That surging mob of men outside this factory during the week following the announcement of his profit-sharing plan had impressed indelibly on Ford’s mind the tremendous importance of a job.
“A workingman’s job is his life,” he says. “No one man should have the right ever to send another man home to his family out of work. Think what it means to that man, sitting there at the supper table, looking at his wife and children, and not knowing whether or not he will be able to keep them fed and clothed.
“A normal, healthy man wants to work. He has to work to live right. Nobody should be able to take his work away from him. In my factory every man shall keep his job as long as he wants it.”
Impractical? The idea seems fantastic in its impracticality. What, keep every man—lazy, stupid, impudent, dishonest, as he may be—every man in a force of 18,000 workmen, on the payroll as long as he wants to stay? Surely, if there is any point at which ideals of human brotherhood end and coldblooded business methods begin, this should be that point.
But Ford, obstinate in his determination to care for the interests of every one, declared that this policy should stand. As a part of his new plan, he installed the labor clearing house as part of his employment department.
Now when a foreman discharges a man, that man is not sent out of the factory. He goes with a written slip from the foreman to the labor clearing house. There he is questioned. What is wrong? Is he ill? Does he dislike his work? What are his real interests?
In the end he is transferred to another department which seems more suited to his taste and abilities. If he proves unsatisfactory there, he returns again to the clearing house. Again his case is discussed, again he is given another chance in still another department. Meantime the employment managers take an active interest in him, in his health, his home conditions, his friends. He is made to feel that he has friends in the management who are eager to help him make the right start to the right kind of life.
Perhaps he is ill. Then he is sent to the company hospital, given medical care and a leave of absence until he is well enough to resume work.
Over 200 cases of tuberculosis in various stages were discovered among Ford’s employees when his hospital was established. These men presented a peculiar problem. Most of them were still able to work, all of them must continue working to support families. Yet, if their cases were neglected it meant not only their own deaths, but spreading infection in the factory.
The business world has never attempted to solve the problem of these men. Waste from the great machine, they are thrown carelessly out, unable because of that tell-tale cough to get another job, left to shift for themselves in a world which thinks it does not need them.