The success of next year’s sales was certain.
The following day when Ford reached the factory, Wills met him with an anxious face. It was pay day and there was no money.
“We didn’t bother you about it last week because you were so busy with the race,” Wills said. “We thought up to the last minute that the check from Chicago would come. It was due two days ago. We wired yesterday and got no answer. Mr. Couzens left this morning on the early train to find out what is wrong. You know how it is; the men want their money for over Christmas. The —— Company wants men and they’re offering more money than we can pay. I’m afraid our men will quit, and if they do and we can’t get out the Cincinnati order next week——”
Ford knew that to raise more money from the stockholders would be impossible. They had gone in as deeply as they could. To sacrifice a block of his own stock would be to lose control of the company, and besides it would be difficult to sell it. The company was still struggling for existence; it had paid no dividends, and other automobile manufacturers were already paying the enormous profits that led in the next few years to wild, disastrous expansion in the automobile business. The Ford company had no marketable assets—nothing but the rented building, the equipment and a few unfilled orders.
“Well, if we pull through the men will have to do it,” said Ford. “I’ll tell them about it.”
That evening when the day’s work was over and the men came to the office to get their pay they found Ford standing in the doorway. He said he had something to tell them. When they had all gathered in a group—nearly a hundred by this time—he stood on a chair so that all of them could hear what he had to say, and told them the exact situation.
“Now, men, we can pull through all right if you’ll help out now,” he concluded. “You know the kind of car we’re selling, and the price, and you know what the new one did yesterday. We can get through the winter on our unfinished orders if we never get that Chicago check. Next year we’ll have a big business. But it all depends on you. If you quit now we’re done for. What about it, will you stay?”
“Sure, Mr. Ford.” “You bet we will, old man!” “We’re with you; don’t you forget it!” they said. Before they left the plant most of them came up to assure him personally that they would stand by the Ford company. Next day they all arrived promptly for work, and during the week they broke all previous records in the number of cars turned out.
“War between capital and labor is just like any other kind of war,” Henry Ford says to-day. “It happens because people do not understand each other. The boss ought to show his books to his employees, let them see what he’s working for. They’re just as intelligent as he is, and if he needs help they’ll turn in and work twenty-four hours a day, if they have to, to keep the business going. More than that, they’ll use their heads for him. They’ll help him in hundreds of ways he never would think of.
“The only trouble is that people make a distinction between practical things and spiritual qualities. I tell you, loyalty, and friendliness, and helping the other man along are the only really valuable things in this world, and they bring all the ‘practical’ advantages along with them every time. If every one of us had the courage to believe that, and act on it, war and waste and misery of all kinds would be wiped out over night.”