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
off 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 bv



MANAGKRS MUST SHARK 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 workingman 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. Kxtend 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. Itvwas 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 1 ,
there is a very strong and well-established sentiment
of strangerhood, which education, civilization, 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; socictv
has been "kidding" itself into believing that it could
ignore the profounder principles and secure a super-
ficial sort ot unit\- bv 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.

22



ON TAKING SIDKS



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 hattle. 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 lights; the good does not have to.

\Yhat is occurring in the world todav is this :
under a false notion that vital difference's 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 sentimentalist!! 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
into 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.



21



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 you "you
are the one person in this world to do it" would
simply do the thing they want done, and which they
are surfe 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.

\Yhat 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 buzzinir around the world todav



FORD IDEALS

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

26



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 clone? 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, lie 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.

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

Well, do it !

"But," says the impatient spirit, "1 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 thev deserve, no more,
no less. By "de-serve" 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 cimtinue 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 clearer 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 arid 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.



28



Poisons That Creep Into
Industry



IT IS a pathetic illusion of the people that perfection
can be found in government or industrial 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 thefe 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 are at a cost that
would be ruinous to even the largest privately con-
trolled means, it is not dishonesty, it is not wilful
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 merelv the addition of brain to bra\vn,
the mixing of mind with machinerv.

Then came something more 1 : the element of hu-
manity began to thrust itself up through industrial
development, and forward-looking manufacturers and
managers began to consider ;//(;/. It was natural that



29



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 intentioned 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-



30



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," "slvop 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