[Niebuhr was an American theologian who worked and wrote extensively on applying the insights of Christianity to the analysis and solution of social problems. A pastor in Detroit at the time the following essay was written, Niebuhr wrote many books, including Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics (1932), Beyond Tragedy: Essays on the Christian Interpretation of History (1937), The Nature and Destiny of Man (1941-1943), and The Structure of Nations and Empires: A Study of the Recurring Patterns and Problems of the Political Order in Relation to the Unique Problems of the Nuclear Age (1959). In the following essay, he compares the myth of Henry Ford—particularly regarding the extent of his philanthropy—with Ford's actual behavior. Niebuhr concludes that the myth reflects little more than the diligence of Ford's "publicity agents."]

Henry Ford is America. If we may judge men not so much by their achievements as by their hopes, not so much by what they are as by what they want to be, Henry Ford reveals the true nature of the average American. Henry Ford is not a typical businessman. If he were, he could not be a typical American. There is a sentimental quality in American life which the narrow-eyed and obviously shrewd businessman type does not satisfy as a symbol. The standardized businessman is too obviously, too robustly masculine. And America is half feminine. We worship success, but we do not like to pay too high a price for it. That is why only half of America admired Carnegie and Rockefeller. The other half spoke of the Homestead strikes and Standard Oil ruthlessness. In spite of libraries and colleges, the two wealthiest men of the last generation were reviled almost as much as they were praised. Henry Ford is wealthier than either and is nevertheless the hero of the average American. The reason is that he is supposed to have accumulated his fabulous fortune without ruthlessness, and to have preserved a generous heart in the money-getting process. To pay high wages, sell a cheap product, and yet accumulate vast riches—that is a miracle which fires the imagination of every mother's son who, if the truth were known, indulges both spiritual and worldly ambitions in the secret of his heart. To be feared and loved at the same time, to satisfy natural greed without sacrificing the instincts of love—that were to solve the problem of life to the complete satisfaction of the man in the street. That is why Henry Ford is the hero not only of America, but of many a European.

A HERO WITH IMAGINATION

It must be admitted that there is a quality in the character of Ford that seems to justify this universal acclaim. Ford has imagination. He has never been lost in the mechanical processes of his business. Objectively tested, his humanitarian characteristics may be inadequate enough, but there is no question but that he talks as if he were a humanitarian and that he regards himself as one. He has gone to much pains to insist that his latest venture, the five-day week, is purely a business proposition. But obviously he is doing this because he has previously seen to it that humanitarian motives should be ascribed to the new policy. His disavowal of philanthropic intentions in the institution of the five-day week are like the assurances of an old spinster that her reputation as a flirt has been grossly exaggerated.

Mr. Ford's reputation for philanthropy is a wonderful triumph of astute publicity on the one hand and an almost inevitable fruit of the peculiar psychology of the man on the other. To begin with, he has always declared himself against organized philanthropy. While his wife and son have given annually to the Detroit community fund, which embraces all the charities of the city, their contributions have never equaled the total sum given by the workers in his plant and have frequently been but a fraction of the sums given by others, much less wealthy—Senator Couzens, for instance. College endowments, libraries, and similar benefactions have never had the support of the Ford millions. A million and a half given by the family for a Y.M.C.A. building campaign recently is the first large contribution to a local charity.

Against these facts and in seeming contradiction of his own principles, it must be said that Mr. Ford has built and is maintaining one of the largest hospitals in the city. No one knows what this venture is costing him. Years ago he established the principle that an adequate wage was to be the basis of his philanthropy. One could hardly find fault with that principle, generously interpreted, if he were true to it. There is a logic in it which one might wish had been learned by a Victor Lawson and a Frank Munsey, who sluiced their wealth into enterprises—theological seminaries, art museums, and the like—which, however worthy in themselves, were totally unrelated to the institutions that created the wealth.

WAGES IN FORD PLANTS

The trouble is that the facts do not bear out Mr. Ford's contention that his wage obviates the necessity for philanthropy. Outside of a few thousand of the highly skilled workers, such as toolmakers, diemakers, and patternmakers, it is hardly possible to find a Ford worker who earned more than $1,500 during the past year. The five day week was in fact in effect long before it was publicly proclaimed, and there were layoffs without pay besides. As a result, few Ford workers have actually averaged the $30 per week which are needed to provide an annual total of $1,500. Years ago, when the $5 a day minimum was established, which meant $30 per week, the Ford boast that an adequate wage obviated the necessity for charity was not an idle one. Today it is an idle boast, for living prices have well-nigh doubled and the weekly wage still hovers around $30. Mr. Ford declares that a third of his men have received increases. Most of these increases are either $2 or $4 per week, which means that even the best of his men are still short from $2 to $4 in their weekly pay envelope. That is, they receive either $32 or $34 instead of $36. At the present moment the five-day week has been reduced to four and one half days throughout the plant, and many workers have even less work than that. At the present rate the only workers who actually equal the money wages of 1913 are those few thousand who receive $6.80 a day or more. Whatever the pay in dollars may be, it is an established fact that the actual wage is immeasurably lower than in 1913. Every social worker in Detroit knows that the Ford wage places Ford workers in the ranks of social liabilities. The Ford worker in times of distress and sickness is thrown upon the charitable resources of the city. The statistics of practically every charity reveal not only a proportionate but frequently a disproportionate number of Ford workers who are the recipients of charity.

