The Expanded and Annotated My Life and Work

Borrowing Cures the Symptoms But Not the Disease
Ford now reiterates his position that borrowing may fix the symptoms 
of an underlying problem, but does not correct the problem itself. Ford 
proved on the other hand that attention to the job, and particularly any 
wasteful aspects of the job, will address most monetary concerns.
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We could have borrowed $40,000,000—more had we wanted to. Suppose we 
had borrowed, what would have happened? Should we have been better fit-
ted to go on with our business? Or worse fitted? If we had borrowed we should 
not have been under the necessity of finding methods to cheapen production. 
Had we been able to obtain the money at 6 per cent flat—and we should 
in commissions and the like have had to pay more than that—the interest 
charge alone on a yearly production of 500,000 cars would have amounted 
to about four dollars a car. Therefore we should now be without the benefit 

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Money: Master or Servant?  •  161
of better production and loaded with a heavy debt. Our cars would probably 
cost about one hundred dollars more than they do; hence we should have a 
smaller production, for we could not have so many buyers; we should employ 
fewer men, and in short, should not be able to serve to the utmost. You will 
note that the financiers proposed to cure by lending money and not by bet-
tering methods. They did not suggest putting in an engineer; they wanted to 
put in a treasurer.
And that is the danger of having bankers in business. They think solely in 
terms of money. They think of a factory as making money, not goods. They 
want to watch the money, not the efficiency of production. They cannot com-
prehend that a business never stands still, it must go forward or go back. 
They regard a reduction in prices as a throwing away of profit instead of as a 
building of business.
Bankers play far too great a part in the conduct of industry. Most business 
men will privately admit that fact. They will seldom publicly admit it because 
they are afraid of their bankers. It required less skill to make a fortune deal-
ing in money than dealing in production. The average successful banker is 
by no means so intelligent and resourceful a man as is the average successful 
business man. Yet the banker through his control of credit practically con-
trols the average business man.
There has been a great reaching out by bankers in the last fifteen or twenty 
years—and especially since the war—and the Federal Reserve System for a 
time put into their hands an almost limitless supply of credit. The banker 
is, as I have noted, by training and because of his position, totally unsuited 
to the conduct of industry. If, therefore, the controllers of credit have lately 
acquired this very large power, is it not to be taken as a sign that there is 
something wrong with the financial system that gives to finance instead of to 
service the predominant power in industry? It was not the industrial acumen 
of the bankers that brought them into the management of industry. Everyone 
will admit that. They were pushed there, willy-nilly, by the system itself. 
Therefore, I personally want to discover whether we are operating under the 
best financial system.