“Well, I figured over the situation quite a while and I found out that by putting the substitutes on the regular list and shifting the men around a little I could give them all an eight-hour day without increasing the pay roll. I did it.
“Yes, there was a howl from the stockholders when they heard about it. Nobody had ever tried it before; they thought I was going to turn everything upside down and ruin the business. But the work was going along better than before. The men felt more like work, and they pitched in to show they appreciated being treated right. We had fewer breakdowns after that; everything went better.
“After the thing was done it was easy enough to prove that it paid, and the stockholders quieted down after one or two complaints.
“As a matter of fact, I don’t believe in any hours for work. A man ought to work as long as he wants to, and he ought to enjoy his work so much that he wants to work as long as he can. It’s only monotonous, grinding work that needs an eight-hour day. When a man is creating something, working to get results, twelve or fourteen hours a day doesn’t hurt him.”
Ford put this theory into practice as apparently he had done with all his theories. He himself worked more than fourteen hours a day.
From 6 to 6 he worked in the Edison plant, for his eight-hour régime did not apply to himself. Then he hastened home to the little house on Edison avenue, ate supper and hurried out to his improvised workshop in the old shed. He turned on the big electric lights and there in the glare lay materials for his self-propelling gasoline engine—his real work, which at last he could begin!
Until late at night the neighbors heard the sound of his tools and saw the glare of light through the cracks.
“The Smiths are giving a party to-night—I suppose we can’t go?” Mrs. Ford said one evening, wistfully. “Oh, well—when the gasoline engine is finished—how long do you think it’s going to take?”
“I don’t know—I’m working on the cylinder now. I’ll have to have a larger bore to get the speed—and then there’ll be the transmission.” Ford stopped speaking and was lost in the problems. He finished supper abstractedly and pushed back his chair.
“Oh, about the party. Too bad. I hope you don’t mind much. When I get the gasoline engine finished,” he said apologetically, and hurried out to work on it. In a few minutes he was absorbed with the cylinder.