Читать книгу Moving Forward - Henry Ford - Страница 5

Table of Contents

If a machine he regarded only as a way of saving labour—as a method by which an employer can do with fewer men—then it may be a hardship to everyone. The workers who broke up the first power loom were logical according to their lights; in fact the whole opposition to the introduction of power and machinery has had a reasonable foundation. The rebellion—although few know it—is against the use of machinery as a mere substitute for hand labour. The phrase "labour saving" is current as evidence of how little the function of machinery is understood. For unless machinery is labour serving it has no excuse for being.

The proper and profitable use of machinery for production demands a very different conception of the industrial organization from that which was held in the old hand days—or in the days when machines were only aids to man power. That was, properly, the machine age. But now, as a matter of fact, the machine age has passed. We are now in the process of finding out how best to make machines serve us. They are now just a part in a new order.

This does not seem wholly to be grasped. Much of to-day's thinking is still in the stage of fitting labour-serving machines into a hand-labour kind of society. They cannot be so fitted and much that is blamed on machines should be blamed on a lack of comprehension of the new life that we are in. We fail to realize that if we are to have things continuously in more abundance we cannot also preserve all of the traditions of the old isolated, self-contained society. Neither can we preserve the old dependent relation between the employee and the employer. The world does not owe any of us a living, but we all owe livings to one another.

It seems that the time when people begin to get excited over an industrial movement is also just about the time when the movement is either waning or has considerably changed its form. When the prophets get together and decide when and how disaster is coming, the conditions from which they predict disaster have already changed. It has always been so with machinery. Every little while someone, without a complete knowledge of the subject, gets a general notion of what is going on and then starts in to predict and to forecast. The note of their prophecies is that the world will soon be so full of machines as to leave no place for men.

Some machinery does displace men, but that is only a stage in its development. A ditch may be more effectively dug by a power shovel than by a gang of men, but that is a displacement in the interests of humanity, for merely moving earth around with a shovel is not a human sort of a job. Cheapening the digging of ditches allows more ditches to be dug and among the many consequences of cheap ditches are better drainage and health, a demand for pipe, the removal of ugly and dangerous wires, and so on and on. It soon works out that the ditching machine, while a blessing to everyone, is a most particular blessing to the man who once dug ditches, for it opens up new and better work for him.

Machinery driven by power is only a tool, and if we consider even the highest developments of machinery only as tools, the situation becomes somewhat easier to comprehend. A foot rule is a tool, but it does not save labour in the sense of destroying jobs. Without the element of measurement we could not have industry. A chisel does not save labour; it enables a man to do what he could not otherwise do. One first-class carpenter can put up more and better buildings than a thousand cavemen. He does not displace a thousand men; he just does what they, without tools, could not do. If the carpenter must cut down the trees to make boards with his set of tools, he can do far less than if the boards are delivered to him. If the lumbering and mill work has been done by machinery, then the boards will come to him finished, and on them he need use only his skill instead of both his skill and his muscle. The machinery has served him. No one in this country regrets the passing of the chimney sweep. Yet chimney sweeping was once the livelihood of many persons.

No one can deny that a workman needs tools of some sort with which to work. But is there a point at which the fineness of the tools causes less work instead of more work? It is not necessary to discuss the point as to whether industry exists to provide work for men or to provide goods for men. There happens to be no conflict between providing goods and providing work, just as there is no conflict between low costs and high wages. If machinery, no matter how simple or how complex, be used for any purpose other than providing a free flow of goods at the lowest possible prices, then the balance between production and consumption is hurt and there will be few jobs for men. But also there will be few buyers for the products of the machines, and the machines will be only liabilities to their owners. If a machine be regarded as labour saving instead of as labour serving, it may become a menace. The fault is not, however, in the machine but in the managers of it.

There is no point at which the development of the machine is a menace. An iron chisel is better than a flint one, and a steel chisel is better than an iron one. Could there be a point where the cutting quality of the chisel could be made so fine that it would be a menace?

Obviously not. There is a great deal of wrong in the theory. It is founded not on fact but on very superficial reasoning. A good deal of the reasoning starts with the error of assuming that machinery is merely "labour saving" because someone in the past called it "labour saving." Most of our more important machines to-day do not save labour except in a larger sense. They either do things which could not be done by hand, or which would not be done at all, had not the machines come in to make the product cheap enough to touch a universal demand.

