Numbers in the Dark and Other Stories

by Italo Calvino

  SPOKESMAN: But this world you’ve helped create… weren’t you ever afraid that it might be terribly uniform, monotonous?

  HENRY FORD: It’s poverty that’s monotonous. It’s the waste of energy and lives. The people who stood in line outside our hiring office were Italians, Greeks, Poles, Ukrainians, emigrants from all the provinces of the Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires, crowds of them, speaking incomprehensible languages and dialects. They were nobodies, without trade or home. I made honourable men of them, I gave them all a useful job, a salary that made them independent, I turned them into men capable of running their own lives. I made them learn English and the values of our moral code: this was the only condition I imposed; if they didn’t like it they were free to go. But I never turned away those who were willing to learn. They became American citizens, they and their families, on a par with those born to families here for generations. I don’t care what a man has been: I don’t ask him about his past, nor where he’s come from, nor what he’s achieved. I don’t care if he’s been to Harvard and I don’t care if he’s been to Sing Sing! I only want to know what he can do, what he can become!

  SPOKESMAN: Right… become by conforming to a model…

  HENRY FORD: I know what you’re trying to say. I have always taken human diversity as my starting point. Physical strength, speed of movement, capacity to react to new situations are all qualities that vary from one individual to the next. My idea was this: to organize the work in my factories so that those who were unskilled or disabled could yield as much as the most skilled worker. I had each department’s tasks classified according to whether they demanded unusual vigour, or normal strength and stature, or whether they might be carried out by people whose speed and physical capacities were below the average. It turned out that there were 2,637 jobs that could be entrusted to workers with only one leg (mimes mechanical operations pretending to have only one leg), 670 that could go to people with no legs (mimes as above), 715 for those with only one arm (mimes as above), 2 for those with no arms (mimes as above) and 10 jobs that could be done by the blind. A blind man given the job of counting bolts in the warehouse proved capable of doing the work of three workers with good eyes (mimes). Is this what you call conforming? I’m telling you I did everything I could to help each man overcome his handicap. Even the sick could work and earn their keep in my hospitals. In their beds. Screwing nuts on small bolts. It helped keep up morale too. They got better faster.

  SPOKESMAN: But work on the assembly line… Being forced to concentrate your attention on repetitive movements, follow a rhythm that never changes, imposed by machines… What could be more mortifying for the creative spirit… for the most elementary freedom of having control over the movements of your own body, over the expense of your own energy in line with your own rhythm, your own breathing… Always to perform only one operation, one movement, always made in the same way… Isn’t it a terrifying prospect?

  HENRY FORD: For me, yes. Terrifying. For me it would be inconceivable always to do the same thing all day every day. But not everyone is like me. The great majority of men have no desire to do creative work, to have to think, decide. They simply want a job that allows them to apply the minimum amount of mental and physical strength. And for this great majority, mechanical repetition, participation in a task that has already been organized down to the last detail, guarantees perfect inner calm. Of course, they mustn’t be restless types. Are you restless? Me, yes, extremely. Well then, I won’t use you for a routine job. But most of the jobs in a big factory are routine and as such suitable to the great majority of the workforce.

  SPOKESMAN: They are like that because you wanted them to be like that… both jobs and people…

  HENRY FORD: We managed to organize the work in the way that was easiest for those who had to do it, and most profitable. I say we the ‘creative’ ones, if you want to call us that, we the restless ones, we who can’t relax until we have found the best way of doing things… You know where I got the idea of the conveyor that brings the component to the worker without him having to move toward the component? In the meat-canning factories of Chicago, watching the quartered cattle hung on trolleys moving along elevated rails, to be sprinkled with salt, cut up, pulped, minced… The quartered cattle passing by, dangling… the cloud of salt grains… the knife blades sawing back and forth… and I saw the chassis of the Model T running along at hand height while the workers tightened the bolts…

  SPOKESMAN: So creativity is reserved to the few… those who design… who take decisions…

  HENRY FORD: No! It is extended! How many artists, real artists, were there in the past? Today we are the artists, we who experiment with production and the men who produce! In the past creative tasks were restricted to putting together colours or notes or words on a painting, a score, a page… And for whom in the end? For a handful of world weary idlers who hang around the galleries and concert halls! We are the real artists, we who invent the work that millions of people count on!

