My Life and Work
love them than in the institutions. There are more old people being
sheltered by friends than you can find in the old people's homes. There
is more aid by loans from family to family than by the loan societies.
That is, human society on a humane basis looks out for itself. It is a
grave question how far we ought to countenance the commercialization of
the natural instinct of charity.
Professional charity is not only cold but it hurts more than it helps.
It degrades the recipients and drugs their self-respect. Akin to it is
sentimental idealism. The idea went abroad not so many years ago that
"service" was something that we should expect to have done for us.
Untold numbers of people became the recipients of well-meant "social
service." Whole sections of our population were coddled into a state of
expectant, child-like helplessness. There grew up a regular profession
of doing things for people, which gave an outlet for a laudable desire
for service, but which contributed nothing whatever to the self-reliance
of the people nor to the correction of the conditions out of which the
supposed need for such service grew.
Worse than this encouragement of childish wistfulness, instead of
training for self-reliance and self-sufficiency, was the creation of a
feeling of resentment which nearly always overtakes the objects of
charity. People often complain of the "ingratitude" of those whom they
help. Nothing is more natural. In the first place, precious little of
our so-called charity is ever real charity, offered out of a heart full
of interest and sympathy. In the second place, no person ever relishes
being in a position where he is forced to take favors.
Such "social work" creates a strained relation--the recipient of bounty
feels that he has been belittled in the taking, and it is a question
whether the giver should not also feel that he has been belittled in the
giving. Charity never led to a settled state of affairs. The charitable
system that does not aim to make itself unnecessary is not performing
service. It is simply making a job for itself and is an added item to
the record of non-production.
Charity becomes unnecessary as those who seem to be unable to earn
livings are taken out of the non-productive class and put into the
productive. In a previous chapter I have set out how experiments in our
shops have demonstrated that in sufficiently subdivided industry there
are places which can be filled by the maimed, the halt, and the blind.
Scientific industry need not be a monster devouring all who come near
it. When it is, then it is not fulfilling its place in life. In and out
of industry there must be jobs that take the full strength of a powerful
man; there are other jobs, and plenty of them, that require more skill
than the artisans of the Middle Ages ever had. The minute subdivision of
industry permits a strong man or a skilled man always to use his
strength or skill. In the old hand industry, a skilled man spent a good
part of his time at unskilled work. That was a waste. But since in those
days every task required both skilled and unskilled labour to be
performed by the one man, there was little room for either the man who
was too stupid ever to be skilled or the man who did not have the
opportunity to learn a trade.
No mechanic working with only his hands can earn more than a bare
sustenance. He cannot have a surplus. It has been taken for granted
that, coming into old age, a mechanic must be supported by his children
or, if he has no children, that he will be a public charge. All of that
is quite unnecessary. The subdivision of industry opens places that can
be filled by practically any one. There are more places in subdivision
industry that can be filled by blind men than there are blind men. There
are more places that can be filled by cripples than there are cripples.
And in each of these places the man who short-sightedly might be
considered as an object of charity can earn just as adequate a living as
the keenest and most able-bodied. It is waste to put an able-bodied man
in a job that might be just as well cared for by a cripple. It is a
frightful waste to put the blind at weaving baskets. It is waste to have
convicts breaking stone or picking hemp or doing any sort of petty,
useless task.
A well-conducted jail should not only be self-supporting, but a man in
jail ought to be able to support his family or, if he has no family, he
should be able to accumulate a sum of money sufficient to put him on his
feet when he gets out of jail. I am not advocating convict labour or the
farming out of men practically as slaves. Such a plan is too detestable
for words. We have greatly overdone the prison business, anyway; we
begin at the wrong end. But as long as we have prisons they can be
fitted into the general scheme of production so neatly that a prison
may become a productive unit working for the relief of the public and
the benefit of the prisoners. I know that there are laws--foolish laws
passed by unthinking men--that restrict the industrial activities of
prisons. Those laws were passed mostly at the behest of what is called
Labour. They are not for the benefit of the workingman. Increasing the
charges upon a community does not benefit any one in the community. If
the idea of service be kept in mind, then there is always in every
community more work to do than there are men who can do it.
Industry organized for service removes the need for philanthropy.
