finding it hard to give up
an incrusted method is a sign of a hardening of the
mind which, like the hardening of the arteries," is not
to be neglected.

388

When Not to Borrow Money

THE time for a business man to borrow money, if
ever, is when he does not need it This is a rule
whose observance would prevent a great deal of trouble
and, what is more, would turn out a better disciplined
class of business men.

A business is one entity which must stand on its
own feet. There is a great deal of talk about the
souUessness of business and about the ruthlessness
with which big concerns take their own wherever they
are able, but just the same, if business were superin-
tended by sentiment and managed by dreamers, there
would be no business.

It is the unconscious compliment which people pay
to business, that they always are ready to believe that
business can help them, but who ever saw the public
run to the aid of a sinking business? Why? Because
there is an unconscious belief that the business that
cannot stand on its own feet is not worth bothering
about. And it is true. That is the whole austerity
and severity of business; there is no monastic rule
more austere; there is no military discipline more se-
vere ; that business is justifiable only as, it serves, and
that it is permanent only as long as it can stand by
right and not by favor.

A business concern is a living body, though not
nearly so perfect as the human body. If the business
entity were as united and as responsive as the human
body, the progress that we are making now would seem
nothing in comparison with the progress we should
then make. In the human body, the executive func-
tions located in the office up in the head are able to
convey their orders directly to the hands, feet, eyes or
mouth. Normally, orders are precisely obeyed. But
in business it often happens that the executive ideas
could not be recognized by the time they have passed
half-way down the shop.

Now, because business is like a living body, it is

389

FORD IDEALS

capable of derangement, sickness. We make a great
mistake when we think that business becomes sick
only from without. The real illness to fear is not "de-
pressed trade" (that is an outer condition), but de-
ranged functions, an internal malady.

Take the tree. In times of "good business," so
to speak, it clothes itself luxuriantly with leaves; it
pumps streams of sap from the nourishing earth; all
its leaf-factories are kept going, in the daytime gath-
ering the necessities of life and growth, in the hours
of darkness absorbing them. Then come "bad times,"
so to speak : autumn storm, winter cold. The tree easily
and naturally adjusts itself to the change. It detaches
its leaves. It slows down. But it does not "fail." It
does not "borrow." It simply trims itself to the sit-
uation; it does not even freeze up. When the life
processes begin to flow full again, the tree is there
ready to receive them. It stands on its own feet. If it
did not, it would die. Indeed, the failure to do that is
all that constitutes dying.

Now, the internal ailments of business are the ones
that require most attention. "Business" in the sense
of trading with the people is largely a matter of filling
a want of the people. If you make what they need,
and sell it at such a price as will make possession a
help and not a hardship, then you will do business as
long as there is business to do. People buy what helps
them just as naturally as they drink water.

But your process of making the article will require
your constant care. Machinery wears out and needs
to be restored. Men grow uppish or lazy or careless,
and that is a situation that must be remedied, too.
A business is men and machines united in the produc-
tion of a commodity, and both the men and the ma-
chines need repairs and replacements. It is a fact
which every business man should realize that sometimes
it is the men "higher up" who need this treatment most
and get it least.

When a business becomes congested with bad
methods; when a business becomes ill through lack of
attention to one or more of its functions ; when exec-
utives sit comfortably back in their chairs as if the
plans they have inaugurated are going to keep them

390

WHEN NOT TO BORROW MONEY

going forever; when business becomes a mere planta-
tion on which to live, and not a big work which one
has to do — then look out for trouble.

You will wake up some fine morning and find your-
self doing more business than you have ever done
before — and getting less out of it. Keep on, and you
will begin to feel the pinch. It is then that you show
what is in you; it is the la§t examination to determine
whether you are entitled to the degree of Business Man.

In such a situation you can borrow money. And
you can do it, oh, so easily. People will crowd it on
you. It is the most subtle temptation the young busi-
ness man has.

Or in such a situation you can take off your coat,
plunge into the business and see what ails its internal
workings. Go through it like a surgeon. Remove dan-
gerous growths, cut off wastes, purge away accumu-
lated customs which hinder, put your business on the
operating table and give it a chance for its life.

If you borrow money, you are simply borrowing,
stimulus to whatever it may be that is wrong. You
are feeding the disease. Is a man more wise with
borrowed money than he is with his own? Not as a
usual thing. To borrow under such conditions is to
mortgage a declining property.

The time for a business titan to borrow money, if
ever, is when he does not need it. That is, wheh he
does not need it as a substitute for some things he
ought himself to do. If a man's business is in excellent
condition and in need of expansion which the business
can take care of, that is another matter. But if a
business is in need of money through mismanagement
or a disorder of the internal functions, then the thing
to do is to get after the business and correct the trouble
from the inside, not poultice it by loans from the out-
side.

Money is only another tool in business, anyway.
It is just a part of the machinery. You might as well
borrow -100,000 lathes as $100,000, if the trouble is
inside your business. More lathes won't cure it ; nei-
ther will more money. Only heavier doses of brains
and thought and wise courage can do it. A business
that misuses what it has, will continue to misuse what

391

FORD IDEALS

it can get ; the point is, cure the misuse. Then, when
that is done, the business will begin to make its own
money, as a repaired human body begins to make suffi-
cient pure blood.

Borrowing may easily become an excuse for boring
into the cause of the trouble.

Borrowing may easily become a sop for laziness
and pride. Some business men are too lazy to get
into overalls and go down to see what is the matter.
Or they are too proud to permit the thought that any-
thing they have originated could go wrong. But the
laws of business are like the laws of gravity, and
the man who opposes them feels their power.

Borrowing for expansion is one thing; borrowing
to make up for waste and mismanagement is quite
another. You don't want money for the latter, for
the primary reason that money cannot do the job.
Waste is corrected by economy; mismanagement is
corrected by brains and application; and neither of
these correctives can be confused with money. Indeed,
money under certain circumstances is the worst enemy
of these desirable qualities. And many a business man
thanks his stars for the pinch which showed him that
his best capital was in his own brains and not in bank
loans. ^

Borrowing under certain circumstances i§ just like
the drunkard taking another drink to cure the effect
of the last one. It doesn't do what it is expected to do.
It simply increases the difficulty. It is the capstan
of the young business man's education when he sees
that the tightening up of the loose places in his busi-
ness is much more profitable than any amount of cap-
ital at 7 per cent.

392

Tariff— Taxes — Transportation

GOVERNMENT never will be efficient through
and through because tliat is not what Government
exists for. But in its tasks, in the various things it
undertakes to do as specific services for the people,
it should be a model of efficiency. After all is said
and done, Government is a business organization^ and
something more. In so far as it is the culmination
of national purpose and aspiration, it is as foolish to
require efficiency of a Government as of a poem. That
is not the sphere of governmental efficiency. But if
it is a matter of digging a canal, of surveying a road,
of delivering a letter — if it is anything like the things
men undertake in individual or lesser corporate ca-
pacity, then we have a right to expect of the Govern-
ment a perfect performance.

These services, however, are but a part of the
work of Government. They lie on the factory side
of Government, so to speak, and should be organized
under efficient superintendents who are held responsible
for results. But there is a great region of policy and
progress where efficiency,, by the very nature of the
case, cannot be maintained, but where wisdom is in-
dispensable. Efficiency consfsts in doing in the best
possible way anything which we already know how to
do. But in the field of government there are some
things which we have yet to learn how to do. We
are still in the experimental stage.

Tariff is one of these experimental matters. Think
of the many minxls that have devoted themselves to
this problem, of the party battles that have been waged
over it, of the artificial prosperities and the needless
distresses that have cursed whole populations as the
tariff pendulum swung this way or that.

It would be most uncharitable to say that none of
this effort to reach the basic principle of tariff has
been honest ; doubtless most of it has been ; and doubt-
less the tariff idea rests largely on the confidence that

393

FORD IDEALS

a tariff is justified because it is serviceable to the peo-
ple.

Perhaps there never will be a perfect tariff adjust-
ment until the world itself is perfected, and then there
will be no need of tariffs. It is because of the inequal-
ities of the nations and the imperfection of thf earthly
federation that these walls are wanted. Formerly they
walled each city apart from the rest; now they only
wall each country.

It is all imperfect, of course, and tariffs are but
a part of the general imperfection. We can perhaps
tolerate them better for knowing that they are an effect
more than a cause. Certainly the tendency of the times
is toward less tariff restriction rather than more.

There was once a hope held by a party that the
tariff problem could be solved on the principle of
"tariff for revenue only," but if that rule were liter-
ally applied now, we probably should have the highest
tariff wall in our history.

Tariff has always been relied on as a tax producer,
and as a side line it served the industrial party — the
greedy and short-sighted financial party — ^as a monop-
oly-maker. It is right to protect American industries
when this does not mean protecting and coddling the
greedy inefficiency of individual Americans. This
country does not protect the individual that way; why
should it protect a group of individuals formed into
a corporation? If it is an American industry, it can
meet the world. If it cannot meet the world, it should
not be artificially sustained to represent American in-
dustry.

Taxation is another problem still in the experimen-
tal room of government. There never was an ideal tax
because there never has been an ideal expenditure of
taxes. There has never been a perfect basis of taxa-
tion because we have no basis of value. Many plans
have been suggested to meet this lack. The single-
taxer would make land the basis; others would take
a certain percentage of the income. We try both after
a fashion, and instead of people feeling that the tax
is their contribution to the cost of the benefits they
enjoy under their Government, they oftener feel that

394

TARIFF — TAXES — ^TRANSPORTATION

it is a burden. The very word has come to have an
ugly sound.

The present administration must raise taxes, and
of recent months most of the tax-producing sources
have dried up. What happens then? What does the
Government do then? Maybe the Government will go
into production to earn its own money. We have
100,000,000 people here who never stop eating, who
continue to wear clothes — it is a pretty good market
and ought always to keep business pretty brisk, if
there were not some kink in the money machinery
which the Government says it controls.

It is easy to say, "Lower taxes." But to stop
taxes altogether might mean to lower our Flag. How
would you like a 50 per cent reduction in all your
taxes ? Well, that could easily happen, and stilt give
the Government 40 per cent more than it is now re-
ceiving for the purposes of government, if we were
not so dumbly tied up with a system that takes oceans
of gold every year for the upkeep of our man-killing
machinery.

If the tax system were even 50 per cent perfect;
if people had a view of the course of their tax monies
which should be half as clear as their view of the in-
fluence of their ballots — ^that is, if the people knew
their government, or if the facts of government were
such as would make the government desirous of hav-
ing the people know them, then the payment of taxes
would become a pleasant ceremonial, like unfurling the
Flag or firing off firecrackers on the Fourth of July.
Taxes provide the method by which people enter most
closely into the work of Government, yet nobody knows
it. Fundamentally there is a wrong, wrong principle.

Then there is Transportation — ^that also is still an
experiment. Nothing is more arresting than the serv-
ice breakdown of the railways five years ago under
increasing business, and their fiscal breakdown now
under increasing income. When more business breaks
a business, and more income renders it poorer, there's
something deeper th^n mere mismanagement, there is
something fundamentally wrong.

Of course, fiscally, our railroads are paying for
multitudes of dead horses. Gamblers first controlled

395

FORD IDEALS

our railroads, robbed them till there was no- more gam-
ble in them, and left it to honest management to pay
the lOU's. Railroads developed artificially because
their gambling controllers strangled the railroad's side
partner, the canal — the canal, which, had it been kft
alone to perform its functions, would have assisted the
railroad to grow on a more natural basis. But, no,
the gamblers filled the canals with rubbish, and today
the railroads are breaking down for lack of waterways
to help them.

Our railroads are striking illustrations of the retri-
bution which overtakes even a national and interna-
tional business which is victimized by speculation. By
being regarded as mere financial devices, railroads were
cheated of the mechanical development which today
would have enabled them to meet the changed condi-
tions. Worse than being inefficient, worse than being
near bankruptcy, our railroads are not admirable even
in the railroad sense. They are equipped wrongly and
operated wrongly and they never will be efficient and
they never will be profitable again until they have been
changed from the bottom. You can't run railroads
from a speculator's office.

