Ford-Life&Work
Getting Into Production
A device that saves 10% in time or increases results by 10% implies that its absence incurs a 10% tax. For example, if an employee earns per hour, a 10% saving is equivalent to per hour.
Principles upon which production was built:
Getting machinists.
Necessity of production increased.
Skilled men were not necessary for production.
A majority of people are not mentally or physically capable of earning a good living.
It is a common belief that we have eliminated skill from work, but instead, we have introduced skill into planning, management, and tool building, benefiting even unskilled workers. Recognizing the disparities in human mental capabilities is crucial; without this recognition, the scale of our operations would be impossible, as training enough skilled workers would take centuries. More importantly, the output of a million manual laborers could not compete in price with that of efficient production methods.
Economical Methods of Production
Economical production methods evolved gradually, with "Model T" being the first motor we manufactured entirely ourselves. The most significant efficiencies were achieved in assembly and subsequently extended to other areas. Today, while we have numerous skilled mechanics, their primary role is to facilitate automobile production for others, rather than direct production themselves. Our skilled workforce comprises tool makers, experimental workers, machinists, and pattern makers, whose expertise is best utilized in tasks that machines cannot perform.
The majority of our workforce comes to us unskilled.
They typically learn their job in a few hours or days.
They must be able to perform enough work to cover the cost of the floor space they occupy.
Physical abilities are not required.
It's challenging to comprehensively detail the step-by-step development of manufacturing due to the constant changes and improvements. However, by examining various changes, we can understand the potential of a production-based world, the current overpricing of goods, the inadequacy of wages, and the vast opportunities for exploration. The Ford Company is still in the early stages of this journey.
A Ford car consists of approximately 5,000 parts, including screws and nuts. Initially, assembly involved placing a car at a spot and having workers bring parts to it, similar to building a house. As parts manufacturing began, a single department was created for each part, with one worker typically handling all operations on a small part. However, increasing production demands necessitated plans to prevent workers from interfering with each other.
Assembly Principles
The first advancement in assembly was bringing the work to the men, rather than the men to the work. Two core principles guide all operations:
Minimize worker steps.
Eliminate stooping.
Principles of assembly:
Arrange tools and workers in the sequence of operations to minimize the distance each component part travels during finishing.
Use slides or carriers, so that workers put parts in the most convenient place.
Use sliding assembly lines to deliver parts at convenient distances.
The application of these principles reduces the need for worker thought and minimizes movements. Workers now perform one task with one movement as much as possible.
The assembly of the chassis is a well-known operation, though we now ship parts for assembly at distribution points. The experiment with an assembly line began around April 1, 1913, focusing on the flywheel magneto assembly. We prefer to test new methods on a small scale before making drastic changes. To do this we:
We will rip out anything once we discover a better way.
Need to know that the new way is going to be better than the old.
Flywheel Magneto Assembly
Previously, a single workman assembled 35-40 pieces in a 9-hour day (20 minutes per assembly). By dividing the process into 29 operations, assembly time was reduced to 13 minutes, 10 seconds. Raising the line height by 8 inches in 1914 further reduced the time to 7 minutes. Experimenting with the speed of work reduced it to 5 minutes. Scientific study enabled one man to produce more than four had previously. This success led to the widespread adoption of assembly lines. The assembly of the motor, once done by one man, is now divided into 84 operations, with the workers producing what three times their number once did. Following the success, the plan was trialed on the chassis.
Stationary chassis assembly averaged 12 hours and 28 minutes per chassis. An experiment using a rope and windlass to draw the chassis down a 250-foot line reduced the time to 5 hours and 50 minutes. In early 1914, the assembly line was elevated to waist height (26.75 inches or 24.5 inches from the floor) to accommodate different worker heights. This arrangement, along with further work subdivision, reduced labor time per chassis to 1 hour and 33 minutes. Initially, only the chassis was assembled on the line, with the body added on "John R. Street." Now, the entire car is assembled on the line.
