MR. FORD’S UTOPIA

Dominion, Volume 14, Issue 180, 26 April 1921, Page 5

MR. FORD’S UTOPIA

FARMERS TO WORK AND COWS TO

DISAPPEAR. The Ford car is to be followed by the Ford paradise. Mr. Henry Ford is now claiming public attention as the architect of new Utopia, of which the foundations are already laid (wrote the New York correspondent of the London "Times" on February 9). By means of an alliance between his industry and the farming population, Mr. Ford proposes to change the face of the United States and abolish manufacturing cities, with their squalor and "industrial filth.” Briefly expressed, his idea is that the urban industrial worker now lives in congested and unhealthy areas, which he calls "concentration for parasitic manipulation of the necessaries of life,” causing unnatural nnrest in men’s minds, and incidentally robbing agriculture of its man-power. "They have created the spectacle of the farmer’s products having to be transported to these great centres, treated and manipulated before being transported back aeain and sold to the farmers." says Mr. Ford. On the other hand, he says that except during the short food-producing season the farmer’s life Is "spent in enforced idleness amid a few cows. He therefore proposes to manufacture Ford cars, and above all, tractors, in numbers of small factories fituated in towfis and villages, making use of waterpower whenever possible. . The farmer will then be able to work in the winter to increase his wealth by making appliances which will enable him to farm with redoubled efficiency. In summer all hands in the factories will become ti’lers of the soil, thus solving the farmers present problem of the supply of farm labour. This is merely the broad outline of the scheme the details of which are ecually intriguing. Mr. Ford proposes to abolish horses© and cows as anachronisms. Ihe horse he contemptuously dismisses ns "a clumsy hay-motor of one horse-power. The cow, also, is a poor makeshift. Mr. Ford's laboratories have demonstrated their ability to take the same cereals that cows eat and transform them into milk infinitely superior in every way to the dirty product of. these discredited animals. "Cows are the crudest machines in the world,” is Mr. Ford's withering description, their meat, he adds, is entirely unecessary, as Ford Food manufactured from artificial milk can beat any meat for nutriment and digestibility. The first branch of the new "paradise,” the head office of which remains in Detroit. has boon opened at Ford, a town of 1500 inhabitants 20 miles away, where valves for Ford tractors and motors are manufactured. Mr. Ford mentions this town as a case in poin ll where a great concern can use its wealth lor the general good. The little town needs a sewer, so the Ford Company, is building it in conjunction with the inhabitants, thus avoiding the necessity of the town’s struggling under a load of debt for years. Arrangements have been made to begin the immediate introduction of the new scheme in 15 other communities, and in reply to a onestion as to when he would b°gin to make inroads on American dies, Mr. Ford said: "Fifteen years ago there were no farm tractors or ships’ wireless; 25 years ago there were only three or four motors in the world; 35 years ago there were no electric ears; 50 years ago there were no telephones." His last remark was: "England seems to offer many opportunities for the exploitation of my idea."