FORD SCORNS RICHES

Evening Star, Issue 22573, 15 February 1937, Page 10

FORD SCORNS RICHES

PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE Imposed upon the walls of a building in River Rouge, home of the Ford 1 Motor Company, is the aphorism; “If we had more social justice, we would need less charity ” (writes the Detroit correspondent of the ‘ Christian Science Monitor’). The words embrace, in brief, the philosophy of a mechanical genius, whose dream as a youth on a nearby farm brought him world renown at a stage of life where many men already live in the past, it is the philosophy born of an ambition, not to accumulate enormous wealth; not to “change the course of the world,” as some have said, no,r to win for himself “ a place m that select company assured of perpetual fame,” but to “ make of the world a better place in which to live.” The building bouses many exhibits of the far-reaching interests of Henry Ford, now in his seventy-fourth year, still a mechanical genius, still active, optimistic and enthusiastic, and still convinced the next 50 years will bring greater economic and industrial progress than the last half-century. History records no predecessor to Henry Ford. Whether the future will produce a successor even the most daring seer hesitates to predict. Air Ford to-day is one of the very few survivors, if not actually the last, of the original pioneers in the automobile field. Long since gone are such noted figures in the early days as the Duryea brothers, the Appersous and Haynes, the Lelands and Wintons, and others who contributed to, the development of the automotive industry. They were the men who, while not wise in the ways of finance in the early days, built with their hands the fore-runners of to-day, 200,000,000 motor cars. To Air Ford alone, however, goes credit for making of the industry a really competitive institution and an ever lengthening shadow of his own stature. Of his great wealth Air Ford speaks almost invariably in the abstract. It is commonly understood that he has no personal checking account and change in his pocket. AIOST-PRI ZED POSSESSIONS. It is more than likely Air Ford does not know the actual amount of the wealth that came to, him out of the experiments he conducted in a little red brick barn in Bagiev Avenue, here, 44 years agt>. The car, the barn, and the lathe used in processing it are among his most-prized possessions. He believes that the soil can he made to produce not only all the things man requires for food, but all the things he now looks upon industry to provide. Probably no ( one thing in this connection interests him quite as much as proving his contention that agriculture and industry have a very definite affinity for each other and must be “ good neighbours.” Air Ford is proving a large part of this theory by utilising the sova bean ns the base not only for plastics used in motor cars, hut also for paint for body finishing in the industry. And this, he contends, is only a beginning. Wholly different is his view' of industry and finance. “ Industry is one thing,” he asserts, “ finance is another.” Ever since his brush, with Wall Street in 1921, the year his company “ almost went broke,” Air Ford has been his own financial partner. Mr Ford started the present Ford Motor Company on the proverbial “ shoestring,” 28,000 of a 100,000 dollar capitalisation was actually paid in when business began in 1903. It produced nine multi-millionaires before Air Ford bought out the original stockholders in 1919, and concentrated sole ownership in himself, his wife, and his son. There is a storv, never officially confirmed dr denied, that Mr Ford once refused an offer that ran above the billion dollar mark for his holdings long before they reached their present value. But Air Ford has his ow:n conception of money. “ Aloney,” he once said, “is like the belt on a machine; it must be kept moving round and round to be of any real value. lam not interested in money hut in the things of which it is the symbol.” Discussing an indicated 67,000,000 dollar loss of income in one depression year, Air Ford said: “ Wo went on buying materials just the same; the money was not loss, it was distribution.” FIRST MASS PRODUCER. To the industry Air Ford is identified not so much as the man who heads an industrial empire reaching into the far corners of the world, but as the pioneer who introduced mass production, who successfully fought the Seldeu patent case to make the automotive industry actually competitive, and as the employer who startled the industrial world by establishing a five-dollar-a-day minimum wage scale at a time when average compensation in automotive plants was 2.34d0l a day. Air Ford was ridiculed in 1914 for his five-dollar-a-day minimum wage almost as much as he was in 1892 for believing a sel f-propel led vehicle could be popularised. “ There is something sacred about wages,” Air Ford held. “ They represent homes and families and domestic destinies. People ought to tread very carefully when approaching wages. On the cost sheet wages are mere figures; out in the world wages are bread boxes and coal bins; babies’ cradles and children’s education—family comfort and contentment. “ Even though they are the highest in the world. American wages are not nearly as high now (1936) as they are going to he when this country really gets started. The only threat I see to higher wages in this country is fro.m threatened political and financial control.” The story of the career of Henry Ford is one of the mast romantic in history, but it has been embellished in the popular thought with many things that are more fanciful than accurate. Contrary to one generally accepted misconception, Air Ford was not the son of poor parents. His father was an Irish immigrant who became a Justice of the Peace and sufficiently well-to-do to be able to offer his son a farm as a wedding present. Another erroneous impression concerns Mr Ford’s early schooling. He received the education of an average farm youth, finishing the ’course before seeking work in a Detroit machine shop. Subsequently he became chief engineer of the Edison Illuminating Company in Detroit. It has been said the late Senator •lames Couzons, an early associate of Air Fo.rd, played a large part in the successful development of the Ford Afotor Company, Senator Conzens did have much to do with the financial affairs of the company, and for a time drew as largo a salary from it as did l Air Ford himself. No one has challenged the fact, however, that the companv was founded and progressed upon the Ford mechanical genius.