The Crime Of Henry Ford

The Crime Of Henry Ford

by

R.E. Prindle

 

 

 

Very few truly great men such as Henry Ford have been reviled or defamed so much.  One might well ask what Honkety Hank do to merit such contumely.

 

The answer is simple.  He challenged and refuted deeply held religious beliefs.

 

I'm sure that everyone knows that Henry Ford founded Ford Motors.  While there isn't a crime there he did it without the aid of bankers and that might be called an egregious error from their point of view.  In 1914, however, he successfully challenged one of the most sacred biblical beliefs, that belief is that the poor shall always be with us.  The whole of the economic system was based on that Old Testament belief.

 

Because it was believed that the poor shall always be with us it was made morally defensible to formulate the Iron Law Of Wages.  That law is that the proper wage for any job is the lowest wage that anyone will accept to do it.  The law applies most harshly to those who have no training or skill such as common labor.

 

Thus slavery, in which men are forced to accept subsistence wages or even less, in many instances in the history of slavery men and women were simply worked to death, was depressant of wages where it offered competition to free labor such as in the American South.  Indeed many plantation owners wee training slaves to perform mechanics jobs so as not to have to depend n not only higher labor costs from free workers but cash labor costs.  What a slave did cost the owner the same whatever he did..  Of course, following the Iron Law Of Wages the more skilled the labor the more the worker would want in privileges if not money.  Indeed, as a skilled blacksmith expended more calories he would perforce need to be better fed.

 

But the slave mechanics of necessity were driving the free mechanics from business.

 

Thus the Northern wage slave, ostensibly free, if only free to starve, feared the freed slave who could subsist on less and would drive the price of labor even lower.

 

The Northern plantation mentality recruited laborers from all over Europe taking advantage of language and national differences in the attempt to drive wages down or prevent their rising.

 

As I say, this attitude was based on and sanctioned by biblical scripture.  The Word of God, so to speak.

 

This was the existing situation when in 1914 came a sainted man who said that by adopting certain procedures he could drive the cost of manufacturing so low that he could lower the cost of his product, raise wages above subsistence level and still increase his profits.

 

So, one day in 1914 he announced he was going to double wages of his unskilled labor force from  actually less than 2.50 to 5.00 a day.  He said in effect that the poor need no longer be with us.  A visible shudder went through the religious community and the economic system based on that religion.

 

For a brief moment all faces were turned in disbelief toward Detroit.  Then a murmur was heard throughout the land swelling into a thundering chorus:  Get Henry Ford!  Crucify the bastard!

 

And essentially they did just that.  When the Great Hank died in 1947 there were virtually none to mourn him.  He had been thoroughly reviled.  Well, no good deed ever goes unpunished.

 

His legacy of a living wage lived until the presidency of Ronald Reagan.  During his administration the airport controllers went on strike for absurd wages.  Everything gets out of hand sooner or later.  Ronnie Reager said:  Let 'em.  That broke the back of the labor movement and began the decline of the Ford dictum.

 

Today the plantation mentality is acting in many ways to return to the world of the Iron Law Of Wages.  The American economic structure after Reagan has been all but destroyed.

 

The Savings an Loan industry was looted out of existence.  The borders were thrown open to encourage an influx of low cost labor.  High cost jobs were transferred to low labor cost areas around the world.  What was left of the economy was shipped to China to be performed if not by slave labor by what is equivalent to it.

 

Home owners were encouraged to dissipate the value of the homes by refinancing them then being unable to meet the higher mortgage payments they were stripped of their net worth as neatly as the Savings and Loan industry had been looted.  One name has stood out in both.  I won't mention it

 

Thus 100 years later the crime of Henry Ford has been nearly extirpated.  The Great Heretic who disproved religious economic theory and actually was forced to apologize for it has been rolled over in his grave to spend eternity face down.

 

Strange world, isn't it?