ERA OF CHEAP MOTORS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18571, 1 December 1923, Page 11

ERA OF CHEAP MOTORS.

WHAT FORD HAS ACHIEVED.

CHEAP OUTPUT ON HIGH WAGES.

CARS IN AMERICA FOR £80.

' . Twenty years ago, Henry Ford organised a company with a capital of £20,000, of which only £5600 was subscribed in cash, to manufacture motorcars. He was credited with £500 worth of shares for putting into the company the car* that he had invented. That company has grown into tie greatest manufacturing enterprise in the world— owned by three shareholders, Henry Ford, his wife and their son. The story of this remarkable man and of his achievements has been related in the aristocratic pages of the Quarterly Review, which devotes 16 pages to what it calls " The Miracle of the Ford Car." The writer estimates this year's net profits of the Ford works at over £20,000,000. It may, therefore, safely bo said that the capfital value of the Ford works is between £300,000,000 and £400,000,000. Out of an original inevstment of a few thousand pounds, the greatest manufacturing organisation in the world has been created. It has been built up out of profits. The Ford example gives an invaluable lesson showing the necessity and benefit off targe manufacturers' profits. But for the gigantic profits made, the vast Ford works could never have been created. Henry Ford may be considered not only as the organiser of the biggest factory in the world, but also as the inspirer of the American motor-car industry and the creator of the cheap motor-car. One-fourth of Labour Cost. Mr. Ford adopted novel methods not only in creating a new type of car and •in selling it, but on the productive side as well. He resolved to produce the cheapest car in the world by means of the best-paid labour. He states in- his autobiography that a worker cannot be expected to do good work unless he is free from anxiety and worry. Mr. Ford combines a miraculous cheapness of output with very high wages by increasing efficiency of production to the utmost. The system of the Ford works, as of many leading American factories, is 'to put '■: in the raw material at one end of the factory, to keep it steadily moving, and to turn out the finished product at the other end. If at our present rate of production we employed the same number of men per car that we did when we began in 1903—and those men were only . for assembly—we should to-day require a force of more than two hundred thousand. We have less than fifty thousand men on automobile production at our highest point of around four thousand cars a day. A New Era in Manufacture. • Mr. Ford is not merely an exceedingly successful inventor; he haa started a new era in manufacturing, in the art of trading, and in the art of managing workers. He is changing the aspect of the United States and of the world by means of his car, i which is revolutionising the habits of men in all five Continents. Until recently the motor-car .was the luxury of the rich and the well-to-do. Now millions of middle-class men and of ; ordinary workers have a car. After 'all/ a Ford v car is within the reach of most American workers., It costs about £80 in English money, and as American wages are approximately three times as high as British wages, the purchase of a Ford car is no more burdensome to the average American at > the price of £80 than its purchase would be to the average Englishman at £30. In fact, the position of the American worker is more favourable, '~ because wages are so high on the other side that workers there can easily put by considerable amounts, while many English workers can put by little, if anything. The Ford works are at present producing cars and trucks at the rate of about 6000 per day. Mr. Ford intends to increase the output shortly to 8000 per day, and hopes to advance the production of agricultural tractors to 1000 a day. In his opinion the motor boom has only begun. He thinks the United States can make use of 20,000,000 cars, and that the rest of the world will eventually require far more even than that number. Challenge to British Industry.. "If the motor-car and the tractor fulfil a genuine economic want, their advent cannot be prevented by the hostility and opposition of those who would retain the placid peace of the countryside," says the writer, in conclusion. " If they have come to stay, as seems hkely, it is in.the highest interest of this country that Great Britain and the States in the Imperial Commonwealth should become self-supporting in regard to cars, I trucks, and tractors. England once led i the world by the inventiveness and the I achievements of her Engineering industry. The spirit of inventiveness still is there. Excellent cars are made in this country, but the day of the hand-made car, as that of the hand-made watch, is gone. Mass production, on the model of the Ford works, is necessary, if this country is to obtain an adequate share of that young giant industry. The British Empire, with more than four times the area, and more than four times the population, of the United States, should be able to maintain a larger motor-car industry than the republic. The possibilities for such an industry are boundless; but, .unless British makers wake up in time, the world monopoly of Mr. Ford and a few other American makers will have become more firmly established than ever.. - /