Business & Finance: Motormaker Looks at Life

Successful businessmen are apt to have philosophies; few have so many and so radical views upon so many subjects as Henry Ford. Last week, in Florida, he gave opinions on mass-production, war, speculation.

¶ Not one bit has the business recession changed his belief that: "It is unnatural to curtail production of anything. . . . Any plan to manipulate conditions and retard production is inadvisable if not ruinous. . . . Machines eliminate drudgery. . . . Strange as it may seem, the more machines in operation, the more men at work. There are more men working today by 50% than at any time in the history of the world, and the standard of the worker has been raised to a much higher level."

¶ Dismissing the London Naval Conference as "something to talk about," he said he would buy all the navies of the world if it would end war, but: "You can't end war by taking away the weapon that is at hand. Men fought before there were battleships or before there were guns. The only way to end war is to teach the fellows who profit by it that they can profit some other way, and get the ideas of war out of their head."

¶ His views on speculation were much the same as those he has already expressed: "I don't know anything about the stockmarket. I do believe, however, that when the people generally speculate in stocks in a substantial way it costs everybody money. Too much speculation is a bad thing. . . . More brains are being retarded by the striving for money than any other thing."

¶ After announcing that he intends to dedicate the rest of his life to education he expounded the theory that: "Racketeering is nothing but a revolt against the present improper and ineffectual system of teaching. If taught properly every boy upon leaving school could go to an employer and say he was specifically fitted to perform a given task. Now they say: 'I went through high school' or 'I went through college.' That doesn't mean anything. But if they said they are a machinist, a chemist or a cabinetmaker, that does mean something. . . . I would not be surprised if I spent one hundred million dollars in the project [building schools throughout the country]."

Other Ford pronouncements:

¶ "Transportation is the life of everything."

¶ "No man can expect to be anything or get anywhere unless he has a good wife. One of the first aims of a young man out of school should be to get married."

¶ "Cities will spread out more and more, working men can have more ground around their homes. Cities had better stop piling up their skyscrapers anyway. Everyone knows the interior of the earth is plastic. It's possible to get too much weight upon the surface. It's bound to make a dent."