Henry Ford

“ A business man has a routine that he follows with great exactness; the work of a bank president is nearly all routine; the work of under officers and clerks in a bank is purely routine. Indeed, for most purposes and most people, it is necessary to establish something in the way of a routine and to make most motions purely repetitive--otherwise the individual will not get enough done to be able to live off his own exertions. ”

“ Our factory buildings are not intended to be used as parks. The close placing requires a maximum of safeguards and ventilation.
Machine safeguarding is a subject all of itself. We do not consider any machine--no matter how efficiently it may turn out its work--as a proper machine unless it is absolutely safe. We have no machines that we consider unsafe, but even at that a few accidents will happen. Every accident, no matter how trivial, is traced back by a skilled man employed solely for that purpose, and a study is made of the machine to make that same accident in the future impossible. ”

“ We seemingly limit the creative functions to productions that may be hung on gallery walls, or played in concert halls, or otherwise displayed where idle and fastidious people gather to admire each other's culture. But if a man wants a field for vital creative work, let him come where he is dealing with higher laws than those of sound, or line, or colour ”

“ That is, developed industry can provide wage work for a higher average of standard men than are ordinarily included in any normal community. If the jobs in any one industry or, say, any one factory, were analyzed as ours have been analyzed, the proportion might be very different, yet I am quite sure that if work is sufficiently subdivided--subdivided to the point of highest economy--there will be no dearth of places in which the physically incapacitated can do a man's job and get a man's wage. ”

“ We want men who can create the working design for all that is right and good and desirable in our life. Good intentions plus well-thought-out working designs can be put into practice and can be made to succeed. It is possible to increase the well-being of the workingman--not by having him do less work, but by aiding him to do more. If the world will give its attention and interest and energy to the making of plans that will profit the other fellow as he is, then such plans can be established on a practical working basis. ”

“ But there is always a period of convalescence, especially in fracture cases, where the man is strong enough to work, and, indeed, by that time usually anxious to work, for the largest possible accident allowance can never be as great as a man's wage. If it were, then a business would simply have an additional tax put upon it, and that tax would show up in the cost of the product. There would be less buying of the product and therefore less work for somebody. That is an inevitable sequence that must always be borne in mind. ”

“ We shift men whenever they ask to be shifted and we should like regularly to change them--that would be entirely feasible if only the men would have it that way. They do not like changes which they do not themselves suggest. Some of the operations are undoubtedly monotonous--so monotonous that it seems scarcely possible that any man would care to continue long at the same job. Probably the most monotonous task in the whole factory is one in which a man picks up a gear with a steel hook, shakes it in a vat of oil, then turns it into a basket. ”

“ The men are there to get the greatest possible amount of work done and to receive the highest possible pay. If each man were permitted to act in his own way, production would suffer and therefore pay would suffer. Any one who does not like to work in our way may always leave. The company's conduct toward the men is meant to be exact and impartial. It is naturally to the interest both of the foremen and of the department heads that the releases from their departments should be few. The workman has a full chance to tell his story if he has been unjustly treated--he has full recourse. ”

“ I think that if an industrial institution is to fill its whole role, it ought to be possible for a cross-section of its employees to show about the same proportions as a cross-section of a society in general. ”

“ Men are not always fair with their fellow workmen. Defective human nature obstructs our good intentions now and then. The foreman does not always get the idea, or misapplies it--but the company's intentions are as I have stated, and we use every means to have them understood.
It is necessary to be most insistent in the matter of absences. A man may not come or go as he pleases; he may always apply for leave to the foreman, but if he leaves without notice, then, on his return, the reasons for his absence are carefully investigated and are sometimes referred to the Medical Department. ”

“ If a man cannot earn his keep without the aid of machinery, is it benefiting him to withhold that machinery because attendance upon it may be monotonous? And let him starve? Or is it better to put him in the way of a good living? ”

“ There are far too many assumptions about what human nature ought to be and not enough research into what it is. Take the assumption that creative work can be undertaken only in the realm of vision. We speak of creative "artists" in music, painting, and the other arts. ”

“ None of the men work too hard. The wages settle nine tenths of the mental problems and construction gets rid of the others. We have then to guard against unsuitable clothing, carelessness, and ignorance, and to make everything we have fool-proof. This is more difficult where we have belts. In all of our new construction, each machine has its individual electric motor, but in the older construction we had to use belts. Every belt is guarded. Over the automatic conveyors are placed bridges so that no man has to cross at a dangerous point. ”

“ The Heat Treat department wanted a skilled firebrick layer. He also was found on a drill press--he is now a general inspector.
There is not much personal contact--the men do their work and go home--a factory is not a drawing room. But we try to have justice and, while there may be little in the way of hand shaking--we have no professional hand shakers--also we try to prevent opportunity for petty personalities. We have so many departments that the place is almost a world in itself--every kind of man can find a place somewhere in it. Take fighting between men. ”

“ We have always with us the maimed and the halt. There is a most generous disposition to regard all of these people who are physically incapacitated for labour as a charge on society and to support them by charity. ”

“ Most certainly business and charity cannot be combined; the purpose of a factory is to produce, and it ill serves the community in general unless it does produce to the utmost of its capacity. We are too ready to assume without investigation that the full possession of faculties is a condition requisite to the best performance of all jobs. To discover just what was the real situation, I had all of the different jobs in the factory classified to the kind of machine and work--whether the physical labour involved was light, medium, or heavy ”

