Numbers in the Dark and Other Stories - Italo Calvino [108]
SPOKESMAN: So creativity is reserved to the few… those who design … who take decisions … henry FORD: No! It is extended! How many artists, real artists, were there in the past? Today we are the artists, we who experiment with production and the men who produce! In the past creative tasks were restricted to putting together colours or notes or words on a painting, a score, a page… And for whom in the end? For a handful of world weary idlers who hang around the galleries and concert halls! We are the real artists, we who invent the work that millions of people count on!
SPOKESMAN: But professional skill has disappeared from manual work!
HENRY FORD: Oh enough! You lot are always harping on the same note. Quite the contrary. Professional skill has triumphed, in automobile manufacture and the organization of labour, and this way it's been put at the service of those who are not skilled who can now achieve the same yields as the more talented! You know how many parts go to make up a Ford? Including screws and bolts, about five thousand: big parts, medium-sized parts, small parts and some no bigger than the cogs in a clock. Workers used to have to walk across the shop floor to look for each part, walk to take them to the part to be assembled, walk to look for a spanner, a screwdriver, a welding torch … The day was frittered away with this back and forth… Then they always ended up banging into each other, tripping over themselves, crowding each other, bunching … Was this the human, creative way to work you people like so much? I wanted to organize things so that workers didn't have to run back and forth through the workshops. Was that an inhuman idea? I wanted to organize things so that workers didn't have to lift and carry weights. Was that an inhuman idea? I arranged men and tools in the order of the jobs to be done, I used trolleys on rails or hanging cables, so that arm movements were kept to a minimum. Save ten thousand people just ten steps a day and you've saved sixty miles of pointless movements and ill-spent energy.
SPOKESMAN: To sum up: you wish to save your workers unnecessary movements in the building of automobiles which allow us all to live in continual movement…
HENRY FORD: It's time-saving, my dear fellow, in both cases. There is no contradiction! The first advertisement I used to persuade Americans to buy themselves a car was based on the old proverb Time is money!’ It's the same at work: for each operation the worker must have the right time: not a second too little and not a second too much! And the worker's entire day must be based on the same principles: he must live near the factory so as not to lose time travelling. That's why I came to the conclusion that medium-si2e factories were better than enormous ones … and meant you could avoid big urban conurbations, slums, dirt, delinquency, vice …
SPOKESMAN: And yet Detroit… The masses who gathered in the Mid West to look for work in Ford factories …
HENRY FORD: Right, I was the only one able to offer high, ever increasing salaries, in a period when no other factory owners would even consider it… It was hard work arguing for my idea and imposing it on the whole American economy: the idea that it's higher salaries, not higher profits that get the market moving. And to give higher salaries you have to save on the system of production. That is the only saving that's really worth making: saving not to accumulate but to increase salaries, that is purchasing power, that is abundance. The secret of abundance lies in an equilibrium between prices and quality. And it's only on abundance that you can build, not on shortages: I was the first to understand that. If a capitalist works in the hope that one day he'll be able to live off the revenue, he's a bad capitalist. I never felt I possessed anything myself, but that I was managing my property by putting the best means of production at the service of others.
SPOKESMAN: But the unions saw things differendy. And for years you didn't want to have anything to do with unions … As late as 1937 you were paying