My Life and Work - Henry Ford (classic novels for teens TXT) 📗
- Author: Henry Ford
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Take fighting between men. 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 consumer must pay the extra overhead and the extra transportation involved in having machines even six inches farther apart than they have to be. We measure on each job the exact amount of room that a man needs; he must not be cramped—that would be waste. But if he and his machine occupy more space than is required, that also is waste. This brings our machines closer together than in probably any other factory in the world. To a stranger they may seem piled right on top of one another, but they are scientifically arranged, not only in the sequence of operations, but to give every man and every machine every square inch that he requires and, if possible, not a square inch, and certainly not a square foot, more than he requires. 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.
When we put up the older buildings, we did not understand so much about ventilation as we do to-day. In all the later buildings, the supporting columns are made hollow and through them the bad air is pumped out and the good air introduced. A nearly even temperature is kept everywhere the year round and, during daylight, there is nowhere the necessity for artificial light. 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; part is to prevent carelessness, and part is to make machinery absolutely fool-proof. The principal causes of accidents as they are grouped by the experts are: (1) Defective structures; (2) defective machines; (3) insufficient room; (4) absence of safeguards; (5) unclean conditions; (6) bad lights; (7) bad air; (8) unsuitable clothing; (9) carelessness; (10) ignorance; (11) mental condition; (12) lack of cooperation.
The questions of defective structures, defective machinery, insufficient room, unclean conditions, bad light, bad air, the wrong mental condition, and the lack of cooperation are easily disposed of. 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. Wherever there is a possibility of flying metal, the workman is required to wear goggles and the chances are further reduced by surrounding the machine with netting.
Around hot furnaces we have railings. There is nowhere an open part of a machine in which clothing can be caught. All the aisles are kept clear.
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.
WAGES
There is nothing to running a business by custom—to saying: “I pay the going rate of wages.” The same man would not so easily say: “I have nothing better or cheaper to sell than any one has.” No manufacturer in his right mind would contend that buying only the cheapest materials is the way to make certain of manufacturing the best article. Then why do we hear so much talk about the “liquidation of labour” and the benefits that will flow to the country from cutting wages—which means only the cutting of buying power and the curtailing of the home market? What good is industry if it be so unskillfully managed as not to return a living to everyone concerned? No question is more important than that of wages—most of the people of the country live on wages. The scale of their living—the rate of their wages—determines the prosperity of the country.
Throughout all the Ford industries we now have a minimum wage of six dollars a day; we used to have a minimum of five dollars; before that we paid whatever it was necessary to pay. It would be bad morals to go back to the old market rate of paying—but also it would be the worst sort of bad business.
First get at the relationships. It is not usual to speak of an employee as a partner, 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 to share the management with him. Why, then, if a man finds the production part of a business too much for his own two hands should he deny the title of “partner” to those who come in and help him produce? Every business that employs more than one man is a kind of partnership. The moment a man calls for 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 and sole director of its operations, but only while he remains sole manager and sole producer can he claim complete independence. No man is independent as long as he has to depend on another man to help him. It is a reciprocal relation—the boss is the partner of his worker, the worker is partner of his boss. And such being the case, it is useless for one group or the other to assume that it is the one indispensable unit. Both are indispensable. The one can become unduly assertive only at the expense of the other—and eventually at its own expense as well. It is utterly foolish for Capital or for Labour to think of themselves as groups. They are partners. When they pull and haul against each other—they simply injure the organization in which they are partners and from which both draw support.
It ought to be the employer’s ambition, as leader, to pay better wages than any similar line of business, and it ought to be the workman’s ambition to make this possible. Of course there are men in all shops who seem to believe that if they do their best, it will be only for the employer’s benefit—and not at all for their own. It is a pity that such a feeling should exist. But it does exist and perhaps it has some justification. If an employer urges men to do their best, and the men learn after a while that their best does not bring any reward, then they naturally drop back into “getting by.” But if they see the fruits of hard work in their pay envelope—proof that harder work means higher pay—then also they begin to learn that they are a part of the business, and that its success depends on them and their success depends on it.
“What ought the employer to pay?”—“What ought the employee to receive?”
These are but minor questions. The basic question is “What can the business stand?” Certainly no business can stand outgo that exceeds its income. When you pump water out of a well at a faster rate than the water flows in, the well goes dry. And when the well runs dry, those who depend on it go thirsty. And if, perchance, they imagine they can pump one well dry and then jump to some other well, it is only a matter of time when all the wells will be dry. There is now a widespread demand for more justly divided rewards, but it must be recognized that there are limits to rewards. The business itself sets the limits. You cannot distribute $150,000 out of a business that brings in only $100,000. The business limits the wages, but does anything limit the business? The business limits itself by following bad precedents.
If men, instead of saying “the employer ought to do thus-and-so,” would say, “the business ought to be so stimulated and managed that it can do thus-and-so,” they would get somewhere. Because only the business can pay wages. Certainly the employer cannot, unless the business warrants.
But if that business does warrant higher wages and the employer refuses, what is to be done? As a rule a business means the livelihood of too many men, to be tampered with. It is criminal to assassinate a business to which large numbers of men have given their labours and to which they have learned to look as their field of usefulness and their source of livelihood. Killing the business by a strike or a lockout does not help.
The employer can gain nothing by looking over the employees and asking himself, “How little can I get them to take?” Nor the employee by glaring back and asking, “How much can I force him to give?” Eventually both will have to turn to 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?”
But by no means all employers or all employees will think straight. The habit of acting shortsightedly is a hard one to break. What can be done?
Nothing. No rules or laws will effect the changes. But enlightened self-interest will. It takes a little while for enlightenment to spread.
But spread it must, for the concern in which both employer and employees work to the same end of service is bound
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