Henry Ford’s Map To The Final Solution

Give Everyone Enough They Want To Be Enslaved

Part II

The corporate idea didn’t exactly die.  But there were not a lot of corporations created. The idea of companies that took care of their own protection costs did not last, of course. As the costs of war-making soared in the 18th century, both the English and Dutch companies staggered under the burden. When they tried to earn back these costs on goods they monopolized, they found themselves very unpopular — and often undercut by smugglers. (The English East India Company’s problems with tea sales in America are only the most famous example.)

By the 1830s, all these companies had collapsed. Their colonies had been taken over by their home governments. And a new era of capital-intensive industry was about to create more productive uses for the corporate form that they had pioneered. 

The first rail companies were small and mostly localized lines.  But as rails began to expand across the continent (later it would be utilities) that the government wanted but lacked the funding to accomplish but encouraged the railines to accomplish, larger infusions of investment were now necessary and corporations began to flourish and then dominate the economy, and so great corporations of steel and rail industries began to be seen as an advantageous way to earn super fortunes and to consolidate those fortunes by encroaching upon smaller businesses and partnerships, and corporations followed the well-tread path of their predecessors the kings who had conquered and subdued communities to create kingdoms, then empires.  

And of course to accomplish these business empires more and more subjects were needed to be subdued into what was now illegal to be called slaves but in many ways were treated as slaves.  Hasn’t there been recent indignation about teaching that slavery was beneficial.  Well paying to own a person creates a certain amount of proprietary interest in the property owned that requires at least a minimal interest in the well-being of the property.  Not all, but the preponderance of people will attempt to take better care of what they “own”.  In this sense slavery was a disadvantage to those who had purchased them and I suppose that could be considered an advantage to the slave.  Other than that I can’t think of much advantage of slavery to the person who is notified he is a slave.  Nevertheless,  there is no advantage to being a worker for someone else either who still owns your subsistence but can subterfuge that even though he still believes he owns the laborer he can  pretend to the worker that he doesn’t because he is allowed to choose who owns him.  But there is actually a great value to the owner of laborers—he can pay you less than you need to subsist because he can replace you at no cost to him.  And he can abuse the laborer equally, he doesn’t need to only punish the recalcitrant or the rebellious (escape is a form of rebellion).  

But the lives of the worker have no value whatsoever to the owner who can continue to pay less than the needs demand because if you choose to work for him or someone else is totally irrelevant when he has no investment in the worker, and likewise it matters not to the owner if he places life-replacing risks upon the laborer, once again,the wage earners are replaceable.  Immigration boomed with incorporation.  A thousand or more new workers arriving everyday to replace those who don’t survive. 

By the 1870’s it was quite obvious to workers that the American Dream promised if they immigrated was not a way to become a Horatio Algerian success story; it was a delusional dream that the worker could succeed, but it became apparent that his labor allowed others to succeed.  The Progressive movement began. There were really two progressive moments; the farm movement and the labor movement and although the goal of both was to achieve their personal dream of successfully surviving and achieving the dream, the farmers saw themselves as owners of their own industry being suppressed and the laborers as the devaluation of their persons being owned.  Different champions of both appeared who disparaged the champions of the other and created an artificial divide presented as philosophical differences.  To the farmer, the labor movement was presented as socialistic and that if their goals succeeded his land would be subdivided and possibly given to the laborer.  To the laborer he was told if farmers were able to have more of his own share of his labor, that food prices  would rise and he would have less ability to survive on his pittances called wages that already left his belly and those of his children wanting.  They elected to the presidency a champion both more or less agreed upon (Grover Cleveland) who disappointed both arms of the progressive movement and he was defeated for reelection.

For most of his first term, Cleveland was more concerned with preventing Congress from granting privileges to special interests than with pursuing his own legislative agenda. He did not see himself as an activist President. Beyond making speeches, he did not send much legislation to Congress or demonstrate much leadership. Instead, he focused on making the federal government more efficient by appointing officials based on merit. Cleveland's management style was to name qualified cabinet members, delegate authority to them, and use them for advice and counsel. He was a great proponent of hard money (currency backed, less credit).  While this was meant to decrease speculation and increase stability in the economy which would favor labor in the long run, hard money always hurt farmers who relied on  credit to grow their new crop and sustain themselves  until the next crop.  But it could also harm labor because with less speculative investment there would be fewer jobs.  So Cleveland succeeded in repealing the Bland-Allison Silver Purchase Act.Cleveland also supported lowering tariffs which both farmers and laborers supported but he was unable to make any consequential headway in reducing the tariffs.  Perhaps more than anything he vetoed drought relief for farmers.

He also alienated the rural community by being opposed to temperance which was a strong plank of their movement.  This led to the election of Benjamin Harrison four years later (even though his victory was in electoral college only, he did lose substantially in the popular vote) and the passage of The McKinley Tariff that increased tariffs.  Despite being expansionist (six states added during his four year tenure) and quite imperialist in showing desires to expand beyond our continental boundaries); unlike Cleveland  he wanted to expand voting and civil rights for Afro-Americans and to desegregate schools.  Instead the Supreme Court handed down the Plessy decision,quieting those aspirations. 