The automobile is only one of hundreds of commodities that have been made possible by the machine. One may look at the automobile as only an extension of the power of man, but it is really a thing of itself. A man may go faster on roller skates than he can on foot, and on a bicycle he can make his strength still more efficient. But in an automobile he contributes only guidance and control. His personal strength is not of moment. The automobile is really, therefore, not a labour-saving device at all. It enables the doing of things that would not otherwise be done. A drop-forging machine is in a way doing what men might do with heavy hammers, but an upsetting machine—which presses a bit of metal into shape—is doing something requiring a strength and power not attainable by human beings. Up until 1925 our factories had never used as much as thirty million kilowatt hours of electrical power in a month. It was not until last year that we ever touched forty million a month, but now we are around sixty million. To think of such amounts of power in terms of slaves, or of substituting for the strength of men, or in any human terms is only distorting the picture, for human strength could not possibly be mobilized to exert any such amount of power in one place.

The power is nothing of itself. It has to be used through machines. It cannot be used through men. These machines are therefore more than mere extensions of the human hands. They are labour serving—not labour saving. Describing them in terms of labour saved brings in the thought that there is only so much work to be done in the world, and that there is a choice between doing it with men and doing it with machines. There is no such choice. The work simply could not be done by men.

It is quite generally believed that the introduction of machinery to do work formerly done by men creates unemployment. That, however, is not usually the case, for if the machines are properly used they will create more employment than before, and the period of change will be neither long nor difficult. The larger unemployment arises from the wiping out of whole industries through technical progress, or in those industries or sections of industries that refuse to keep up with the advances in science or in practice. We can never have any prolonged unemployment if the leaders in industry stay fully awake. Only such industries as oversleep awaken to find themselves not needed. And we are always better off for the ending of sleepy industries, for they invariably are low-wage industries.

It used to be taken for granted that quantity production had to be rough-and-ready. It was thought that the machine was not as accurate as the skilled worker. When I first went into the large-scale production of automobiles, a tolerance of one hundredth of an inch was in the region of extreme accuracy. But the public, especially in automobiles, has become educated to demand better workmanship, so that now a tolerance of one thousandth of an inch is common and a tolerance of one ten thousandth is not uncommon. Such accuracy would be out of the question in other than the most expensive, skilled hand work. The older machinery and methods of production would not give this accuracy.

It cannot be too often repeated that production and design must go together. The tools have not yet been devised that will make any part exactly to a measurement. The nearest approach to absolute exactness is in our Johanssen gauge department, which controls the gauges throughout all our industries. On the blue print the exact measurement of a part is put down. This exact size is not always attained, and so in addition to the measurement there is noted what is called the "permitted tolerance"—which means that the part may be a certain fraction of an inch above or below the designated size.

When we began quantity manufacturing, years ago, the tolerances were rather large, although smaller than on any piece of machinery that had previously been made in quantity. This had to be because there were no machines in existence which could produce more precise work. As the years passed and we developed better machinery the tolerances grew much closer, until when we retooled our industries we were able to take a big jump in precision. We made a limit of three ten thousandths of an inch rather common, while on a few parts we put the limit at one ten thousandth. This precision is not demanded simply as a test of skill. The better fitted the parts of a machine, the better work it will do, and the longer it will last. The motor of our present product is only slightly larger and slightly heavier than the old motor, but it gives double the power. It could not have been designed to do this had we not undertaken to bring about a new order of precision in quantity manufacturing. The fact here to be noted is that it has fundamentally changed the function of machines and the character of the men who work with them. A thousandth of an inch has proved to have large consequences in the employment of men. These consequences run exactly counter to the ordinary ideas on the subject. With crude machinery the man must be a part of the machine and function with it, and under these circumstances he is at his best when restricted to a single operation. We carried that principle farther than ever it had been carried—so far indeed as to show us it was only a step on the way. Workmen have very generally suspected or resisted scientific management and in this they have been more instinctively right than most managers are willing to acknowledge. It is right for a man to resist being made into a machine. We regulated the speed of the men by the speed of the conveyor and found it possible to get a large and economical production at a moderate, steady pace and to reflect it in our wage rates and in our selling prices. No manufacturing economy is worth while unless it be translated into both wages and sales prices. It does not do to put all of the savings into the sales prices, for then the wage earners are not added to the list of possible customers. And putting all of the savings into profits is very short-sighted, for the profits go to comparatively few people and have very little effect upon consumption.

