My Life and Work

le, work by the week. They get an order or a job when they can and at the price they can. During wha

r. When a great many people want to buy, there is said to be a shortage of goods. When nobody wants to buy, there is said to be an overproduction of goods. I know that we have always had a shortage of goods, but I do not believe we have ever had an overproduction. We may have, at a particular time, too much of the wrong kind of goods. That is not overproduction-that is merely headless production. We may also have great stocks of goods at too high prices. That is not overproduction-it is either bad manufacturing or bad financing. Is business good or bad according to the dictates

n this country. It upset the whole world. There would have been no war had management been better. But the war alone is not to blame. The war showed up a great number of the defects of the financial system, but more than anything else it showed how insecure is business supported only by a money foundation. I do not know whether bad business is the result of bad financial methods or whether the

ns. Farming is already in process of reorganization. When industry and farming are fully reorganized they will be complementary; they belong together, not apart. As an indication, take our valve plant. We established it eighteen miles out in the country so that the workers could also be farmers. By the use of machinery farming need not consume more than a fraction of the time it now consumes; the time nature requires to produce is much larger than that required for the human contribution of seeding, cultivating, and harvesting; in many industries where the parts are not

reflected good times or bad times; it has kept right on regardless of conditions excepting from 1917 to 1919, when the factory was turned over to war work. The year 1912-1913 was supposed to be a dull one; although now some call it "normal"; we all but doubled our sales; 1913-1914 was dull; we increased our sales by more than a third. The year 1

ction-which is a matter that depends upon his own desire to work. We have put our estimate of profits into the wage and are now paying higher wages than during the boom times after the war. But we are, as always, paying them on th

in every sense of the word comfortable. It is the degree of the comfort of the people at large-not the size of the manufacturer's bank balance-that evidences prosperity. The function of the manufacturer is to contribute to this comfort. He is an instrument of society and he can serve society only as he manages his enterp

ycles of prosperity and depression. They call the periods when prices are high "prosperous." A real

ceived as starting with a manufacturing process and ending with a consumer. If that consumer does not want to buy what the manufacturer has to sell him and has not the money to

mer will not-says he cannot-buy what the manufacturer has to offer, is that the fault of the manufacturer

ture is based solely upon an ability to serve that consumer to his liking. He may be served by quality or he may be served by price. He is best served by the highest quality at the lowest price,

siness? Get the costs down by better managem

at other people try to overcome by wage reduction. To tamper with wages before all else is changed, is to evade the real issue. And if the real issue is tackled first, no reduction of wages may be necessary. That has been my experience. The immediate practical point is that, in the process of adjustment, someone will have to take a loss. And wh

l stocks and had the benefit of them. Besides, the ten thousand dollars which I say I will lose are not the same kind of dollars that I used to have. They are, in a way, speculative dollars. They are not the good dollars that bough

he progress of his community. A man like that is an asset to a town. He has a clear head. He is better able to swing the adju

up. He realized what seems to have been quite generally forgotten-that it is pa

turn out a car at a price lower than we were asking, but that was a price which on the turn of business was higher than people could or wanted to pay. We closed down to g

business and take the loss of idleness. The loss of not doing business is commonly a loss greater than the actual money involved, for during th

he must get his price down to what people will pay. There is always, no matter what the condition, a pr

t only by increasing the efficiency of production and, viewed in this fashion, each business depression, so-called, ought to be regarded as a challenge to the brains of the bus

that simple formula is not considered business-like. It is not complex enough. We have "business" which takes the most honest of all human activities and makes them subject to the spec

t they are. They blame our industrial system for all the faults which we behold in mankind generally. And you will find other men who say that man creates his own conditions; that if the economic, industrial, or social system is bad, it is but a reflection of what man himself is. What is wrong in our industri

not have lasted as long as the present one has. But few will claim that mankind deliberately set out to create a faulty social system. Granting without reserve that all faults of the social system are in ma

rowth every imperfection latent in the system came out. A man's business grew to such proportions that he had to have more helpers than he knew by their first names; but that fact was not regretted; it was rather hailed with joy. And yet it has since led to an impersonal system wherein the workman has become

make money. The industrial idea is to express a serviceable idea, to dupl

of the industrial idea is the effort to make a profit out of speculation instead of out of work. There are short-sighted men who cannot see that business is bigger than any one man's interests. Business is a process of give and take, live and let live. It is cooperation among many forces

business. Which leads us into the practical appl