Reenter Grover Cleveland for his second term and the worst panic to date in American history just as he was starting it, in 1893.  The McKinley protectionist tariff created a huge economic surplus for the government and gave encouragement  to American investors to speculate wildly in foreign markets (encouraged by Harrison) in such diverse locales like Argentina and Australia, and South Africa. A coup in Argentina and property devaluation in the other two caused by renewed Boer resistance in South Africa  and the Australian development failing to be realized. And overmining of silver that now had limited monetary exchange value.  This was all followed by a barren wheat harvest and food shortages.  

So who do we choose to replace Cleveland the second time, naturally the tariff author himself, William Mckinley.  But Mckinley’s assassination finally resulted in the first real progressive ascending to the presidency, Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt was not born into pro-labor positions.  But he became their champion because he was of a curious mind.  Samuel Gompers challenged him to visit workshop tenements in New York City and he was shocked into realizing the awful hazards present in those environments.  Likewise when Jacob Riis took him on a visit to the city slums and the living conditions  he witnessed.  Few presidents had ever allowed themselves to see how people doing the work actually lived or the conditions under which they worked.  He took up their mantle and as governor he passed the first eight-hour workday in any state (to be struck down by the supreme court).  As president he used the Sherman Anti-Trust Act to disempower a great deal of vertical and horizontal movement by the corporations, he startted the Food & Drug Agency, began to favor union’s right to picket and bargain, and passed labor laws to protect women from poor working conditions and the first child labor laws (struck down by the supreme court).

And it was into this environment that Henry Ford emerged.  By 1900 Ford was thirty-seven years old.  He was a mechanic, not born into wealth, but enough to have enough to afford him to invest in his little tinkerings.  And he came up with this idea of creating a product everyone could afford.  His youthful idea first conceived of a (pocket) watch cheap enough that everyone could afford one.But he calculated to sell a watch for thirty cents he would have to produce 2000 watches a day or 730,000 in one year and at that rate the demand for pocket watches would be over-saturated rather rapidly.    But Henry got really interested in automobiles and in the speed that he envisioned they might achieve.  His first notoriety was actually winning an automobile race in a racer he designed and drove.  That got investors involved but they pulled out of the first two ventures  he tried.  

But Ford eventually returned to his idea of being able to mass produce something to such an extent that it could be sold cheap enough that even the many who could never afford a product would be able to do so.

And of course we know what followed, the assembly line, the Model T, the total dominance of the auto market, not just the vehicles, but the vertically structured ownership of the resources to create the assembled car efficiently.  I like efficiency. But Ford’s efficiency meant he needed efficient labor to continually be at work.   The miracle of production was that Ford was able to deliver parts, subassemblies, and assemblies with precise timing to a constantly moving main assembly line. This reduced the time to produce a complete chassis from over 12 hours to about an hour and a half. The subdivision of labor into small, easily repeated steps and the coordination of a multitude of operations produced huge gains in productivity. But that productivity came at a cost. The work was monotonous, hot, dirty, and often dangerous.

Many who’ve never worked on an assembly line might not realize  exactly how dangerous the work can be. Well the answer is in the other three.  Monotony creates lack of attention, parts continuously coming at you demand attention, and one minor error causes injury.  Heat from the machinery and poor ventilation create difficulties in breathing and lack of movement and an inability to both replenish and expel fluids  create physical weakness and the machines need to be oiled creating an oily presence on the skin that is just as difficult to cleanse later as if it were the physical dirt that accumulates  in unventilated foundries or descending into mines.  Quickly realizing that forcing workers to stand too long on an assembly without food, water, or the opportunity to go to the bathroom meant his workforce was dropping off (dying), or simply quitting , sometimes without even finishing a month of work, he soon adjusted to creating two nine-hour workshifts.  But he was still losing too many laborers and unable to keep the line moving.  Aha! Three shifts–eight hour days and the workers could rest and the line could be kept going, producing more and more automobiles at less and less cost.  And wait, a minute if I offer the world’s highest wage I will not have to face labor shortages, so how about nearly five times what any laborer could possibly earn anywhere, how about $5 whopping dollars an hour?  How about that?  And if I can keep my assembly from shutting down and I have enough workers to keep them going I can run several lines all at the same time and if I can make a half million cars a year (in the 19 year production of the T,  15 million were sold, so actually closer to 790,000 a year), I don’t really have to charge a lot, and if I can make the price low enough, I can sell to everyone.

Well he succeeded and other businesses followed. For the first time since the advent of the boss-labor system in the days  of Alulim and Narmer and Qin Shi Huang,and Pacachuti , labor could own something.  People who actually made stuff, could buy stuff they made or that others made.  The idea of owning was more than just a revolution in what labor could have it was the greatest mind-altering societal transformation since people had become enslaved and it was not just that laborers could purchase and own, they could now be drawn back into the delusion that slavery could be beneficial to them.  Rebellion against being owned was being challenged and Henry Ford saved the delusional day for the capitalist ownership of human beings.