Numbers in the Dark and Other Stories (30 page)

SPOKESMAN: You mean that you invented and manufactured and sold automobiles so that people could get away from the factories of Detroit and go and hear the birds singing in the woods?

HENRY FORD: One of the people I most admired was a man who dedicated his life to watching and describing birds, John Burroughs. He was a sworn enemy of the automobile and all technical progress! But I managed to make him change his mind… The happiest memories of my life go back to the weeks spent together on a vacation I organized with Burroughs himself, and my other mentors and closest friends, the great Edison, and Firestone, the tyre man… We travelled in a caravan of cars, across the Adirondack Mountains, and the Alleghenys, sleeping under canvas, gazing at the sunsets, the dawns over waterfalls…

SPOKESMAN: But don’t you think that an image like this… in relation to what people know about you… Fordism… is, how can I put it?, misleading… doesn’t it shirk everything essential?

HENRY FORD: No, no, this is what is essential. American history is a history of journeys between boundless horizons, a history of means of transportation: the horse, the wagons of the pioneers, the railroads… But only the automobile has given Americans America. Only with the automobile have they become masters of the length and breadth of the country, each individual master of his own means of transport, master of his time, in the midst of this immensity of space…

SPOKESMAN: I must confess that the idea we had for your monument… was a little different… a backdrop of factories… of assembly lines… Henry Ford, the creator of the modern factory, of mass production… The first automobile for the common man: the famous Model T…

HENRY FORD: If it’s an epigraph you’re after, sculpt out the text of the announcement I used to launch the Model T on the market, in 1908. Not that I ever needed any advertising for my cars, mind! I always maintained that advertising was pointless, a good product doesn’t need it, it is its own advertisement! But that leaflet expressed the
ideas
I wanted to get across. It’s in advertising as education that I believe! Read it, read it.

‘I shall build an automobile for the masses. It will be large enough for a family, but small enough to satisfy the needs of the individual. It will be built with the best materials and by the best men available on the market, following the simplest designs that modern engineering can devise. But it will be priced so low that no man with a decent salary shall be unable to possess it and enjoy together with his family the blessing of a few hours’ pleasure in God’s great open spaces.’

SPOKESMAN: The Model T… For almost twenty years the factories of Detroit produced this car and no other… You spoke of the needs of individuals… But you’re quoted as making this joke: ‘Every client can have his car in his favourite colour, so long as it’s black.’ Did you really say this, Mr Ford?

HENRY FORD: Sure, I said it and I wrote it too. How do you think I managed to get my prices down, to put my cars within the reach of everyone’s pocket? Do you think I could have done that if I’d introduced new models every year, like ladies’ bonnets? Fashion is one of the forms of waste I most detest. My idea was a car whose every component could be replaced, so that it need never grow old. It was the only way I could transform the car from being a luxury item, a prestige accessory, to an essential product everyone must have, one whose worth lies in its utility…

SPOKESMAN: That marked a big change in industrial practices. From then on the efforts of world industry have aimed to satisfy the common consumer, and to increase the demand for consumer goods. That is precisely why industry has tended to design products with built-in obsolescence, things to be thrown out as soon as possible, so that other products can be sold… The system you introduced had consequences which run contrary to your basic ideas: things are produced that soon wear out, or go out of fashion, so as to leave room for other products that are no better than the first but seem newer, products whose fortunes depend entirely on advertising.

HENRY FORD: That wasn’t what I wanted. Change only makes sense before you have reached that
unique optimum
method of production that must exist for every product, the way that will guarantee the maximum economy with the highest yield. There is one method and only one method for making everything in the best possible way. Once you’ve got there, why change?

SPOKESMAN: So your idea is for a world where all cars are the same?

