The Times Great Lives. Anna Temkin

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СКАЧАТЬ followed: but he nevertheless continued to be haunted by an early ideal of a machine which would do the heavy work of a farm. In the country he kept a machine shop of his own and worked in summer for a harvester company by repairing their portable farm engines. However, the promptings of his genius became too strong for him and eventually he decided to go back to Detroit where in 1890 he secured a post with the Detroit Edison Electric Company.

      Ford had realized in his earlier Detroit days that the public were more interested in road vehicles than in tractors; but scheme as he would the weight of a steam engine had thwarted him. Then in an English paper, the World of Science, he had read of a ‘silent gas engine’ which used gas for fuel. A little later he had been asked to repair one of these Otto engines. Convinced by his study of it that its principles were sound, he had in 1887 built his first gas engine, and had kept on building more. After he returned to Detroit, however, he worked in his spare time on his first ‘gasoline buggy’, and in 1893 it was ready for public trial, at which it attained a speed of 25 miles an hour. In 1896 he began work on a second car. In 1899 he resigned his position and organized a local company in which, holding one sixth of the stock, he became chief engineer. The company made cars on the model of his first one. Ford, whose governing idea was to provide automobiles for the masses, was soon in disagreement with his associates, who thought chiefly of profits, and in 1902 he resigned, ‘determined never again to put myself under orders’. At that time the public interest was centred on racing cars and Ford determined to enter the racing field. He proved astonishingly successful with some racing machines of his design and thus drew attention to his own car. In 1903, therefore, he was able to found the Ford Motor Company with 12 shareholders and a capital of $100,000, of which $20,000 was put into the company, the only cash investment in its long career which did not come from earnings. In 1908 Ford himself became the controlling owner and president, and in 1924 he and his son, Edsel, were to acquire all the stock. Ford had long had his own ideas about quantity production, and with control in his own hands was able to put them into effect. Sales began to rise and his products to enter foreign markets. His success in the Scottish Reliability Trials of 1905 had already helped him considerably in establishing himself in Great Britain. He also developed a new agency policy which included an agreement to maintain service stations. The car itself had, moreover, been steadily improving, and in 1908 and 1909 his famous model ‘T’ was put on sale. Standardization became thenceforward his settled policy, and the ‘assembly line’ was devised; but in this, as in all else, his ruling notion was service to the ordinary man.

      In 1915 Ford was able to turn his attention to his first love, the farm tractor. The European war seemed to him to impose a delay in placing it on the market: but victory depended upon British agriculture making good the food shortage which the German submarines were causing, and Ford sent his Fordson tractor to the rescue. He also rendered notable service by fulfilling his undertaking to build Eagle submarine chasers by the same methods he employed in regard to his cars. From war, however, he refused to profit. At this period indeed the magician in production stood in strange contrast to the unrealistic pacifist who as leader of a group of cranks went in the Peace Ship to Scandinavia in order to have the ‘boys out of the trenches by Christmas, never to return’. It was the foolishness of a child, but the intention was entirely sincere. Ford had his difficulties and in the slump of 1920 faced a serious financial situation: but he found his own way out and his vast undertaking went on from strength to strength. In 1924 its annual production reached the towering peak of 2,000,000 cars, trucks, and tractors. His achievements were, moreover, by no means in the material sphere alone. Of humble origin himself he had a deep feeling for his employees, and worked out rough and ready principles in regard to labour which he consistently applied. One was to pay the highest possible wages, and in this he was a true reformer; another to accept applicants for work without questions or references. Ex-prisoners were welcomed: but once a would-be employee was accepted he came under a rigid discipline which followed him even into his home. For years Ford would have nothing to do with unions. His passion for the perfect organization of production led him indeed into an effort to mechanize the human material he employed. It was, however, a deterrent to many independent-minded Americans and numbers of his workers were drawn from recent emigrants to the United States.

      In 1918 Ford, who was a supporter of President Wilson, had run unsuccessfully for the Senate and in 1923 there was some talk – it caused alarm among the professional politicians – that he would run for the Presidency, and a movement to support him was started; but before long he himself announced his refusal to stand against Mr Coolidge. In the next year his acquisition of the Dagenham site in addition to his Trafford Park and Cork works was announced. It was part of a post-war policy of expansion, and between 1931 and 1946 over 1,000,000 vehicles were manufactured at the Dagenham factory alone. He then went into civil aviation, opened his company’s private air service, and soon afterwards his all-metal monoplanes were on sale. It was the beginning of great developments. At this period the Press published many stories of his fabulous wealth, and his spectacular successes and good treatment of his workers were widely discussed, and Ford himself wrote three books concerning his own life’s work and ideals – My Life and Work, Today and Tomorrow, and Moving Forward. In 1927 ‘Model T’ was superseded and over 350,000 advance orders were received for his new car. In April, 1931, his 20,000,000th car came off the assembly line, but in that year also the company, suffering like all others from the depression, lost £10,000,000.

      The years immediately before the 1939–45 war saw a revival in the Ford fortunes and fresh expansions of plant, and as the war developed his company did excellent work; but the production of his great plant at Willow Run scarcely lived up to his earlier estimates of his own capacity as a producer. In 1943 Ford lost his only child and close associate, Edsel Bryant Ford, who for many years had played a leading part in all his undertakings, and, although nearly 80, himself resumed the presidency of his company. He resigned, for the second time, in 1945, and on his nomination his grandson, Henry Ford ii, was elected in his place. Henry Ford ii, who was born in September, 1917, had been released from the United States Navy in 1943 to direct war production at the Ford Motor Company, of which he was appointed executive vice-president in 1944.

      Mahatma Gandhi

      Apostle of independence

      30 January 1948

      Mr Gandhi, who was assassinated in Delhi yesterday afternoon, was the most influential figure India has produced for generations. He set out to promote national consciousness, and to defend the ancient Indian ideals of poverty and simplicity against the inroads of modern industrialism, though this part of his teaching was seldom heard in his later years. He judged all activities, whether of the State or of the individual, by their conformity to the doctrine of non-violence, which he held to be the panacea of all human ills, political, social, and economic. His day of triumph when British authority was voluntarily withdrawn was turned to profound sorrow, for communal strife and bloodshed, instead of ending as he had confidently hoped, were greatly intensified, and the two new Dominions of India and Pakistan were brought to the verge of war. To efforts to replace this fratricidal strife by Hindu, Muslim, and Sikh harmony and good will he devoted the last months of his long life.

      In all parts of the world many regarded the ‘Mahatma’ (‘great soul’) as both a great moral teacher and a great Indian patriot. Others held him to be the victim of a naive self-delusion which blinded him to the race-hatred, disorder, and bloodshed which his ‘non-violent’ campaigns against British authority invariably provoked. But few critics have questioned the sincerity of his repudiation of force. A whole-hearted pacifist, he believed he had a mission not to India only but to all the world. To his own co-religionists he was certainly a ‘saint’. His increasing asceticism, finally marked by a complete indifference to the comforts of life (though these were showered upon him by wealthy supporters), won him a reverence that bordered upon adoration; the popular mind long credited him with powers little short of miraculous; his gospel of the liberation of India from British rule early won the enthusiastic support of most of the younger school of Hindu politicians, and did much to wean them from the cult of anarchy; his defence of Hindu faith СКАЧАТЬ