  SPOKESMAN: But professional skill has disappeared from manual work!

  HENRY FORD: Oh enough! You lot are always harping on the same note. Quite the contrary. Professional skill has triumphed, in automobile manufacture and the organization of labour, and this way it’s been put at the service of those who are not skilled who can now achieve the same yields as the more talented! You know how many parts go to make up a Ford? Including screws and bolts, about five thousand: big parts, medium-sized parts, small parts and some no bigger than the cogs in a clock. Workers used to have to walk across the shop floor to look for each part, walk to take them to the part to be assembled, walk to look for a spanner, a screwdriver, a welding torch… The day was frittered away with this back and forth… Then they always ended up banging into each other, tripping over themselves, crowding each other, bunching… Was this the human, creative way to work you people like so much? I wanted to organize things so that workers didn’t have to run back and forth through the workshops. Was that an inhuman idea? I wanted to organize things so that workers didn’t have to lift and carry weights. Was that an inhuman idea? I arranged men and tools in the order of the jobs to be done, I used trolleys on rails or hanging cables, so that arm movements were kept to a minimum. Save ten thousand people just ten steps a day and you’ve saved sixty miles of pointless movements and ill-spent energy.

  SPOKESMAN: To sum up: you wish to save your workers unnecessary movements in the building of automobiles which allow us all to live in continual movement…

  HENRY FORD: It’s time-saving, my dear fellow, in both cases. There is no contradiction! The first advertisement I used to persuade Americans to buy themselves a car was based on the old proverb ‘Time is money!’ It’s the same at work: for each operation the worker must have the right time: not a second too little and not a second too much! And the worker’s entire day must be based on the same principles: he must live near the factory so as not to lose time travelling. That’s why I came to the conclusion that medium-size factories were better than enormous ones… and meant you could avoid big urban conurbations, slums, dirt, delinquency, vice…

  SPOKESMAN: And yet Detroit… The masses who gathered in the Mid West to look for work in Ford factories…

  HENRY FORD: Right, I was the only one able to offer high, ever increasing salaries, in a period when no other factory owners would even consider it… It was hard work arguing for my idea and imposing it on the whole American economy: the idea that it’s higher salaries, not higher profits that get the market moving. And to give higher salaries you have to save on the system of production. That is the only saving that’s really worth making: saving not to accumulate but to increase salaries, that is purchasing power, that is abundance. The secret of abundance lies in an equilibrium between prices and quality. And it’s only on abundance that you can build, not on shortages: I was the first to understand that. If a capitalist works in the hope that one day he’ll be able to live off the revenue, he’s a bad capitalist. I never felt
I possessed anything myself, but that I was managing my property by putting the best means of production at the service of others.

  SPOKESMAN: But the unions saw things differently. And for years you didn’t want to have anything to do with unions… As late as 1937 you were paying teams of bouncers and professional boxers to stop strikes by force…

  HENRY FORD: There were some troublemakers who wanted to stir up conflicts between Ford and the workers, conflicts for which there could be no logical reason. I had worked out everything in such a way that the workers’ interests and the company’s interests were the same thing! These people came up with arguments that had nothing to do with my principles, nor with the principles that arise from the laws of nature. There is a work morality, a morality of service that cannot be overturned, because it is a law of nature. Nature says: work! prosperity and happiness can only be achieved through honest toil!

