Henry Ford: An Interpretation

X. Henry Ford, Dives, Lazarus and Others

CHAPTER X HENRY FOBD, DIVES, LAZARUS AND OTHERS HENRY FORD is a rich man, but he is not a Dives. Dives went to his office every morning , saw Lazarus lying at his gate as he passed out, and did nothing about it. He accepted the beggar as a necessary evil, the outgrowth of a disease in the industrial order for which there was no cure. It will be recalled that the rich man died and that the beggar died also, and then the tables were turned. It seems that in the hereafter we live on the things we have laid up in the inside of us, not on the things we have piled up outside. This being the case, Dives found himself in bad shape. Spiritually he was in destitute circumstances, and the beggar was rich. The tables, as I have said, were turned, and Dives found himself begging favors of a man who himself had been a beggar. I amnot going to preach a sermon. I have 93 HENRY FORD called to mind the parable of the rich man and Lazarus because it will help me to illustrate some things I want to say regarding Henry Ford in his handling of the ne'er-do-wells in whom in the past he has shown great interest. Lazarus would not lie unnoticed very long at the gate of Henry Ford. He would not be accepted as a fixed part of the landscape and be permitted to remain there. Something would be done to put him on his feet, something more than giving him a crumb or a coin. Henry Ford does not believe in beggars; does not believe in the social and economic order that creates them; does not believe in the sentimental charity that encourages beggars to remain in the business of begging. To the beggar at hisgate Henry Ford would say, "Millions for work, but not a cent for charity. You go to the employment office, tell them that I sent you there, and that they are to give you a job. Then go to the doctor's office and have him fix you up. If you would prefer work to begging, you are going to have your chance. What follows will be up to you." And so, unless the beggar was one of the 94 HENRY FORD AND OTHERS professional sort and belonged to the ancient and dishonorable order of voluntary mendicants , he would be given a job — a light job — till he got on his feet, and then he might be transferred to the foundry just to see if he really meant business, really preferred honest work to begging. If he should develop a yellow streak, that is, ask for a clerical job in the main office, or for a light sitting-down job in the magneto department , he would be back on the street collecting pennies in a tin cup in no time at all. But if he showed that .he had the right kind of stuff in him he would be living'in a home of his own in a few years and paying an income tax along with the rest of us. If a man is paid six dollars a day in the Ford factory he is expected to earn it and conveyors tuned up to a six-dollar speed leave little to the will of the operator. It's a great system, but it needs careful supervision by human beings. When the beggar at the gate of Henry Ford is picked up and given a job, his past history is carefully looked into — or there was a time when it would have been. It may be 95 HENRY FORD so now. I cannot say as to that. There was a time, however, when the beggar hired into the Ford Motor Company, if he had a wife and six children in Chicago whom he had deserted long ago, and toward whose support he had contributed little or nothing in recent years, would have been told to bring his family to Detroit on the next train, or lose his job. Mr. Ford believes the reconstruction of a man is not complete so long as he neglects his home. Money would have been advanced to defray the expense of bringing the family to Detroit and later taken in easy payments from the man's wage. He would have been given assistance in finding...