thinks best; for in carrying out the orders of the Engineer of the Universe it is quite impossible to pass the buck." And this brings us to the subject of Mr. Ford's personal traits. Says Mr. Wood:
Mr. Ford is often referred to as a man of contradictions. No one is more autocratic, for instance, nor more democratic. He uses his wealth ruthlessly, yet no one is less wealth-conscious. To me he has always seemed one of the most modest of men. He doesn't "condescend" to talk with newspaper men. He either talks with them or he doesn't; if he does, the talk is always on the level, and not as tho his time were too precious to listen to what the other fellow had to say. He won't make appointments for mere conversation. You either find him or you don't. He likes to chat with people, but he keeps himself foot-loose. His time is altogether too precious to have every minute of it scheduled for weeks in advance.
These seeming contradictions are quite understandable if one remembers his fundamental conception of human life. He has no notion that wealth has made him great, and any one who is imprest merely by his wealth bores him. In his personal contacts he likes to dodge the subject. He would prefer to talk with a machinist about machinery, or with somebody who likes birds about birds. In these contacts, he asks no deference; and if he gets it, he suspects it is mere deference to wealth, and that ends his interest.
On the other hand, if you work for him, especially if you are associated with him in the formation of any of his policies, there is abundant testimony that he is a ruthless autocrat, demanding absolute obedience, and is shockingly inconsiderate of the other fellow's feelings. Whether Mr. Ford is aware of this, I never could find out or whether, being aware, he cares.
One kind of criticism makes him angry, as this interviewer inadvertently discovered. Ford denies with heat that his workers are "robots." Thus:
"You think a worker on our assembling line doesn't have to be skilled," he said, rather hotly. "You don't know what you're talking about. I tell you, those fellows out there to-day have more skill, and need to have more skill, than the old-fashioned mechanics ever had."
"But, Mr. Ford," I protested. "I—"
"I don't want to talk with you any more," he said, "until you've learned something. You go out on the line. Go through the Rouge plant. Talk with the men who are organizing the work out there, and find out anything that you can find out. If you come back here then and tell me that the men are becoming automatons, I'll listen to you; but there's no use of talking when we can't understand each other."
Mr. Ford went out to do his disagreeable job and I set out on my strange commission. Obviously I couldn't talk with the 45,000 who were then working at the River Rouge plant, and it was a couple of days before I could get an appointment with Mr. Sorensen, the superintendent.
Charles E. Sorensen is commonly spoken of as Ford's "Man Friday," but he is still an indistinct figure to the world at large. It was the first time that Mr. Wood had met him, we are told, and the result was the discovery of a forceful personality. Mr. Wood has no use for the pet formula of Ford's critics—"It isn't Ford, it's Sorensen"—but he goes on to say:
Work is Sorenson's religion. He, too, is not clubby. If a man doesn't seem to be making good, Sorensen is strangely patient with him, and will go to no end of trouble to find out why. Paradoxically, it is the man who does seem to be making good toward whom he seems impatient. Sorenson has the reputation of driving such people pretty hard.
A salesman who makes a good record is especially in for a riding. The salesman may, in his own mind, be aiming at nothing more than $10,000 a car; and when he reaches that mark, he may wish to rest upon his laurels. But the boss, under this system, can not let anybody rest—that is, anybody who has shown any capacity for development. Especially is this so if, in the course of his promotion, he has come to have many workers under him.
The writer talked with many of Ford's employees, as he had been so warmly admonished to do, and he came away imprest with the fact that such complaints as he heard had nothing whatever to do with the common theory that the machine is making automatons out of the men. Some of them like their jobs, and some don't, he reports, but it is not when the Ford works are going at top speed that they grumble. It is when they shut down, which, we must admit, is not often. Mr. Wood continues:
Men used to working alone naturally find it irksome to work in concert with so many other men, especially if they are getting on in years and have learned their trade in what they call the "good old days" when the standard of living was a small fraction of what it is to-day.
But it is not the speed to which they object. Nor is it the hard labor. As a matter of fact, "speeding up" in the modern factory does not mean what those who read about it think it does. They think it means the double-quick of military tactics, whereas it simply means more coordination of effort. Workers on the big modern machine do not work as fast as corn-huskers or hay-pitchers or wood-choppers used to work. It isn't necessary.
If they did so, moreover, they would be likely to get tired, and modern industry knows that it can not afford to let its workers get too tired.
Certainly there is little lugging and lifting and back-breaking hard work in the modern plant. Heavy things can be lifted and lugged much better by machinery, and they are. The assembling line which I watched seemed more like a modern dance.
"But what will happen," I asked Mr. Ford, referring to the assembly line, "when all our work in America is handed in some such way as this?"
"There will be a lot of work done," he said.
"And a lot of things made," I added. "Is that the only answer?"
"Of course not," he replied. "When work generally is organized like this, we will be able to make the things we want in much less time. The hours of labor will constantly be lessened and the pay will constantly be increased."
