INTERNATIONAL: Ford Is Mohammed!

New America is shattering standards which not only Old Europe but Old America thought were “eternal,” finding new motives, setting new goals—so Germans think, and to them Henry Ford is Mohammed. The rest of Europe is less sure, but painfully interested. What if God turn out to be the Machine? It was good last week, it was very comforting to Spaniards in old Madrid (for example) to learn that Henry and Clara Ford had broken their swift 1930 swing around Europe by pausing to see the Passion Play.

Reaching Oberammergau just at the season’s end, they witnessed the last awesome performance—last for ten years. “Mr. and Mrs. Henry Ford,” reported the Associated Press, “did not conceal their deep emotion.” But the Machine beckoned. Leaving the world’s thriftiest— village behind, Mohammed went directly to Cologne. There, surrounded by German businessmen to whom his words are as the Koran, Mr. Ford peeled off his coat, vigorously laid the cornerstone of his first manufacturing factory on the European continent.†The historic moment was exactly high noon. Tapping thrice upon the stone, Henry Ford said:

“I am convinced that German workmen will do good work here.”

Cologne papers’ praise of Mr. & Mrs. Ford redoubled on discovery that they had done a “good deed” before leaving Oberammergau. Calling upon disappointed Anton Lang, replaced this year by another actor in the role of Christus, they told him to go and see the Ford representative in Munich. Whichever type of car Anton Lang picks out will become his free.

Ford Koran. The day after U. S. papers reported the cornerstone laying, shrewd Doubleday, Doran & Co. released Moving Forward, By Henry Ford in collaboration with Samuel Crowther ($2.50). The earlier Ford-Crowther Book My Life and Work, translated into eleven languages, was a German best seller for two years. The new work is definitely more significant, not a biography but an attempt by Henry Ford to speak with the voice of New America, brushing aside many an “eternal standard,” postulating new motives for U. S. tycoons, pointing new U. S. goals.

In Cologne last week and in the pages of Moving Forward it appeared that Mr. Ford wished first to get off his chest a deep grudge against the stockmarket. “This ‘depression’ we hear about,” he told Cologne reporters, “is due to laziness! People wanted something for nothing. . . . They wanted to gamble on the stock exchange. They didn’t want to work. The crash was a good thing; it has made them start working and thinking again. That will lead to new levels, new attainments in quality and a new era of prosperity. You watch. It is coming.”

New Motives & New Goals. In Moving Forward Grandfather Ford rules out mere money making as a ruling motive for New America’s tycoons. Leave that to the little fellows! “Working just to get more money is out of the question. . . . There are two things of which men grow weary in the material sphere—meaningless poverty and meaningless prosperity.”

A tycoon worth his salt is striving to advance mankind. Thus in Russia (writes Mr. Ford) “We are there erecting for the account of the Soviet Government an automobile plant which they will own and manage. We are training men for them in our factories; we are turning over to them all our blueprints and plans and are undertaking to keep them informed of our technical progress. All this we are doing at cost. If we were simply selling our product we could do so at considerably less trouble than this, but we think that Russia needs modern industry and more particularly the automotive industry in order that the wealth of the country may be opened up. Otherwise it will remain one of the sore spots of the world.”

Great Russia needs modern industry—this simple but colossal fact, Mr. Ford thinks, provides a sufficient, a tycoon-worthy motive for his helping Russia.

Lamp Posts, Booze, Chisels. Like Prophet Mohammed’s original Koran, Tycoon Ford’s Moving Forward is best read in stimulating snatches. Its inconsistencies, some irreconcilable, are not the point. Snatches:

> “No lamp posts have been provided for weak or overstimulated business to cling to and so they are apt to cling to one another. The embrace is called a merger.”

> “When an executive who has been very keen and capable begins to accept things as they are . . . I can feel very certain that he is tippling out of hours. . . .*Brains . . . are made permanently dull by even the most moderate habitual use, and they vanish altogether in the steady, heavy drinker.”

> “The American cannot benefit at the expense of the foreigner. He cannot take away the wealth of the foreigner. For one thing, there is not enough of it. . . . Americans are not invading [Europe] they are returning home. . . .”

> “It is often said that the tastes of the public change and that a manufacturer must keep up with them. But it would seem rather to be the other way about. For in those countries where the manufacturers preserve their machinery with the care that we give to antiques the tastes of the people do not change—people keep on asking for exactly the same sort of articles year after year.”

> “It is right for a man to resist being made into a machine. . . . If a machine be regarded as labor saving, instead of as labor 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 at which the cutting quality of the chisel could be made so fine that it would be a menace? Obviously not.”

> Headline writers extracted from the Ford book chiefly its prediction that 20 years hence the workman’s wage will be $27 per day, ignored the attached qualification “provided the leaders of industry actually lead!”

* To see 80 performances 383,000 visitors paid $1,200,000 which, after deducting promotion and production expenses and the cost of the new theatre left a Passion Play net profit of some $600,000. By letting rooms, dispensing food and drink, peddling curios and selling objects of piety the villagers further swelled their grand total net to some $650,000.

†A factory which Mr. Ford will not own is being built to build Fords by the Soviet Government in Russia. The Fordson Tractor factory is at Cork, Ireland. But in Europe proper Mr. Ford owns only sales offices and assembly plants.

* Prophet Mohammed, too, thought paradise unattainable by tipplers.