CHAPTER XXX
THE BEST PREPAREDNESS
Henry Ford saw that the meaning of his work was about to be lost. He was in for the greatest fight of his life.
He counted his resources. The mammoth factory was still running to capacity, the farm-tractors, which would mean so much in increased production of food, in greater comforts for millions of farmers, were almost ready to be put on the market. His plan for profit-sharing with the buyers of his cars had recently been announced. Three hundred thousand men in this country would have, during 1916, an actual proof in dollars and cents of the practical value of cooperation, of Ford's principle that "helping the other fellow will help you." Those men would share with him the profit which would add still more millions to his credit.
Ford had these things; he had also a tremendous fortune at his command. He cast about for ways of using that fortune in this fight, and again the uselessness of money was impressed upon him.
"Money is of no real value whatever," he says. "What can I do with it now? I cannot pay a man enough to make him change his real opinions. The only real resource this country has now is the intelligence of our people. They must think right, they must know the true principles on which to build a great, strong nation.
"They must hold firm to the big, true things, and realize—some way they must be made to realize—that they are practical, that ideals are the only practical things in this world.
"It is to everybody's interest to do right. Not in the next world, nor in a spiritual way only, but in good, hard dollars-and-cents business value.
"Let's be practical. Suppose we do prepare for war? Suppose we do take the energies of our young men and spend them in training for war. Our country needs the whole energy of every man in productive work, work that will make more food, more clothing, better houses. But suppose we turn that energy from real uses, train it to destroy, instead of to create? Suppose we have half a million young men ready to fight? What weapons shall we give them?
"Shall we give them guns? They will be out of date. Shall we give them poisonous gases, or disease germs, or shall we invent something even more horrible? As fast as we make these things, other nations will make worse ones.
"Shall we turn our factories into munition plants? Shall we build dreadnoughts? The submarine destroys them. Shall we build submarines? Other nations will make submarine-destroyers. Shall we build submarine destroyers? Other nations will build war-aeroplanes to destroy them. We must make something worse than the aeroplanes, and something worse still, and then something still more horrible, bidding senselessly up and up and up, spending millions on millions, trying to outdo other nations which are trying to outdo us.
"For if we begin to prepare for war we must not stop. We can not stop. I read articles in the magazines saying that we might as well have no navy at all as the one we have; that we might as well have no army as the army we have, if this country should be invaded. Yet we have already spent millions on that army and that navy. Let us spend millions more, and more millions, and more, and still, unless we keep on spending more than any other nation can spend, we might as well have no army or navy at all.
"And yet there are people who think that to begin such a course is practical, is good common sense!
"I tell you, the only real strength of a nation is the spirit of its people. The only real, practical value in the world is the spirit of the people of the world. There were animals on the earth ages ago who could kill a hundred men with one sweep of a paw, but they are gone, and we survive. Why? Because men have minds, because they use their minds in doing useful things, making food, and clothes, and shelters.
"A few hundred years ago no man was safe on the street alone at night. No woman was safe unless she had a man with her who was strong enough to kill other men. We have changed all that. How? By force? No, because we have learned in a small degree that there are things better than force. We have learned that to look out for the interests of every one in our community is best for us in the end.
"Let us realize that to think of the welfare of the whole world is best for each one of us. We do not carry a gun so that if we meet an Englishman on the street and he attacks us we can kill him. We know he does not want to kill us.
"We know that the real people of the whole world do not want war. We do not want war. There are only a few people who think they want war—the politicians, the rulers, the Big Business men, who think they can profit by it. War injures everybody else, and in the end it injures them, too.
"The way to handle the war question is not to waste more and more human energy in getting ready to hurt the other fellow. We must get down to the foundations; we must realize that the interests of all the people are one, and that what hurts one hurts us all.
"We must know that, and we must have the courage to act on it. A nation of a hundred million people, of all nationalities and races, we must work together, each of us doing what he can for the best good of the whole. Then we can show Europe, when at last her crippled people drag themselves back to their ruined homes, that a policy of peace and hopefulness does pay, that it is practical.
"We can show them that we do mean to help them. They will believe it, if we do not say it behind a gun.
"If we carry a gun, we must depend on the gun to save our nation. We must frankly say that we believe in force and nothing else. We must admit that human brotherhood and ideals of mutual good will and helpfulness are secondary to power and willingness to commit murder; that only a murderer at heart can afford to have them. We must abandon every principle on which our country was founded, every inch of progress we have made since men were frankly beasts.
"But if our country is not to go down as all nations have gone before her, depending on force and destroyed by force, we must build on a firm foundation. We must build on our finest, biggest instincts. We must go fearlessly ahead, not looking back, and put our faith in the things which endure, and which have grown stronger through every century of history.
"Democracy, every man's right to comfort and plenty and happiness, human brotherhood, mutual helpfulness these are the real, practical things. These are the things on which we can build, surely and firmly. These are the things which will last. These are the things which will pay.
"I have proved them over and over again in my own life. Other men, so far as they have trusted them have proved them. America has built on them the richest, most successful nation in the world to-day. Just so far as we continue to trust them, to build on them, we will continue to be prosperous and successful.
"I know this. If my life has taught me anything at all, it has taught me that. I will spend every ounce of energy I have, every hour of my life, in the effort to prove it to other people. Only so far as we all believe it, only so far as we all use our strength and our abilities, not to hurt, but to help, other peoples, will we help ourselves."
This is the end of my story, and the beginning of Henry Ford s biggest fight.
the end