There, then, are three problems, all of them touch-
ing our times pretty vitally — Tariff, Taxes, Transpor-
tation. Each of them a field for dreams that come
true.

396

Illusions Are Not Faith

MANY a man thinks he has lost faith when he
has lost only his illusions. It is one of the pen-
alties we pay for not making proper distinctions be-
tween values. The power of illusion is so great, that
when the illusion vanishes we think that the bottom
has fallen out of reality; the truth is that only the
mists have been dispelled. The mists sometimes give
illusions of flowery meadows beyond; when they lift
we see a hard road.

Illusions can be lost, but faith cannot. A good
deal of credulity can be turned into skepticism, but
faith cannot. A man may lose many things, but he
cannot lose anything that he once possessed as part
of his very self ; and faith is such a part.

It is perhaps impossible correctly to see illusions
until they have vanished, because they fill so large a
part of the foreground of our minds while we have
them. They are like the dreams of youth which are
very real while they last, and even after they pass
leave fragrant vestiges behind, but which in the clearer
light of reality we see to have been wrongly placed.
They were beautiful, but they were not true; at least
they were not yet true. They may have been fore-
gleams, as when a sunny day foretells the Spring but
is succeeded by weeks of raw and changeable weather.

Illusions are numerous and take their color from
the man himself. Perhaps the most common of them
all relate to ourselves and society. There is a com-
fortable feeling which most of us possess at some time
in our lives and which is based on the supposition that
all men are good and unselfish. This feeling seems
to be confirmed during youth, for as a rule the world
does not show its hard side to young people. A great
defect in ordinary education is the teaching that every-
one is all right, when later experience, if it be normal,
cannot but show that everyone is not all right. There
is a sort of education which tends to make us soft

397

FORD IDEALS

and overdeveloped on the conciliatory side, so pathet-
ically anxious for harmony that we are afraid to stand
up for the truth which comes like a divisive sword and
cuts men into parties.

Society is suifering a reaction from that attitude
now, because of the weakness in ordinary thinking
which leads the ordinary mortal, for a time at least, to
say to himself, "Everybody is for himself alone; I
will therefore be for myself alone, and the devil take
the rest/'

There are people who in their reaction turn to a *
deeper dye of the thing which they thought was not
there and have found to be there ; their reaction is not
toward the actual condition as a real condition but
incomplete, and then goes still further toward the con-
dition that ought to exist. That is, men disappointed
in their illusions as to human society often turn de-
fensive and predatory, instead of constructive.

That is the cause of what is called "class conscious-
ness" today — a predatory attitude toward a class to
which one conceives he does not belong. It is seen
at its most fateful development in Russia, and its ex-
istence is a warning to all men.

There is enough good in society to preserve it for
all social purposes, but it is not of the ice cream party
or missionary kind. It doesn't go out in large and
generous waves, but it is there, waiting to greet its
own kind when it comes along. But some men's bit-
terness upon the loss of their illusions is so strong
that they miss the very thing for which their natures
are searching. In the great social upheaval in Russia,
there is a terrible lack of idealism. As one who has
been through it says, the idealists become rapacious
hypocrites as soon as they come into power. No po-
litical or social philosophy can be blamed for this; it
IS simply human nature.

Illusions are fine things to keep us afloat until we
find our feet, and the best thing that can be said of
them is that they trend mostly in the right direction.
If they were not mainly tinged with the right color,
they would not last long as illusions. Uncomfortable
illusions depart sooner than any other, for truth drives

398

ILLUSIONS ARE NOT FAITH

them out; if truth is kindlier to our comfortable il-
lusions, it may be because these are more akin to truth
itself. However, illusion is at best a mirage, while
faith has something solid about it — ^it is perhaps the
solidest thing in the world. All faith at last is one
faith, though the expressions of it may vary.

People do not commonly think of faith as solid and
substantial; they regard it as an airy fairy nothing,
colored balloons which one sends up for one's own
amusement. This is because they have confused faith
with something else.

Faith is know-so more than hope-so. Faith may
begin as a conscious preference; it ends as an ironclad
proof. The man who has faith knows. There may
be still much work to be done on the drawing board
or in the experimental room to make his faith articu-
late, but nevertheless he knows just as assuredly as
if the thing were the commonplace of everyday agree-
ment.

Faith is a higher grade of intelligence and is ac-
cessible even to those whose brains do not move easily
in routine methods, who do not manufacture their
thoughts according to the rules made and established
by the professionals.

The rule ought to be, the less illusion the more
faith, because illusion may be balmy, but faith is dyna-
mic. Illusions are sedative, faith is stimulative. A
man rests on his illusions, he climbs on his faith. Il-
lusions grow less and less as life goes on ; faith grows
more and more. Illusions are many, faith is one.

Faith is the material out of which all the things
that are yet to be are made. It is an invisible and
plastic substance capable of taking upon itself the
reality of visible form. Not only is it substance, but
it is force as well. It probably does not create any-
thing that already does not exist, but it has power to
bring the invisible things into the visibfe plane where
all men may use them. Faith is the matter out of
which new pattern things are made, and after they
appear, then commonplace men may make the same
things out of wood or laws or systems, or whatever
it may be.

We talk about having faith in ourselves. Well,

399

FORO IDEALS

if we know what that means, it is true; but too often
it means only a stimulated self-confidence, the assump-
tion and presumption of a "front." But plainly and
simply, faith must be in ourselves, because there we
make the only contact with reality that we can make.
It is faith in ourselves as having become at last a use-
ful part of the whole, that the term really signifies.

We sometimes talk about faith and sight as if they
were opposed; they are the same thing. The only
man who walks by sight is the man who walks by faith,
for he is the only man who can see. Nobody sees
anything until faith has brought it within the sphere of
vision.

Faith is the sixth sense that completes all the others
and it shows itself chiefly in loyalty to Duty, for Duty
sums up all the creative work we do. Our career is
our duty, and our duty is our contribution to life.
Creative work is not a fine and pleasant frenzy; it is
often doing what we would not choose to do, for we
are chosen oftener than we choose. A man plodding
along at what he knows to be his duty is an agent of
the universe, in his right place. Not only is he doing
something, but something is being done for him. Faith
works changes both in the agent and the objective. It
is the creative medium, without any limit that has been
found.

400

What Makes Immigration
a ''Problem?"

THE immigration question has come to the front
again and gives another illustration of the diffi-
culty of deciding national policies with rigid mathe-
matical precision. The fact that this question occurs
is proof that something is wrong; the fact that no
offered solution can be considered as final is proof
that we have not yet found the principle that should
govern us.

Two points are fixed, of which it will be very hard
to dispose. One is our national tradition as a place
of refuge for all people. It will be impossible to cause
the people of the United States to turn their faces like
flint against the populations of the Old World who
wish to come to us. We have stood before the world
as the open door for all who would begin their lives
again in a condition of liberty; we have never refused
sanctuary to the person fleeing from persecution.

The other point has already been made : our na-
tional attitude is the first; the plight of the alien is
the second ; they merge together. To close our doors
is not a national act alone, it reacts upon human beings
elsewhere. And that we shall ever be loath to do.

That is to say, perhaps, that we are incurable sen-
timentalists on this question. We may admit this, even
while we keep a shrewd eye on those who diligently
play upon our sentimentality for their own purposes.

We may admit most of what the spokesmen tell us,
too — the spokesmen who are more interested in other
races than they are in America. We may admit, for
instance, that this country was made by immigrants.
So it was. The pioneers were immigrants. They
came to a wilderness and made it blossom. They came
to a bleak and stormy coast and filled it with commerce.
It is impossible to honor them too much.

We ought to be frank enough, however, to see that

401

FORD IDEALS

not all modern immigrants arje of pioneer quality. It
is one thing to come to a country to help make it, and"
quite another thing to come to a countn'' as to a ripe
tree to pick it. There was no immigration problem in
the United States so long fls immigrants came to help
make the country. The country knew its friends, felt
the impulse of new life with every shipload of those
who came seeking a place to bestow their best. But
as soon as the type of immigration changed to include
people who came to pluck the country of its good
things, immediately the body of the nation felt its
vitality decreasing, as with some slow insidious disease,
and presently we knew that we had an immigration
problem.

The pioneers came on their own initiative. A very
large proportion of those who come now, are brought ;
they are transported as literally as an army is; they
do not form that surging forward of the free and in-
dependent portions of other peoples which character-
ized our former immigration tidal waves. No country
can have too much of the pioneer spirit, too much of
that loyalty which contributes to the upbuilding of its
institutions.

But what have we been getting in this country,
particularly of late? What have we been importing
besides immigrants? The immigration of destructive
ideas has been enormous, too. It is easier to deal
with immigrants, in whatever condition of physical,
mental or financial decrepitude they may come to us,
than with the false ideas which so many of them bring.
That i^ one of the conditions that make the immigra-
tion question: we are importing something^^lse besides
people and the danger of disease; we are importing
dangerous and false ideas — dangerous because false.

Now America is on the right road, or she is on the
wrong road. The United States stands for personal
liberty within the limits prescribed by the public good,
and for equality before the law, or it does not* Our
Constitution is the charter of a proper kind of national
life, or it is not. We must take one side or the other
on these matters, and we must classify men according
to the side they choose. If they are of the opinion that

402

WHAT MAKES IMMIGRATION A "PROBLEM"?

the United States ought to be changed into something
else, let them be so classified. They, however, cannot
be considered as citizens contributing to the upbuilding
of this country. If there is a class of people who come
to us saying, "Wq are the apostles of a new era ; your
way of doing things is wrong ; your whole system must
be changed," we are entitled to say in reply, "That
many of our ways are imperfect, we have long known ;
we are trying to perfect them ; tell us how it is that a
light has shone on you with reference to American
problems that has never shone on us; show us what
you have behind you in achievement and then we shall
consider your fitness to become our rulers."

And, for the most part, we find that these people
have no constructive record at all, and have nothing
within or upon them that recommends them to us as
the friends of the American spirit. They may prop-
agate the idea that Americans think them dangerous
only because they are dangerous to certain practices
by which some Americans practice: they are wrong;
we think them dangerous because they run contrary to
the spirit of America.

The immigration problem is not only a question of
numbers. The country is not in danger of being over-
populated. There are still great areas of land waiting
for people. It is not the number of the newcomers
that constitutes the problem, but their unwillingness to
begin as pioneers, with the land, and their unwilling-
ness to become American in the American sense.

This, of course, is due to several causes. And be-
fore the immigration question can be tackled satisfac-
torily, a number of things must be done.

The custom of hawking about Europe for immi-
grants who have least to leave should be prohibited.
We are getting now those classes which their home
governments are gladdest to get rid of. Indeed, their
home governments are so glad to be rid of them that
they facilitate their progress hither.

The custom of certain societies in the United States
of assisting thousands of immigrants to evade the law
by providing them with the amount of money required

403

FORD IDEALS

should be stopped. The same fold of bills brings any
number of immigrants into the country, thus destroy-
ing the virtue of the law which makes possession of a
certain sum an indication of certain desirable qualities.

The custom of immigrants settling in the cities
should be so regulated as practically to be stopped.
What immigration is doing for cts now is simply ex-
tending the slums of our large cities until they threaten
^o taint every part of every community. The United
States should assume the right which other govern-
ments have assumed and say to the immigrants, "You
may go here and settle where you will, but you may
not go there." President Taft once said he wished
that Russian Jew immigrants would go elsewhere than
to the cities. "The more we spread them out in the
West the better I like it," he said. "I have tried to
help it along so we could help them directly on to the
plains of Texas."

This custom of city settlement is encouraged, it is
believed, merely to give power to racial rulers which
set themselves up in every large city. Settled on the
land, the immigrant would more readily imbibe Ameri-
can ideas and would be less amenable to the leaders'
plans, and thus a leadership built upon so-called "racial
solidarity," but really upon ignorance of American
ways, would fall. This type of leadership is a very
grave danger in this country, and it is the cause of
some very disquieting manifestations in our national
life.