HENRY FORD: No two things are the same in nature. And the idea that all men are the same and equal is mistaken and disastrous. I’ve never worshipped equality, but I didn’t make a monster out of it either. Even if we do all we can to manufacture identical cars, made of identical components, so much so that any component can be taken from one car and mounted on another, the sameness is no more than apparent. Once you’ve put it on the road, every Ford handles a little differently from other Fords, and after he’s tried a car a good driver will be able to distinguish it from all the others, all he has to do is sit at the wheel, turn the ignition key…

SPOKESMAN: But this world you’ve helped create… weren’t you ever afraid that it might be terribly uniform, monotonous?

HENRY FORD: It’s poverty that’s monotonous. It’s the waste of energy and lives. The people who stood in line outside our hiring office were Italians, Greeks, Poles, Ukrainians, emigrants from all the provinces of the Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires, crowds of them, speaking incomprehensible languages and dialects. They were nobodies, without trade or home. I made honourable men of them, I gave them all a useful job, a salary that made them independent, I turned them into men capable of running their own lives. I made them learn English and the values of our moral code: this was the only condition I imposed; if they didn’t like it they were free to go. But I never turned away those who were willing to learn. They became American citizens, they and their families, on a par with those born to families here for generations. I don’t care what a man has been: I don’t ask him about his past, nor where he’s come from, nor what he’s achieved. I don’t care if he’s been to Harvard and I don’t care if he’s been to Sing Sing! I only want to know what he can do, what he can become!

SPOKESMAN: Right… become by conforming to a model…

HENRY FORD: I know what you’re trying to say. I have always taken human diversity as my starting point. Physical strength, speed of movement, capacity to react to new situations are all qualities that vary from one individual to the next. My idea was this: to organize the work in my factories so that those who were unskilled or disabled could yield as much as the most skilled worker. I had each department’s tasks classified according to whether they demanded unusual vigour, or normal strength and stature, or whether they might be carried out by people whose speed and physical capacities were below the average. It turned out that there were 2,637 jobs that could be entrusted to workers with only one leg
(mimes mechanical operations pretending to have only one leg)
, 670 that could go to people with no legs
(mimes as above)
, 715 for those with only one arm
(mimes as above
), 2 for those with no arms
(mimes as above)
and 10 jobs that could be done by the blind. A blind man given the job of counting bolts in the warehouse proved capable of doing the work of three workers with good eyes
(mimes)
. Is this what you call conforming? I’m telling you I did everything I could to help each man overcome his handicap. Even the sick could work and earn their keep in my hospitals. In their beds. Screwing nuts on small bolts. It helped keep up morale too. They got better faster.

SPOKESMAN: But work on the assembly line… Being forced to concentrate your attention on repetitive movements, follow a rhythm that never changes, imposed by machines… What could be more mortifying for the creative spirit… for the most elementary freedom of having control over the movements of your own body, over the expense of your own energy in line with your own rhythm, your own breathing… Always to perform only one operation, one movement, always made in the same way… Isn’t it a terrifying prospect?

HENRY FORD: For me, yes. Terrifying. For me it would be inconceivable always to do the same thing all day every day. But not everyone is like me. The great majority of men have no desire to do creative work, to have to think, decide. They simply want a job that allows them to apply the minimum amount of mental and physical strength. And for this great majority, mechanical repetition, participation in a task that has already been organized down to the last detail, guarantees perfect inner calm. Of course, they mustn’t be restless types. Are you restless? Me, yes, extremely. Well then, I won’t use you for a routine job. But most of the jobs in a big factory are routine and as such suitable to the great majority of the workforce.