  SPOKESMAN: But what people called Fordism, or at least your more popular ideas about society—stable jobs, safe salaries, a certain level of affluence—generated new aspirations in the workers’ minds. Were you aware of that, Mr Ford? Out of a shapeless, unstable mass, you helped to create a workforce with something to defend, a workforce with dignity and with an awareness of its own value, and hence a group that demanded security, guarantees, contractual power, the right to decide its own destiny. It was what they call an irreversible process, that your paternalism could no longer either contain or control…

  HENRY FORD: I always look to the future, but in order to simplify things, not complicate them. Yet all those engaged in planning the future, proposing reforms, seem to want nothing better than to complicate things over and over. They’re all the same: reformers, theorists, politicians, even presidents: Wilson, Roosevelt… Again and again I found myself fighting a lone battle against a pointlessly complicated world: politics, finance, wars…

  SPOKESMAN: You’re not going to deny that wars brought certain advantages to your business…

  HENRY FORD: Those advantages weren’t part of my plans. I’ve always been a pacifist, no one can ever deny that. I was always against American intervention, in the First World War and in the Second. In 1915 I organized the Peace Ship, I crossed the Atlantic to Norway together with influential people from the Church, the universities and the newspapers to ask the European powers to break off hostilities. They didn’t listen to me. Then my own country joined the war too. Even the Ford Company started working for the war. So I announced that I wouldn’t touch a cent of the profits on war contracts.

  SPOKESMAN: You promised to return those profits to the State, but it doesn’t seem you ever did that…

  HENRY FORD: After the war I had to face an extremely critical financial situation. The banks…

  SPOKESMAN: The banks were always another of your bêtes noires…

  HENRY FORD: The financial system is another pointless complication which hinders manufacturing rather than helping it. As I see it money should always come after work, as the result of work, not before. As long as I steered clear of the financial markets everything went well: I came through the Crash of 1929 because my shares weren’t quoted on the stock exchange. My goal in my work is simplicity…

  SPOKESMAN: But you played a very important role in setting up this economic system you say you don’t approve of. Don’t you think that rather than being inspired by simplicity, your considerations are somewhat simplistic?

  HENRY FORD: When it comes to business I always relied on simple American ideas. Wall Street is another world to me… a foreign world… oriental…

  SPOKESMAN: Just a minute, Mr Ford… No doubt you have every reason to be annoyed with Wall Street… That’s one thing, but to identify the financial world and all your enemies with people of a particular origin, a particular religion… to write anti-Semitic articles in your papers… to collect them in a book… to support that fanatic who was soon to seize power in Germany, these…

  HENRY FORD: My ideas were misunderstood… I had nothing to do with the obscenities that were to happen in Europe… I was speaking for the good of America and for their good too, these people who are different from us, and who, if they wanted to take part in our community, should have appreciated what the real American principles were… those principles I am proud to have run my company on.

  SPOKESMAN: You achieved an enormous amount in the area of manufacturing, Mr Ford… And you theorized a great deal too… But while things always behaved as you forecast and planned, men didn’t, there was always something in the human being that escaped you, that fell short of your expectations… Is that right?

  HENRY FORD: My ambition wasn’t just to make things. Iron, laminates, steel, they’re not enough. Things aren’t an end in themselves. What I was thinking of was a model of humanity. I didn’t just manufacture goods. I wanted to manufacture men!

  SPOKESMAN: Could you explain a bit more clearly what you mean by that, Mr Ford? May I sit down? Could I light a cigarette? Would you like one?

  HENRY FORD: Nooooo! You can’t smoke here! Cigarettes are a vice and an aberration! Cigarettes are prohibited in Ford factories! I dedicated years of energy to the anti-smoking campaign! Even Edison said I was right!

  SPOKESMAN: But Edison smoked!

  HENRY FORD: Only cigars. I can forgive a cigar or two. Likewise a pipe. They are part of the American tradition. But not cigarettes! Statistics show that the worst criminals are cigarette smokers. Cigarettes lead straight to the gutter! I published a book against cigarettes!

  SPOKESMAN: Don’t you think that, as well as cigarettes, you might also have concerned yourself with the effects of rhythms of work on health? Or of the pollution your factories generate? Or of the stench of the exhaust emissions your cars produce!