More stringent rules of citizenship should be made.
The immigrant should be more stringently required to
look forward toward citizenship as an important part
of his career, and the standard of the requirements of
citizenship should be much higher and more strictly
applied. It should not be more difficult to acquire
membership in a lodge than it is to acquire member-
ship in the citizenship of the United States of America.
We have been far too negligent.

404

The Three Foundation Arts

No MAN is more dangerous, in war or in peace,
than the man who tries to stop the processes by
which the legitimate needs of the people are supplied.
When a man attempts that in time of war, he is dealt
with as a traitor. His character does not change when
he carries on his work in time of peace, although his
punishment does. The reasons which move him to act
at one time are precisely the same as at another. He
wishes to aid some cause by breaking down the estab-
lished character of the people's lives.

Everyone remembers what was thought during the
war of men who tried to induce the farmers to raise
less food, the shop workers to complete less work, the
railwaymen to invent unnecessary delays.

Now, suppose there is today a return of that same
program, is it to be regarded as any more desirable
now than it was then? If a thing is good and right
to do, is there ever any justification for a conspiracy
to stop doing it ? Yet there is considerable propaganda
at work today to make men quit doing the right things
for society. The farmer is urged to raise no more
than he needs; the shopman is urged to do no more
than he must; the transport man is encouraged to let
society go hang.

And this propaganda is having a certain amount
of effect. To understand it, however, you must not
too hastily condemn it. It is not enough to say that
the program is wrong in every way in which it is pos-
sible to be wrong. We must understand why men
are persuaded to such a wrong program. Men do not
enter wholesale into a conspiracy to do wrong. Ameri-
cans do not undertake to injure society for the fun or
malice of it. They have been persuaded that it is a
means to a good end — a harsh means, perhaps, but to
be condoned for the sake of what it has in view.

405

FORD IDEALS

That is the point. Take the farmer's case, for ex-
ample. Many farmers are saying now that they will
not raise any more this season then they need — little
more, anyway. The farmer is, in many cases, sore in
his mind. Things have gone badly with him — not in
failure of the crops, nor in the enmity of the elements,
nor yet in the loss of public esteem for his profession —
but in a money way. He has as much of the wealth
of the earth as he ever had, much more in fact, but it
has not meant so much in tnoney. Farming has ceased
to be only a matter of making the earth perform her
yearly miracle; it has been hooked up with banking;
and, of course, the taint of money exerts a disturbing
influence.

Wheat will make as much bread as before, but it
will not make as much money.

Now, men have been busy telling the farmer that if
he will forbid the earth to yield as much food this year,
if he will exercise a prohibition over the beneficent
forces of nature, prices will go up next year.

Doubtless they will, and with them will go up the
cry of the people because of a scarcity of food.

The farmers are persuaded to do this as a protest
against the banking and financial system that juggled
their prices downward. That is to say, farming has
been advised to annex the evils of the financial system
in order to get even. It is a clear case of two wrongs
being counseled in order to make a right.

The farmers do not deliberately say, "We'll make
food scarce in the cities." They say, "We'll do some-
thing to check this game the hiasters of the money
market have been playing on us.'* Yet the latter
means the former. And even then, it does not mean
that the game will be won. Instead of food there will
be prices, and nothing was ever sustained on prices
alone.

Now, having this understanding of what the farm-
ers are taught will result from their action, let us see
how the whole case stands.

Society is like a city. There are some functions
which, in a city, can never stop without disaster: they

406

tHE THREE FOUNDATION ARTS

are the primal functions, for the benefit of which peo-
ple gather together in cities of similar communities.
They are such things as water, light, police and fire
protection.

Now, these things must be supplied, regardless. If
the city is wild or drunk, still the firemen and police-
men must stand guard, and the water . station must
keep pumping. If the city government is inefficient
and the revenues of the city wasted, still policemen
must pace their beats and fire stations must keep the
watch alert. There are some duties which, if deserted,
destroy the last chance of betterment and reform.

In the great national community, in the great world
community, there are certain primary functions with-
out which modern life is simply impossible, and even
primitive life is impossible.

These are Agriculture, Manufacture and Trans-
portation, the three great arts. Community life is im-
possible without them. They hold the world together.
Raising things, making things and carrying things are
as primitive as human need and yet as modem as any-
thing can be. Yet we cannot get beyond them. They
are of the essence of physical life. They are to the
world what water, light and fire protection are to the
city — indispensable. When they cease, community life
is no longer possible.

Now, the truth is this : things get very much out of
shape in this present world under the present system,
but the hope we have of a betterment of matters is that
certain things are going to stand firm. The basis for
a better state of things is here, if someone does not
destroy the basis. As long as the foundations stand
sure, a better building is always possible. Destroy the
foundation, and no building at all is possible.

The great delusion today is to make the Men of the
Foundation feel that they may trifle with the part they
have been given by Destiny to play in the social proc-
ess. They are being told that they are the victims',
when as a matter of fact they are the world's chief
hope, socially and economically. If they stand firm,
they will help bring about the order that is desired ; if

407

FORD IDEALS

they go fooling with the fundamentals committed to
their care, no one knows what will happen.

Now, we have the main timbers for the new order,
whatever it may be and whenever it may come. These
main timbers are the men and means to grow things,
to make things and to carry things. These will be the
hold-overs, so to speak, or a better figure still, they are
the bridges all set to see us across without disaster. As
long as Agriculture, Manufacture and Transportation
go on, the world can carry any economic or social
change.

But, if this bridge is destroyed, who knows what
will come? And if it is destroyed, it will only have
to be rebuilt again, and of the same men and means,
and for the same purposes — growing food, making
utensils, carrying goods.

It seems that if the men engaged in the three arts
were only able to see the part they play, that they are
really the great natural elements which prevent the old
order from being as bad as it might be, and are abso-
lutely indispensable to the new order, they would re-
gard their responsibility more highly than the prop-
agandists wish them to do.

The best service any man can now do to bring
about a better state of things is to be absolutely loyal
to the thing he is doing in the Three Principal Arts.
Speculators may have to stop, but not farmers. Money-
makers may have to quit, but not plow-makers. These
necessary things tide over any break, and are already
the substance of the newer time.

Anyone laboring in the Three Principal Arts today
has a hand in remaking the world for his children.
Anyone curtailing them is holding back society.

408

k Few Remarks on Education

EVERY little while the old question is brought up
again — "Does Education Educate?*' — ^and we
have more or less entertaining demonstrations of the
ignorance of college students, the illiteracy of the read-
ing public, numerous diverting tests of knowledge, and
debates concerning the difference between wisdom and
learning.

It is one of our favorite sports, this habit of getting
fun out of the question of knowledge : we make fun of
men who never went to college, because they did not
go; and we make fun of men who went to college,
because going did apparently so little for them.

There never was and probably never will be a sys-
tem devised that will put brains into men's heads, and
until such a system appears we must expect to find in
men the same differences that have always marked
them, whether with books or without them, in or out
of college.

Take a group of wholly illiterate men, men who
cannot read a date on the calendar, who cannot write
their own names, and you will find a difference in brain
power among them. Equally illiterate, one man will
exhibit more native intelligence ; he has brains even if
he has little book knowledge ; he has foresight, insight,
initiative; he knows what he knows, and, therefore,
possesses confidence and a sense of mastery.

Passing that group through college would probablv
not change the comparative brain values; one would
still be brighter than the others. The average of ability
might be raised, but there would be no essential en-
largement of native br^ain power.

Just as there are some stones that will not take a
polish, so there are minds that cannot be standardized
so far as knowledge and the ability to use it is con-
cerned.

' 409

FORD IDEALS

. An able man is a man who can do things, and his
ability to do things is dependent on what he has in him,
and what he has in him depends on what he started
with and what he has done to increase and discipline it.

An educated man is not one whose memory is
trained to carry ^a few dates in history, but one whose
mind can accomplish things. A man who cannot think
is not an educated man, however many college degrees
he may have acquired. Thinking is the hardest work
any one can do, which is probably the reason we have
so few thinkers.

There are two extremes to be avoided; one is the
attitude of contempt toward education, the other is the
tragic snobbery of assuming that marching through an
educational system is a sure cure for ignorance and
mediocrity. One benefit that education can confer on
a man is to give him an equal start with his fellows.
Sometimes even that is not an advantage, but in the
main and for the general run of human beings, per-
haps it is. You cannot learn in any school what the
world is going to do next year, but you can learn some
of the things which the world has tried to do in former
years, and where it failed, and why it succeeded.

If education consisted in warning the young stu-
dent of some of the exploded false theories on which
men have tried to build, so that he may be saved the
loss of time in finding this out by bitter experience, its
good would be unquestioned. One sees a great deal
along this line among the amateur inventors of the day.
Inventors, by the way, are not made by education, but
if they have enough education to save them from put-
tering away over the mistakes that have been con-
clusively proved to be mistakes, it saves them time.
There are men at work today on theories fundamen-
tally wrong, but they do not know that other men have
followed that road and have had to come back. An
education which consisted of signposts indicating the
failures and the fallacies of the past, doubtlessly would
be very useful. If education had as its objective the
putting of the student in possession of the world up-
to-date, so that leaving the school he could start in step

410

A FEW REMARKS ON EDUCATION

with humanity, it would be a great service. But
whether this is the objective, it may be better to let
educators themselves decide.

It is not education and it is not learning to be in
possession of the theories of a lot of professors who
do not know and never will know. Speculation is very
interesting, and sometimes profitable, but it is not edu-
cation. To be learned in science today is merely to
be aware of a hundred theories that have not teen
proved. And not to know what those theories are is
to be "uneducated," "ignorant," and so forth. But
neither the man who knows these theories nor the man
who does not know them, really knows anything. If
knowledge of guesses is learning, then one may be-
come learned by the simple ejcpedient of making his
own guesses, and by the same token he can dub the
rest of the world "ignorant" because it does not know
what his guesses are.

But the best that education can do for a man is
to put him in possession of his powers, give him con-
trol of the tools with which destiny has endowed him,
and teach him how to think. The college renders its
best service as an intellectual gymnasium, in which
mental muscle is developed and the student strength-
ened to do what he can.

To say, however, that mental gymnastics can only
be had in college is not true, as every educator knows.
A man's real education begins after he has left school,
as any university graduate will tell you. True education
is gained through the discipline of life.

The trouble is not with the schools altogether
(though their one-sidedness in filling the field with
books and leaving no place for the training of eye and
ear and hand is recognized), but with the public illu-
sion that schools can do for a young man what he must
do for himself. If young men come out of college un-
educated it is their own fault, and the same would be
true if it were a canning factory Jhey came out of, or
a boiler shop, or anywhere else. Any place, any work
offers an opportunity for education, but it is something

411

FORD IDEALS

the recipient takes, it is not something that can be
handed to him.

Here is a farmer boy working in the greatest school
that ever existed, walking all day long on the greatest
textbook ever written. If he could master the secrets
of one acre, or even one square foot of land, he would
be a learned man. There are more things to be learned
on one farmstead than in Harvard, Yale and Prince-
ton put together ; though it sometimes occurs that the
young man doesn't know this until he has gone through
school first.

' We are a nation of casual readers. We read to
escape thinking. Reading has become a dope habit
with us. Learning has become a thing of accent and
of facts. It is "learning" to have read the latest novel,
but not to know that it's a silly, trivial thing. It is
"learning" to have looked into this or that book-suf-
focated man's speculation, but not to know that he
would be a wiser man and have more wholesome blood
coursing through his brain if he would take a hammer
or an ax and get out where he could sense life. Book-
sickness is the modern ailment. There's more wisdom
in the shop where men deal with real materials and real
persons every day.

What can you do to help and heal the world ? — that
is the educational test. If a man can hold up his own
end, he counts for one. If he can help ten or a hun-
dred or a thousand other men hold up their ends, he
counts for more. He may be quite rusty on many
things that inhabit the realm of print, but he is a
learned man just the same. When a man is master
of his own sphere, whatever it may be, he ha^ won his
degree — he has entered the realm of wisdom.

