Henry Ford: An Interpretation

XV. Lights

CHAPTER XV LIGHTS IT was toward the close of the year 1915 that I gave up the deanship of St. Paul's Cathedral, Detroit, and took charge of the Sociological department of the Ford Motor Company. I continued in the employ of the company for a period of a little more than five years. The sociological department — later known as the educational department — had been organized early in the year 1914, at the time the Ford profit-sharing plan, with itsfive-dollarsa -day minimum pay went into effect. To Mr. John R. Lee, who organized the department and conducted its work for the first two years of its existence, credit is due, more than to any other one man, for devising those uniaue humane policies which attracted world-wide attention , and which gave a practical and helpful 147 HENRY FORD direction to the philanthropic impulses of Mr. Ford. There is in Mr. Lee a rare combination of qualities which were needed at the time in the development of the personnel work of the company. Mr. Ford has a way of making great things possible, of opening the door of opportunity for others. And fortunately for him, he has been able in the past to gather about him men who have been able to seize upon these opportunities and to use them in a way that has reflected great credit upon him and upon themselves . If it had not been for Mr. Lee, I am inclined to think that the sociological work of the Ford Motor Company would have taken its course along lower and conventional lines. He is a man of ideas and ideals. He has a keen sense of justice and a sympathy with men in trouble that leads to an understanding of their problems. He has an unbounded faith in men, particularly in the "down and outs," without which no man can do constructive human work. Under his guidance the department put a soul into the company and gave intelligent direction to the generous thought and will of Mr. 148 LIGHTS Ford and Mr. Couzens toward their employees. Mr. Lee must be credited with being one of the makers of the Ford Motor Company on its human side. A few days after the profit-sharing plan went into effect I called upon Mr. Ford at his request. We sat in his office talking and looking out on a great throng of men gathered in the street below, drawn there in the hope that they might be able to obtain employment at the hitherto unheard-of rate of pay. On many previous occasions he had talked over with me his desire to share in some practical manner his prosperity with his employees. As we sat there that morning he spoke at length of his plans and purposes and of the motives back of them. I asked him why he had fixed upon five dollars as the minimum pay for unskilled labor. His reply was, "Because that is about the least a man with a family can live on in these days. We have been looking into the housing and home conditions of our employees and we find that the skilled man is able to provide for his family, not only the necessities, but some of the luxuries of life. He is able to edu149 HENRY FORD cate his children, to rear them in a decent home in a desirable neighborhood. But with the unskilled man it is different. He's not getting enough. He isn't getting all that's coming to him. And we must not forget that he is just as necessary to industry as the skilled man. Take the sweeper out of the shop and it would become in a short time an unfit place in which to work. We can't get along without him. And wehaveno right to take advantage of him because he must sell his labor in an open market . We must not pay him a wage on which he cannot possibly maintain himself and his family under proper physical and moral conditions just because he is not in a position to demand more." " But suppose the earnings of a businessare so small that it cannot afford to pay that which, in your opinion, is a living wage; what then?" I asked. " Then there is something wrong with the man who is trying to run the business. He may be...