Foreign News: Henry Ford’s Way

Sir Percival Perry, general European executive for Henry Ford, squirmed visibly one day last week in London as his employer gave audience to English journalists.

“Do you mean to say,” exploded one of the newshawks, “that an Englishman in your employ can’t so much as drink a glass of beer at lunch time?”

“I certainly do,” said Mr. Ford.

“How are you going to enforce such a rule?”

“We shall see to it in our own way.”

“But how?”

“I repeat,” said the Motor Man, putting an edge on his voice, “we shall see to it in our own way.”

“Let me ask you a straight question,” broke in another Englishman. “What means will you use to find out if a man is drinking in his private time? Will your workmen at Dagenham [new Ford British works] be followed into their homes and penalized for exercising their private rights? Will you give a straight answer to that?”

“We shall see about it in our own way.”

“Mr. Ford,” said the first English journalist picking up his hat, and starting toward the door, “I am afraid you are going to be misrepresented.”

“Perhaps that will be a good thing!” snapped wrathful Employer Ford. But squirming Employe Sir Percival hopped up in time’s nick, blandished the journalists before they got away.

“Drink will not be served at any of the company canteens,” he soothed. “And I think I can answer your other question. Ah-ha! ‘How are we going to find out if a man drinks at home?’ Well, ah, we don’t go into his home to see, gentlemen. That’s all there is to it!”*

Steering the interview deftly into quiet channels, Sir Percival soon had Mr. Ford saying: “I think that in England you make too much of your troubles. Take unemployment. There is a great deal of it in England. But your figures are apt to give a wrong impression.

“Your unemployment of 2,000,000 includes women and children as young as 16! Still it is better to keep thorough statistics as you are doing and to know who are unemployed rather than to remain in complete ignorance.†At least you can deal with the problem instead of having your unemployed sleeping in ditches and under hedges anywhere, so long as they are out of sight.

“At least your unemployed are not starving as they used to starve, and as they are in many countries which you are inclined to think are in better economic position because of the lack of information that they are starvingtoday.”

As is usual whenever Henry Ford visits England, he was received atSt. James’s Palace last week by Edward, Prince of Wales.

*What Mr. Ford means by “in our own way” appears in the chapter Prohibition or Poverty? in his new book Moving Forward (TIME, Oct. 13).

“As the years have passed, the work in our shops has become finer and has called for an increasing amount of … fine coordination between hand and brain. . . . ‘Any use of alcohol at all seems to destroy that exact coordination. . . . We rarely have to discharge the drinkers. They discharge themselves—a man will not stick at a job on which he is falling down.”

†The U. S. and Japan are the only Great Powers which do not scientifically compute unemployment figures. In Great Britain they are corrected from week to week, rose 52,031 last week to 2,161,689.