The Expanded and Annotated My Life and Work

The Right Leader Is the One Who Can Do the Job
Recall from Chapter 6, the statement (MacPherson, 2012) that every mem-
ber of the U.S. Special Forces is expected to exercise leadership in accor-
dance with the situation at hand. If an enlisted man is a subject matter 
expert in a specific situation, officers and noncommissioned officers will 
follow that man’s directions. The directions are not the orders of a supe-
rior to a subordinate, but rather the requirements of the job for which the 
entire team is ultimately responsible.
* * *
And taking all this out of the shop and into the broader fields, it is not neces-
sary for the rich to love the poor or the poor to love the rich. It is not neces-
sary for the employer to love the employee or for the employee to love the 
employer. What is necessary is that each should try to do justice to the other 
according to his deserts. That is real democracy and not the question of who 
ought to own the bricks and the mortar and the furnaces and the mills. And 
democracy has nothing to do with the question, “Who ought to be boss?”
That is very much like asking: “Who ought to be the tenor in the quartet?” 
Obviously, the man who can sing tenor. You could not have deposed Caruso. 
Suppose some theory of musical democracy had consigned Caruso to the 
musical proletariat. Would that have reared another tenor to take his place? 
Or would Caruso’s gifts have still remained his own?

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19
What We May Expect
This chapter begins with a clear and easily understandable explanation of 
the barriers to universal prosperity, and then reiterates Ford’s common 
sense principles for its achievement. It also introduces the concept of sus-
tainable manufacturing, which Ford practiced long before anybody heard 
of it.
* * *
We are—unless I do not read the signs aright—in the midst of a change. It is 
going on all about us, slowly and scarcely observed, but with a firm surety. 
We are gradually learning to relate cause and effect. A great deal of that 
which we call disturbance—a great deal of the upset in what have seemed to 
be established institutions—is really but the surface indication of something 
approaching a regeneration. The public point of view is changing, and we 
really need only a somewhat different point of view to make the very bad sys-
tem of the past into a very good system of the future. We are displacing that 
peculiar virtue which used to be admired as hard-headedness, and which 
was really only wooden-headedness, with intelligence, and also we are get-
ting rid of mushy sentimentalism. The first confused hardness with progress; 
the second confused softness with progress. We are getting a better view of 
the realities and are beginning to know that we have already in the world all 
things needful for the fullest kind of a life and that we shall use them better 
once we learn what they are and what they mean.
Whatever is wrong—and we all know that much is wrong—can be righted 
by a clear definition of the wrongness. We have been looking so much at one 
another, at what one has and another lacks, that we have made a personal 
affair out of something that is too big for personalities. To be sure, human 
nature enters largely into our economic problems. Selfishness exists, and 
doubtless it colours all the competitive activities of life. If selfishness were the 
characteristic of any one class it might be easily dealt with, but it is in human 
fibre everywhere. And greed exists. And envy exists. And jealousy exists.

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240  •  The Expanded and Annotated My Life and Work
But as the struggle for mere existence grows less—and it is less than it used 
to be, although the sense of uncertainty may have increased—we have an 
opportunity to release some of the finer motives. We think less of the frills 
of civilization as we grow used to them. Progress, as the world has thus far 
known it, is accompanied by a great increase in the things of life. There is 
more gear, more wrought material, in the average American backyard than 
in the whole domain of an African king. The average American boy has more 
paraphernalia around him than a whole Eskimo community. The utensils of 
kitchen, dining room, bedroom, and coal cellar make a list that would have 
staggered the most luxurious potentate of five hundred years ago. The increase 
in the impedimenta of life only marks a stage. We are like the Indian [Native 
American] who comes into town with all his money and buys everything he 
sees. There is no adequate realization of the large proportion of the labour 
and material of industry that is used in furnishing the world with its trum-
pery and trinkets, which are made only to be sold, and are bought merely to 
be owned—that perform no service in the world and are at last mere rubbish 
as at first they were mere waste. Humanity is advancing out of its trinket-
making stage, and industry is coming down to meet the world’s needs, and 
thus we may expect further advancement toward that life which many now 
see, but which the present “good enough” stage hinders our attaining.
And we are growing out of this worship of material possessions. It is no 
longer a distinction to be rich. As a matter of fact, to be rich is no longer a 
common ambition. People do not care for money as money, as they once did. 
Certainly they do not stand in awe of it, nor of him who possesses it. What we 
accumulate by way of useless surplus does us no honour.
It takes only a moment’s thought to see that as far as individual personal 
advantage is concerned, vast accumulations of money mean nothing. A 
human being is a human being and is nourished by the same amount and 
quality of food, is warmed by the same weight of clothing, whether he be rich 
or poor. And no one can inhabit more than one room at a time.
But if one has visions of service, if one has vast plans which no ordinary 
resources could possibly realize, if one has a life ambition to make the indus-
trial desert bloom like the rose, and the work-a-day life suddenly blossom 
into fresh and enthusiastic human motives of higher character and efficiency, 
then one sees in large sums of money what the farmer sees in his seed corn—
the beginning of new and richer harvests whose benefits can no more be self-
ishly confined than can the sun’s rays.
There are two fools in this world. One is the millionaire who thinks that by 
hoarding money he can somehow accumulate real power, and the other is the 
penniless reformer who thinks that if only he can take the money from one 
class and give it to another, all the world’s ills will be cured. They are both on 
the wrong track. They might as well try to corner all the checkers or all the 

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What We May Expect  •  241
dominoes of the world under the delusion that they are thereby cornering 
great quantities of skill. Some of the most successful money-makers of our 
times have never added one pennyworth to the wealth of men. Does a card 
player add to the wealth of the world?