412

Common Life Is Standard

and Best

THE time is here when many young people are leav-
ing school and casting about for clues by which
they may settle the question of their careers ; they want
to know what they are going to do, what niche they
will fill, what name people will know them by as to
trade, service and success. It is a trying period. It is
astounding sometirpes how little can be done to help.
The very anxiety of the search seems to be a stage
through which the developing life must come.

There is probably not so much nonsense to be got
rid of by the person leaving school nowadays, as there
formerly was. Years ago no school was believed to
have done its duty which did not send out every pupil
filled with the idea that some day he (and now it would
be also she) might become President. As the United
States has required only 29 Presidents in the 145 years
of its national existence, there has been a rather alarm-
ing waste of raw material.

The majority of people are blessed by being des-
tined to the very best kind of life there is, the life of a
plain person upon whom all the liberties descend and
who with others of his kind constitute the ruling class
of the world. They will not be President, nor Con-
gressman, nor town councilman, nor even secretary of
their lodge; they will just be folks.

It is very easy to state this another way. It may
be said that "they are doomed to mediocrity." It may
be said that "they are destined to live the colorless life
of the common man.'' It may be said, "They are sen-
tenced to a proletarian life." ,

These phrases are the scum that rose to the surface
of those old false teachings that success consisted in
getting the place that was accessible to only a few in a

413

FORD IDEALS

generation. Failing that, then life was "doomed" to
be common. Utter rant and nonsense !

The very word "proletariat" is an insult, and if the
majority of the people knew what it meant they would
repudiate it and cast off the propagandists that foisted
the name upon them. Proletariat means that class that
is good for nothing but to raise children for the state
— the lowest, most vulgar and useless type of human
beings.

Yet whole bodies of well-read and highly useful
American citizens are induced to parade around calling
themselves the Proletariat, and reading about them-
selves as Proletarians. The man who calls himself a
Proletarian, and knows what the word means, ought
to be ashamed to look his wife and family in the face.

There are no such people as common people, in the
sense that makes all the others uncommon. We are
all common, or we are all uncommon, however you
choose to look at it. The king is common, once you
get to know him. The Presidential office is not a com-
mon office, but the President is common. Ask him,
and_ he will tell you that he never felt himself to be
anything but common. That is to say, people on the
same plane of character are common possessors of
pretty much the same qualities ; they are citizens of the
same commonwealth.

To say that the king is common and that the Presi^
dent is common, is, however, not quite the whole truth ;
for these statements are made sometimes to soothe
those who are in rebellion against being themselves.
The major half of the truth is that no man is com-
mon; individuality, personality, the moral dignity of
a human being as a creation of the infinite mind, these
are the most imcommon things we can think about. No
man is common. But in the compass of that fact, all
men are common. They have a common uncommon-
ness by virtue of their being human beings. Their
commons is the universe.

Now, the book that the majority reads is said to be
the best book. The food that the majority eats is held
to be the most natural and nourishing food. The mode

414

COMMON LIFE IS STANDARD AND BEST

of life which the majority pursues is held to be the
most satisfactory mode. The life that the majority
leads may be called the standard, the normal of life.
Very well; that standard, normal life is the same life
we call common, and which som^ poor pitiable people
regard as a life of failure. Life itself is at once the
common and the uncommon thing. The richest and
nK)st successful person is the one who has the most
life; and life fe within; it is within and from within;
there is no favoritism, no "puir* at the source of life.

Now that is what is meant when the false guides
say "the majority are doomed to live the life of the
masses," and that also is what is meant when others
say, "the majority are going to live the standard,
normal human life." That life is common to all. It is
the life which everybody must live in order to live at
all; the life of labor and food, of day and night, of
home and family, of body and soul — the same life
which the President must live in his White House and
the pioneer in his prairie home. It is the same life.
It ought to be a relief to know in advance that it is to
be ours.

Life is divided into two main periods — the period
when we take in and the period when we give out.
Youth is the receptive period, and although that period
does not end, there comes to keep company with it an
expressive period when the individual makes his or
her contribution to the general life. He does more
than that, however; in his work he also makes a con-
tribution to himself. The sum of earth life is the mak-
ing of character. It is inevitable.

We make character whether we want to or not.
We make it whether we are conscious of it or not.
We make it wherever we are and by whatever we do.
There is no special location or no special occupation
which is more favorable to character-making than is
another location or occupation. There is no station in
life that is favorable to the production of a finer type
of character than is any other station.

The more and better character that is made, the
more the outer world is changed to conform to it. The

415

VOKu OfiALS

money question, the industrial question, the political
question, the social question — ^all these wait for the
settlement of the character question.

The reason that high office is so powerless to bring
about reforms, the reason that titles and prerogatives
are helpless in making a clean sweep of injustices, is
just this — ^no office or authority gets any further than
the character that creates and fills it. Character is the
great authority. Given character, office can be dis-
pensed with. Presidents and kings and magnates of
all degrees are but the servants of great characters.
And great characters are independent of riches or
power. They are rich and they have power, and are
therefore invincible in whatever right things they un-
dertake.

We have rather successful inventions, successful
businesses, successful policies, but not enough success-
ful men. The success of a man is to become a Man in
the character and power that make him, stripped and
alone, a Man. And this is all within his own control ;
no outer circumstance can control that, but he can use
that to control outer circumstance.

No one should be content with poverty, because if
it is poverty instead of the clean, hard type of bareness
which constitutes the voluntary "doing without" of
camp life, it is degrading. If a man is poor, it should
only be by his own choice. Many men have been poor
by their own choice, and therefore they escaped the de-
pression of poverty. In the perfect society, most peo-
ple will choose to live on the plane of the average man
of today — it is more comfortable, more human, more
conducive to peace. The state to which the majority
of society has attained today, with such corrections of
the money and governmental system as will prevent dis-
honest tampering, is, with certain changes, approxi-
mately the state that will prevail when society becomes
what it ought to be. Why not? What better base is
there for the development of character?

416

Discouraging People From

Thinking

THERE is a false theory which dates from ancient
times that the way to prevent social or political
disruption is to prevent the people from thinking.
Keep their minds off fundamental problems and every-
thing will go along without disturbance. Sometimes
this was done by free circuses and free distribution of
food, as in ancient Rome. Sometimes it was done by
bringing on a war when the population seemed to be
growing restless. Sometimes it is achieved by bring-
ing upon the stage a leader with a Roosevelt personal-
ity who captures the imagination of the people and
gives an appearance of rushing hither and thither on
an endless series of hopeful quests.

In these days, the same doctrine is preached with
reference to unemployment — ^keep the people employed,
because if you do not, they will begin to think, and
thinking is not a good sign.

It is doubtless true that unemployment is unneces-
sary, or would be unnecessary if our affairs were man-
aged by plain common sense. There is always enough
to do and always enough people willing to do it, but
there is always also that, little-understood matter of
money which usurps so big a position in the question.
Unemployment is everybody's fault, and not the fault
of a class only, as the false teaching of the day asserts.
The class propaganda is merely a postponement of the
sense of general responsibility which all the people must
feel before substantial and enduring progress can be
made.

As to the dangers of the people thinking, there are
several points to observe. Thought, of course, is the
most powerful dynamite in the world. Thought has
achieved whatever we see. Wrong thought has achieved

417

FORD IDEALS

all the wrong we see. It is not thought that is danger-
ous, but its temper and direction.

It is perhaps true that one of the root causes of our
troubles today is that there is too little public thought.
More people are reading than ever before — ^as witness
the enormous editions of incendiary literature which
the radical organizations circulate — ^but what they read
stirs up something besides thought. It stirs up passion,
resentment, hatred, the latent destructive faculties, and
puts the man into fierce vibration, but this is not stir-
ring up thought. Thought has quite another tone and
result.

What little thought may be mixed in these "manifes-
tations of the destructive passions is thereby contamin-
ated, prostituted and neutralized. Men cannot think
under such conditions. The real problem is not how to
prevent the people thinking and asking questions, but
how to make it possible for them to think under right
conditions.

During the period of stress and unemployment
which is now happily past, many people did a great
deal of so-called thinking. That is, they brooded and
they made vows and they gave vent to great denuncia-
tions. It was not purposeful thinking. How could it be ?
When a man is in a corner, how can he be expected to
be philosophical? Unless, of course, he is an extraor-
dinary man; and if he were that, the chances are he
would not be in a corner.

Our best social thinking is not done in periods of
stress and enforced idleness. Indeed, you can measure
the difference between real thinking and brooding, by
measuring the difference between leisure and idleness.
Leisure is necessary to thought, but idleness seems to
be the enemy of thought. Leisure is a breathing
period in a situation in which the man feels secure;
idleness is a brooding period in a situation in which the
bottom has apparently dropped out of the man's secur-
ity. If the lay-off last winter could have been em-
ployed as leisure, if men had been so well provided for
that they could have looked upon the lay-off as a wel-
come vacation, the mental results would have been
beneficial to the country. As it was, the idleness was

418

DISCOURAGING PEOPLE FROM THINKING

not leisure, and the psychological recovery is just as
necessary as the economic recovery.

The farmer is a good illustration of this. No one
can deny that the farmer has been very hard hit and
that his problem is the problem of every one of us.
Until we regard the farmer's problem as our own, we
are neglecting a bulwark of our economic security
and our social solidarity. We hear in other countries
of "Soldiers' and Workmen's Committees"; what we
need in this country is a better understanding and a
closer relation between workmen and farmers.

During the slack season of the winter, when the
farmer himself was shut out of his fields bv win-
ter, he did a great deal of brooding. He had enough
to brood about, too. And he expressed himself quite
fully. His leisure was robbed of its value because of
the change that had come in his economic standing,
and his thoughts veered likewise. He said, among
other things, that he would not raise a bushel more
grain this year than he needed for himself and family !
He was through being the football of the profiteers!
He would show them that they could not do as they
liked with him!

It was a serious threat. Aside ffom the economic
phase of it, there was something ominous in the
priests of the soil threatening to prevent the forces of
nature doing their seasonal work.

But what has occurred? The sun of spring began
to shine and the spring rains came down, and the farm-
er went forth to his fields. He began to work. Work
began to heal him. It is safe to guess that what the
farmers think by the end of the season, by the time of
harvest, will be more constructive than what they
thought during the winter.

If the people only would think, and if conditions
could be maintained which would enable them to think
constructively, few problems would remain unsolved.
Prosperity is the best time to think, for then you have
the elements which are desirable to be maintained,
and which the thoughtlessness of the people is some-
times a very large element in destroying.

419

FORD IDEALS

Why is it that public thinking, under conditions of
prosperity, is more valuable to the public interest than
the so-called thinking which is done under economic
stress ?

The answer is clear. First, the man is free to
think without bias or resentment. There is no sense of
personal wrong resting upon him, no feeling of bitter-
ness twisting all his views into one channel. Second,
the elements which are fundamental are present be-
fore him — the fact of work and its necessity ; the fact
of home and its security; the fact of society and the
great dependence it has on ordered industry. Third, a
general view into all grades of life which ease of mind
permits him and which stress of mind often shuts out ;
he can consider his children and their education ; mor-
als and their sanction ; literature, science, politics — ^all
the things which are shut out and undervalued when
mental stress forces the mind into merely class ques-
tions.

Now, with none of these things present, but with
himself forced down to the animal plane of finding
something to eat, plainly the man is not in a position to
do all-round thinking. And it is all-round thinking that
is going to save the people from lopsided mistakes. Our
education cannot be too general, our acquaintance with
the grades of life too wide, for in the breadth of our
view comes the correction of our tendencies to narrow-
ness.

Therefore, the agitators of destruction know ex-
actly what they are doing when they choose the times
of depression for their propaganda. Would that the
children of light were as wise to choose the times of
prosperity for the cultivation of sound, unbiased and
constructive thinking upon the matters pertaining to
our common life!

