Страница 8 из 120
Will a billion dollars solve that sort of trouble? No, a billion dollars will only make the difficulty one billion dollars worse. The purpose of the billion is simply to continue the present methods of railroad management, and it is because of the present methods that we have any railroad difficulties at all (put in bold type by the authors).
The mistaken and foolish things we did years ago are just overtaking us. At the begi
Having expressed his opinion on the cause of the mess in railroad business, having related how they got over it using common sense that is ALWAYS directed towards acting to the benefit of society, Ford summarizes his railroad experience:
«It is one of nature’s compensations to withdraw prosperity from the business which does not serve.
We have found that on the Detroit-Toledo & Ironton we could, following our universal policy, reduce our rates and get more business. We made some cuts, but the Interstate Commerce Commission <i.e. the American equivalent of the Soviet and Russian State committee on rates and prices> refused to allow them? Under such conditions why discuss the railroads as a business? Or as a service?» (Ch. 16. “The Railroads”, the very end).
Another quotation from Ford’s book describes in an uncompromising and blunt ma
«We are not against borrowing money and we are not against bankers. We are against trying to make borrowed money take the place of work[24]. We are against the kind of banker who regards a business as a melon to be cut <i.e. as on object a usurer can parasite on>. The thing is to keep money and borrowing and finance generally in their proper place, and in order to do that one has to consider exactly for what the money is needed and how it is going to be paid off.
Money is only a tool in business. It is just a part of the machinery. You might as well borrow 100,000 lathes as $100,000 if the trouble is inside your business. More lathes will not cure it; neither will more money. Only heavier doses of brains and thought and wise courage can cure. A business that misuses what it has will continue to misuse what it can get. The point is — cure the misuse. When that is done, the business will begin to make its own, money, just as a repaired human body begins to make sufficient pure blood.
Borrowing may easily become an excuse for not boring into the trouble. Borrowing may easily become a sop for laziness and pride. Some business men are too lazy to get into overalls and go down to see what is the matter. Or they are too proud to permit the thought that anything they have originated could go wrong. But the laws of business are like the law of gravity, and the man who opposes them feels their power.
Borrowing for expansion is one thing; borrowing to make up for mismanagement and waste is quite another[25]. You do not want money for the latter — for the reason that money ca
The internal ailments of business are the ones that require most attention. “Business” in the sense of trading with the people is largely a matter of filling the wants of the people. If you make what they need, and sell it at a price which makes possession a help and not a hardship, then you will do business as long as there is business to do. People buy what helps them just as naturally as they drink water» (Ch. 11. “Money and Goods”).
«Had we been able to obtain the money at 6 per cent. flat — and we should in commissions and the like have had to pay more than that — the interest charge alone on a yearly production of 500,000 cars would have amounted to about four dollars a car. Therefore we should now be without the benefit of better production and loaded with a heavy debt. Our cars would probably cost about one hundred dollars more than they do[26]; hence we should have a smaller production, for we could not have so many buyers; we should employ fewer men, and in short, should not be able to serve to the utmost. You will note that the financiers proposed to cure by lending money and not by bettering methods. They did not suggest putting in an engineer; they wanted to put in a treasurer.
And that is the danger of having bankers[27] in business. They <usurers> think solely in terms of money. They think of a factory as making money, not goods. They want to watch the money, not the efficiency of production (put in bold type by the authors). They ca
Bankers play far too great a part in the conduct of industry. Most businessmen will privately admit that fact. They will seldom publicly admit it because they are afraid of their bankers <organized on mafia-like principles>. It required less skill to make a fortune dealing in money than dealing in production (put in bold type by the authors: the same conditions were created by the rascal-reformers[28] in Russia). The average successful banker is by no means so intelligent and resourceful a man as is the average successful businessman. Yet the banker through his control of credit[29] practically controls the average businessman.
There has been a great reaching out by bankers <usurious institutions> in the last fifteen or twenty years — and especially since the war — and the Federal Reserve System for a time put into their hands an almost limitless supply of credit. The banker is, as I have noted, by training[30] and because of his position, totally unsuited to the conduct of industry. If, therefore, the controllers of credit have lately acquired this very large power, is it not to be taken as a sign that there is something wrong with the financial system that gives to finance instead of to service the predominant power in industry? It was not the industrial acumen of the bankers that brought them into the management of industry. Everyone will admit that. They were pushed there, willy-nilly, by the system itself[31]. Therefore, I personally want to discover whether we are operating under the best financial system.
Now, let me say at once that my objection to bankers has nothing to do with personalities. I am not against bankers as such. We stand very much in need of thoughtful men, skilled in finance[32]. The world ca