My Life and Work
time unknown in business. The new is always thought odd, and some of us
are so constituted that we can never get over thinking that anything
which is new must be odd and probably queer. The mechanical working out
of our creed is constantly changing. We are continually finding new and
better ways of putting it into practice, but we have not found it
necessary to alter the principles, and I cannot imagine how it might
ever be necessary to alter them, because I hold that they are absolutely
universal and must lead to a better and wider life for all.
If I did not think so I would not keep working--for the money that I
make is inconsequent. Money is useful only as it serves to forward by
practical example the principle that business is justified only as it
serves, that it must always give more to the community than it takes
away, and that unless everybody benefits by the existence of a business
then that business should not exist. I have proved this with automobiles
and tractors. I intend to prove it with railways and public-service
corporations--not for my personal satisfaction and not for the money
that may be earned. (It is perfectly impossible, applying these
principles, to avoid making a much larger profit than if profit were the
main object.) I want to prove it so that all of us may have more, and
that all of us may live better by increasing the service rendered by all
businesses. Poverty cannot be abolished by formula; it can be abolished
only by hard and intelligent work. We are, in effect, an experimental
station to prove a principle. That we do make money is only further
proof that we are right. For that is a species of argument that
establishes itself without words.
In the first chapter was set forth the creed. Let me repeat it in the
light of the work that has been done under it--for it is at the basis of
all our work:
(1) An absence of fear of the future or of veneration for the past. One
who fears the future, who fears failure, limits his activities. Failure
is only the opportunity more intelligently to begin again. There is no
disgrace in honest failure; there is disgrace in fearing to fail. What
is past is useful only as it suggests ways and means for progress.
(2) A disregard of competition. Whoever does a thing best ought to be
the one to do it. It is criminal to try to get business away from
another man--criminal because one is then trying to lower for personal
gain the condition of one's fellow-men, to rule by force instead of by
intelligence.
(3) The putting of service before profit. Without a profit, business
cannot extend. There is nothing inherently wrong about making a profit.
Well-conducted business enterprises cannot fail to return a profit but
profit must and inevitably will come as a reward for good service. It
cannot be the basis--it must be the result of service.
(4) Manufacturing is not buying low and selling high. It is the process
of buying materials fairly and, with the smallest possible addition of
cost, transforming those materials into a consumable product and
distributing it to the consumer. Gambling, speculating, and sharp
dealing tend only to clog this progression.
* * * * *
We must have production, but it is the spirit behind it that counts
most. That kind of production which is a service inevitably follows a
real desire to be of service. The various wholly artificial rules set up
for finance and industry and which pass as "laws" break down with such
frequency as to prove that they are not even good guesses. The basis of
all economic reasoning is the earth and its products. To make the yield
of the earth, in all its forms, large enough and dependable enough to
serve as the basis for real life--the life which is more than eating and
sleeping--is the highest service. That is the real foundation for an
economic system. We can make things--the problem of production has been
solved brilliantly. We can make any number of different sort of things
by the millions. The material mode of our life is splendidly provided
for. There are enough processes and improvements now pigeonholed and
awaiting application to bring the physical side of life to almost
millennial completeness. But we are too wrapped up in the things we are
doing--we are not enough concerned with the reasons why we do them. Our
whole competitive system, our whole creative expression, all the play of
our faculties seem to be centred around material production and its
by-products of success and wealth.
There is, for instance, a feeling that personal or group benefit can be
had at the expense of other persons or groups. There is nothing to be
gained by crushing any one. If the farmer's bloc should crush the
manufacturers would the farmers be better off? If the manufacturer's
bloc should crush the farmers, would the manufacturers be better off?
Could Capital gain by crushing Labour? Or Labour by crushing Capital? Or
does a man in business gain by crushing a competitor? No, destructive
competition benefits no one. The kind of competition which results in
the defeat of the many and the overlordship of the ruthless few must go.
Destructive competition lacks the qualities out of which progress comes.
Progress comes from a generous form of rivalry. Bad competition is
personal. It works for the aggrandizement of some individual or group.
It is a sort of warfare. It is inspired by a desire to "get" someone. It
is wholly selfish. That is to say, its motive is not pride in the
product, nor a desire to excel in service, nor yet a wholesome ambition
to approach to scientific methods of production. It is moved simply by
the desire to crowd out others and monopolize the market for the sake of
the money returns. That being accomplished, it always substitutes a
product of inferior quality.