The speed of the moving work was carefully adjusted. In the flywheel magneto assembly, an initial speed of 60 inches per minute was too fast, while 18 inches per minute was too slow. The final speed was set at 44 inches per minute. The goal is to give workers the necessary time without unnecessary delays. Speeds were determined for each assembly, leading to the overhaul of our entire manufacturing method and the implementation of mechanically driven lines. The chassis assembly line moves at 6 feet per minute, while the front axle assembly line moves at 189 inches per minute. The chassis assembly involves 45 separate operations or stations. For example:
The first men attach mud-guard brackets to the chassis frame.
Other men work in detail.
The motor arrives on the tenth operation.
Some men perform one or two operations.
The man who places a part does not fasten it.
The man who puts in a bolt does not put on the nut.
The man who puts on the nut does not tighten it.
On operation 34, the motor gets gasoline after lubrication, and on operation 44, the radiator is filled with water. On operation 45, the car drives out onto John R. Street.
Essentially the same ideas have been applied to the assembling of the motor. In October 1913 it required 9 hours and 54 minutes of labor time to assemble one motor; six months later, this time had been reduced to 5 hours and 56 minutes. Every piece of work in the shops moves: on hooks via overhead chains, on a moving platform, or by gravity. There is no lifting or trucking of anything other than materials. Materials are brought in on small trucks or trailers operated by cut-down Ford chassis. No workman has anything to do with moving or lifting anything; that is all in a separate department- the department of transportation.
Departmentalization
Initially, we assembled a motor car in a single factory. As we started making parts, we departmentalized, assigning each department a single task. Now, each department makes or assembles a single part. A department is a small factory in itself, processing raw materials or castings through machines and heat treatments, and outputting a finished part. Departments were initially grouped together for ease of transport.
I did not realize such minute divisions would be achievable.
As production and departments grew, we transitioned from making automobiles to making parts. We then discovered that not all parts needed to be made in one factory. This realization was similar to my initial manufacturing approach of buying motors and 90% of parts from outside sources. When we began making our own parts, we assumed they all had to be made in one factory, believing there was a unique advantage to having all manufacturing under one roof.
We have now moved away from this approach. Future large factories will only be built if a single part requires such high volume production that it necessitates a large unit. Ideally, the Highland Park plant will focus on only one or two things. The casting has already been moved to the River Rouge plant. We are returning to our starting point, but instead of buying parts from external sources, we are making them in our own external factories.
This development has significant implications, as it means highly standardized and subdivided industry no longer needs to concentrate in large plants. A factory with 500 to 1000 men would eliminate the issues of transportation, housing, and overcrowding. Highland Park now has 500 departments, compared to 18 at the Piquette plant and 150 previously at Highland Park, demonstrating our progress in parts manufacturing.
Improvements are made almost weekly in machines or processes, sometimes defying "best shop practice." For instance, a machine manufacturer doubted the possibility of building a machine that could produce 200 units per hour, only to discover that such a machine already existed in our factory.
The factory does not keep official records of experiments. Foremen and superintendents rely on their memory of past experiences. However, I am not particularly anxious for men to remember what someone else tried to do in the past, for then we might quickly accumulate far too many things that could not be done. That is one of the troubles with extensive records. If you keep on recording all of your failures you will shortly have a list showing that there is nothing left for you to try-whereas it by no means follows because one man has failed in a certain method that another man will not succeed.
For example, we were told that it was impossible to cast gray iron using our endless chain method, but we are doing it. Similarly, we were told that it was impossible to pour hot iron directly from the blast furnace into the mould, yet we are doing it at the River Rouge plant. Detailed records of failures can discourage innovation, so we encourage "fools" to "rush in where angels fear to tread".
Experts
None of our men are experts; we get rid of a man as soon as he thinks himself an expert. A man who knows a job sees so much more to be done than he has done, that he is always pressing forward and never gives up an instant of thought to how good and how efficient he is. A state of mind in which nothing is impossible. The moment one gets into the "expert" state of mind a great number of things become impossible.
