HENRY FORD'S LIFE AND WORK.
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Just Published in this Country, the Book, Written by One of the World's Wealthiest and Most Successful Men, is Full of Unusual Interest.
THERE ARE few men who have been more thoroughly misunderstood and yet (to use his own words) have got away with it than Henry Ford. Even when his book, "My Life and Work," was announced one heard the suggestion, " Ohl it will have been written by a ghost." But a study of the volume (published in this country by William Heinemann) not only helps one to see that Henry Ford started out with a definite purpose, that he has pursued a consistent course, recognizing, admitting and correcting the errors of detail as they disclosed themselves, but ever aiming at and, seemingly, reaching.a goal beyond the ambitions of most, men.
We say without hesitation that rarely has a, book so completely held our interest, and, strangely enough, the introduction, a feature of a book that so often can be skipped, is one of the most interesting parts. In it he shows that his idea is based upon the giving of service and in helping men Co get a full return from service, and he sets out to show that his *idea has developed into a practical product, that it has brought good wages and a desirable mode of living to Ford employes, considerable wealth to Ford shareholders, and cheap and good service to users of Ford products. He suggests that these things may be done by other capitalists and manufacturers in the States. The prospects of many important industries in America being conducted upon Ford lines would set the capitalists and manufacturers of this country thinking with a vengeance !
Ford and the New Democracy.
Henry Ford makes no secret of his process. He declares that he is not a reformer ; he believes in the power of high wages, of the benefits to the business of freeing the employes of trouble on financial scores, in a practical form of co-partnership ; but he draws many morals from Russia's attempts to run her factories by committees, and shows that Bolshevism is now crying for the brains, the experience and the skill which it yesterday treated so ruthlessly. One of Ford's ideas is that even bare necessities are much more complex than they need to be. Our clothing, our food, our household furnishings could he much simpler than they now are, and at the same time be better looking. And in many things weight could he cut down with advantage. Most of us, too, are wasteful of our energy, and use power to the least possible degree. The farmer, for instance, puts to a really useful purpose only about 5 per cent, of the energy he spends. Ford was the son of a farmer, but, developing mechanical instincts, set about employing machinery on his father's farm, and from this went, into engineering, becoming an apprentice in the machine shop of the Drydoek Engine Works at Detroit. His bent was turned towards mechanical road locomotion by seeing a portable engine and boiler mounted on wheels used for driving threshing machines and sawmills. He had seen many of these being horse-hauled, but this one had a chain that made a connection between the engine and the rear wheels of the wagon like frame on which the mechanism wa,s mounted. Ford got the engineer to tell him all about it, and from that day his mind never dropped the idea of road locomotion and ploughing by mechanical power.
His first thought was of a kind of light steam car mainly of use as a farm tractor, because the habit of getting around had not grown, and of all the work on the farm ploughing was the hardest. He built a steam car that ran, but rapidly came to the conclusion that a steam car must be heavy, and, as the local roads were bad, it would be racked to pieces. But he kept his ideal before him, and when he read in an English publication of the Otto gas engine, he kept in touch with this new form of power producer, and in 1881 he built a model engine with 1-in. bore and 3-in, stroke, which ran successfully.
In 1890 he began on a double-cylinder engine, with the idea, of putting it on a bicycle, but, as it grew, he saw that the weight was becoming too great. in 1892 the first car was built, and he goes into a lot of interesting detail about this vehicle which ran until 1896, when it was sold for $200, to be bought back later on and put in his museum, where it is to-day, together with Ford No. 5,000,000, completed on May 31st, 1921. He gradually built up a small motorcar business, developing nine different models, building racing cars because they were then regarded as the best method of convincing the potential buyer. The ninth model was the model T, the Ford of to-day, and it was put out for the season 1908-9.
How the Ford Business Has Grown.
Ford, as his book shows, had a clear idea of what
he wanted in the way of a car, of the way to produce it in quantity, and of selling cheaply. His ' output in 1907 was 1,708 cars; in 1908 it was 6,181 cars. Jr. 1909, with model T selling at $850, /0,607 were made. The factory was small and the ears were mainly. assembled. From that year the production seems to have almost doubled yearly, whilst the .price has been steadily reduced. The output in 1920-21 was 1,250,000, and it is now 4,000 daily. The description of the growth and development of the business, of the way in which things are done in the factory, of the manner in which economies have been effected at every turn, is all entrancingly interesting, whilst throughout the book there shows a simple personality pursuing with modesty and good humour a course in which mere wealth is not sought, but the well-being of all who work for or deal with the company is regarded as the aim of a vast organization.
There are a lot of curious and unexpected facts in
the book. For instance, the collecting and keeping of statistics has been scrapped. The foreman no longer keeps cost statistics. Ford says,they were all quite • interesting, but they did not construct automobiles, so out they went. His account of the way in which the factory makes use of the services of men maimed, crippled or even blind is really wonderful. He thinks that if an industrial institution is to fill its whole role, it ought to be possible for a cross-section of its employes to show about the same proportions as a cross-section of a society in general—a quaint way of saying that a factory can, and should, employ its share of the unfit. At the Ford factory the unfit are put to jobs suited -to their condition, and often they do better work than the fit. A blind man was assigned to the stock department to count bolts and nuts for shipment to branch establishments, and intwo days he was doing his own work and that of two sound men who had been doing the job, the latter being thus released for something else
Very interesting reading is the account of the wartime supply of agrimotors that were at first intended to be made over here. There are interesting chapters on Money—Master or Servant? Why be Poor? On railroads, bankers and lawyers, on democracy and industry, and on the prospects of a change in our industrial system. One could go on picking out gems of thought and of deseription, but the better course is to recommend that the book be read and studied and some of its teachings acted upon.