Numbers in the Dark and Other Stories - Italo Calvino [107]
SPOKESMAN: Right…, become by conforming to a model…
HENRY FORD: I know what you're trying to say. I have always taken human diversity as my starting point. Physical strength, speed of movement, capacity to react to new situations are all qualities that vary from one individual to the next. My idea was this: to organize the work in my factories so that those who were unskilled or disabled could yield as much as the most skilled worker. I had each department's tasks classified according to whether they demanded unusual vigour, or normal strength and stature, or whether they might be carried out by people whose speed and physical capacities were below the average. It turned out that there were 2,637 jobs that could be entrusted to workers with only one leg {mimes mechanical operations pretending to have only one leg), 670 that could go to people with no legs (mimes as above), 715 for those with only one arm {mimes as above), 2 for those with no arms (mimes as above) and 10 jobs that could be done by the blind. A blind man given the job of counting bolts in the warehouse proved capable of doing the work of three workers with good eyes (mimes). Is this what you call conforming? I'm telling you I did everything I could to help each man overcome his handicap. Even the sick could work and earn their keep in my hospitals. In their beds. Screwing nuts on small bolts. It helped keep up morale too. They got better faster.
SPOKESMAN: But work on the assembly line: Being forced to concentrate your attention on repetitive movements, follow a rhythm that never changes, imposed by machines … What could be more mortifying for the creative spirit… for the most elementary freedom of having control over the movements of your own body, over the expense of your own energy in line with your own rhythm, your own breathing… Always to perform only one operation, one movement, always made in the same way… Isn't it a terrifying prospect?
HENRY FORD: For me, yes. Terrifying. For me it would be inconceivable always to do the same thing all day every day. But not everyone is like me. The great majority of men have no desire to do creative work, to have to think, decide. They simply want a job that allows them to apply the minimum amount of mental and physical strength. And for this great majority, mechanical repetition, participation in a task that has already been organized down to the last detail, guarantees perfect inner calm. Of course, they mustn't be restless types. Are you restless? Me, yes, extremely. Well then, I won't use you for a routine job. But most of the jobs in a big factory are routine and as such suitable to the great majority of the workforce.
SPOKESMAN: They are like that because you wanted them to be like that… both jobs and people …
HENRY FORD: We managed to organize the work in the way that was easiest for those who had to do it, and most profitable. I say we the ‘creative’ ones, if you want to call us that, we the restless ones, we who can't relax until we have found the best way of doing things … You know where I got the idea of the conveyor that brings the component to the worker without him having to move toward the component? In the meat-canning factories of Chicago, watching the quartered cattle hung on trolleys moving along elevated rails, to be sprinkled with salt, cut up, pulped, minced… The quartered cattle passing by, dangling … the cloud of salt grains … the knife blades sawing back and forth… and I saw the chassis of the Model T running along at hand height while the workers tightened