Anyone who preaches that the people must be pre-
vented from thinking is as dangerous to society as are
those who spend immeasurable zeal in their efforts to
make society think wrongly. It is when all the people
think, normally and wholesomely, that the world will
become what it might be.

420

Getting Rid of Fear and Failure

THE only communism that ever helped men, and
that ever will help men, is the communism of
thought and understanding. Our modern life has
taken a direction which makes it necessary for people
to become acquainted all over again. We form our
conclusions of persons and classes apart from them
and, as a result, the world is dealing with dummy fig-
ures which never existed, and with types of men who
are few and unimportant.

There was a time when people knew one another
more intimately than they do now, and that time is
still present in other countries. People knew one an-
other in America when they were more dependent on
one another. When neighborliness consisted in a com-
munity of understanding, sympathy and helpfulness,
when neighborliness was a duty such as "keeping up
an appearance" is now regarded, there was a wide-
spread social knowledge, gained by contact, which is
now only imperfectly gained from other sources.

Then the industrial era opened ; the amount of
money handled by each family increased; the things
that people used to do for one another, were hired
done, or done within the family; in a word, people
became more independent of one another, and thus
drifted apart. Neighborhoods, on the surface at least,
^re not what our forbears remembered them to be, nor
even what they were in our youthful years. Indeed,
there are no "neighborhoods" in the larger cities ; there
are just "localities."

Perhaps it is not as bad as this ; it only appears as
bad. From time to time there comes news of a re-
vival of the old neighborly spirit. Trouble comes to
a family that has lately moved in and whom no one
knows, and presently the neighborhood spirit — sleep-
ing, but apparently not dead— discloses itself again in
t^bose old and homely acts which, while they often have

421

FORD IDEALS

small power to heal the circumstance, have ne.«^rthe-
less a very potent power to soothe sore hearts.

Try as we may to relegate all this to the realm of
useless sentimentality, the fact remains that there is
mysterious power in just the compassion of men for
one another in their difficulties. There is not enough
of it, and the reason is that we have made ourselves
believe that material sufficiency makes us independent
of all men. Not so. As a matter of^ fact, no one is so
constantly dependent on other men as he whose inter-
ests and responsibilities are great.

But if experience teaches us anything it is this, that
there is no readjustment without its compensation. The
only constant and reliable fact is change. Life is a
river whose sources are hidden, whose ultimate sea is
not in view, and no work of man is quite so vain as
that which seeks to fix life in a certain form for all
the future. Create the form you dote on; establish it
by revolution or the people's suffrage; yet as soon as
it is established, the law of change begins to eat it
away, and in a generation men reared under your form
will be sadly saying, "Things are not what they used
to be."

And if we have been dislodged ''out of our reliance
on the neighborhood, it has all been a profitable thing ;
by it we have been thrown back into more reliance
upon ourselves.

After all, the successful man is the man who has
no fear of himself. The true man of the world is the
man who feels that as long as the earth turns round
and the seasons come he is in his proper home, with
all needful things awaiting his command.

If there is one element of darkness which one
would banish from the earth sooner than any other^ it
is this element of fear. Fear is the offspring of a reli-
ance placed on something outside — on a foreman's
good will, perhaps, on a shop's prosperity, on a mar-
ket's steadiness. That is just another way of sa)ang
that fear is the portion of the man who acknowledges
his career .to be in the keeping of earthly circumstance.
Fear is the result of the body assuming ascendancy
over the soul. It is the fruit of the mind that ac-

422

GETTING RID OF FEAR AND FAILURE

knowledges itself to be a bond-slave. Many men fear
every undertaking, and when you analyze the sources
of their fear you will find that it is nothing but the
memory pi their own previous failures. Men are like
colts; if they are permitted to fail too often, it becomes
a habit with them. Colts, however, fail because they
are overloaded ; men, because they do not "adjust their
efforts to obstacles" — which was Napoleon's rule.

This habit of failure is purely mental and is the
mother^of fear, and like any other bad habit, it carries
a great deal of blameworthiness with it. Men fail —
everybody fails — experiment and the getting o^expert-
ness can be achieved by no other means than by items
of failure; but to let failure in details or in experiment
fix the ha'bit and the fear of failure on the mind is not
only tragic but positively sinful.

This habit gets itself fixed on men because they
lack vision ; that is, they start out ^.o do something that
reaches from A to Z of a certain matter. Now, at A
they fail, at B they stumble, and at C they meet what
seems to be an insuperable difficulty, and then they
throw the whole task down — beaten! They have not
even given themselves a chance to fail; they have not
given their vision a chance to be proved or disproved ;
they have simply been beaten by the natural difficulties
that attend every kind of effort.

It is a very serious thought that more men are
beaten than fail. It was not wisdom they needed, nor
money, nor brilliance, nor "pull," but just plain gristle,
plain bone. This rude, simple, primitive power which
we call "stick-to-it-iveness" is the uncrowned king of
the world of endeavor.

People are utterly wrong in their slant upon things.
They s^ie the successes that men have made and some-
how they appear to be easy. But that is a world away
from the fact. It is a failure that is easy. Success
is always hard. A man can fail in ease; he can suc-
ceed only by paying all that he is and has. It is this
which makes success so pitiable a thing if it be in lines
that are not useful and uplifting to the people.

Men ought to learn not to keep putting their trust

423

FORD IDEALS

into what they deem untrustworthy. If a man is in
constant fear of the industrial situation he ought to
change his life so as not to be dependent on it. There
is always the land,, and fewer people on the land now
than there ever was before.

If a man lives in fear of an employer's favor
changing toward him, he ought to extricate himself
from dependence on any employer. He can become
his own boss. It may be that he will be a poorer boss
than the one he leaves, and that his returns will be
much less, but at least he will have rid himself of
the shacipw of his pet. fear, and that is worth a great
deal in money and position.

Better still, is for the man to come up through him-
self and exceed himself by getting rid of his fears in
the midst of the circumstances where his daily lot is
cast. Become a freeman in the place where you first
surrendered your, freedom. Win your battle where
you lost it. And you will come to see that, although
there was much outside of you that was not just right,
there was more inside of you that was wrong. Thus
you will learn that the wrong inside of you spoils even
the right that is outside of you.

A man is still the superior being of the earth.
Whatever happens, he is still a man. It may rain to-
morrow — he is still a man. Business may slacken to-
morrow — he is still a man. He goes through the
changes of circumstances, as he goes through the
variations of the temperature — still a man. If he can
only get this thought reborn in him, it opens new wells
of water and new mines of wealth in his own being.
There is no security outside of himself. There is no
wealth outside of himself. The elimination of fear is
the bringing in of security and supply.

424

The Exodus From the Cities

IT IS human nature to want to sit down contented,
to get everything so nicely arranged that it will go
without tending; but everyone knows that that is not
the way life goes. There is a difference of tempo, a
difference of purpose, a difference of method between
human nature and life. Human nature would seem
to be the sleepy pupil, and the forces of life the stern
teacher who prods the pupil and keeps him doing what
he would rather not do. Which, of course, is the high-
est education, the best discipline— the power to do
what we would rather not do.

Every now and again something comes along to jar
us loose, and start us going again. The conditions we
thought were settled turn out not to be settled at all.
The method we thought was established turns out to
be the most temporary of expedients. Life steps in
and orders us to move on.

The thermometer is one of the staffs of authority
which life wields over us. You will find within a cer-
tain belt around the world all the progress that is con-
tained within the world, and the secret of that belt's
prosperity, progress, morality and superiority is re-
vealed to us by the thermometer. The thermometer is
mightier than the sword. Those races whom destiny
has not set within that earth-belt need not be fought
with swords; the thermometer fights them and keeps
them in their place. The People of the Four Seasons
are four times set upon every year by the forces of
nature ; they have the sternness of winter, the promise
of spring, the rich fruitfulness of summer and the
beauty of autumn in their make-up. They are not
suffered to loll upon the earth as others are. The gad
of destiny is always whisking their flanks.

Take the gentler upset which the coming of the
present season brings to our ways of thinking. "Spring
fever,'* so-called, and summer discontent are not mere

425

FORD IDEALS

individual restlessnesses, they are comparable to the
tremor which sometimes runs through the earth; they
indicate that new settlements, new bases are being
sought for. What we overlook too often is the fact
that our desires are our prophets, foretelling what is
to be. Millions of people at this season of the year
are becoming sensible, often in a dull, dumb, uncon-
scious way, of the difference between the way we have
organized our life and the way in which nature has
organized the world.

People go out under the trees and beside broad
waters ; they endure, dust and heat and crowding and
the plaints of children, to seek a place where they may
lie on a shaded hill and idly watch the cloud-fleets sail
the sky. They get a new sense of the expanse and
freedom of the world. Their minds range where there
are no walls, no bounds, no close schedule of limita-
tions.

Say what you will, this contact with nature, though
it be but for a day, is more than a pleasure, more than
a vacation from work ; it is a jolt. People are made
sensible of a jar between what is and what might be.
Reflective people do not even enjoy the time of their
vacation as they ought to, because it comes so clear to
their minds that something is wrong. They may be
inclined to think that it is merely their freedom from
their usual work that causes this uneasiness, their free-
dom to think once more — but that is not always the
case. The Voice of Nature is saying to them, "Up,,
for this is not your rest, you must march on!"

It is not that the city is hot ; the country is hot too.
It is not that the city means daily toil; there is daily
toil in the country too. But somehow, at this season
of the year, when the men of the cities come into the
temples of the groves, and see miles of meadows and
the sweep of rivers, they are torn between two feelings
— first, that the cities have their disadvantages ; second,
that the cities have their advantages too.

One thing you may set down as true is that the
cities are doomed. Not immediately, but perhaps much
sooner than even the most adventurous are willing to
believe. There is no city now existing that would be

426

THE EXODUS FROM THE CITIES

rebuilt as it is, if it were destroyed; which fact is in
itself a confession of our real estimate of our cities.

There is a strange new movement afoot, which is
well to attend a little. Never was there such an influx
of people from the country into the cities; never was
there such an exodus of people from the cities into
the country. The two go on together. The people
who don't know the cities are flocking in, as many as
can. The people who do know the jcities are flocking
out, as many as can.

Now it means this : the city has had a part to play
in the civilization of the world, and that part is now
being played with accelerated speed. All our cities
have changed their inhabitants the last few years.
More and more people have been passed through them
to gain wha^ they have to give. When the full part
is played, and it is being played out fast, cities will pass
off the stage. To this many lines of indication agree.

So, the unrest we are beginning to feel, and which
we increasingly feel at this season, is prophetic. Men
are going to live nearer the source of things, not walled
away like exiles from the very sun by which they live,
and from the very soil that gives them bread.

The city had a place to fill, a work to do. Doubt-
less the country places would not have approximated
their present livableness had it not been for the cities.
By crowding together, men have learned some secrets.
They would never have learned them alone in country
life. Why, even the fresh air method of treating
tuberculosis is a city discovery. Sanitation, lighting,
social organization, all these are products of men's
experience with each other in the city.

That is to say, practically all the improvements that
have been made in country life have originated in the
city and have passed on to bless the country. In that
we may see the city's place in the world — it was a
gathering place in which men might work out those
necessary devices of successful living which, when
transplanted into the country, would make the desert
blossom as the rose and, what is better, make the gray
waste of life a colorful thing.

People who are getting out of the cities now are

427

FORD IDEALS

taking the best of the cities with them — ^those discover-
ies and inventions which make life safe and pleasant,
and which unburden men of loads that are better borne
by iron and steel.

\^ It is not the advantages of cities that are doomed,
but the disadvantages — ^the congestion, the inequality
which reigns even in the matter of air and sunlight and
ground space. And yet, the world has known for
many centuries that air and sunlight and ground space
were not of >J:hemselves the infallible sources of happi-
ness and success, for without certain improvements
even country life becomes an insupportable drudgery
and an unrelieved loneliness. The advantages of the
country are natural; the advantages of the city are
human ; when both are fused, as they are being fused,
the cities lose in large degree their justification for
existence. When they bring their best to the country,
their work is done.

