The Expanded and Annotated My Life and Work

KEY SAFETY PRINCIPLES
The next section underscores Ford’s “can’t rather than don’t” safety prin-
ciple, which applies error proofing (poka yoke) to workplace safety. The 
achievement of safety comes not from warning signs that tell workers to 
be careful, but rather from job and equipment designs that make accidents 

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The Terror of the Machine  •  99
impossible. Note especially the investigation of every accident, and follow-
up with closed-loop corrective action to preclude similar accidents.
Ford cites the danger of wearing loose clothing or ties that may be caught 
in machinery, and this may be the origin of the practice of putting one’s tie 
inside one’s shirt when in a factory.
* * *
Machine safeguarding is a subject all of itself. We do not consider any 
machine—no matter how efficiently it may turn out its work—as a proper 
machine unless it is absolutely safe. We have no machines that we consider 
unsafe, but even at that a few accidents will happen. Every accident, no mat-
ter how trivial, is traced back by a skilled man employed solely for that pur-
pose, and a study is made of the machine to make that same accident in the 
future impossible.
When we put up the older buildings, we did not understand so much about 
ventilation as we do to-day. In all the later buildings, the supporting col-
umns are made hollow and through them the bad air is pumped out and the 
good air introduced. A nearly even temperature is kept everywhere the year 
round and, during daylight, there is nowhere the necessity for artificial light. 
Something like seven hundred men are detailed exclusively to keeping the 
shops clean, the windows washed, and all of the paint fresh. The dark corners 
which invite expectoration are painted white. One cannot have morale with-
out cleanliness. We tolerate makeshift cleanliness no more than makeshift 
methods.
No reason exists why factory work should be dangerous. If a man has 
worked too hard or through too long hours he gets into a mental state that 
invites accidents. Part of the work of preventing accidents is to avoid this 
mental state; part is to prevent carelessness, and part is to make machinery 
absolutely fool-proof. The principal causes of accidents as they are grouped 
by the experts are:
 
(1) Defective structures;
 
(2) defective machines;
 
(3) insufficient room;
 
(4) absence of safeguards;
 
(5) unclean conditions;
 
(6) bad lights;
 
(7) bad air;
 
(8) unsuitable clothing;
 
(9) carelessness;
 
(10) ignorance;
 
(11) mental condition;

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100  •  The Expanded and Annotated My Life and Work
 
(12) lack of cooperation.
The questions of defective structures, defective machinery, insufficient 
room, unclean conditions, bad light, bad air, the wrong mental condi-
tion, and the lack of cooperation are easily disposed of. None of the men 
work too hard. The wages settle nine tenths of the mental problems and 
construction gets rid of the others. We have then to guard against unsuit-
able clothing, carelessness, and ignorance, and to make everything we 
have fool-proof. This is more difficult where we have belts. In all of our 
new construction, each machine has its individual electric motor, but in 
the older construction we had to use belts. Every belt is guarded. Over 
the automatic conveyors are placed bridges so that no man has to cross 
at a dangerous point. Wherever there is a possibility of flying metal, the 
workman is required to wear goggles and the chances are further reduced 
by surrounding the machine with netting. Around hot furnaces we have 
railings. There is nowhere an open part of a machine in which clothing 
can be caught. All the aisles are kept clear. The starting switches of draw 
presses are protected by big red tags which have to be removed before the 
switch can be turned—this prevents the machine being started thought-
lessly. Workmen will wear unsuitable clothing—ties that may be caught 
in a pulley, flowing sleeves, and all manner of unsuitable articles. The 
bosses have to watch for that, and they catch most of the offenders. New 
machines are tested in every way before they are permitted to be installed. 
As a result we have practically no serious accidents.
Industry needs not exact a human toll.

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101
8
Wages
This chapter deserves particular attention because it lays out everything 
that anybody other than an attorney needs to know about industrial and 
labor relations. Ford’s principles are emphatically common sense, but 
costly and destructive labor disputes show that common sense is far too 
uncommon. The failure of Ford’s successors to conform to these principles 
led directly to the company’s decline, and also to serious and even violent 
conflicts with labor during the late 1930s.
Chapter 8 begins by discrediting thoroughly employers who seek 
to pay their workers as little as possible, and it also underscores the 
relationship between high wages and national prosperity. Ford and 
Crowther (1930, 53) state explicitly that it is a false economy to hire 
cheap, low-skill workers to run expensive manufacturing equipment. 
Ford and Crowther (1926, 119–121) add that cheap sailors will allow a 
ship to remain in port for one or two weeks, thus wasting the time of 
a very expensive asset. A well-paid, first-class crew, on the other hand, 
will keep the ship moving, so payment of higher wages actually saves 
money. This was the thought process behind the Ford Motor Company’s 
compensation policies.
* * *
There is nothing to running a business by custom—to saying: “I pay the going 
rate of wages.” The same man would not so easily say: “I have nothing bet-
ter or cheaper to sell than any one has.” No manufacturer in his right mind 
would contend that buying only the cheapest materials is the way to make 
certain of manufacturing the best article. Then why do we hear so much talk 
about the “liquidation of labour” and the benefits that will flow to the coun-
try from cutting wages—which means only the cutting of buying power and 
the curtailing of the home market? What good is industry if it be so unskill-
fully managed as not to return a living to everyone concerned? No question 

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102  •  The Expanded and Annotated My Life and Work
is more important than that of wages—most of the people of the country live 
on wages. The scale of their living—the rate of their wages—determines the 
prosperity of the country.
Throughout all the Ford industries we now have a minimum wage of six 
dollars a day; we used to have a minimum of five dollars; before that we 
paid whatever it was necessary to pay. It would be bad morals to go back 
to the old market rate of paying—but also it would be the worst sort of bad 
business.