I refuse to recognize that there are impossibilities. The right kind of experience ought to enlarge the mind and reduce the number of impossibilities. It unfortunately does nothing of the kind. If some man, calling himself an authority, says that this or that cannot be done, then a horde of unthinking followers start the chorus: “It can't be done.”
Casting
Casting, an old and wasteful process, has accumulated traditions that hinder improvements. One expert declared that anyone claiming to reduce costs within six months was a fraud. Our foundry used to resemble others, with manual labor dominating operations. In 1910, when we cast the first "Model T" cylinders, everything was done by hand. Shovels and wheelbarrows. Now, only 5% of our workforce consists of skilled molders and core setters, while the remaining 95% are unskilled but skilled in one operation that can be learned within two days. Moulding is machine operated.
Each part we cast has its own unit, adapted to the specific casting. The men in the unit perform one operation that is always same. Each unit consists of an overhead railway with platforms for the moulds, enabling the making of the moulds and the cores, and the packing of the cores, are done with the work in motion on the platforms. The metal is poured at another point as the work moves, and by the time the mould in which the metal has been poured reaches the terminal, it is cool enough to start on its automatic way to cleaning, machining, and assembling. And the platform is moving around for a new load.
Piston-Rod Assembly
Previously considered insignificant, this operation took 3 minutes with 28 men assembling 175 pistons and rods in a 9-hour day. There was no inspection, and many assemblies were returned as defective. The operation involved pushing the pin out of the piston, oiling the pin, slipping the rod in place, putting the pin through the rod and piston, tightening one screw, and opening another screw.
The foreman, after analyzing the motions, found that 4 hours were spent walking to gather materials and push away finished pieces. Each man performed six operations. The foreman split the operation into three divisions, put a slide on the bench and three men on each side of it, and an inspector at the end. Instead of one man performing the whole operation, one man then performed only one third of the operation. The squad was reduced to 14 men. Now seven men turn out twenty-six hundred assemblies in eight hours. It is not necessary to calculate the savings there!
Painting the Rear Axle Assembly
Once a troublesome task involving hand-dipping in an enamel tank and requiring two men. Now, one man uses a special machine to hang the assembly on a moving chain that carries it over the enamel tank. Two levers thrust thimbles over the ends of the ladle shaft, the paint tank rises six feet, immerses the axle, returns to position, and the axle goes on to the drying oven. The whole cycle of operations now takes just thirteen seconds.
Radiator Assembly
Radiator is complex.
Soldering it required skill.
95 Tubes in each radiator.
Fitting and soldering tubes by hand is long.
Machine now makes 1,200 radiator cores in eight hours; then they are soldered in place by being carried through a furnace by a conveyor. No tinsmith work and so no skill are required.
Riveting the Crank-Case Arms
Previously done with pneumatic hammers by 12 men. An automatic press operated by one man now does five times as much work in a day as those twelve men did.
In the Piquette plant, cylinder casting travelled 4,000 feet during finishing; now it travels just over 300 feet. There is no manual handling of material. There is not a single hand operation. If a machine can be made automatic, it is made automatic. Not a single operation is ever considered as being done in the best or cheapest way. At that, only about ten per cent. of our tools are special; the others are regular machines adjusted to the particular job. And they are placed almost side by side. We put more machinery per square foot of floor space than any other factory in the world every foot of space not used carries an overhead expense. We want none of that waste.
Keynotes of Production
Dividing and subdividing operations.
Keeping the work in motion.
All the parts are designed.
*Saving: If we hired as many people per car now as we did in 1908—and those people were just there for assembly—we would need more than 200,000. At our highest point, we have fewer than 50,000 men making cars at a rate of roughly 4,000 per day!
Machines and Men
The most important thing when bringing a lot of people to work is to fight against too much organization and the resulting paperwork. I think there's nothing more dangerous than being good at organizing. This usually results in a big chart that shows how power spreads out, like a family tree. The tree is covered in nice, round berries, each with a man's name or a job title on it. Every man has a title and specific tasks that are only limited by how big his berry is.
