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public to charge it necessary costs and no more, is usually such an enterprising concern that it has plenty of
jobs at which to employ the tenth man. It is bound to grow, and growth means jobs. A well-managed concern
is always seeking to lower the labour cost to the public; and it is certain to employ more men than the concern
which loafs along and makes the public pay the cost of its mismanagement.
The tenth man was an unnecessary cost. The ultimate consumer was paying him. But the fact that he was
unnecessary on that particular job does not mean that he is unnecessary in the work of the world, or even in
the work of his particular shop.
The public pays for all mismanagement. More than half the trouble with the world to-day is the "soldiering"
and dilution and cheapness and inefficiency for which the people are paying their good money. Wherever two
men are being paid for what one can do, the people are paying double what they ought. And it is a fact that
only a little while ago in the United States, man for man, we were not producing what we did for several years
previous to the war.
A day's work means more than merely being "on duty" at the shop for the required number of hours. It means
giving an equivalent in service for the wage drawn. And when that equivalent is tampered with either
way--when the man gives more than he receives, or receives more than he gives--it is not long before serious
dislocation will be manifest. Extend that condition throughout the country, and you have a complete upset of
business. All that industrial difficulty means is the destruction of basic equivalents in the shop. Management
must share the blame with labour. Management has been lazy, too. Management has found it easier to hire an
additional five hundred men than to so improve its methods that one hundred men of the old force could be
released to other work. The public was paying, and business was booming, and management didn't care a pin.
It was no different in the office from what it was in the shop. The law of equivalents was broken just as much
by managers as by workmen. Practically nothing of importance is secured by mere demand. That is why
strikes always fail--even though they may seem to succeed. A strike which brings higher wages or shorter
hours and passes on the burden to the community is really unsuccessful. It only makes the industry less able to
serve--and decreases the number of jobs that it can support. This is not to say that no strike is justified--it may
draw attention to an evil. Men can strike with justice--that they will thereby get justice is another question.
The strike for proper conditions and just rewards is justifiable. The pity is that men should be compelled to
use the strike to get what is theirs by right. No American ought to be compelled to strike for his rights. He
ought to receive them naturally, easily, as a matter of course. These justifiable strikes are usually the
employer's fault. Some employers are not fit for their jobs. The employment of men--the direction of their
energies, the arranging of their rewards in honest ratio to their production and to the prosperity of the
business--is no small job. An employer may be unfit for his job, just as a man at the lathe may be unfit.
Justifiable strikes are a sign that the boss needs another job--one that he can handle. The unfit employer
causes more trouble than the unfit employee. You can change the latter to another more suitable job. But the
former must usually be left to the law of compensation. The justified strike, then, is one that need never have
CHAPTER XVIII 117
been called if the employer had done his work.
There is a second kind of strike--the strike with a concealed design. In this kind of strike the workingmen are
made the tools of some manipulator who seeks his own ends through them. To illustrate: Here is a great
industry whose success is due to having met a public need with efficient and skillful production. It has a
record for justice. Such an industry presents a great temptation to speculators. If they can only gain control of
it they can reap rich benefit from all the honest effort that has been put into it. They can destroy its beneficiary
wage and profit-sharing, squeeze every last dollar out of the public, the product, and the workingman, and
reduce it to the plight of other business concerns which are run on low principles. The motive may be the
personal greed of the speculators or they may want to change the policy of a business because its example is
embarrassing to other employers who do not want to do what is right. The industry cannot be touched from
within, because its men have no reason to strike. So another method is adopted. The business may keep many
outside shops busy supplying it with material. If these outside shops can be tied up, then that great industry
may be crippled.
So strikes are fomented in the outside industries. Every attempt is made to curtail the factory's source of
supplies. If the workingmen in the outside shops knew what the game was, they would refuse to play it, but
they don't know; they serve as the tools of designing capitalists without knowing it. There is one point,
however, that ought to rouse the suspicions of workingmen engaged in this kind of strike. If the strike cannot
get itself settled, no matter what either side offers to do, it is almost positive proof that there is a third party
interested in having the strike continue. That hidden influence does not want a settlement on any terms. If
such a strike is won by the strikers, is the lot of the workingman improved? After throwing the industry into
the hands of outside speculators, are the workmen given any better treatment or wages?
There is a third kind of strike--the strike that is provoked by the money interests for the purpose of giving
labour a bad name. The American workman has always had a reputation for sound judgment. He has not
allowed himself to be led away by every shouter who promised to create the millennium out of thin air. He
has had a mind of his own and has used it. He has always recognized the fundamental truth that the absence of
reason was never made good by the presence of violence. In his way the American workingman has won a
certain prestige with his own people and throughout the world. Public opinion has been inclined to regard
with respect his opinions and desires. But there seems to be a determined effort to fasten the Bolshevik stain
on American Labour by inciting it to such impossible attitudes and such wholly unheard-of actions as shall
change public sentiment from respect to criticism. Merely avoiding strikes, however, does not promote
industry. We may say to the workingman:
"You have a grievance, but the strike is no remedy--it only makes the situation worse whether you win or
lose."
Then the workingman may admit this to be true and refrain from striking. Does that settle anything?
No! If the worker abandons strikes as an unworthy means of bringing about desirable conditions, it simply
means that employers must get busy on their own initiative and correct defective conditions.
The experience of the Ford industries with the workingman has been entirely satisfactory, both in the United
States and abroad. We have no antagonism to unions, but we participate in no arrangements with either
employee or employer organizations. The wages paid are always higher than any reasonable union could think
of demanding and the hours of work are always shorter. There is nothing that a union membership could do
for our people. Some of them may belong to unions, probably the majority do not. We do not know and make
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