* * * * *
Freeing ourselves from the petty sort of destructive competition frees
us from many set notions. We are too closely tied to old methods and
single, one-way uses. We need more mobility. We have been using
certain things just one way, we have been sending certain goods
through only one channel--and when that use is slack, or that channel
is stopped, business stops, too, and all the sorry consequences of
"depression" set in. Take corn, for example. There are millions upon
millions of bushels of corn stored in the United States with no
visible outlet. A certain amount of corn is used as food for man and
beast, but not all of it. In pre-Prohibition days a certain amount of
corn went into the making of liquor, which was not a very good use for
good corn. But through a long course of years corn followed those two
channels, and when one of them stopped the stocks of corn began to
pile up. It is the money fiction that usually retards the movement of
stocks, but even if money were plentiful we could not possibly consume
the stores of food which we sometimes possess.
If foodstuffs become too plentiful to be consumed as food, why not find
other uses for them? Why use corn only for hogs and distilleries? Why
sit down and bemoan the terrible disaster that has befallen the corn
market? Is there no use for corn besides the making of pork or the
making of whisky? Surely there must be. There should be so many uses for
corn that only the important uses could ever be fully served; there
ought always be enough channels open to permit corn to be used without
waste.
Once upon a time the farmers burned corn as fuel--corn was plentiful and
coal was scarce. That was a crude way to dispose of corn, but it
contained the germ of an idea. There is fuel in corn; oil and fuel
alcohol are obtainable from corn, and it is high time that someone was
opening up this new use so that the stored-up corn crops may be moved.
Why have only one string to our bow? Why not two? If one breaks, there
is the other. If the hog business slackens, why should not the farmer
turn his corn into tractor fuel?
We need more diversity all round. The four-track system everywhere would
not be a bad idea. We have a single-track money system. It is a mighty
fine system for those who own it. It is a perfect system for the
interest-collecting, credit-controlling financiers who literally own the
commodity called Money and who literally own the machinery by which
money is made and used. Let them keep their system if they like it. But
the people are finding out that it is a poor system for what we call
"hard times" because it ties up the line and stops traffic. If there are
special protections for the interests, there ought also to be special
protections for the plain people. Diversity of outlet, of use, and of
financial enablement, are the strongest defenses we can have against
economic emergencies.
It is likewise with Labour. There surely ought to be flying squadrons of
young men who would be available for emergency conditions in harvest
field, mine, shop, or railroad. If the fires of a hundred industries
threaten to go out for lack of coal, and one million men are menaced by
unemployment, it would seem both good business and good humanity for a
sufficient number of men to volunteer for the mines and the railroads.
There is always something to be done in this world, and only ourselves
to do it. The whole world may be idle, and in the factory sense there
may be "nothing to do." There may be nothing to do in this place or
that, but there is always something to do. It is this fact which should
urge us to such an organization of ourselves that this "something to be
done" may get done, and unemployment reduced to a minimum.
* * * * *
Every advance begins in a small way and with the individual. The mass
can be no better than the sum of the individuals. Advancement begins
within the man himself; when he advances from half-interest to strength
of purpose; when he advances from hesitancy to decisive directness; when
he advances from immaturity to maturity of judgment; when he advances
from apprenticeship to mastery; when he advances from a mere _dilettante_
at labour to a worker who finds a genuine joy in work; when he advances
from an eye-server to one who can be entrusted to do his work without
oversight and without prodding--why, then the world advances! The
advance is not easy. We live in flabby times when men are being taught
that everything ought to be easy. Work that amounts to anything will
never be easy. And the higher you go in the scale of responsibility, the
harder becomes the job. Ease has its place, of course. Every man who
works ought to have sufficient leisure. The man who works hard should
have his easy chair, his comfortable fireside, his pleasant
surroundings. These are his by right. But no one deserves ease until
after his work is done. It will never be possible to put upholstered
ease into work. Some work is needlessly hard. It can be lightened by
proper management. Every device ought to be employed to leave a man free
to do a man's work. Flesh and blood should not be made to bear burdens
that steel can bear. But even when the best is done, work still remains
work, and any man who puts himself into his job will feel that it is
work.
And there cannot be much picking and choosing. The appointed task may be
less than was expected. A man's real work is not always what he would
have chosen to do. A man's real work is what he is chosen to do. Just
now there are more menial jobs than there will be in the future; and as
long as there are menial jobs, someone will have to do them; but there
is no reason why a man should be penalized because his job is menial.
There is one thing that can be said about menial jobs that cannot be
said about a great many so-called more responsible jobs, and that is,
they are useful and they are respectable and they are honest.