If a straw boss wants to tell the general superintendent something, it has to go through the sub-foreman, the foreman, the department head, and all the assistant superintendents before it gets to the general superintendent. By then, whatever he wanted to say is probably already old news. If someone in a berry in the lower left corner of the chart wants to send a message to the president or chairman, it takes about six weeks. And if it ever gets to one of those important people, it has a pound of criticisms, ideas, and comments attached to it. Very few things are ever officially looked into until they should have been done a long time ago.
Responsibility is avoided, and people think that two heads are better than one.
A business, in my opinion, is not a machine. It is a group of people who are brought together to do hard work and not to write letters to one another. It is not necessary for any one department to know what any other department is doing. If a man is doing his work he will not have time to take up any other work. It is the business of those who plan the entire work to see that all of the departments are working properly toward the same end. It is not necessary to have meetings to establish good feeling between individuals or departments. It is not necessary for people to love each other in order to work together. Too much good fellowship may indeed be a very bad thing, for it may lead to one man trying to cover up the faults of another. That is bad for both men.
When we are at work we ought to be at work. When we are at play we ought to be at play. There is no use trying to mix the two. The sole object ought to be to get the work done and to get paid for it. When the work is done, then the play can come, but not before. And so the Ford factories and enterprises have no organization, no specific duties attaching to any position, no line of succession or of authority, very few titles, and no conferences. We have only the clerical help that is absolutely required; we have no elaborate records of any kind, and consequently no red tape.
Responsibility
We make the individual responsibility complete. The workman is absolutely responsible for his work. The straw boss is responsible for the workmen under him. Every man has to know what is going on in his sphere. I say “general superintendent.” There is no such formal title. One man is in charge of the factory and has been for years. He has two men with him, who, without in any way having their duties defined, have taken particular sections of the work to themselves. With them are about half a dozen other men in the nature of assistants, but without specific duties. They have all made jobs for themselves—but there are no limits to their jobs. They just work in where they best fit. One man chases stock and shortages. Another has grabbed inspection, and so on.
This may seem haphazard, but it is not. A group of men, wholly intent upon getting work done. They do not get into trouble about the limits of authority, because they are not thinking of titles. If they had offices and all that, they would shortly be giving up their time to office work and to wondering why did they not have a better office than some other fellow.
Because there are no titles and no limits of authority, there is no question of red tape or going over a man's head. Any workman can go to anybody, and so established has become this custom, that a foreman does not get sore if a workman goes over him and directly to the head of the factory. It will be very quickly found out, and he shall no longer be a foreman. One of the things that we will not tolerate is injustice of any kind. The moment a man starts to swell with authority he is discovered, and he goes out, or goes back to a machine. A large amount of labor unrest comes from the unjust exercise of authority by those in subordinate positions.
The work and the work alone controls us. That is one of the reasons why we have no titles. Most men can swing a job, but they are floored by a title. The effect of a title is very peculiar. It has been used too much as a sign of emancipation from work. It is almost equivalent to a badge bearing the legend: “This man has nothing to do but regard himself as important and all others as inferior.”
Not only is a title often injurious to the wearer, but it has its effect on others as well. There is perhaps no greater single source of personal dissatisfaction among men than the fact that the title-bearers are not always the real leaders. Everybody acknowledges a real leader—a man who is fit to plan and command. And when you find a real leader who bears a title, you will have to inquire of someone else what his title is. He doesn't boast about it.
Titles in business have been greatly overdone and business has suffered. One of the bad features is the division of responsibility according to titles, which goes so far as to amount to a removal altogether of responsibility. Where responsibility is broken up into many small bits and divided among many departments, each department under its own titular head, who in turn is surrounded by a group bearing their nice sub-titles, it is difficult to find any one who really feels responsible. Everyone knows what “passing the buck” means. The game must have originated in industrial organizations where the departments simply shove responsibility along.
