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Show Ford, at 70, Looks to .Future With an Eagerness of Youth i . i 1 1 1 1 i i ii ii i i . f x -itsi. , v .? ' ' V. i ' -I y . ' m f ' ' ' . . r - . Ill, I i' (i ' t ' r L.,.... .. .... 1 Changing Times Have No Worry For Noted U. S. -Motor Magnate Henry Ford's views on men, money, recovery, the new deul urn! the. future ns lie i. :ti's his 70th hirtltduy are Krup'm'U.l'y prewnted the Provi Herald renders in this story by Willis Thornton, N KA Service writer, repurtin;;- his iiiteriev with the letrolt motor genius. I!y WILLIS TUOKNTOX DETROIT, July 20 Henry Ford will be 70 years old on July 30. But today, with that anniversary less than a week away, Henry Ford reveals an agility of body, an elasticity of mind, and an eagerness to face the future lacking in many men who have not even approached ap-proached their alloted three score and ten. Changing times, an uncharted future, the beginning of a new era, abandonment of the gold' standard, a new deal for capital and labor these worry him not at all. The suggestion that many people are confused and shaken by an unstable present and an uncertain un-certain future brought a quick reaction re-action from Ford. "Afraid?" he asks. "What are I hey afraid of?" He dropped the foot he had propped against, the edg of a dsk in an office in his Dearborn plant and leaned eagerly forward in his1 chair. . UKNKY 1'tllU) . . . n ehariictcr study, sketched from u photn;rah by George Scarhu Opportunity "What is anybody afraid of? Of (Continued on Page Four) Ford Looks to Future At 70 With Eagerness (Continued from Page One) That's not losing money!" Signs of the upturn that is quickening quick-ening . throughout the industrial world were discussed. Ford agreed that they appear most promising. "But eyen if industry gets back to normal production again," I askedv "suppose.it is unable to reabsorb re-absorb a great many of the people it once had jobs for? What will become of them?" ; "Industry never has been able to absorb all the people who wanted to enter it," Ford shot. back. "It is a fallacy to assume that industry indus-try can, or should support all or most of the people. The purpose of industry is to work for the people, peo-ple, not to have all the people working for it. "Yet because Industry has caused so many people to leave their homes and find themselves stranded strand-ed in the city, it is up to industry to help them solve their problem. Back To JLand i . "I am doing -this by decentralizing. decentral-izing. . . . spreading small industries indus-tries throughout the country, so that people may have a double security, se-curity, one in the land, another in their. jobs. People are leaving the cities to go back to the land. The tidal wave that swept them here is receding. But as they go, they take with them not only the same abilities they had when they came to the cities, but new abilities acquired ac-quired there. They are better trained, train-ed, better thinkers. gives a simple, concrete example of how minimum wages affected his own wokrers. v "1 did it because it was good businessV he explained. "It is just as good business today as it was then, good business for everybody." "There have been times when high wages at the Ford plant simply sim-ply enabled our workers to go out and buy the cars of some other ; maker who was perhaps paying poor wages, while his workers couldn't afford to buy either his car or ours. That is the sort of thing that can't happen under the Industrial Recovery Act. Good minimum wages all around will: mean good business for everybody.. And I think the government in-, tends to make it stick." Tecimo'ji'aey You can't pin labels on Henry Ford. ..But he is at least a little bit of a technocrat. He doesn't believe be-lieve in technocracy as a ruling caste system or as a plan of gov-, ernment, but "they had one idea, ; at least," he admits. "The idea of production for use. That is absolutely abso-lutely sound., A business ought to make mpney, yes, but not for the sake of the money. To put back into expanding, building up, re-i search and the safeguarding of the ; business itself." i Ford still retains an evident life-, time respeot .'for the skilled mechanic; me-chanic; his Love for machinery and those who design it. "The , best, work today," he explains with en-, thusiasm,, "is being done on the machinery to ma"ke the machinery: to make goods. Those a, re the fel-: lows,- the leaders, who are showing the real, skill -these days." The Future ; But aren't;- those very men by their ingenuity and skill the ones who are cutting down the oppor-i oppor-i tunity to work, the number of jobs, ; and creating technological unem-; ployment? Ford shook his head emphatically. "So-callecT technological unemployment unem-ployment i is largely a myth," he said. "There ale more men at work building automobiles than - there, ever were carriage-makers. There are more typists writing letters today to-day than there were writing them by hand before the typewriter was invented. There are .more men at sea in steamships than there ever were under sail. Those inventions enabled more people to use transportation, trans-portation, more letters to be written, writ-ten, more commerce to be carried at sea. Eventually there is a net gain." Thus hopefully Henry Ford speaks at 70, after 30 years in the very vortex of industrial competition. competi-tion. They are the words of a man who has done much to change the world, and who has an evident eagerness to do still more. course we are now at the end of an era," he went. "But what is there about that to be afraid of? There is a place in the world for everybody. That's basic under any system. Why, the changes that are taking place make today even bet- . ter as a time of opportunity. Opportunity Op-portunity is always the same, except ex-cept that it becomes more numer-, oils. "This talk about the end of individualism in-dividualism is nonsense. You'll notice no-tice that only the strongest kind of individuals talk thai way. There will always be opportunity for the individualist. 'Some things are being destroy- j ed today, but there are some things that ought to be destroyed. The wrecker and the builder both have their place. Sometimes it takes a wrecker to make a place where the, builder can build. But there is a place for everybody in any, scheme of things we. might adopt." Money ' ' Many people are worried, I suggested, sug-gested, because of the world-wide confusion over money. "Suppose we come to an entirely new conception of money, and of banking? Something all new, without with-out any . connection with gold? What of it?" Ford's quiet voice became be-came more emphatic. "What of it? Nine-tenths of all business is carried car-ried on by check, anyway, and what is a check? The credit of somebody some-body who has produced something! I've no objections to letting anybody any-body who wants gold, have it. The rest of us can get along without it." It became clear that Ford regards re-gards money not as1 a solid something some-thing to be put away in a sock, touched, hoarded, handled, but as a sort of life-blood flowing through productive industry. I recalled how the net worth of the Ford Motor Co. had dropped more than $57,000,-000 $57,000,-000 last year. . Money Ford had had, and which was gone. I asked how it felt to lose $57,-000,000 $57,-000,000 in a year. His unusual view of money came immediately to the surface. !'We didi;'t lose a cent," he said quietly. "We just spent that much more than we took in. The money wasn't lost. It was spent, in wages, in material, in useful work. It's still in productive use somewhere in - the country. "As industry decentralizes, which we have already begun to do, people peo-ple will find a new way of combining com-bining native abilities brought from the country with new skills learned learn-ed in the cities. Then they won't go around demanding that somebody give them a job. They will make their own jobs. They will be free of the payroll habit. Just because a man is off the payroll, he needn't be out of a job."- , rf Wages With the government now seeking seek-ing to enforce as part of the "New Deal" minimum wage codes in all leading industries, any conversation conversa-tion with Ford must naturally turn to his own pioneering along minimum min-imum wage lines. Many have seen a prophetic touch in the "revolutionary" "revolu-tionary" stroke of a few years ago when Ford adopted a $5 minimum I wage in his plants, and later xais ed this to $6 and $7. But Ford disclaims the jole of prophet, and |