Cities, in the sense of central assembling places for
manufacture and commerce, may continue to exist;
but people will live outside them. Wherever people
can carry with them the advantages which the city has
produced, they move out of the city. And that is the

- natural, necessary movement ; for you cannot carry the
country into the city, it cannot be done ; or if it could
be done, the city would be destroyed in the process.
But you can carry the city into the country, without
destroying the country, but even improving, it.

So while it is clear that cities are to pass, let us not
regard them as a sad blunder; they were a school for
the race. They taught us something. They filled their
place and did their work of education. But an end
comes to every phase of education, and it seems clear
that an end is coming to this also.

428

Use Is Better Than Economy

IT IS rather a strange arrangement of nature that
only the most precious values can be wasted. You
can waste time, you can waste labor, you can waste
material — and that is about all. You cannot waste
money. You can misuse money, but. you cannot waste
it; it is still somewhere. You can waste your own
opportunity to use it for benefit, but that is all. Which
would seem to put money in at least the second class.

Time, energy and material are worth more than
money, because they cannot be purchased by money.
Not one hour of yesterday, nor one hour of today can
be bought back. Not one ounce of energy can be
bought back. Material wasted,, is wasted beyond re-
covery. These things are in the front rank of values.
They are the precious elements ^ut of which all wealth
is made.

It is worth noting that these precious values are
not of human creation. We have done a great deal
with our human intelligence and energy, we have ac-
complished much by the manipulation of natural mate-
rial and forces, but the severely modifying fact remains
that ourselves and all we have worked with, and the
very intelligence we have worked by, were not our own
creation. So, while mankind may be pleased, and even
thankful, it ill becomes it to be boastful.

All our values were given us. Mind-values, power-
values, material-values were all here. And we, the
human race, have simply been cutting our eye-teeth on
vSome of the elementary problems. The tree makes
apples, mankind makes engines and philosophies — the
tree cannot boast itself to be very original and power-
ful; it does what it was given power to do.

But mankind always has promise of being per-
mitted to do still greater things. If trees bore different
and finer apples every succeeding year, we should say,
"Well, there is progress in the apple kingdom, and

429

((

FORD IDEALS

some day those apple trees are going to develop into
beings of wonderful powers." But we don't see that.
We see, however, mankind putting out different and
better fruits age by age, and even helping the tree
bear better apples, and the bush better berries; and
therefore we say, "Well, there will cotne a time when
this wonderfully endowed and protected race of beings
will work in some finer material than steel, and by
some finer force than electricity or gasoline explosions.
Its present progress has every sign of being only
preparation."

The waste which we practice upon the original
store of wealth is always repairing itself. That is to
say, the time we waste is wasted for us, not for Time
— somewhere the unused hours and days return to
original source where there are neither days nor hours,
nor yet Time, but endless duration. Hours and days
are doled out to us as small coin to see how we will
use them.

It is the same everywhere. Wasted material is re-
placed; the earth never ceases making what we need
and is prepared to fill future needs of which we have
not now the slightest fore-knowledge. If men waste
energy, it is lost to them as individuals — the great
reservoir of energy on wh^ch all life draws is not
exhausted.

Therefore the great word of life is Use.

Some would say Economy. Not so. The word
economy represents a half-idea born of fear. Its his-
tory is something like this: the great and tragic fact
of waste is brought home to the mind by some circum-
stance, usually of a most materialistic kind; or there
comes a violent reaction against extravagance — for
even nature rebels against our unwise courses (which
is the reason why so many people break down from
"overwork," which is not overwork at all) ; and as a
sudden revulsion against it all, the mind catches hold
of the idea of "economy." It flies from a greater evil
to a lesser one ; 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

430

USE IS BETTER THAN ECONOMY

can there be any doubt that it is not as good as Use.

People who pride themselves on their economy
sometimes bristle when it is attacked, as if one of the
virtues had been denounced. It is principally in the
interests of the economizers that this attitude is taken.
For if there is anything more pitiable on earth than a
poor, pinched mind spending the rich days and months
pinching at a few pieces of metal, or paring the outer
necessities of life to the very quick — if there is any-
thing more pitiable, where is it?

Obviously, a practice that so pinches the mind is a
wrong one. 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 anything. They are all shriveled
up.

Indeed, 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. Ill the
precious things of life the strict- economizer is in dan-
ger of being classed with the sluggard.

The beauty of the principle of Use is that it obtains
all the advantages of economy and at the same time
gives healthy expression to all the instincts of which
wastefulness is the diseased symptom. Most people's
extravagance is a reaction from severe suppression of
expenditure. Most people's economy is a reaction
from extravagance.

Under the principle of Use the expansive experience
of expenditure is obtained, as well as the seU-control
and economic discipline of "economizing.**

Everything- was given us to use. There is no evil
from which we suffer that did not come about through
misuse. There is no function which human beings can
fulfill that is not good. But we have all about us the
spectacle of whole nations having to make laws against
things, not bad fundamentally, but bad in their mis-
use. The worst possible 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

431

FORD IDEALS

only one phase of misuse. All waste is misuse; all
misuse is waste.

It is possible even to overemphasize the savings
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 at-
tempt to counteract thoughtless and selfish expenditure,"
it has its value ; but it is not positive ; it doesn't lead the
child out into safe and useful avenues of self-expression
or self-expenditure.

To teach a child to invest is better. Most men are
saving a few dollars who, if they would invest those few
dollars, first in themselves, and then in some useful
work, would find it easier to save because they would
have more to save. • ,

Young men ought to be investing instead of sav-
ing. They ought to be investing in themselves to in-
crease their creative value; after they have brought
themselves to their 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 are preventing your-
self from becoming more productive. You are really
taking out of your ultimate capital; you are reducing
yourself in value as one of nature's investments.

The principle of Use is the main guide-post. Use is
positive, active, life-giving. Use is alive. Use adds
to the sum of good. Start out on that principle. You
will have just as much materially, but you will have a
great deal more mentally and spiritually. Investment is
the prerequisite of returns. Investment is in the old-
fashioned term, "putting out to use."

432

Interest Robbery in Bonus Loan

THE word "bonus" is frequently heard these days in
connection with the men who fought for our
country in the Great War. And wherever it is heard,
there will be found two opinions upon it Perhaps
everybody, those who are for it and those who are
against it, feels that at best it is a makeshift, that the
granting of a bonus will not do much for the soldier
after all, and that it will constitute no permanent good
for him. The principal element is the spiritual : to re-
fuse the bonus is felt to be ingratitude, and this is to
be avoided as an evil spirit. But at the same time
no one will be found to say that to grant the bonus, a
mere $10 or $15 for every month of service, is an ade-
(Juate show of gratitude. It doesn't discharge the debt.
Heaven help us if we measure our gratitude to our
soldiers by the amount of any bonus.

So there are the two points : the bonus pays nothing.
It is a small and temporary aid to men who may be in
need of ready money by reason of unemployment, but
who would prefer a return of their rightful work in the
world to anything else we could do for them.

The American Soldier, the boy who left shop and
store and office and school, taking a year or two out of
his life to settle the military question overseas, should
not be placed in a false light in all this discussion. He
is not asking for charity. He would not take charity.
He should not be used in argument or plea as if he
were asking or expecting charity.

But he has a right to expect that after having done
what we asked him to do, we shall give him the oppor-
tunity to regain the place he left, and shall leave noth-
ing wanting in our effort to restore him to the same
degree of competence which he had before.

That is one of the really black blots on our whole
war organization. We had a splendid organization for
the handling of copper, for example. We had many

433

FORD IDEALS

men ready to leap in and offer their services where it
was a matter of rounding up war supplies. Our war
government, with its price fixers and its general manip-
ulators of "understandings" here and there, was cer-
tainly an amazing institution. But when it came to
cleaning up tHe ruck and riot of war, there wasn't one
to help. They had all resigned. There is no profit in
teaching a blind soldier a trade. There is no profit in
helping to salvage the human wreckage of the war.
There is no profit in taking the armless and the l^less
and the shell-shocked and helping to restore them again.
And so our famous "war government*' is not on the
job. It is out looking for other worlds to conquer.
And about the only thing we hear is complaints about
the mistakes and lacks of the restorative program, and
urges for the bonus.

The soldier has a right to complain, although to his
credit be it said that he is not complaining for himself
so much as for his wounded "buddy" who isn't getting
the chance he ought to have. And he also has a right to
reflect that the so-called "bonus" is a mighty little thing
after all.

In one state where it is proposed to pay the soldiers
a bonus, no soldier will receive more than $300, yet the
state will expend about $30,000,000 in paying the
amounts, and an additional $54,000,000 for interest on
the bonds which it had to issue in order to raise the
bonus money. There is the matter of $150 to $300
for the soldier, and a matter of $54,000,000 for the
money-lenders. Indeed, whatever bonus the soldier
gets, he will pay for over and over again in his ta^ces.

Now, if the people of that state should go down into
their pockets and by a self-imposed assessment of about
$10 a head, raise a fund to present to their soldiers as a
special ^if t to tide them over a tough time, there would
be something tremendously human and moving about
that. But the trouble is that bonuses have not even
that much sentiment. They are first politics, then they
are debts, and the only people who really benefit are the
money-lenders. They get their "bonus" regularly for
30 years afterward.

If a bonus, no matter how small it was, came as a

434

INTEREST ROBBERY IN BONUS LOAN

wreath of victory ; if it were really the conscious act of,
the people in sho\ying their appreciation, that would be
quite another thing. But all it amounts to nowadays
is the sale of interest-bearing bonds.

If a state really wants to do something for the
soldiers, why does it not give them the interest f If
the state would arrange to give the soldiers the interest
on the projected bonus loans, the soldiers would get
nearly twice as much, and the state would save the en-
tire principal.

To give its soldiers $30,000,000 the state in question
is going to give the money-lenders $54,000,000 ; a total
of $84,000,000 in all to finance the giving away of
$30,000,000. If the state would give its soldiers the
interest, $54,000,000, it would save the principal, or
$30,000,000. And the soldiers would get nearly twice
as much.

If a state can pay interest to the banks, it can pay
interest to the men it ought to help.

Now the soldier himself does not regard our sys-
tem as a very good one, when it works out that way.
He is not impressed with the wisdom of a system that
mortgages a state for 30 years in a great sum, and still
doesn't do much for the soldier.

If the bonus really set the soldier up for life, if it
established him in his place as a professional man, com-
mercial man, mechanic or farmer, ii the bonus settled
anything at all, it might be worth any state's eflFort to
do it.

But what does a scrawny $150 to $300 do for a
man? It is totally inadequate as a testimonial of the
state's gratitude ; it is totally inadequate to the establish-
ment of the soldier in his place in the world.

When you give a soldier $300 and a banker $540
interest for the privilege, it would seem much wiser as
well as much kinder to give the soldier the $540 in-
terest and save the $300, thus costing the state only $240
when measured by the other plan. And, if the state
wanted to go as far as it goes under the bond plan,
let the soldier have the $300 and the $540 too, $840, and
let the state pay both interest and principal to herself.

The best bonus that can be given the soldier is a

435

FORD IDEALS

-place to work where he can snap his finger^at bonuses,
and a state to live in where the money-lenders have not
the deciding voice about everything.

Money is the least valuable of all the commodities,
yet it brings the highest price ; and though we have the
manufacture of it in our own hands as a nation, yet it
is the scarcest of all the things we make. The control-
lers of money were able to smooth the way for the sol-
dier when they wanted him to fight; they seem
strangely helpless to smooth the way for him now that
he only wants to work.

There is doubtless a duty and a debt to those who, in
response to our call, suffered loss, of whatever kind the
loss may be. Certainly there is an element of fairness
in the consideration that the man who stayed at home
and had a year or two advantage over the man who
went, should not thus put the soldier at a disadvantage.
The breaks of war were many; they must be repaired
where possible; many of the breaks can never be re-
I>aired. But can it be done in this slip-shod, half-
hearted borrowing which profits nobody but the lender ?
If a state desires to give its soldiers $30,000,000, let it
tax its people for that amount, instead of taxing its
people for $84,000,000 in order to expend $30,000,000.

