How far we shall thus reach back to sources depends entirely on circumstances. Nobody anywhere can really do more than guess about the future costs of production. It is wiser to recognize that the future holds more than the past—that every day holds within it an improvement on the methods of the day before.
But how about production? If every necessary of life were produced so cheaply and in such quantities, would not the world shortly be surfeited 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 if in the process of manufacturing fewer and fewer men are used, what is going to become of these men—how are they going to find jobs and live?
Take the second point first. We mentioned many machines and many methods that displaced great numbers of men and then someone asks:
"Yes, that is a very fine idea from the standpoint of the proprietor, but how about these poor fellows whose jobs are taken away from them?"
The question is entirely reasonable, but it is a little curious that it should be asked. For when were men ever really put out of work by the bettering of industrial processes? The stage-coach drivers lost their jobs with the coming of the railways. Should we have prohibited the railways and kept the stage-coach drivers? Were there more men working with the stage-coaches than are working on the railways? Should we have prevented the taxicab because its coming took the bread out of the mouths of the horse-cab drivers? How does the number of taxicabs compare with the number 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 changed overnight, then disposing of the surplus men would be a problem, but these changes do not occur as rapidly as that. They come gradually. In our own experience a new place always opens for a man as soon as better processes have taken his old job. And what happens in my shops happens everywhere in industry. There are many times more men to-day employed in the steel industries than there were in the days when every operation was by hand. It has to be so. It always is so and always will be so. And if any man cannot see it, it is because he will not look beyond his own nose.
Now as to saturation. We are continually asked:
"When will you get to the point of overproduction? When will there be more cars than people to use them?"
We believe it is possible some day to reach the point where all goods are produced so cheaply and in such quantities that overproduction will be a reality. But as far as we are concerned, we do not look forward to that condition with fear—we look forward to it with great satisfaction. Nothing could be more splendid than a world in which everybody has all that he wants. Our fear is that this condition will be too long postponed. As to our own products, that condition is very far away. We do not know how many motor cars a family will desire to use of the particular kind that we make. We know that, as the price has come down, the farmer, who at first used one car (and it must be remembered that it is not so very long ago that the farm market for motor cars was 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 for some years to come, provided the prices are right. It is the refusal of people to buy on account of price that really stimulates real business. Then if we want to do business we have to get the prices down without hurting the quality. Thus price reduction forces us to learn improved and less wasteful methods of production. One big part of the discovery of what is "normal" in industry depends on managerial genius discovering better ways of doing things. If a man reduces his selling price to a point where he is making no profit or incurring a loss, then he simply is forced to discover how to make as good an article by a better method—making his new method produce the profit, and not producing a profit out of reduced wages or increased prices to the public.
It is not good management to take profits out of the workers or the buyers; make management produce the profits. Don't cheapen the product; don't cheapen the wage; don't overcharge the public. Put brains into the method, and more brains, and still more brains—do things better than ever before; and by this means all parties to business are served and benefited.
And all of this can always be done.