My Life and Work

tal facts of business. Sometimes raw materials will not move, no matter how low the price. We have seen something of that during the last year, but that is because the

et is only one in which the price

ot be short at all. An inflation of currency or credit will cause a quick bulge in apparent buying power and the consequent opportunity to speculate. There may be a combination of actual shortages and a currency inflation-as frequently happens during war. But in any condition of unduly high prices, no matter what the real cause, the people pay the high prices because they think there is going to be a shortage. They may buy bread ahead of their own

e may think we know how much of a commodity is produced on a certain day or in a certain month, but that does not tell us how much will be produced the next day or the next month. Likewise we do not know how much is consumed. By spending a great deal of money we might, in the course of time, get at fairly accurate figures on how much of a particular commodity was consumed over a period, but by the time those figures were compiled they would

rice and encouraging in his customers the hope of even lower prices, he takes a great big bite out of the price and gets the stuff out of his place. Everyone takes a loss on some proposition of sales. The common hope is that after the loss there may be a big profit to make up for the loss. That is usually a delusion. The profit out of which the loss has to be taken must be found in the business preceding the cut. Any one who was foolish enough to reg

t is considered good business to buy far ahead, and when prices are up to buy as little as possible. It needs no argument to demonstrate that, if you buy materials at ten cents a pound and the material goes later to twenty cents a pound you will have a distinct advantage over the man who is compelled to buy at twenty cents. But we have found that thus buying ahead does not pay. It is entering into a guessing contest. It is not business. If a man buys a large stock at ten cents, he is in a fine position as long as the other man is paying twenty cents. Then he later gets a chance to buy more of the material at twenty cents, and it seems to be a good buy because everything points to the price going to thirty cents. Having great satisfaction in his previous judgment, on which he made money, he of course makes the new purchase. Then the price drops and he is just where he started. We have car

demand, our prices are based on an estimate of what the largest possible number of people will want to pay, or can pay, for what we

48,307 " 1914-15 $490 308,213 " 1915-16 $440 533,921 " 1916-17 $360 785,432 " 1917-18 $450 706,584 " 1918-19 $525 533,706 " (The

on we buy one of every new car that comes out. Usually the car is used for a while, put through a road test, taken apart, and studied as to how and of what everything is made. Scattered about Dearborn there is probably one of nearly every make of car on earth. Every little while when we buy a new car it gets into the newspapers and somebody remarks that Ford doesn't use the Ford. Last year we ordered a big Lanche

vacation now; I am in no hurry, we do not care much wh

o have a line of

l way is to take the costs and then determine the price, and although that method may be scientific in the narrow sense, it is not scientific in the broad sense, because what earthly use is it to know the cost if it tells you you cannot manufacture at a price at which the article can be sold? But more to the point is the fact that, although one may calculate what a cost is, and of course all of our

unt of being relieved of outside worries. The payment of five dollars a day for an eight-hour day was one of the finest c

lar use in bothering on that point. The tractor, for instance, was first sold for $750, then at $850, then at $625, and the other day we cut it 37 per cent, to $395. The tractor

of manufacturing process we are able to provide that kind of a machine which most multiplies the power of the hand, an

terest on the investment and the cost of their upkeep only serve to add uselessly to the cost of what is produced-so these monuments of success are apt to end as tombs. A great administration building may be necessary

effort must be sincere, painstaking, and fearless. Cutting out a half-a-dozen models is not standardizing. It may be, and usually is, only the limiting of business, for if one is selli

ith consumer, work back through the design, and finally arrive at ma

tood. The price relation is not understood. The notion persists that prices ought to b

ought either because repair parts for the old cannot be had, or because the new model offers a new sales argument which can be used to persuade a consumer to scrap what he has and buy something new. We have been told that this is good bu

solete. We want the man who buys one of our products never to have to buy another. We never make an improvement that renders any previous model obsolete. The parts of a specific model are not only interchangeable with all other cars of that model, but they are interchangeable with similar parts on all the cars that w

out 20,000 a day and expect to find further uses for the remainder. We saved about ten dollars each by making transmissions instead of buying them. We experimented with bolts and produced a special bolt made on what is called an "upsetting machine" with a rolled thread that was stronger than any bolt we could buy, although in its making was used only about one third of the material that the outside manufacturers used. The saving on one style of bolt alone amounted to half a million dollars a year. We used to assemble our cars at Detroit, and although by special packing we managed to get five or six into a freight car, we needed many hundreds of freight cars a day. Trains were m

industry generally, when each part of a composite article is made at the exact point where it may be made most economically. We are constantly experimenting with every material that enters into the car. We cut most of our own lumber

coal. This coal comes directly from our mines over the Detroit, Toledo and Ironton Railway, which we control, to the Highland Park plant and the River Rouge plant. Part of it goes for steam purposes. Another part goes to the by-product coke ovens which we have established at the River Rouge plant. Coke moves on from the ovens by mechanical transmission to the blast furnaces. The low volatile gases from the blast furnaces are piped to the power plant boilers where they are joined by the sawdust and the shavings from the body plant-the making of all our bodies has been shifted to this

of coke, not suitable for the blast furnaces, are sold to the employees-delivered free into their homes at much less than the ordinary market price. The large-sized coke goes to the blast furnaces. There is no manual handling. We run the melted iron directly from the blast furnaces into great ladles. These ladles travel into th

n an indication of what is ahead, and we save in so many directions-in transportation, in the generation of our power, in the generation of gas, in the expense in casting, and then over

lly do more than guess about the future costs of production. It is wiser to recognize that the future

with goods? Will there not come a point when, regardless of price, people simply will not want anything more than what they already have? And

any machines and many methods that displace

oint of the proprietor, but how about these po

of horse-cabs when the latter were in their prime? The coming of shoe machinery closed most of the shops of those who made shoes by hand. When shoes were made by hand, only the very well-to-do could own more than a single pair of shoes, and most working people went barefooted in summer. Now, hardly any one has only one pair of shoes, and shoe making is a great industry. No, every time you can so arrange that one man will do the work of two, you so add to the wealth of the country that there will be a new and better job for the man who is displaced. If whole industries chan

ation. We are c

overproduction? When will there be

absolutely unknown-the limit of sales was at that time fixed by all the wise statistical sharps at somewhere near the number of millionaires in the country) now often uses two, and also he buys a truck. Perhaps, instead of sending workmen out to scattered jobs in a single car, it will be cheaper to send each worker out in a car of his own. That is happening with salesmen. The public finds its own consumptive needs with unerring accuracy, and since we no longer make motor cars or tractors, but merely the parts which when assembled become motor cars and tractors, the facilities as now provided would hardly be sufficient to provide replacements for ten million cars. And it would be quite the same with any business. We do not have to bother about overproduction

heapen the product; don't cheapen the wage; don't overcharge the public. Put brains into the method, and more brains, an

this can al