in the least degree a business on which so many depend.

The employer is a man like any o.f 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.

Me 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.

\Yhy not begin loyalty there? If the shop is keep-
ing your family, educating your children, buving 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, onlv the independent em-
plover 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, lie can. indeed, treelv devote hnn-
selt to devising ways and means bv which thev shall
be enabled to draw more. Xot onlv mav he I eel tins
to be a dutv which he owes to hi< men. but he takes
a pride in it. High wages are the result ot two ele-

o-'7



FORD IDEALS

merits : 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
fears. 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 industry,
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 cle-
structionists are playing.



328



What Shall 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 the people "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, unorganized 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 Hol-
sheviks rule them.

It is not so despicable as it once was considered to
be interested in world peace. Previous to 1-14 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 miraculous capacity for sacrifice ; the human
contribution lavished upon war was most glorious in
its pure unselfishness; but the men who promised most



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 they intend to provoke war ;
they are merely getting ready. It 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 feu-
men armed with most potent powers, will be the new
order. The forces of nature will he used more and
more to supplant the muscular force of soldiers. Ray
warfare is already the theme of military 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 \va^
still in a crude stage. \Yells 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 which the common people of
very few of the nations would have approved. Xo
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 onlv people who do 1101
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 employes with private business, about the
"inside" group that reallv 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 monev out of war todav.
Millions are being minted out of blood and suffering
this very minute. There is enough war tinder King
about to kindle the whole lire again if nothing pre-
vents.

What is there to prevent? Nothing, except the
people's Will. Hut they must exert that Will.

You do not have to speculate about what the people
will do: you are one ot them judge bv vourselt. leu
chances to one vou vourselt are thinking this moment



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 opportunity 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.
v Paper can only hold ink. But the 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 tight 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 you 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 lield 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 rlock
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
quillings, embroideries, and the handiwork of the
women of the farm.

If you go to anv one of the little one-dav Fairs
held in the mountains of Vermont you will see this
institution in its pristine simplicitv - 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 von -ee has come
from the hills. The exlnbit> arc' not large, but behind
each ol them is the home-tarm, and YOU can read



FORD 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 modern in-
vention and standardized manufacture are being
heaped upon the Fanner 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 l)r\td(jcr\ is go-
ing to be removed from the I'arm. Power-Farming
is simply taking the burden off flesh and blood and
putting it on steel.

Fanning, of course, has advanced. Time was
when men dug with their fingers the hole where tin-
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 denv 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 Fra 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. I>oth serve each other. The
trouble is that thev do not serve each oilier more di-
rectlv. There are too main- interests squeezing in
between them. There is too big a ta\ or toll exacted
on the exchange between them.

It would be a good thing if we could add a third
section to our I ''airs a section where large groups ol
citv people could meet with large groups ol count rv
people, discuss their problems together, and make



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 that 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." lie 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 stvle. Stoves, of
course, are useful, but people like to see the lire.
Children love to see "eyes of fin-" shining through the
sliding front doors of the kitchen cookstove. Adults
like the sight of lire, in the old-fashioned "self-feeder,"
now rechristened the "base-burner."



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.



THE OLD WAYS WKRE GOOD

So, you could go through the whole round of daily
living and find the old things coming hack. We are
even going hack to the use of water power to a greater
extent than ever our forl>ears did. It may he that
we shall some time find many of the old-time domestic
arts return to the household. \\'hat 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 heing clothed with
shoddy hecause 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