The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-04-17


 Requests have come for more informa- tion on Ford methods of dealing with his workers. Letters have also come from workmen discussing both men. very pointedly.
 Extracts may be given later.
 Young Rockefeller took great pains to- visit and get personally acquainted with the miners of the Colorado Fuel and Iron company some years ago when serious labor troubles broke out. Rocke-i feller declares he is earnestly. groping toward fuller measure of democracy In industry.
 Ford makes no pretense of having any use for democracy in industry or for getting acquainted with his people or for introducing at, his plants any thing in the way of social clubs. or other organizations designed to give fhe men opportunity to form friendships and obtain recreation. Ford practices industrial autocracy and doesn't care who knows it. He has nothing but scQrn for those who seek to extend a ,giad hand to their employees. He .ber iieyes in paying the highest wages posl sible and letting it go at that.
 His perfectly frank and outspoken at. titude can be gathered from the fol lowing extracts from his recently pub- lished book, My Life and Work :.
 It is not necessary /to have meet ings to establish good feeling between individuals or departments. It is not necessary for people to, love each other in order to work together. Too much good fellowship may, indeed, be a very bad thing, for it may lead to one man trying to cover up the faults of an- other. That is bad for both men.
 When we are at work we ought do be at work. When we are at play we ought to be at play. There is no use trying to mix the two. The, sole object ought to be tp get work done and to get paid for it. N. k
 There is not much personal contact the men do their work and go home "a factory is not drawing room.
 ''The only group of union men in the country is the group that draws salaries from the unions. Some of them are very rich. Some of them are inter ested in influencing the affairs of our large institutions of finances Others are so extreme in their, sozcalled so-' cialism that they border on bolshevism and anarchism, their union salaries lib- erating them from the, necessity of work so they can, devote their energies to subversive propaganda All of them enjoy certain prestige and power which, in the natural course of com petition, they could not otherwise have a won. .s.1 a.Practica1ly nothing of importance N is secured by mere demand. That is why strikes always failSen though \ they may seem to succeed. A strike ' which brings higher wages or shorter N hours and passes on the burden to the N community is really unsuccessful. It II only makes the industry less able to \ serve and decreases the number of jobs \ that it can support. This. is not to say that no strike is justified-it may
 draw attention to an evil, We make no attempt to c0ddle the \ people the people who work with us. | It is absolutely give-and-take rela- II tion. During the period in which we. I largely increased wages we did have II large supervisory force. The home Il life of the men was investigated and an II effort was made to find out what they |i did with their wages. Perhaps at the M time it was necessary; it gave! us val II uabie Information. But it would not II do at all as permanent affair, and it I has been abandoned
 H I've do not believe in the glad hand or the professionalized personal touch Il or human element
 II Propaganda, bulletins, lectures-- 4 they are nothing.
 "A great business is really too big, \ gto be human. It grows so large as to S Slsupplant the personality of the man.. DIn big business the employer, like the lemploye, is lost in the mass: Together Ithey have created productive organi- zation that sends out articles that the