Page:How Henry Ford is regarded in Brazil (1926).djvu/6

 make him a heavier sack than other full sacks. His value lies in his being the most lucid and penetrating intellect of modern times placed at the service of the noblest of all causes: THE SUPPRESSION OF HUMAN MISERY.

So far the solvers of social problems have been merely Utopian idealists after the fashion of Rousseau or Marx—of those dreamers who dream theoretical solutions, far too pretty to be sound. Ford does not dream solutions. He deduces them. He takes Man as he is, accepts the world as he finds it, experiments and lets the facts bring to the surface the logically correct, natural and human solution. His idealism is organic. His ideas do not spring up “a priori”, born of mental or sentimental transports. They simply reflect the answers given by consulted facts. Hence the enormous import of his ideas, the repercussion they are beginning to have and the profound influence they must necessarily exercise on the future order of things.

Henry Ford is to be regarded therefore not as the biggest money-bag that ever was but as the foremost example of clearness of vision in our day and generation.

Henry Ford, a farmer’s son, saw the light of day in 1863 in Dearborn, Michigan. He was a born mechanic and never put the fallacious study of books before the direct study of things as they are. He was self-taught, and to this he owes in great part his 4