CHAPTER XIII
WHY BE POOR?
Poverty springs from a number of sources, the more important of which are controllable. So does special privilege. I think it is entirely feasible to abolish both poverty and special privilege–and there can be no question but that their abolition is desirable. Both are unnatural, but it is work, not law, to which we must look for results.
CHAPTER XIX
WHAT WE MAY EXPECT
Poverty cannot be abolished by formula; it can be abolished only by hard and intelligent work. We are, in effect, an experimental station to prove a principle. That we do make money is only further proof that we are right. For that is a species of argument that establishes itself without words.
In the first chapter was set forth the creed. Let me repeat it in the light of the work that has been done under it–for it is at the basis of all our work:
(1) An absence of fear of the future or of veneration for the past. One who fears the future, who fears failure, limits his activities. Failure is only the opportunity more intelligently to begin again. There is no disgrace in honest failure; there is disgrace in fearing to fail. What is past is useful only as it suggests ways and means for progress.
(2) A disregard of competition. Whoever does a thing best ought to be the one to do it. It is criminal to try to get business away from another man–criminal because one is then trying to lower for personal gain the condition of one’s fellow-men, to rule by force instead of by intelligence.
(3) The putting of service before profit. Without a profit, business cannot extend. There is nothing inherently wrong about making a profit. Well-conducted business enterprises cannot fail to return a profit but profit must and inevitably will come as a reward for good service. It cannot be the basis–it must be the result of service.
(4) Manufacturing is not buying low and selling high. It is the process of buying materials fairly and, with the smallest possible addition of cost, transforming those materials into a consumable product and distributing it to the consumer. Gambling, speculating, and sharp dealing tend only to clog this progression.
The whole world may be idle, and in the factory sense there may be “nothing to do.” There may be nothing to do in this place or that, but there is always something to do. It is this fact which should urge us to such an organization of ourselves that this “something to be done” may get done, and unemployment reduced to a minimum.
MY LIFE AND WORK, By Henry Ford, 1922
In Collaboration With Samuel Crowther