FINANCIAL SYSTEM

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVIII, Issue 8, 7 December 1937, Page 13

FINANCIAL SYSTEM

GREATER PRODUCTION URGED. MR HENRY FORD’S VIEWS. DETROIT, Nov. 25. Mr Henry - Ford, the well-known automobile manufacturer and financier, stated in a discourse on modern business to-day that the present system “had got us twisted into producing things with which to buy dollars, when what we needed was a. system that would produce dollars with which to buy goods. “The present system is a system that seeks to control labour, wants to control the Government, the food industry and even the schools. It manifests an av.ariciousness that would control everything,” he said. “Here is a nation that might be the richest in the world, when actually we ha.ve not enough of anything because there is insufficient production. The future will bring a new race of financial engineers, whose pride will he social efficiency instead of profit making.” Mr Ford called on American • business to come out of its despondency, .and emphasised that the present decline in trade was only temporary.

“None need look forward to 1938 with any uncertainty,” he added. “The present slowdown was not a setback ; it was a pause before another

climb. Two things helped to bring it on just now. One was the uncertainty about political interference, but Congress was taking care of that. The other was stock market fluctuation. Everybody knew that the stock market did not permanently affect business; but had an effect on the state of mind of the American business man who played the market. He often mistook his personal depression for business depression. The stock market had no more real effect on American business than the results of a dog race in California. Money had become a business in itself instead of a.n adjunct of. business.”