We began first to eliminate hard work, and then we discovered that machines could be devised to take the place of many hand operations or operations where the machine had wholly to be controlled by hand. This quickly led us to machines that did more than one operation, as, for instance, boring a number of holes at once, or performing several operations on a part at the same time, or even, with automatic or quasi-automatic machines, completing a whole part. A full automatic machine is one that requires no human attention; a quasi-automatic requires an attendant—if only to put in the unfinished part and take out the finished one. And thus we began to learn that the minute subdivision of labour was based on man power and neglected the possibilities of machine power. Then we started to find machines that would do many operations at the same time and we began to group operations instead of separating them as before. This is the road to automatic machinery.

The present problem is to discover the principles and work out the designs for automatic machinery that will completely turn out articles of whatever accuracy of measurement may be required. We have one job right now that needs great accuracy and which employs nine hundred men. That whole job could be far better done by the right kind of machine with very few attendants. Such a machine will have to be devised. Accurate, large-scale production must now have automatic or nearly automatic machines in order to reduce the cost and the errors of human labour. And so many of these machines will shortly be required that the making of them will come out of the specialty and fall into the high-production class.

Machinery is thus developing rapidly to take the position of the old craftsman in production. This is an advantage, for it both raises the quantity of production and increases the possible earnings of men. If a man works with a machine which will produce one hundred units as against one by hand, then more people can have goods and at the same time the man is demonstrating a higher earning power. The man who helps make the machine which in turn makes the machine which actually produces goods is in a position to be paid more highly than the most skilled man in the production of goods—for he furnishes the means for high production. And while the machine itself may have only a single purpose, the mechanics who make the machines or who manage them must be in the nature of all-around men. This is one of the machine developments which have not been foreseen.

The actual development runs exactly counter to tradition and it is going to take some years to train men to view themselves as general mechanics and artisans capable of quickly learning to manage almost any kind of machine. There will always be places for expert hand craftsmen, as they are artists and are to be regarded as such. But they will not be used in production, for there is no use in wasting the time of an artist doing tasks which a machine can do quite as well and usually better.

The spirit of craftsmanship may be in everyone, but the ability to become a real craftsman is reserved for the very few, and these few will come to the top under any circumstances. The usual average man will learn just so much and no more about any job that he is put at, and there is no point in pretending that he is a mentally hungry human being with a gnawing appetite for knowledge. Possibly he ought to be and possibly he will be all that, but he never has been and is not to-day. The run of journeymen mechanics, or artisans, have only a certain skill that they bring to their tasks, and only the most exceptional man can meet an unusual situation. They must be both led and supervised in order to do first-class work.

The tendency in the crafts, therefore, is on one side toward greater specialization and on the other toward greater freedom. In carpentry, for example, the special parts of buildings which were formerly made by the carpenter on the job are now put together by special machinery in the factory and only set in place by the carpenter on the job. This release from special requirements brings the opportunity or the necessity to widen the individual's field of work, so that now we find a generation of men who know how to be helpful along many lines, who in fact have a very moderate amount of knowledge of half-a-dozen jobs instead of a knowledge of only one job. The old jibe about "a jack-of-all-trades" is out of fashion. No knowledge now comes amiss to a man in doing his work. So many formerly unrelated lines of work now enter into the production of the simplest article that a man must be made versatile in spite of himself. We have discovered that while a man may never attain the status of a specialist on any job, which few ever attained even under the old system, he can attain a moderate mastery of half-a-dozen different kinds of jobs as easily as of one. An ability to work at a wide variety of tasks with an understanding of what he is doing is a necessary characteristic of the new kind of general workman that modern industry needs. Such workmen are developing rather rapidly, but in changing over our industries we could have used many more of them had they been available.

This is a world of change. No industry ever stands still, and no industrial unit ever stands still. Every company in this country is either going forward or going back—according to the necessity for the service which it performs and the quality of its performance. It is very comforting to think of a great manufacturing company as an institution which will go on forever and be a source of livelihood to a large body of people. That simply cannot be, but fortunately, as one industry passes out, another greater and more important industry always takes its place.

Neither the factory nor the job can be regarded as permanent. Both are transient. The view of a job as a fixed income producer will need revision. There can be no such fixity. An industry will exist only so long as it is useful. Beyond that point it should not exist.