“ Something like seven hundred men are detailed exclusively to keeping the shops clean, the windows washed, and all of the paint fresh. The dark corners which invite expectoration are painted white. One cannot have morale without cleanliness. We tolerate makeshift cleanliness no more than makeshift methods.
No reason exists why factory work should be dangerous. If a man has worked too hard or through too long hours he gets into a mental state that invites accidents. Part of the work of preventing accidents is to avoid this mental state ”

“ Yet the man on that job has been doing it for eight solid years. He has saved and invested his money until now he has about forty thousand dollars--and he stubbornly resists every attempt to force him into a better job!
The most thorough research has not brought out a single case of a man's mind being twisted or deadened by the work. The kind of mind that does not like repetitive work does not have to stay in it. The work in each department is classified according to its desirability and skill into Classes "A," "B," and "C," each class having anywhere from ten to thirty different operations. ”

“ To them the ideal job is one where the creative instinct need not be expressed. The jobs where it is necessary to put in mind as well as muscle have very few takers--we always need men who like a job because it is difficult. The average worker, I am sorry to say, wants a job in which he does not have to put forth much physical exertion--above all, he wants a job in which he does not have to think. ”

“ In hiring a man the only data taken concerns his name, his address, his age, whether he is married or single, the number of his dependents, whether he has ever worked for the Ford Motor Company, and the condition of his sight and his hearing. No questions are asked concerning what the man has previously done, but we have what we call the "Better Advantage Notice," by which a man who has had a trade before he came to us files a notice with the employment department stating what the trade was. In this way, when we need specialists of any kind, we can get them right out of production. ”

“ We want artists in industrial relationship. We want masters in industrial method--both from the standpoint of the producer and the product. We want those who can mould the political, social, industrial, and moral mass into a sound and shapely whole. ”

“ If he is already at work and he does not seem able to perform the work, or if he does not like his work, he is given a transfer card, which he takes up to the transfer department, and after an examination he is tried out in some other work more suited to his condition or disposition. Those who are below the ordinary physical standards are just as good workers, rightly placed, as those who are above. For instance, a blind man was assigned to the stock department to count bolts and nuts for shipment to branch establishments. Two other able-bodied men were already employed on this work. ”

“ It is economically most wasteful to accept crippled men as charges and then to teach them trivial tasks like the weaving of baskets or some other form of unremunerative hand labour, in the hope, not of aiding them to make a living, but of preventing despondency.
When a man is taken on by the Employment Department, the theory is to put him into a job suited to his condition. ”

“ It would be quite outside the spirit of what we are trying to do, to take on men because they were crippled, pay them a lower wage, and be content with a lower output. That might be directly helping the men but it would not be helping them in the best way. The best way is always the way by which they can be put on a productive par with able-bodied men. I believe that there is very little occasion for charity in this world--that is, charity in the sense of making gifts. ”

“ We have experimented with bedridden men--men who were able to sit up. We put black oilcloth covers or aprons over the beds and set the men to work screwing nuts on small bolts. This is a job that has to be done by hand and on which fifteen or twenty men are kept busy in the Magneto Department. The men in the hospital could do it just as well as the men in the shop and they were able to receive their regular wages. In fact, their production was about 20 per cent., I believe, above the usual shop production. No man had to do the work unless he wanted to. ”

“ Those who have what might be called the creative type of mind and who thoroughly abhor monotony are apt to imagine that all other minds are similarly restless and therefore to extend quite unwanted sympathy to the labouring man who day in and day out performs almost exactly the same operation. ”

“ What this generation needs is a deep faith, a profound conviction in the practicability of righteousness, justice, and humanity in industry. If we cannot have these qualities, then we were better off without industry. ”

“ Men will fight, and usually fighting is a cause for discharge on the spot. We find that does not help the fighters--it merely gets them out of our sight. So the foremen have become rather ingenious in devising punishments that will not take anything away from the man's family and which require no time at all to administer.
One point that is absolutely essential to high capacity, as well as to humane production, is a clean, well-lighted and well-ventilated factory. Our machines are placed very close together--every foot of floor space in the factory carries, of course, the same overhead charge. ”

“ The starting switches of draw presses are protected by big red tags which have to be removed before the switch can be turned--this prevents the machine being started thoughtlessly. Workmen will wear unsuitable clothing--ties that may be caught in a pulley, flowing sleeves, and all manner of unsuitable articles. The bosses have to watch for that, and they catch most of the offenders. New machines are tested in every way before they are permitted to be installed. As a result we have practically no serious accidents.
Industry needs not exact a human toll. ”

“ There is no reason why any one with a creative mind should be at a monotonous job, for everywhere the need for creative men is pressing. There will never be a dearth of places for skilled people, but we have to recognize that the will to be skilled is not general. ”

“ But those cases are extraordinarily rare, and we have found it possible, among the great number of different tasks that must be performed somewhere in the company, to find an opening for almost any one and on the basis of production. The blind man or cripple can, in the particular place to which he is assigned, perform just as much work and receive exactly the same pay as a wholly able-bodied man would. ”