The soldier himself would be of that opinion.

436

On Being Fit for the

New Era

IT HAS become common and almost boresome to say
that we are on the threshold of a new era. It ought
to be one of the most startling announcements that any-
one could make or hear. But it has always been true
that great changes have come over the human race,
never to be noticed until, a century after, some observ-
ing soul has said, "That was a great period back there
one hundred years ago." We understand gunshots and
wars and industrial failures and depression, but the
real changes of which these are the passing signs, go
mostly over our heads.

The trouble is we don't realize that the "new era" is
going to mean something to us — something different
than we have supposed. We think everything is going
to be lovely and that the world is to be humored along
in its old ways.

In short, when it is said that we are entering a new
era it is accepted as meaning that now, at last, things
are going to be very nearly what we lazily wanted them
to be.

We have been using the phrase for comfort, when
really it is challenge.

If it were said that tomorrow we are to wake up on
another continent to make our lives over again, it would
not be regarded as a very soothing sort of statement.
We should find it hard to lie back in our chaifs and
say, "Well, times are going to be all right again." The
knowledge that we were to begin anew, under unknown
conditions, would keep us awake and alert.

You remember how it was when you went to school.
It was great to be promoted, but the "next grade" was*
never viewed with ease of mind. That "next grade"
loomed up before you with its unknown tests and tasks,
and your mind was set to grapple with something
bigger than you had yet encountered.

437

FORD IDEALS

Well, something like that should be our feeling when
we contemplate the fact that we are entering upon a
"new era/' It is the next grade. We are not going
back to retravel familiar ground, we are entering upon
a new continent with new tests and new tasks. The past
is past in a double sense now ; not only is the Time that
made it, gone; but the temper and principles out of
which it was built are gone too.

All the mature generations of tod'ay have grown up
in the era of their own fathers. There were improve-
ments upon their fathers' times, of course, but the gen-
eral period was the same. Sires and sons were in the
same "grade," so to speak, one nearer the beginning of
the "term," the other nearer the end. The sons have
now come to the end of the "term." The road ahead is
untraveled. The conditions to be passed are new.

Just why this comes about as it does, no one knows.
It would be useless to guess. Something has been
switched of?, and something else has been switched on.
The time that was, is not ; the time that is to be, begins.
One course of lessons has been finished, the doors of the
next "grade" open.

There seems to be a difference, however. In school,
there is an examination. The standard you maintam
in your examination determines your fitness to leave
the lower grade. In the present change that is reversed ;
examinations will determine whether we are fit to enter
the higher grade — the new era. It is quite possible that
in matters of character a man stays on the lower plane
until he is ready to enter the higher plane ; but when the
new era is fully arrived there will not be vestiges ot the
old era left — ^all the people will be New Era People who
have shown themselves fit to be promoted. The others
will have vanished as worn-out and unprogressive races
have always vanished.

You see, therefore, that it is more than afi eloquent
flourish of words to say that "we are on the threshold
of a new era." It is as startling to the individual as was
the announcement of the new conscription law in 1917.
The question for every individual is, What will it mean
to me? Am I fit to be one of the New Era People?

433

ON BEING FIT FOR THE NEW ERA

Am I going to pass the examination requirements into
the new time ?

The test is going to be made all down the line, but it
is going to begin at what we call the "top/' There will
always be leaders. Even in anarchic Russia they have
leaders — ^very hard leaders, too. Leaders are necessary
and have a special part to play and bear an extra degree ^
of responsibility. We say leaders are at the "top," pre-
sumably because they ought to be found at the head of
the column. And that is where the testing and weeding
out is to commence.

V It is in process now. We are not speaking of some-
thing that will begin next year ; we are speaking of what
has silently overshadowed the world for several years.
It is a Day of Judgment for the leaders of the old era.
If they cannot pass their examinations, if their faces
are not toward the future, if their hearts are not more
devoted to righteousness than to the preservation of
some old and respected iniquity, they fail. They dis-
appear. New leaders take their places.

Look where you will — in railroading, in banking, in
manufacturing, in commerce, in teaching or preaching,
in making newspapers, in farming — everywhere the
New Era is crowding in and is crowding out those who
are against its coming. It is not merely a matter of
new and better ways of doing things, but a new and
better spirit and purpose in doing them. There have
been New Era People in the world for some time, but
they have been rated as "fools" ,-^ now their day is
come.

This is news worth while for the young fellow. It
is genuine news. He has been hearing for a long
time past that opportunity was pretty well sewed up.
Indeed, certain labor leaders have written and preached
that no one has any right to expect to improve his
condition in the world, that "the laboring class" con-
stituted an iron-bound caste out of which it was prac-
tically impossible for anyone to break.

Of course, no one ever breaks out of "the labor-
ing class" unless he turns gambler or some other sort
of financial criminal. Honest men stay in "the labor-
ing class" all their lives. But this is what the false

439

FORD IDEALS

teachers mean: that a man need not hope to rise to
his own level of ambition and ability in the laboring
class, and that is false. This is the New Era, and
New Era People are in demand to fill the places of
old era leaders who failed in their examinations; and
the present time is the most glorious period to be young
and ambitious. There wasn't much chance during the
last ydars of the old era, that is why it closed so quick-
ly. But it is morning again and a new day is full of
opportunity.

The only "hold overs*' from the old era are the
qualities which gave it its worth. They are the old-
fashioned virtues of honesty, industry and courage.
They are just as necessary now as in the first year
after the Independence of the United States or the
first year after the Civil War. Ir^ fact, they are never
out of date. Many people seem to think that the New
Era is merely another chance for them to work their
old games, cheating the laws of value, the laws of
work, and every other good law. Not at all. The
old era died of these old games, and died in discred-
itable circumstances, too.

Rewards will not be less but greater in the New
Era. New Era People are going to produce as much
or more, but they are going to have a larger share in
it, they will live broader lives. The world is going to
continue practical— always practical — even more prac-
tical than before, because the world was not practical
while it tried to break the laws of value, and work,
and justice. Some people had the notion that in the
New Era we were to sit down under the trees and spin
beautiful theories. No ; we are going to spin beauti-
ful realities on the loom of more and better work.

440

Much Nonsense in Titles

RECENTLY a financier made a speech in which
he said a few plain things about the effect of
titles in business. He was of the opinion that it was
being very much overdone. / He thought he observed
harmful effects on industrial and business organiza-
tions by this method of decoration, and he seemed to
feel that something ought to be done about it.

It is a refreshing sign of the times that a business
man could be found who had the courage to stand up
at a banquet and talk about so simple a matter. It
is refreshing because it shows a willingness to climb
down from the pedestal and look at the machinery of
business as it actually works.

We are all going back to work — even the men in
the front office. Business has made a discovery, it has
rediscovered work. The magic of money has been ex-
ploded and the invincible power of work is again be-
coming appreciated.

Business men have believed for too long a period
that you could do anything by "financing" it. The
most frequent item of business news that has marked
the past five years has related to hundreds upon hun-
dreds of concerns that have been "refinanced." The
process of "refinancing" is simply the game of sending
good money after bad. In the majority of cases the
need of "refinancing" has arisen through bad manage-
ment, and the effect of "refinancing" is simply to pay
the poor managers to keep up their bad management
a little longer. It is merely the postponement of the
day of judgment which is overtaking, and must over-
take, all concerns that have not played fair with the
law of Use and Service.

This makeshift of "refinancing" is, of course, a
device of the speculative financiers. Their money^ is
no good to them unless they can connect it up with
a place where real work is being done, and they cannot
connect it up with a place where real work is being

441

FORD IDEALS

done unless, somehow, that place is poorly managed.
Thus, the speculative financiers delude themselves that
they are putting their money out to "use/* They are
not; they are putting it out to waste, and the end of
the transaction is usually a- sad experience.

That, indeed, is one of the elements in the present
condition of affairs which has troubled the country,
but from which there is now a promise that we shall
emerge. ^

Take the railroads, for example. Theirs has been
one long story of dependence on money before every-
thing else. True, the railroads are a great national
institution. True also, there have been men of vision
connected with their development. But the major part
of j-ailroad history has had to do with stock markets
and games of exploitation.

Today far too many railroads are run, not from the
offices of practical men, but from banking offices, and
the principles of procedure, the whole outlook, is finan-
cial — not transportational, but financial.

There has been a breakdown of railroading gener-
ally, in this the greatest railroad country in the world,
simply because more attention has been paid to rail-
roads as factors in the stock market than as servants
of the people. Outworn ideas have been retained, de-
velopment has been practically stopped, railroad men
with vision have not been free to grow — ^the dead hand
of finance has been heav^ on every department.

As a result — what? Why, it is thought that per-
haps One Billion Dollars, or thereabout, will solve the
difficulty. Let this be understood — One Billion Dol-
lars will only make the difficulty One Billion Dollars
worse. The purpose of the billion is simply to con-
tinue the present methods 'of railroad management,
and it is because of the present methods that we have
any railroad difficulties at all.

This is not new. Every business man who thinks,
knows it. But it is hard to get out of the ruts.

Going back to dependence on Work and not on
Money will make a big difference everywhere, and one
of the effects will be the displacement of titles by real
jobs. Titles are too often the dress uniform that should
be laid aside for field uniform.

442

MUCH NONSENSE IN TITLES x

A foreign observer, in a recent book, has written
that in America we are very strong on titles. Every-
body seems to be a president of something. There is
a story of a President of the United States sojourning
in the country and calling up the village post office
on the phone. "This is the President," said he. "Pres-
ident of what?" inquired the boy at the other end.
In his village there were plenty of presidents, from the
town government to the ladies' aid society.

Most men can swing a job, but they are floored by
a title. The effect of a title is very peculiar. It has
been used too much as a sign of emancipation from
work. It is ahnost equivalent to a sign — "This man
has nothing to do but regard himself as important
and all others as inferior." Not only has it been in-
jurious to the wearers, but it has had its effect on
others as well. There is perhaps no greater single
source of personal dissatisfaction among men than the
fact that the title-bearers are not always the real lead-
ers. Everybody acknowledges a real leader, a man
who is fit to plan and command; but there are moun-
tains of evidence everywhere that the real leaders are
not always the titlebearers. And when you do find a
real leader who bears a title, you will have to inquire
of some one else what his title is. He doesn't boast it.

It has been greatly overdone and business has suf-
fered from it. One of its specially bad effects is such
a division of responsibility as amounts to a removal
of responsibility altogether. Where responsibility is
broken up into many small bits and divided between
many departments, each department under its own
titular head, who in turn is surrounded by a group
bearing their nice sub-titles, it will be difficult to find
anyone who really feels responsible.

Everyone knows what "passing the buck" means,
and the game must have originated in industrial or-
ganizations where the departments simply shove re-
sponsibility dong.

The health of every organization depends oti every
member of it, whatever his place, feeling that every-
thing that happens to come to his notice relating to
the welfare of the business, is up to him. Railroads

443

FORD IDEALS

have gone to the devil under the eyes of departments
that say, "Oh, that doesn't come under our depart-
ment" — some other department 100 miles away has
that in charge, and the interests of the road go to rot
and ruin while each department tries to keep within
its own narrow limits.

There was formerly a lot of advice given to offi-
cials not to hide behind their titles. The very neces-
sity of the advice showed a condition that needed more
than advice to correct it. And the correction is just
this — abolish the titles. A few may be legally neces-
sary; a few may be useful in directing the public
where to do certain kinds of business with the cQncem,
but for the rest the best rule is to get rid of them.

As a matter of fact, the record of business just
now is such as to detract very much from the value
of titles. No one would boast of being president of
a bankrupt bank. Well, business has not been so skill-
fully steered as to leave much margin for pride in
the steersmen. The right to bear titles is to be won
all over again ; the field is open ; past honors are with-
ered ; the contest is on anew.

