The Expanded and Annotated My Life and Work

THE ROLE OF THE NATIONAL FINANCIAL SYSTEM
The following material is not particularly important to a thorough 
understanding of Henry Ford’s business and management system, but it 
is noteworthy that Ford published it about seven years before the 1929 

---

162  •  The Expanded and Annotated My Life and Work
stock market crash. Fluctuation and, even worse, speculation on currency 
exchange rates leads to dysfunctional effects that are totally unrelated to 
the creation of actual wealth.
* * *
Now, let me say at once that my objection to bankers has nothing to do with 
personalities. I am not against bankers as such. We stand very much in need 
of thoughtful men, skilled in finance. The world cannot go on without bank-
ing facilities. We have to have money. We have to have credit. Otherwise 
the fruits of production could not be exchanged. We have to have capital. 
Without it there could be no production. But whether we have based our 
banking and our credit on the right foundation is quite another matter.
It is no part of my thought to attack our financial system. I am not in 
the position of one who has been beaten by the system and wants revenge. It 
does not make the least difference to me personally what bankers do because 
we have been able to manage our affairs without outside financial aid. My 
inquiry is prompted by no personal motive whatsoever. I only want to know 
whether the greatest good is being rendered to the greatest number.
No financial system is good which favors one class of producers over 
another. We want to discover whether it is not possible to take away power 
which is not based on wealth creation. Any sort of class legislation is perni-
cious. I think that the country’s production has become so changed in its 
methods that gold is not the best medium with which it may be measured, 
and that the gold standard as a control of credit gives, as it is now (and I 
believe inevitably) administered, class advantage. The ultimate check on 
credit is the amount of gold in the country, regardless of the amount of wealth 
in the country.
I am not prepared to dogmatize on the subject of money or credit. As 
far as money and credit are concerned, no one as yet knows enough about 
them to dogmatize. The whole question will have to be settled as all other 
questions of real importance have to be settled, and that is by cautious, 
well-founded experiment. And I am not inclined to go beyond cautious 
experiments. We have to proceed step by step and very carefully. The ques-
tion is not political, it is economic, and I am perfectly certain that help-
ing the people to think on the question is wholly advantageous. They will 
not act without adequate knowledge, and thus cause disaster, if a sincere 
effort is made to provide them with knowledge. The money question has 
first place in multitudes of minds of all degrees or power. But a glance at 
most of the cure-all systems shows how contradictory they are. The major-
ity of them make the assumption of honesty among mankind, to begin 
with, and that, of course, is a prime defect. Even our present system would 
work splendidly if all men were honest. As a matter of fact, the whole 

---

Money: Master or Servant?  •  163
money question is 95 per cent human nature; and your successful system 
must check human nature, not depend upon it.
The people are thinking about the money question; and if the money mas-
ters have any information which they think the people ought to have to pre-
vent them going astray, now is the time to give it. The days are fast slipping 
away when the fear of credit curtailment will avail, or when wordy slogans 
will affright. The people are naturally conservative. They are more conserva-
tive than the financiers. Those who believe that the people are so easily led 
that they would permit printing presses to run off money like milk tickets do 
not understand them. It is the innate conservation of the people that has kept 
our money good in spite of the fantastic tricks which the financiers play—and 
which they cover up with high technical terms.
The people are on the side of sound money. They are so unalterably on the 
side of sound money that it is a serious question how they would regard the 
system under which they live, if they once knew what the initiated can do 
with it.
The present money system is not going to be changed by speech-making or 
political sensationalism or economic experiment. It is going to change under 
the pressure of conditions—conditions that we cannot control and pressure 
that we cannot control. These conditions are now with us; that pressure is 
now upon us.
The people must be helped to think naturally about money. They must be 
told what it is, and what makes it money, and what are the possible tricks of 
the present system which put nations and peoples under control of the few.
Money, after all, is extremely simple. It is a part of our transportation 
system. It is a simple and direct method of conveying goods from one person 
to another. Money is in itself most admirable. It is essential. It is not intrinsi-
cally evil. It is one of the most useful devices in social life. And when it does 
what it was intended to do, it is all help and no hindrance.
But money should always be money. A foot is always twelve inches, but 
when is a dollar a dollar? If ton weights changed in the coal yard, and peck 
measures changed in the grocery, and yard sticks were to-day 42 inches and 
to-morrow 33 inches (by some occult process called “exchange”) the people 
would mighty soon remedy that. When a dollar is not always a dollar, when 
the 100-cent dollar becomes the 65-cent dollar, and then the 50-cent dollar, 
and then the 47-cent dollar, as the good old American gold and silver dollars 
did, what is the use of yelling about “cheap money,” “depreciated money”? A 
dollar that stays 100 cents is as necessary as a pound that stays 16 ounces and 
a yard that stays 36 inches.
The bankers who do straight banking should regard themselves as natu-
rally the first men to probe and understand our monetary system—instead 
of being content with the mastery of local banking-house methods; and if 

---

164  •  The Expanded and Annotated My Life and Work
they would deprive the gamblers in bank balances of the name of “banker” 
and oust them once for all from the place of influence which that name gives 
them, banking would be restored and established as the public service it 
ought to be, and the iniquities of the present monetary system and financial 
devices would be lifted from the shoulders of the people.
There is an “if” here, of course. But it is not insurmountable. Affairs 
are coming to a jam as it is, and if those who possess technical facility do 
not engage to remedy the case, those who lack that facility may attempt 
it. Nothing is more foolish than for any class to assume that progress is an 
attack upon it. Progress is only a call made upon it to lend its experience for 
the general advancement. It is only those who are unwise who will attempt to 
obstruct progress and thereby become its victims. All of us are here together, 
all of us must go forward together; it is perfectly silly for any man or class 
to take umbrage at the stirring of progress. If financiers feel that progress is 
only the restlessness of weak-minded persons, if they regard all suggestions 
of betterment as a personal slap, then they are taking the part which proves 
more than anything else could their unfitness to continue in their leadership.