The health of every organization depends on every member-whatever his place feeling that everything that happens to come to his notice relating to the welfare of the business is his own job. Railroads have gone to the devil under the eyes of departments that say: “Oh, that doesn't come under our department. Department X, 100 miles away, has that in charge.”
There used to be a lot of advice given to officials not to hide behind their titles. The very necessity for the advice showed a condition that needed more than advice to correct it. And the correction is just this—abolish the titles. A few may be legally necessary; a few may be useful in directing the public how to do business with the concern, but for the rest the best rule is simple: “Get rid of them.”
As a matter of fact, the record of business in general just now is such as to detract very much from the value of titles. No one would boast of being president of a bankrupt bank. Business on the whole has not been so skillfully steered as to leave much margin for pride in the steersmen. The men who bear titles now and are worth anything are forgetting their titles and are down in the foundation of business looking for the weak spots. They are back again in the places from which they rose-trying to reconstruct from the bottom up. And when a man is really at work, he needs no title. His work honors him.
All of our people come into the factory or the offices through the employment departments. As I have said, we do not hire experts-neither do we hire men on past experiences or for any position other than the lowest. Since we do not take a man on his past history, we do not refuse him because of his past history. I never met a man who was thoroughly bad. There is always some good in him if he gets a chance. That is the reason we do not care in the least about a man's antecedents-we do not hire a man's history, we hire the man. If he has been in jail, that is no reason to say that he will be in jail again. Our employment office does not bar a man for anything he has previously done he is equally acceptable whether he has been in Sing Sing or at Harvard and we do not even inquire from which place he has graduated. All that he needs is the desire to work. If he does not desire to work, it is very unlikely that he will apply for a position, for it is pretty well understood that a man in the Ford plant works.
We do not, to repeat, care what a man has been. If he has gone to college he ought to be able to go ahead faster, but he has to start at the bottom and prove his ability. Every man's future rests solely with himself. There is far too much loose talk about men being unable to obtain recognition. With us every man is fairly certain to get the exact recognition he deserves.
The whole modern industrial system has warped the desire so out of shape that it is now almost an obsession. There was a time when a man's personal advancement depended entirely and immediately upon his work, and not upon any one's favor; but nowadays it often depends far too much upon the individual's good fortune in catching some influential eye. That is what we have successfully fought against. This habit of making the work secondary and the recognition primary is unfair to the work. It makes recognition and credit the real job. And this also has an unfortunate effect on the worker. It encourages a peculiar kind of ambition which is neither lovely nor productive. It produces the kind of man who imagines that by “standing in with the boss” he will get ahead. The worst of it is there are some things in the present industrial system which make it appear that the game really pays.
Foremen are only human. It is natural that they should be flattered by being made to believe that they hold the weal or woe of workmen in their hands. It is natural, also, that being open to flattery, their self-seeking subordinates should flatter them still more to obtain and profit by their favour. That is why I want as little as possible of the personal element. Some men will work hard but they do not possess the capacity to think and especially to think quickly. Such men get as far as their ability deserves.
Advancement
A man may, by his industry, deserve advancement, but it cannot be possibly given him unless he also has a certain element of leadership. This is not a dream world we are living in. I think that every man in the shaking-down process of our factory eventually lands about where he belongs. We are never satisfied with the way that everything is done in any part of the organization; we always think it ought to be done better and that eventually it will be done better. The spirit of crowding forces the man who has the qualities for a higher place eventually to get it.
But we have so few titles that a man who ought to be doing something better than he is doing, very soon gets to doing it he is not restrained by the fact that there is no position ahead of him "open" -for there are no "positions."
We have no cut-and-dried places-our best men make their places. This is easy enough to do, for there is always work, and when you think of getting the work done instead of finding a title to fit a man who wants to be promoted, then there is no difficulty about promotion. The promotion itself is not formal; the man simply finds himself doing something other than what he was doing and getting more money.