SPOKESMAN: They are like that because you wanted them to be like that… both jobs and people…

HENRY FORD: We managed to organize the work in the way that was easiest for those who had to do it, and most profitable. I say we the ‘creative’ ones, if you want to call us that, we the restless ones, we who can’t relax until we have found the best way of doing things… You know where I got the idea of the conveyor that brings the component to the worker without him having to move toward the component? In the meat-canning factories of Chicago, watching the quartered cattle hung on trolleys moving along elevated rails, to be sprinkled with salt, cut up, pulped, minced… The quartered cattle passing by, dangling… the cloud of salt grains… the knife blades sawing back and forth… and I saw the chassis of the Model T running along at hand height while the workers tightened the bolts…

SPOKESMAN: So creativity is reserved to the few… those who design… who take decisions…

HENRY FORD: No! It is extended! How many artists, real artists, were there in the past? Today we are the artists, we who experiment with production and the men who produce! In the past creative tasks were restricted to putting together colours or notes or words on a painting, a score, a page… And for whom in the end? For a handful of world weary idlers who hang around the galleries and concert halls! We are the real artists, we who invent the work that millions of people count on!

SPOKESMAN: But professional skill has disappeared from manual work!

HENRY FORD: Oh enough! You lot are always harping on the same note. Quite the contrary. Professional skill has triumphed, in automobile manufacture and the organization of labour, and this way it’s been put at the service of those who are not skilled who can now achieve the same yields as the more talented! You know how many parts go to make up a Ford? Including screws and bolts, about five thousand: big parts, medium-sized parts, small parts and some no bigger than the cogs in a clock. Workers used to have to walk across the shop floor to look for each part, walk to take them to the part to be assembled, walk to look for a spanner, a screwdriver, a welding torch… The day was frittered away with this back and forth… Then they always ended up banging into each other, tripping over themselves, crowding each other, bunching… Was this the human, creative way to work you people like so much? I wanted to organize things so that workers didn’t have to run back and forth through the workshops. Was that an inhuman idea? I wanted to organize things so that workers didn’t have to lift and carry weights. Was that an inhuman idea? I arranged men and tools in the order of the jobs to be done, I used trolleys on rails or hanging cables, so that arm movements were kept to a minimum. Save ten thousand people just ten steps a day and you’ve saved sixty miles of pointless movements and ill-spent energy.

SPOKESMAN: To sum up: you wish to save your workers unnecessary movements in the building of automobiles which allow us all to live in continual movement…

HENRY FORD: It’s time-saving, my dear fellow, in both cases. There is no contradiction! The first advertisement I used to persuade Americans to buy themselves a car was based on the old proverb ‘Time is money!’ It’s the same at work: for each operation the worker must have the right time: not a second too little and not a second too much! And the worker’s entire day must be based on the same principles: he must live near the factory so as not to lose time travelling. That’s why I came to the conclusion that medium-size factories were better than enormous ones… and meant you could avoid big urban conurbations, slums, dirt, delinquency, vice…

SPOKESMAN: And yet Detroit… The masses who gathered in the Mid West to look for work in Ford factories…

HENRY FORD: Right, I was the only one able to offer high, ever increasing salaries, in a period when no other factory owners would even consider it… It was hard work arguing for my idea and imposing it on the whole American economy: the idea that it’s higher salaries, not higher profits that get the market moving. And to give higher salaries you have to save on the system of production. That is the only saving that’s really worth making: saving not to accumulate but to increase salaries, that is purchasing power, that is abundance. The secret of abundance lies in an equilibrium between prices and quality. And it’s only on abundance that you can build, not on shortages: I was the first to understand that. If a capitalist works in the hope that one day he’ll be able to live off the revenue, he’s a bad capitalist. I never felt I possessed anything myself, but that I was managing my property by putting the best means of production at the service of others.

SPOKESMAN: But the unions saw things differently. And for years you didn’t want to have anything to do with unions… As late as 1937 you were paying teams of bouncers and professional boxers to stop strikes by force…

HENRY FORD: There were some troublemakers who wanted to stir up conflicts between Ford and the workers, conflicts for which there could be
no logical reason
. I had worked out everything in such a way that the workers’ interests and the company’s interests were the same thing! These people came up with arguments that had nothing to do with my principles, nor with the principles that arise from the laws of nature. There is a work morality, a morality of service that cannot be overturned, because it is a law of nature. Nature says: work! prosperity and happiness can only be achieved through honest toil!