The men who bear titles now and are worth any-
thing are forgetting their titles and are down in the
foundations of their business looking for the weak
spots. They are back again in the places from which
they rose trying to reconstruct from the bottom up.
They are leaders in the reconstruction. And when a
man is in that work, he doesn't need titles. His work
decks him with honors.

414

Developing Talent in a Small

Community

WHEN the passing of city life is discussed, and
the rediscovery of the small town is affirmed, one
of the commonest questions to arise is this: "What
are your small towns going to do for the advantages
of the city — ^the theater and entertainments, for ex-
ample?" That is the form in which the question usu-
ally comes, with an anxiety about the "theater and
entertainments."

The question assumes two conditions: First, that
a majority of city people attend the theater and other
entertainments to such an extent that these institu-
tions have become a necessary element in their lives;
and, second, that the theater and entertainments nor-
mally fulfill the human desire and need for recreation.
Neither of these assumptions is true.

It may be found to be just a question whether the
theater is as popular — in point of attendance compared
with the population — ^as it was 50 years, ago. The
totals are larger, but it may be doubtful that the pro-
portions are. We are not half so theater-mad as some
people suppose. The proportion of regular attendants,
people who haunt the theater, who are always looking
over the list of shows for "a place to go tonight," is
not very great. In a certain city where it was as-
sumed that the theater was carrying everything before
it and that church attendance was a contemptible little
quantity in comparison, it was found that the church
with one day a week excelled in drawing power all
the legitimate theaters of that city with seven nights
a week and two matinees. Leaving the modern theater
would not be such a terrible loss, as tens of thousands
who have moved to the small town can testify.

And as to the "entertainment" values of the mod-
ern commercialized amusement enterprise, the bored
audiences of any large city bear eloquently silent wit-

^^ 445

FORD IDEALS

ness. The fresh, blithe wholesomeness which repro-
duces the childishness of human life is lacking. Real
entertainment is lacking and would be undoubtedly
considered as amateurish, so depraved has the public
taste become through bedroom farces and bathroom
dramas. Those who are inoculated with the sordid
sensuousness of the stage would undoubtedly miss that
kind of thing in the small town, just as the drug addict,
locked in a sanitarium, would miss. his favorite poison.

However, that still leaves the question where it
was: what are the small towns to do for recreation,
for the indulgence of the play spirit? The play spirit
is a part of life. Its misdirection leads to harm. In
youth especially it is a safeguard, in maturity and
age a recreative force. Temperaments differ, but taken
by and large the human race will play.

There are, however, no profits in mere playing.
That is the reason amusements became commercialized.
Instead of play, there arose the spectacle. People
ceased to play, and watched players. Football is a
husky game, but of the thousands of "fans" who shout
for football, how many take the risks of it? The same
is true of baseball; it is called "sport" to sit on the
bleachers and boo or boost. We are mere spectators;
other men do the so-called "playing/' and because we
are merely spectators their playing is not Play at all,
but work. There is no community of entertainment
and enjoyment, there is no participation.

In the small town of the future there will be a
Little Theater, and the play instinct of the people
.will work itself out through themselves, not by wage
earners called "actors" or "players." There will be
many actors and players, of course,^ but they will not
be under the commercial domination which every sin-
cerely devoted actor and player feels today. The great
geniuses in the dramatic world will still have their
vogue — or, to state it more accurately, their vogue will
return, because in these sad days dramatic genius is
not necessary. The art of play will be like the art
of music, imported into the community for daily con-
sumption, and not retained in the concert hall as dra-
matic art is retained in the modern theater. The thea-

446

DEVELOPING TALENT IN A SMALL COMMUNITY

ter as a servant of life is being tided over these de-
structive times by the Little Theater which is spring-
ing up in small communities, where the people are
developing themselves.

The commercial monopoly of this natural phase of
life is being broken. And why not? If, when a writer
completes a story, we may all have a copy of it to read
in our own homes; why may we not also have the
play of the playwright, interpreted in our own com-
munity by our own people in our own way? The
question has been answered. The flow of people back
to the country places is bringing with it these new pos-
sibilities. And the benefit is double: the country is
being lifted out of the crude and inexpressive practices
into which its play exercise degenerated for the lack
of inspiration — and — the people from the city are being
benefited by the wholesome restraint which comes from
amusements which have their rise and issue in the
same community. /

That is a point well worth remembering: when the
community shall provide its own recreation and enter-
tainment out of its own resources and by means of
its own people, indecency will simply automatically
disappear. Why? Well, consider what constitutes the
present situation: a theater audience gathers, a few
hundreds from a city of half a million or a million
people, an audience of strangers. The shield of ano-
nymity protects them all. Young women are there,
but they reflect that no one knows them. The people
on the stage are from another city, strangers, too. The
condition is ideal for putting across anything which
common shame would otherwise prevent.

Now, in the home town, with the home folks in
the chairs and home folks on the stage, it would simply
be impossible — there is not enough brazenness in hu^-
man nature to permit home folks to enact bedroom
farces before home folks, or to revel on the stage in
matter that would not be permitted within a thousand
miles of any home-town parlor.

That will be one of the eflFects of a return to the
small town, and a necessity of drawing upon the com-
munity's creative powers to supply the normal need
for entertainment.

447

FORD IDEALS

Of course, the principle extends further. Refer-
ence has been made to amusements only because it
was involved in the question which has been asked.
But the principle applies to every element of com-
munity life. City living has made us entirely too de-
pendent. City dwellers will soon lose the art of build-
ing fires. Most of the other domestic arts are "lost
arts" already. And the art of providing entertainment
or amusement for ourselves was about to disappear.

The ideal community is self-sustaining to a greater
extent than any community now is. If near flowing
water, every community should be self-sustaining in
matters of power, heating and lighting. Every com-
munity in the midst of an agricultural district should
be self-sustaining in the matter of food. The grain
grown near by should be milled near? by, a sufficient
supply reserved and the surplus sent to the great cen-
ters of consumption. Each community should be con-
structed out of materials near at hand, and thus pre-
serve unity with its basic soil. And each community
should derive from the wellsprings of its own life those
finer inspirations and recreative activities which put a
bloom and a flavor upon life. ' It is all contained in
that principle known as "self-development." The re-
ward of self-development should be self-sustenance,
with the community as well as with the individual.

448

Parties Are Born, Not Made

POLITICAL parties are like poets, born, not made.
And yet political parties have been found to be
so useful to certain purposes and interests that numer-
ous attempts have been made to manufacture them for
occasion. A political party is a publicity organization,
a semi-legislative organization, often a coercive organ-
ization which can render more service to special inter-
ests than it can sometimes render to the public.

The people, of course, who are living mostly in the
nursery atmosphere with regard to these things, imag-
ine that a political party is a fellowship of conviction
upon certain principles. That is what it ought to be;
and it is the belief that the political party is just that,
which keeps it going. But the party is other than
that. It would take almost psychic eyes to see just
what the so-called political organizations consist in,
what holds them together, where their ramifications
run, and what type of mind it is that finds congenial
the atmosphere of the "organization." Perhaps it is
the least moral organization in the world, outside the
realm, of those which are distinctively subversive.

And yet, such is the irony of things, this lower
network of organization forms the basis for much
good work. All men who are interested in politics
are not on the inside of the "organization,** not at all.
The real motive power of politics, so far as the motion
of the people's mind is concerned, is in the "idea,"
the "issue,** the genuine proposals of government policy
and legislative action. But these seldom have their
source in the "organization.** They are imported from
the people. All that the "organization,** or the "party**
does (the "party** not being the whole number of ad-
herents, but the hierarchy of leaders) is to sort out
the possible issues and select the group which they
think will "sell** at the election. Any other set of
issues — even quite opposite issues — ^would do just- as

449

FORD ide;als

well if they would "sell/' The main object is to keep
the "organization" in offices. The party never gets the
offices ; only the "organization" does that. As a whole,
our offices are manned by the prettiest lot of political
gamesters that any country ever saw.

So, there we have the genesis of two evils. One
evil is the existence of a party which has neither po-
litical nor moral principle, but which lives for the thing
called "power," using as its steps to power such "issues"
as appeal to popular approval ; the other evil is the view
of certain apostles of moral or political principles that
a political organization can be whisked into existence
by publicity agent methods, to serve the purpose of a
certain candidate or a certain principle for a single
election only. So, on the one hand we have the pol-
iticians whose object is office, poking around among
possible "issues," ignoring the ones which would re-
quire moral courage to espouse, and choosing the ones
that seem ready to ripen in a campaign; and on the
other hand, we have the possessors of progressive
ideas looking for a party to "put them across."

It is a situation which speaks indisputably of the
sorry collapse which has overtaken political effort in
this country.

The "third party" demonstrations have been a sign
of the same condition. The only third parties that ever
had a reasonable and sincere motive and purpose were
never permitted to attain party maturity, because the
older parties took their issues and rode to power upon,
them. An illustration of this may be seen in the adop-
tion of the Prohibition Party's most distinctive plank
by both the older parties.

Lately our "third parties" have been launched either
for the purpose of putting a candidate across (which
must be the final judgment on Mr. Roosevelt's effort)
or for the purpose of cementing the radical elements
of political disorder and giving them the respectable
appearance of political organization. Both were vivid
commentaries on the truth that political parties are
bom, not made. When the genuine Third Party comes,
it will not be a Third Party at all, but the First Party,
relegating lx)th old parties to secondary status. It

450

PARTIES ARE BORN, NOT MADE

will be a national party, summoning New Era Men
from all the old parties, and from no party at all, to
do the work which others have neglected.

We do not need a "third party'' in the United
States, we need a party that is first for Americanism,
by which we mean the principle that the fulfillment
of life consists in the largest liberation of the creative
and constructive forces in nature and in humanity for
the service and prosperity of all. Americanism is com-
munistic only in that it stands for a community benefit,
instead of an exclusive personal benefit, proceeding
from all industrial, financial and political activity. The
Old Era was individualistic in its objective. The New
Era will remain necessarily individualistic in its meth-
od, but will enwrap the whole community in its ob-
jective. Communism fails just because it is not com-
munism, because it is individualism of a type that de-
feats the benefits of individuals, and so cheats also the
community of its benefits. We are individuals in action
and communists in responsibility.

The division between modern parties is not political,
nor philosophical, nor moral any longer, but purely
sentimental. All of the old subjects of division are
now subjects of scientific examination and adjustment.
Locally, politics has come to be a preference of indi-
viduals for office: one group wishes to place this man,
another wishes to place the other man. A sufficient
number of experienced electioneers finds this kind of
politics a sport, to give it zest. But, as for the pro-
found political convictions which marked the birth and
the vigorous years of the Democratic and Republican
parties, they simply don't exist.

The two great parties are being used — that is, the
"organization" of them is being used more and more
as bulwarks against the changes which must inevitably
overtake the stupidities and injustices which have be-
come fastened in our national life. Every old slogan
which warns the people against progress as something
dangerous finds its hearty echo in the political "organ-
ization." The "organization" knows nothing about fi-
nance, administration, international relations — literally
nothing about anything that aflfects the heart of our

451

FORD IDEALS

national life — but it is always ready with the cries
which sustain the old order of things.

That is where the two old parties are in the great-
est danger: they have anchored to an era that is even
now growing dim in the distance : unless they cut the
cable, they will disappear with it.

And it is just here that we mark the fatal distinc-
ticr» between party and people. The people do not
comprise the party. Parties are merely bidders for
the people's suffrage. When parties disappear the peo-
ple remain. This is the logic of third parties. The
old parties simply die off the limb like leaves that have
ceased to nourish themselves with the life of the tree
that bore them. The people grow and keep growing.
If parties lag behind, as parties now are lagging be-
hind, a new party is inevitable — not to put a chosen
candidate across, not to stampede the people for a new
"interest,'* but as an expression of the life-ef the peo-
ple. Parties are the people's political clothing; when
the coat grows too small it is discarded.

452

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