Philanthropy, no matter how noble its motive, does not make for
self-reliance. We must have self-reliance. A community is the better for
being discontented, for being dissatisfied with what it has. I do not
mean the petty, daily, nagging, gnawing sort of discontent, but a broad,
courageous sort of discontent which believes that everything which is
done can and ought to be eventually done better. Industry organized for
service--and the workingman as well as the leader must serve--can pay
wages sufficiently large to permit every family to be both self-reliant
and self-supporting. A philanthropy that spends its time and money in
helping the world to do more for itself is far better than the sort
which merely gives and thus encourages idleness. Philanthropy, like
everything else, ought to be productive, and I believe that it can be. I
have personally been experimenting with a trade school and a hospital to
discover if such institutions, which are commonly regarded as
benevolent, cannot be made to stand on their own feet. I have found that
they can be.
I am not in sympathy with the trade school as it is commonly
organized--the boys get only a smattering of knowledge and they do not
learn how to use that knowledge. The trade school should not be a cross
between a technical college and a school; it should be a means of
teaching boys to be productive. If they are put at useless tasks--at
making articles and then throwing them away--they cannot have the
interest or acquire the knowledge which is their right. And during the
period of schooling the boy is not productive; the schools--unless by
charity--make no provision for the support of the boy. Many boys need
support; they must work at the first thing which comes to hand. They
have no chance to pick and choose.
When the boy thus enters life untrained, he but adds to the already
great scarcity of competent labour. Modern industry requires a degree of
ability and skill which neither early quitting of school nor long
continuance at school provides. It is true that, in order to retain the
interest of the boy and train him in handicraft, manual training
departments have been introduced in the more progressive school systems,
but even these are confessedly makeshifts because they only cater to,
without satisfying, the normal boy's creative instincts.
To meet this condition--to fulfill the boy's educational possibilities
and at the same time begin his industrial training along constructive
lines--the Henry Ford Trade School was incorporated in 1916. We do not
use the word philanthropy in connection with this effort. It grew out of
a desire to aid the boy whose circumstances compelled him to leave
school early. This desire to aid fitted in conveniently with the
necessity of providing trained tool-makers in the shops. From the
beginning we have held to three cardinal principles: first, that the boy
was to be kept a boy and not changed into a premature working-man;
second, that the academic training was to go hand in hand with the
industrial instruction; third, that the boy was to be given a sense of
pride and responsibility in his work by being trained on articles which
were to be used. He works on objects of recognized industrial worth. The
school is incorporated as a private school and is open to boys between
the ages of twelve and eighteen. It is organized on the basis of
scholarships and each boy is awarded an annual cash scholarship of four
hundred dollars at his entrance. This is gradually increased to a
maximum of six hundred dollars if his record is satisfactory.
A record of the class and shop work is kept and also of the industry the
boy displays in each. It is the marks in industry which are used in
making subsequent adjustments of his scholarship. In addition to his
scholarship each boy is given a small amount each month which must be
deposited in his savings account. This thrift fund must be left in the
bank as long as the boy remains in the school unless he is given
permission by the authorities to use it for an emergency.
One by one the problems of managing the school are being solved and
better ways of accomplishing its objects are being discovered. At the
beginning it was the custom to give the boy one third of the day in
class work and two thirds in shop work. This daily adjustment was found
to be a hindrance to progress, and now the boy takes his training in
blocks of weeks--one week in the class and two weeks in the shop.
Classes are continuous, the various groups taking their weeks in turn.
The best instructors obtainable are on the staff, and the text-book is
the Ford plant. It offers more resources for practical education than
most universities. The arithmetic lessons come in concrete shop
problems. No longer is the boy's mind tortured with the mysterious A who
can row four miles while B is rowing two. The actual processes and
actual conditions are exhibited to him--he is taught to observe. Cities
are no longer black specks on maps and continents are not just pages of
a book. The shop shipments to Singapore, the shop receipts of material
from Africa and South America are shown to him, and the world becomes an
inhabited planet instead of a coloured globe on the teacher's desk. In
physics and chemistry the industrial plant provides a laboratory in
which theory becomes practice and the lesson becomes actual experience.
Suppose the action of a pump is being taught. The teacher explains the
parts and their functions, answers questions, and then they all troop
away to the engine rooms to see a great pump. The school has a regular
factory workshop with the finest equipment. The boys work up from one
machine to the next. They work solely on parts or articles needed by the
company, but our needs are so vast that this list comprehends nearly
everything. The inspected work is purchased by the Ford Motor Company,
and, of course, the work that does not pass inspection is a loss to the
school.
The boys who have progressed furthest do fine micrometer work, and they
do every operation with a clear understanding of the purposes and
principles involved. They repair their own machines; they learn how to
take care of themselves around machinery; they study pattern-making and
in clean, well-lighted rooms with their instructors they lay the
foundation for successful careers.