My Life and Work
possible accident allowance can never be as great as a man's wage. If it
were, then a business would simply have an additional tax put upon it,
and that tax would show up in the cost of the product. There would be
less buying of the product and therefore less work for somebody. That is
an inevitable sequence that must always be borne in mind.
We have experimented with bedridden men--men who were able to sit up. We
put black oilcloth covers or aprons over the beds and set the men to
work screwing nuts on small bolts. This is a job that has to be done by
hand and on which fifteen or twenty men are kept busy in the Magneto
Department. The men in the hospital could do it just as well as the men
in the shop and they were able to receive their regular wages. In fact,
their production was about 20 per cent., I believe, above the usual shop
production. No man had to do the work unless he wanted to. But they all
wanted to. It kept time from hanging on their hands. They slept and ate
better and recovered more rapidly.
No particular consideration has to be given to deaf-and-dumb employees.
They do their work one hundred per cent. The tubercular employees--and
there are usually about a thousand of them--mostly work in the material
salvage department. Those cases which are considered contagious work
together in an especially constructed shed. The work of all of them is
largely out of doors.
At the time of the last analysis of employed, there were 9,563
sub-standard men. Of these, 123 had crippled or amputated arms,
forearms, or hands. One had both hands off. There were 4 totally blind
men, 207 blind in one eye, 253 with one eye nearly blind, 37 deaf and
dumb, 60 epileptics, 4 with both legs or feet missing, 234 with one foot
or leg missing. The others had minor impediments.
The length of time required to become proficient in the various
occupations is about as follows: 43 per cent. of all the jobs require
not over one day of training; 36 per cent. require from one day to one
week; 6 per cent. require from one to two weeks; 14 per cent. require
from one month to one year; one per cent. require from one to six years.
The last jobs require great skill--as in tool making and die sinking.
The discipline throughout the plant is rigid. There are no petty rules,
and no rules the justice of which can reasonably be disputed. The
injustice of arbitrary discharge is avoided by confining the right of
discharge to the employment manager, and he rarely exercises it. The
year 1919 is the last on which statistics were kept. In that year 30,155
changes occurred. Of those 10,334 were absent more than ten days without
notice and therefore dropped. Because they refused the job assigned or,
without giving cause, demanded a transfer, 3,702 were let go. A refusal
to learn English in the school provided accounted for 38 more; 108
enlisted; about 3,000 were transferred to other plants. Going home,
going into farming or business accounted for about the same number.
Eighty-two women were discharged because their husbands were working--we
do not employ married women whose husbands have jobs. Out of the whole
lot only 80 were flatly discharged and the causes were:
Misrepresentation, 56; by order of Educational Department, 20; and
undesirable, 4.
We expect the men to do what they are told. The organization is so
highly specialized and one part is so dependent upon another that we
could not for a moment consider allowing men to have their own way.
Without the most rigid discipline we would have the utmost confusion. I
think it should not be otherwise in industry. The men are there to get
the greatest possible amount of work done and to receive the highest
possible pay. If each man were permitted to act in his own way,
production would suffer and therefore pay would suffer. Any one who does
not like to work in our way may always leave. The company's conduct
toward the men is meant to be exact and impartial. It is naturally to
the interest both of the foremen and of the department heads that the
releases from their departments should be few. The workman has a full
chance to tell his story if he has been unjustly treated--he has full
recourse. Of course, it is inevitable that injustices occur. Men are not
always fair with their fellow workmen. Defective human nature obstructs
our good intentions now and then. The foreman does not always get the
idea, or misapplies it--but the company's intentions are as I have
stated, and we use every means to have them understood.
It is necessary to be most insistent in the matter of absences. A man
may not come or go as he pleases; he may always apply for leave to the
foreman, but if he leaves without notice, then, on his return, the
reasons for his absence are carefully investigated and are sometimes
referred to the Medical Department. If his reasons are good, he is
permitted to resume work. If they are not good he may be discharged. In
hiring a man the only data taken concerns his name, his address, his
age, whether he is married or single, the number of his dependents,
whether he has ever worked for the Ford Motor Company, and the condition
of his sight and his hearing. No questions are asked concerning what the
man has previously done, but we have what we call the "Better Advantage
Notice," by which a man who has had a trade before he came to us files a
notice with the employment department stating what the trade was. In
this way, when we need specialists of any kind, we can get them right
out of production. This is also one of the avenues by which tool makers
and moulders quickly reach the higher positions. I once wanted a Swiss
watch maker. The cards turned one up--he was running a drill press. The
Heat Treat department wanted a skilled firebrick layer. He also was
found on a drill press--he is now a general inspector.