Not only is the Ford wage no longer a minimum subsistence wage, not to speak of a minimum comfort wage, but there is no conscience in the industry in the matter of unemployment or old-age insurance. An industry that shows regular profits from a hundred to a hundred and fifty million dollars per year does not lay aside a cent for unemployment insurance. The old argument used to be that an adequate wage would protect the worker not only against sickness disability but against periods of unemployment. It is quite obvious that the present wage is not high enough for that, if, indeed, it ever was. During the business depression five years ago, Ford managed to keep more men employed than many other automobile concerns, partly because bad times affect a cheap car less than a high-priced product and partly because he weeded out thousands of workers, speeded up production with the remaining force, and cut the price of his car. This was an effective business strategy, but it cannot be classed as humanitarian business. It shows no consideration for the average man, thrown upon the streets because he is unable to keep up.

THE DEMAND FOR YOUTH

As I write, the Ford publicity agents are flooding the country with Ford's new solution for the crime problem. He is going to employ five thousand boys from sixteen to twenty years of age to keep them out of mischief. He is doing this at a time when hardly any of his workers are working full time and many are being discharged. The net result is that Ford is substituting young men for old men. With the modern automatic machine it is a wellknown fact that youth is at a premium. The automobile plant has no place for old men. Many factories refuse to employ anyone over forty-five. An industrial process that requires endurance rather than skill inevitably exploits youth and junks the aging man.

Perhaps it is unnecessary to say that there is no system of pensions to offset this ruthlessness. There is not even a contract guaranteeing tenure of employment. A man may put fifteen years into a plant, acquire no more skill than can be duplicated in a youth of eighteen by two months' training, and find himself losing in competition with the superior stamina of the stripling. Perhaps the automobile industry is too young to have acquired a conscience upon this problem. There can be no question mat the conscience is lacking, and that there is rather less than more conscience upon the problem of old age in the Ford industry than in others.

If America were not so utterly naïve in matters of industrial ethics, it would long since have looked with a critical eye into the unemployment and pension policy of a wealthy industry that prides itself on restricting its philanthropy to the conduct of its business. As it is, Mr. Ford is celebrated throughout the nation as the most benevolent of employers, while human material is used with a ruthlessness and a disregard of ultimate effects which may be matched, but is not surpassed, by any industry. Mr. Ford has always maintained that one reason why he is able to perform his alleged miracle of high wages and cheap products is because he had no absentee owners to sluice dividends out of the industry. The obvious implication of this constantly reiterated observation is that he is able to maintain a smaller margin between the cost of production and the cost of the finished article than other concerns which must satisfy stockholders with big dividends. It is remarkable with what gullibility the public has accepted this explanation; for the big profits of the Ford industry are hardly exceeded by any other concern, unless it be the United States Steel Company, and, in the past year, the General Motors Corporation. What difference does it make whether absentee owners get the profits or whether they stay with one man to create the largest centralization of wealth the world has ever known, if the profits are there? The fact is that the General Motors Corporation this year underbid Ford in the cost of the finished product, comparative values considered, equaled him in wages, and yet declared dividends totaling nearly two hundred million dollars! If proof were needed, this would show that the Ford miracle is not as distinctive as has been supposed. It is simply the miracle of the modern industrial process with its tremendous productivity which permits exorbitant profits even if the product is reasonably cheap and the wage a decent, if not an adequate, one.

It is difficult to determine whether Mr. Ford is simply a shrewd exploiter of a gullible public in his humanitarian pretensions, or whether he suffers from self-deception. My own guess is that he is at least as naïve as he is shrewd, that he does not think profoundly on the social implications of his industrial policies, and that in some of his avowed humanitarian motives he is actually self-deceived. The tragedy of the situation lies in the fact that the American public is, on the whole, too credulous and uncritical to make any critical analysis of the moral pretensions of this great industry. Wherefore we have the picture of a hero who is at once the most successful and the most benevolent of men. If Ford is the symbol of an America with its combination of sentimentality and shrewdness, he is also the symbol of an America that has risen almost in a generation from an agrarian to an industrial economic order and now applies the social intelligence of a country village to the most complex industrial life the world has ever known.

HENRY FORD—SYMBOL

Perhaps it is unjust to attribute Ford's vogue altogether to the simplicity of the American mind. After all, it is a universal and inveterate habit of humanity to invest its heroes with moral qualities that they do not possess and to insist that the big man is also a good man. If that should be doubted, it is only necessary to read the effusive preface to the King James Version of the Bible, in which a prince of dubious character is made to appear a very paragon of virtue. Moral philosophers and teachers of religion have ever been critical of obvious success, believing it inimical to moral perfection. But the man in the street has a fine disregard for these scruples. Nothing intrigues his fancy so much as the vision of a hero who is as good as he is great. In a recent school vote on the most famous men of history, Jesus received the highest number of votes and Napoleon the second highest. It is because most men would like to follow Jesus and Napoleon at the same time that they so credulously accept and even help to fashion the Ford myth. It is a thankless but an important task to set history against mythology.