The Connecticut labor news., 1921-08-05
LET FORD OPERATE ROADS
 SHIPPERS TELL PRESIDENT

challenged the admiration of Wall street. 1t has been forced to recog-
 nize his commanding genius and ap-
 plaud the NapoleOnic strokes that en- abled him to meet every obligation before maturity, to increase his out put and his prOtts, and aid industry when nearly all other manufacturers were applying the brakes.
 First Ford went through his or ganization and enforced every possi- ble economy. Then he converted completed cars and sent them with bills of lading to his agents in 35,ooo American towns and cities. The cars were transferred to owners and the money went back to Ford's treasury in a never-ending stream. He Is out of his difficulties and faces the future with every confidence of accomplish ing even greater things.
 Cooperation on the part of his workers, his executives and his sales organizations, Ford says, saved a situation that the hnanciers had ad- vcrtised as being hopeless without their assistance.
 It is not possible for Labor to pub fish the details of Ford's sensational campaign, but it will permit him to tell what part his railroad had i'll this business epic.
 Part His Road Played. Before we got Cotrol ot the D. T. & l.," he says, it required an aver age of p days to haul raw materials to the factories, make 1t into cars and get them to dealers. We had to buy three weeks in advance of need. With no way of knowing future conditions we had to keep immense reserves on
 hand. The money tied up in these
 and the goods moving stood continu-
 ously at about $88, 8,ooo,ooo.
 '1 he D. I. & l. Is really one great tcrminal-it crosses every transConti- stock consigned to us reaches the D..
 T. x 1. it can be speeded along to it's destination Parts of cars, outbound,
 can be made into through trains and thus the running time to destination greatly reduced.
 Then in the offices of the D. T. & 1. they did away with great deal of antiquated red tape. Whole systems of useless accounting were abolished, the offices themselves have been brought to Detroit and the road is operated as a single unit. All these elements combined have reduced the time of our movement Ot stock from the suppliers Of raw materials through the factory and the cars into the hands of the dealers from 22 to IA days, and that isn't the caldwell cut it still more.
 "Where before we had $88,ooo, ,ooo tied up Ill moving and reserve stocks
 required to make o3,ooo cars month,
 now we handle the stock required to
 make II4,2Io cars a month for less
 than 500, ,ooo, ,ooo. This $28,ooo,ooo goes
 into cash account, to be used for oth- CT purposes-as paying debits, for ex- ample"
 A Lesson for Railroad Owners.
 A whole philosophy of efficient
 transportation is embodied in Ford s
 statement. If his system were ap-
 piled to every railroad in the country
 there would be saving of billions ot
 dollars to business men and Consum-
 CTS. It would mean the difference
 between an efficiently operated and
 highly profitable transportation sys-
 tenn and one which is just two steps
 ahead of bankruptcy, maintains a lob by at Washington to inveigle as
 many millions as possible from the government, cuts the wages ot its workers below the starvation point and tells the public that 1t may be damned before rates are cut. It is not any wonder that petitions are flowing in to Washington urging that the railroads and other badly managed enterprises be turned over to Henry Ford.