There is not much personal contact--the men do their work and go home--a
factory is not a drawing room. But we try to have justice and, while
there may be little in the way of hand shaking--we have no professional
hand shakers--also we try to prevent opportunity for petty
personalities. We have so many departments that the place is almost a
world in itself--every kind of man can find a place somewhere in it.
Take fighting between men. Men will fight, and usually fighting is a
cause for discharge on the spot. We find that does not help the
fighters--it merely gets them out of our sight. So the foremen have
become rather ingenious in devising punishments that will not take
anything away from the man's family and which require no time at all to
administer.
One point that is absolutely essential to high capacity, as well as to
humane production, is a clean, well-lighted and well-ventilated factory.
Our machines are placed very close together--every foot of floor space
in the factory carries, of course, the same overhead charge. The
consumer must pay the extra overhead and the extra transportation
involved in having machines even six inches farther apart than they have
to be. We measure on each job the exact amount of room that a man needs;
he must not be cramped--that would be waste. But if he and his machine
occupy more space than is required, that also is waste. This brings our
machines closer together than in probably any other factory in the
world. To a stranger they may seem piled right on top of one another,
but they are scientifically arranged, not only in the sequence of
operations, but to give every man and every machine every square inch
that he requires and, if possible, not a square inch, and certainly not
a square foot, more than he requires. Our factory buildings are not
intended to be used as parks. The close placing requires a maximum of
safeguards and ventilation.
Machine safeguarding is a subject all of itself. We do not consider any
machine--no matter how efficiently it may turn out its work--as a proper
machine unless it is absolutely safe. We have no machines that we
consider unsafe, but even at that a few accidents will happen. Every
accident, no matter how trivial, is traced back by a skilled man
employed solely for that purpose, and a study is made of the machine to
make that same accident in the future impossible.
When we put up the older buildings, we did not understand so much about
ventilation as we do to-day. In all the later buildings, the supporting
columns are made hollow and through them the bad air is pumped out and
the good air introduced. A nearly even temperature is kept everywhere
the year round and, during daylight, there is nowhere the necessity for
artificial light. Something like seven hundred men are detailed
exclusively to keeping the shops clean, the windows washed, and all of
the paint fresh. The dark corners which invite expectoration are painted
white. One cannot have morale without cleanliness. We tolerate makeshift
cleanliness no more than makeshift methods.
No reason exists why factory work should be dangerous. If a man has
worked too hard or through too long hours he gets into a mental state
that invites accidents. Part of the work of preventing accidents is to
avoid this mental state; part is to prevent carelessness, and part is to
make machinery absolutely fool-proof. The principal causes of accidents
as they are grouped by the experts are:
(1) Defective structures; (2) defective machines; (3) insufficient room;
(4) absence of safeguards; (5) unclean conditions; (6) bad lights; (7)
bad air; (8) unsuitable clothing; (9) carelessness; (10) ignorance; (11)
mental condition; (12) lack of cooperation.
The questions of defective structures, defective machinery, insufficient
room, unclean conditions, bad light, bad air, the wrong mental
condition, and the lack of cooperation are easily disposed of. None of
the men work too hard. The wages settle nine tenths of the mental
problems and construction gets rid of the others. We have then to guard
against unsuitable clothing, carelessness, and ignorance, and to make
everything we have fool-proof. This is more difficult where we have
belts. In all of our new construction, each machine has its individual
electric motor, but in the older construction we had to use belts. Every
belt is guarded. Over the automatic conveyors are placed bridges so that
no man has to cross at a dangerous point. Wherever there is a
possibility of flying metal, the workman is required to wear goggles and
the chances are further reduced by surrounding the machine with netting.
Around hot furnaces we have railings. There is nowhere an open part of a
machine in which clothing can be caught. All the aisles are kept clear.
The starting switches of draw presses are protected by big red tags
which have to be removed before the switch can be turned--this prevents
the machine being started thoughtlessly. Workmen will wear unsuitable
clothing--ties that may be caught in a pulley, flowing sleeves, and all
manner of unsuitable articles. The bosses have to watch for that, and
they catch most of the offenders. New machines are tested in every way
before they are permitted to be installed. As a result we have
practically no serious accidents.
Industry needs not exact a human toll.
CHAPTER VIII
WAGES
There is nothing to running a business by custom--to saying: "I pay the
going rate of wages." The same man would not so easily say: "I have
nothing better or cheaper to sell than any one has." No manufacturer in
his right mind would contend that buying only the cheapest materials is
the way to make certain of manufacturing the best article. Then why do
we hear so much talk about the "liquidation of labour" and the benefits
that will flow to the country from cutting wages--which means only the
cutting of buying power and the curtailing of the home market? What good