The Expanded and Annotated My Life and Work

ECONOMIC DEPRESSIONS
The following material is of particular interest because it shows that the 
Ford Motor Company was largely immune to economic downturns. Ford 
wrote explicitly that his company’s ability to ride out such conditions, or 
even prosper despite them, was “the inevitable result of the application of a 
principle, which can be applied to any business.” The principle in question 
appears to be the basic fact that there is always a market for inexpensive, 
high-quality goods or services, and it is up to the producer to supply them.
Ford then adds very emphatically that, if the company’s product is too 
expensive for people to afford, it is up to the company to reduce the pro-
duction cost and, therefore, the price.
* * *
The periodic depressions are more serious because they seem so vast as to be 
uncontrollable. Until the whole reorganization is brought about, they cannot 
be wholly controlled, but each man in business can easily do something for 
himself and while benefiting his own organization in a very material way, 

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118  •  The Expanded and Annotated My Life and Work
also help others. The Ford production has not reflected good times or bad 
times; it has kept right on regardless of conditions excepting from 1917 to 
1919, when the factory was turned over to war work. The year 1912–1913 was 
supposed to be a dull one; although now some call it “normal”; we all but 
doubled our sales; 1913–1914 was dull; we increased our sales by more than a 
third. The year 1920–1921 is supposed to have been one of the most depressed 
in history; we sold a million and a quarter cars, or about five times as many 
as in 1913–1914—the “normal year.” There is no particular secret in it. It is, 
as is everything else in our business, the inevitable result of the application of 
a principle which can be applied to any business.
We now have a minimum wage of six dollars a day paid without reser-
vation. The people are sufficiently used to high wages to make supervision 
unnecessary. The minimum wage is paid just as soon as a worker has quali-
fied in his production—which is a matter that depends upon his own desire 
to work. We have put our estimate of profits into the wage and are now pay-
ing higher wages than during the boom times after the war. But we are, as 
always, paying them on the basis of work. And that the men do work is evi-
denced by the fact that although six dollars a day is the minimum wage, 
about 60 per cent. of the workers receive above the minimum. The six dollars 
is not a flat but a minimum wage.