  HENRY FORD: My factories are always clean, well-lit and well-ventilated. And I can demonstrate that when it came to hygiene no one took as much care as I did. But now I’m talking about the moral aspect, the mind. For my plan I needed sober, hard-working, good-living men, with happy family lives, with clean and orderly homes!

  SPOKESMAN: Is that why you set up a group of inspectors to enquire into the private lives of your employees? To stick their noses into the love affairs and sex lives of other men and women?

  HENRY FORD: An employee who lives in an appropriate way will work in an appropriate way. I chose my personnel on the basis not just of their performance at work, but their morality at home too. And if I preferred to employ married men, good fathers and home-makers rather than libertines, drunkards and gamblers, there were reasons of efficiency for doing so. As far as women are concerned, I am happy to give them factory employment if they have to support their children, but if they have a husband in work then their place is in the home!

  SPOKESMAN: Yet your first opponents were the pious puritans who fought against the spread of the motor car because they saw it as a danger to the family! Preachers and moralists thundered against it as something lovers could use to meet far from their parents’ watchful eyes; something that encouraged families to gad about on Sundays instead of going to church; something people would mortgage their houses and dig into their sacred savings to buy; they said the car prompted an otherwise thrifty people to desire long trips and vacations; the car generated envy amongst the poor and stirred up revolutions…

  HENRY FORD: The reactionaries are like the Bolsheviks: they can’t see reality, they don’t know what people need for the elementary functions of human life. I always acted in line with an idea too, I had my model. But my ideas are always applicable.

  SPOKESMAN: Of course, the Bolsheviks… What do you think of the fact that right from the beginning Soviet communism took Fordism as its model? Lenin and Stalin admired your organization of production and to a certain extent became disciples of your theories. They too wanted the whole of society to organize itself along the lines of industrial productivity, they too wanted to have their factories and workers operate as in Detroit, they too wanted to produce a disciplined and puritanical workforce…
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  HENRY FORD: But they were unable to give their workers what I gave mine. Their austerity, like that of the reactionaries, prolonged shortages; my austerity brought abundance. But I’m not interested in what they did: my idea was an American idea, developed in relation to America, animated by the spirit of pioneers who weren’t afraid of hard work and were able to adapt to the new, who were frugal and austere but wanted to enjoy the things of this world…

  SPOKESMAN: But the America of the pioneers is gone. Wiped out by Henry Ford’s Detroit…

  HENRY FORD: I come from that old America. My father had a farm, in Michigan. I began to experiment with my inventions on the farm, financed by my father; I wanted to build practical transport vehicles for agriculture. The car was born in the country. I kept my love for the America of my childhood and my parents. As soon as I realized it was disappearing, I started buying and collecting old farm tools, ploughs, millwheels, carriages, buggies, sleds, furniture from the old wooden houses that were going to ruin…

  SPOKESMAN: So, just as ecology originates in the culture that produced pollution, so antique dealing originates from the same culture that imposed the new things that have replaced the old…

  HENRY FORD: I bought a traditional old tavern in Sudbury, Massachusetts, together with its swing sign and veranda… I even had them rebuild the unsurfaced track the wagon trails used when they headed West…

  SPOKESMAN: Is it true that in order to bring back the atmosphere of the time of horses and stagecoaches around that old tavern, you had the highway diverted, the very highway your Ford cars were roaring along at top speed?

  HENRY FORD: There’s room for everything in this America of ours, don’t you think? The American countryside mustn’t be allowed to disappear. I was always opposed to the exodus of farmers from the country. I designed a hydroelectric station on the Tennessee to supply low cost energy to farmers. I would have given them electrical appliances, fertilizers, and they would have stayed away from the city. But neither government nor farmers would hear of it. They never understand simple ideas: there are three elementary functions in human life: farming, manufacturing and transportation. Every problem hangs on the way we grow things, the way we produce things, the way we transport things, and I always proposed the simplest solutions. The farmers’ work was pointlessly complicated. Only five per cent of their energy was being spent to good use.