All of our people have thus come up from the bottom. The head of the factory started as a machinist. The man in charge of the big River Rouge plant began as a pattern-maker. Another man overseeing one of the principal departments started as a sweeper. There is not a single man anywhere in the factory who did not simply come in off the street. Everything that we have developed has been done by men who have qualified themselves with us. We fortunately did not inherit any traditions and we are not founding any. If we have a tradition it is this: Everything can always be done better than it is being done.
That pressing always to do work better and faster solves nearly every factory problem. A department gets its standing on its rate of production. The rate of production and the cost of production are distinct elements. The foremen and superintendents would only be wasting time were they to keep a check on the costs in their departments. There are certain costs such as the rate of wages, the overhead, the price of materials, and the like, which they could not in any way control, so they do not bother about them. What they can control is the rate of production in their own departments. The rating of a department is gained by dividing the number of parts produced by the number of hands working. The foreman need not be a cost accountant-he is no better a foreman for being one.
This rating system simply forces a foreman to forget personalities to forget everything other than the work in hand. If he should select the people he likes instead of the people who can best do the work, his department record will quickly show up that fact. Men pick themselves out because the average workman is more interested in a steady job than he is in advancement. Scarcely more than five per cent. of those who work for wages, while they have the desire to receive more money, have also the willingness to accept the additional responsibility and the additional work which goes with the higher places.
Only about twenty-five per cent. are even willing to be straw bosses, and most of them take that position because it carries with it more pay than working on a machine. Men of a more mechanical turn of mind, but with no desire for responsibility, go into the tool-making departments where they receive considerably more pay than in production proper. But the vast majority of men want to stay put. They want to be led. They want to have everything done for them and to have no responsibility. Therefore, in spite of the great mass of men, the difficulty is not to discover men to advance, but men who are willing to be advanced.
The American people do want to go ahead, but they by no means do always want to go clear through to the top. The foreigners, generally speaking, are content to stay as straw bosses. As I have said, everyone in the place reserves an open mind as to the way in which every job is being done. The whole factory management is always open to suggestion, and we have an informal suggestion system by which any workman can communicate any idea that comes to him and get action on it.
Suggestion System
The saving of a cent per piece may be distinctly worth while. A saving of one cent on a part at our present rate of production represents twelve thousand dollars a year. One cent saved on each part would amount to millions a year. Therefore, in comparing savings, the calculations are carried out to the thousandth part of a cent. If the new way suggested shows a saving and the cost of making the change will pay for itself within a reasonable time say within three months-the change is made practically as of course. These changes are by no means limited to improvements which will increase production or decrease cost. A great many-perhaps most of them are in the line of making the work easier. We investigate down to the last decimal whether it is cheaper to make or to buy a part.
The suggestions come from everywhere. The Polish workmen seem to be the cleverest of all of the foreigners in making them. One, who could not speak English, indicated that if the tool in his machine were set at a different angle it might wear longer. As it was it lasted only four or five cuts. He was right, and a lot of money was saved in grinding. Another Pole, running a drill press, rigged up a little fixture to save handling the part after drilling. That was adopted generally and a considerable saving resulted. The cleanliness of a man's machine also-although cleaning a machine is no part of his duty—is usually an indication of his intelligence.
Here are some of the suggestions:
A proposal that castings be taken from the foundry to the machine shop on an overhead conveyor saved seventy men in the transport division.
A man roughly sketched a special machine. His idea was worked out and the machine built. Now four men have several times the output of the seventeen women-and have no hard work at all to do.
Changing from a solid to a welded rod in one part of the chassis effected an immediate saving of about one half million a year on a smaller than the present-day production.
Making certain tubes out of flat sheets instead of drawing them in the usual way effected another enormous saving.
The old method of making a certain gear comprised four operations and 12%. One of the workmen devised a very simple new method for making this gear in which the scrap was only one per cent.
Cam shafts come out warped after heat treatment, employing 37 men to straighten them in 1918. In 1921 improved ovens to counter warping.
