Page:Literary Digest 1928-01-07 Henry Ford Interview 1.jpg

44The Literary Digest for January 7, 1928

NEVER MADE A MISTAKE IN MY LIFE,” said Henry Ford the other day to an interviewer who asked if he hadn't slipt a cog through the long delay over his new car. "Never! And neither did you ever make a mistake—or anybody else." To talk about making mistakes is absurd, according to Mr. Ford. "For what purpose do you suppose you are living on earth?" he demanded of his interviewer. "Do you know what you are here for?" And then he answered his own question: "l'll tell you what every living person is here for, and that is to get experience. That's all we can get out of life."

It is impossible to understand many of the policies of the Ford Motor Company, we are told, unless we realize that Henry Ford is a devout believer in the theory of reincarnation. The interviewer who drew his fire on the subject of mistakes is Charles W. Wood, associate editor of Forbes Magazine, and he has written an article about him for the January number of that periodical, from which we present some interesting passages—Wood asserts that there is a definite relation between the new Ford car and the faith just mentioned. He works it out this way:

Mr. Ford not only believes, but he acts constantly upon who belief, that the Engineer of the Universe has placed each of the two billion or so human beings on this planet on the job of learning by experience the particular things each most needs to learn.

If a man becomes a murderer, it is because he needed the experience. If he lives in poverty and pain, that was the experience of which he stood most in need. After he gets his experiences, he dies. Then he is born again into another life which will give him other experiences of which he stands in need.

Eventually, through the eons, some souls thus learn a good deal which nobody knew a million years ago. That is, nobody but the Engineer of the Universe. Most of us, in fact, have already learned not to murder, except in war, and we may in time, learn not to make war. Only recently did anybody learn how to make wagons run without horses. Mr. Ford was one of the pioneers in this particular field, and it is his aim to get all the experience out of it that he can.

An understanding of this belief is necessary to an understanding of Mr. Ford. Wealth, simply as acquisition, has no meaning to him. Profits, simply as profits, have no meaning. It is only what we learn that counts. If, therefore, we make what we call a mistake, it shows that we needed the experience in order to learn better, which in turn proves that it was no mistake.

Mr. Ford was amused when the interviewer quoted the current criticism to the effect that he had "slipt" when he dropt a hundred millions or more by not having his new plans ready as soon as he quit manufacturing the Model T. His reply, we are told, was characteristic of the man:

"What in the world did they think we wanted of that money?" he asked. "What did they think we put it in the bank for? Did they think we might have spent it for something if we hadn't used it to rebuild our plant, or did they think we wanted to keep it in the banks?

"The only reason whatever for laying up such a surplus is to have it when you need to use it; and no one could use money in such amounts upon himself even if he were fool enough to try. The only right use for money is to capitalize industry. One might give it away, to be sure, but giving doesn't do any good."

"They tell me again," I said, "that you allowed your whole selling organization to become disorganized while the change was going on. Big manufacturers among your competitors boast that they have hired all your best salesmen away from you and that you have left only those they didn't want to hire."

Mr. Ford apparently was not listening. He was drawing a picture on a piece of paper. I was puzzled, as I knew by experience that candor never offends him.

"See here," he said. "Do you know what this picture is?"

It wasn't much of a picture. It was just a big letter U. with some sticks crossed underneath it and the interior blackened somewhat by his pencil. Then he went on to depict another letter U beside it. This time waving lines indicated that the sticks were on fire and something was shooting out of the interior and over the lid. Carefully Mr. Ford marked that something, "Dross."

"That's the big problem," he said, "in any organization—the problem of how to get the dross out. In this diagram here, you see, the dross is all in the kettle, but when you apply enough heat, the dross goes out over the top.

"It isn't the incompetent who destroy an organization. The incompetent never get into a position to destroy it. It is those who have achieved something and want to rest on their achievements who are forever clogging things up. To keep an industry pure, you've got to keep it in perpetual ferment. As for those salesmen, everything that's happened so far suits me. I know some people think that salesmen make cars; we believe that a car, if it's good enough, will make salesmen. If we're wrong, of course, we'll discover it some time. That's the beauty of competition. Competition is mainly competition in discovering the truth."

Remarking that the new Ford car doesn't look anything like the old one, the visitor wondered whether there were to be equally revolutionary changes in the manufacturer's industrial policies, and Mr. Ford said:

"The change isn't revolutionary. It seems strange to me that we could put out such a car without employing one single new basic principle. We have simply done everything better than it was ever done before.

"We didn't start from Model T and attempt to improve that. We started from scratch. We brushed aside all preconceptions and simply asked ourselves the question: What is a car for? And what does a car have to have in order to fulfil its purpose? There were a thousand things, of course, which it had to have, and as we came to each one we asked: How can this part be made in fulfil its purpose better than it has ever been fulfilled before?"

"You were looking for the best car that has ever been made?" I asked.

"More than that," he answered. "We were looking for the