The Expanded and Annotated My Life and Work

HOW TO LOSE THE LUDDITES
Ford now addresses the issue of Luddism, a problem that existed in the 
early days of the Industrial Revolution, if not before. The original Luddites 
were English workmen who destroyed textile machinery, which is why 
they were also called frame-breakers. They believed that mechanization 
would destroy their livelihoods because one person with a machine was 
as productive as 5 or 10 workers without one. Ford showed how, even if 
automation did displace workers, the same workers usually found bet-
ter jobs as a result. This applies, however, to the destruction of entire 
industries, such as manual shoemaking, carriage driving, and so on, as 
opposed to layoffs by the business that has made a job more productive.
This section also reinforces the economic and behavioral legs of Ford’s 
universal code. Consider, for example, Frank Gilbreth’s nonstooping scaf-
fold, which allowed a worker to lay 350 bricks per hour. A worker who had 
to bend over to pick up each brick could lay only 125 an hour, and his back 
was probably very sore when he finished his work day. Implementation 
of the nonstooping scaffold would seem to put almost two of every three 
bricklayers out of work, but the impartial laws of economics say that cus-
tomers will not pay people to bend over 125 times an hour if they can avoid 
it. Luddism, therefore, would have destroyed rather than saved the jobs of 
the 125 brick-per-hour people. On the other hand, adoption of the new 
method allowed the 350 brick-per-hour workers to charge lower prices per 
brick while they earned higher hourly wages. The lower prices increased 
the demand for construction and, thus, the need for more bricks. Ford and 
Crowther (1926, p. 158) classify the bricklayer who deliberately limits his 
productivity with the executive who pays workers as little as possible while 
he charges customers whatever the market will bear.
Emerson (1909, p. 19) elaborates as follows, and both management and 
labor should pay very close attention:

---

How Cheaply Can Things Be Made?  •  139
What could have resulted from an elimination of this waste?
 
1.  The product could have been cheapened.
 
2.  The men could have worked one-third the time and have accomplished 
as much.
 
3. One man could have done all the work and have earned three times 
as much.
The benefits should however be distributed in all three directions. Fewer 
men should work less hard, receive higher wages, and deliver a cheaper 
product.
Emerson (1909, pp. 166–171) also addresses the issue of worker displace-
ment, and cites examples of how efficiency improvements led to long-range 
growth in wages and employment.
Ford and Crowther (1930, p. 14) also address the fallacious idea that it 
is beneficial to have a lot of low-wage jobs instead of a few high-wage jobs. 
Two hundred workers who received $2 a day (in the money of 1930) could 
have bought little more than a subsistence existence, but 50 workers who 
got $8 a day could use their spending power to stimulate the economy 
and create more jobs. Sorensen (1956, p. 146) adds explicitly that this was 
the fundamental defect in Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. The New Deal 
did not give unemployed people significant spending power, but the taxes 
necessary to support it diverted money from consumption and produc-
tion that, in turn, would have created more jobs. This entire discussion is 
simply another example of Ford’s universal code, or Kipling’s Gods of the 
Copybook Headings, in action.
* * *
But how about production? If every necessary of life were produced so cheaply 
and in such quantities, would not the world shortly be surfeited with goods? 
Will there not come a point when, regardless of price, people simply will not 
want anything more than what they already have? And if in the process of 
manufacturing fewer and fewer men are used, what is going to become of 
these men—how are they going to find jobs and live?
Take the second point first. We mentioned many machines and many 
methods that displaced great numbers of men and then someone asks: “Yes, 
that is a very fine idea from the standpoint of the proprietor, but how about 
these poor fellows whose jobs are taken away from them?”
The question is entirely reasonable, but it is a little curious that it should 
be asked. For when were men ever really put out of work by the bettering of 
industrial processes? The stage-coach drivers lost their jobs with the coming 

---

140  •  The Expanded and Annotated My Life and Work
of the railways. Should we have prohibited the railways and kept the stage-
coach drivers? Were there more men working with the stage-coaches than 
are working on the railways? Should we have prevented the taxicab because 
its coming took the bread out of the mouths of the horse-cab drivers? How 
does the number of taxicabs compare with the number of horse-cabs when 
the latter were in their prime? The coming of shoe machinery closed most 
of the shops of those who made shoes by hand. When shoes were made by 
hand, only the very well-to-do could own more than a single pair of shoes, 
and most working people went barefooted in summer. Now, hardly any one 
has only one pair of shoes, and shoe making is a great industry. No, every 
time you can so arrange that one man will do the work of two, you so add to 
the wealth of the country that there will be a new and better job for the man 
who is displaced. If whole industries changed overnight, then disposing of the 
surplus men would be a problem, but these changes do not occur as rapidly 
as that. They come gradually. In our own experience a new place always 
opens for a man as soon as better processes have taken his old job. And what 
happens in my shops happens everywhere in industry. There are many times 
more men to-day employed in the steel industries than there were in the days 
when every operation was by hand. It has to be so. It always is so and always 
will be so. And if any man cannot see it, it is because he will not look beyond 
his own nose.