And then there is the pressing to take away the necessity for skill in any job done by any one. The old-time tool hardener was an expert. The heat treatment in the hardening of steel is highly important. We introduced a system by which the man at the furnace has nothing at all to do with the heat. He does not see the pyrometer the instrument which registers the temperature. Coloured electric lights give him his signals.
We are not bound by precedent but we leave nothing to luck, and we have yet to build a machine that will not do the work for which it was designed. About ninety per cent. of all experiments have been successful. Whatever expertness in fabrication that has developed has been due to men. I think that if men are unhampered and they know that they are serving, they will always put all of mind and will into even the most trivial of tasks.
The Terror of the Machine
Repetitive labor-the doing of one thing over and over again and always in the same way-is a terrifying prospect to a certain kind of mind. I could not possibly do the same thing day in and day out, but to other minds, perhaps I might say to the majority of minds, repetitive operations hold no terrors. In fact, to some types of mind thought is absolutely appalling. To them the ideal job is one where the creative instinct need not be expressed. The jobs where it is necessary to put in mind as well as muscle have very few takers-we always need men who like a job because it is difficult.
The average worker, I am sorry to say, wants a job in which he does not have to put forth much physical exertion-above all, he wants a job in which he does not have to think. Those who have what might be called the creative type of mind and who thoroughly abhor monotony are apt to imagine that all other minds are similarly restless and therefore to extend quite unwanted sympathy to the labouring man who day in and day out performs almost exactly the same operation.
When you come right down to it, most jobs are repetitive. A business man has a routine that he follows with great exactness; the work of a bank president is nearly all routine; the work of under officers and clerks in a bank is purely routine. Indeed, for most purposes and most people, it is necessary to establish something in the way of a routine and to make most motions purely repetitive otherwise the individual will not get enough done to be able to live off his own exertions.
There is no reason why any one with a creative mind should be at a monotonous job, for everywhere the need for creative men is pressing. There will never be a dearth of places for skilled people, but we have to recognize that the will to be skilled is not general. And even if the will be present, then the courage to go through with the training is absent. One cannot become skilled by mere wishing.
Human Nature
There are far too many assumptions about what human nature ought to be and not enough research into what it is. We seemingly limit the creative functions to productions that may be hung on gallery walls, or played in concert halls, or otherwise displayed where idle and fastidious people gather to admire each other's culture. But if a man wants a field for vital creative work, let him come where he is dealing with higher laws than those of sound, or line, or color; let him come where he may deal with the laws of personality. We want artists in industrial relationship. We want masters in industrial method both from the standpoint of the producer and the product. We want those who can mould the political, social, industrial, and moral mass into a sound and shapely whole.
We have limited the creative faculty too much and have used it for too trivial ends. We want men who can create the working design for all that is right and good and desirable in our life. Good intentions plus well-thought-out working designs can be put into practice and can be made to succeed. It is possible to increase the well-being of the workingman-not by having him do less work, but by aiding him to do more. What this generation needs is a deep faith, a profound conviction in the practicability of righteousness, justice, and humanity in industry.
If we cannot have these qualities, then we were better off without industry.
If a man cannot earn his keep without the aid of machinery, is it benefitting him to withhold that machinery? And let him starve? Or is it better to put him in the way of a good living? Is a man the happier for starving? If he is the happier for using a machine to less than its capacity, is he happier for producing less than he might and consequently getting less than his share of the world's goods in exchange?
I have not been able to discover that repetitive labour injures a man in any way. I have been told by parlour experts that repetitive labour is soul- as well as body-destroying, but that has not been the result of our investigations. There was one case of a man who all day long did little but step on a treadle release. He thought that the motion was making him one-sided; the medical examination did not show that he had been affected but, of course, he was changed to another job that used a different set of muscles. In a few weeks he asked for his old job again.
It would seem reasonable to imagine that going through the same set of motions daily for eight hours would produce an abnormal body, but we have never had a case of it. We shift men whenever they ask to be shifted and we should like regularly to change them-that would be entirely feasible if only the men would have it that way. They do not like changes which they do not themselves suggest. Some of the operations are undoubtedly monotonous-so