{"id":5441,"date":"2018-03-17T13:05:14","date_gmt":"2018-03-17T17:05:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alt-fw.org\/public\/?p=5441"},"modified":"2018-03-17T13:05:43","modified_gmt":"2018-03-17T17:05:43","slug":"employment-visionaries-henry-ford-on-employment-and-disabilities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alt-fw.org\/public\/?p=5441","title":{"rendered":"Employment Visionaries: Henry Ford on Employment and Disabilities"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Henry<\/a>
From WikiMedia Commons, Literary Digest 1928-01-07 Henry Ford Interview (click photo to read caption)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Mr. Ford, visionary beyond the thinking of others in his time, believed that all people who want to work should be allowed to work, and that having physical challenges did not mean a person could not do just as much good work and receive just as much pay and benefits as others who need not overcome those physical challenges – they are different, not defective!<\/p>\n

Mr. Ford \u00a0also had a higher wage and shorter (8 hour day) work day than others in his day, yet was more productive and weathered economic downturns without taking on debt or adverse affects on his laborers or profitability.<\/p>\n

I do not represent that Mr. Ford was a perfect man – he would tell you himself that he was here to learn and grow just like everyone else. He made his mistakes, too. But what Mr. Ford did in his factory is an example that we need to remember, re-learn, and adopt nation-wide today: it speaks for itself.<\/p>\n

John D. Nash, CEO
\nAdult Life Training, Inc.<\/p>\n

\n

From\u00a0My Life and Work<\/em><\/strong> by Henry Ford In Collaboration With Samuel Crowther (starting around line 3320). Available download free from\u00a0http:\/\/www.gutenberg.org\/ebooks\/7213<\/a> For the text of the WikiSource Article which provided the adjacent photo see https:\/\/en.wikisource.org\/wiki\/Henry_Ford_on_his_plans_and_his_philosophy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In a previous chapter I noted that no one applying for work is refused\u00a0on account of physical condition. This policy went into effect on\u00a0January 12, 1914<\/span><\/strong>, at the time of setting the minimum wage at five\u00a0dollars a day and the working day at eight hours. It carried with it the\u00a0further condition that no one should be discharged on account of\u00a0physical condition, except, of course, in the case of contagious\u00a0disease.\u00a0I think that if an industrial institution is to fill its whole\u00a0role, it ought to be possible for a cross-section of its employees to\u00a0show about the same proportions as a cross-section of a society in\u00a0general.<\/p>\n

We have always with us the maimed and the halt. There is a most\u00a0generous disposition to regard all of these people who are physically\u00a0incapacitated for labour as a charge on society and to support them by charity. There are cases where I imagine that the support must be by\u00a0charity–as, for instance, an idiot. But those cases are extraordinarily\u00a0rare, and we have found it possible, among the great number of different\u00a0tasks that must be performed somewhere in the company, to find an\u00a0opening for almost any one and on the basis of production. The blind man\u00a0or cripple can, in the particular place to which he is assigned, perform\u00a0just as much work and receive exactly the same pay as a wholly\u00a0able-bodied man would.<\/p>\n

\"Article<\/a>
From WikiMedia Commons, Literary Digest 1928-01-07 Henry Ford Interview<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I\u00a0believe that there is very little occasion for charity in this\u00a0world–that is, charity in the sense of making gifts. Most certainly\u00a0business and charity cannot be combined; the purpose of a factory is to\u00a0produce, and it ill serves the community in general unless it does\u00a0produce to the utmost of its capacity. We are too ready to assume\u00a0without investigation that the full possession of faculties is a\u00a0condition requisite to the best performance of all jobs.<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

<skipping a bit><\/p>\n

I had all of the different jobs in the\u00a0factory classified to the kind of machine and work …\u00a0It turned out at the time of\u00a0the inquiry that there were then 7,882 different jobs in the factory. Of\u00a0these, 949 were classified as heavy work requiring strong, able-bodied,\u00a0and practically physically perfect men; 3,338 required men of ordinary\u00a0physical development and strength. The remaining 3,595 jobs were\u00a0disclosed as requiring no physical exertion and could be performed by\u00a0the slightest, weakest sort of men. In fact, most of them could be\u00a0satisfactorily filled by women or older children. The lightest jobs were\u00a0again classified to discover how many of them required the use of full\u00a0faculties, and we found that 670 could be filled by legless men, 2,637\u00a0by one-legged men, 2 by armless men, 715 by one-armed men, and 10 by\u00a0blind men. Therefore, out of 7,882 kinds of jobs, 4,034–although some\u00a0of them required strength–did not require full physical capacity.<\/p>\n

Those who are below the\u00a0ordinary physical standards are just as good workers, rightly placed, as\u00a0those who are above. For instance, a blind man was assigned to the stock\u00a0department to count bolts and nuts for shipment to branch\u00a0establishments. Two other able-bodied men were already employed on this\u00a0work. In two days the foreman sent a note to the transfer department\u00a0releasing the able-bodied men because the blind man was able to do not\u00a0only his own work but also the work that had formerly been done by the\u00a0sound men.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u00a0believe that there is very little occasion for charity in this\u00a0world–that is, charity in the sense of making gifts. We have found it possible, among the great number of different\u00a0tasks that must be performed somewhere in the company, to find an\u00a0opening for almost any one and on the basis of production (ed. not a hand out). The blind man\u00a0or cripple (sic, 1924 society) can, in the particular place to which he is assigned, perform\u00a0just as much work and receive exactly the same pay as a wholly\u00a0able-bodied man.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[1109,44,1103,1104,1106,1102,1108,1105,1107,336],"class_list":["post-5441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial","tag-able-bodied","tag-charity","tag-cripple","tag-disability","tag-halt","tag-henry-ford","tag-labor","tag-maimed","tag-physically-incapacitated","tag-work"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3sKnr-1pL","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alt-fw.org\/public\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5441","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alt-fw.org\/public\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alt-fw.org\/public\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alt-fw.org\/public\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alt-fw.org\/public\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5441"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/alt-fw.org\/public\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5441\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5445,"href":"https:\/\/alt-fw.org\/public\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5441\/revisions\/5445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alt-fw.org\/public\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alt-fw.org\/public\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alt-fw.org\/public\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}