The Expanded and Annotated My Life and Work

WHAT IS THE “INDUSTRIAL IDEA”?
The following section reemphasizes the principle that the purpose of 
business is not to “make money,” but rather to “express a serviceable 
idea” to customers who need it. The money then follows of itself. Ford 
then concludes that “the principles of service cannot fail to cure bad 

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Why Not Always Have Good Business?  •  123
business,” which is why it is possible to have good business even during 
bad times.
* * *
Take the industrial idea; what is it? The true industrial idea is not to 
make money. The industrial idea is to express a serviceable idea, to dupli-
cate a useful idea, by as many thousands as there are people who need it.
To produce, produce; to get a system that will reduce production to a fine 
art; to put production on such a basis as will provide means for expansion 
and the building of still more shops, the production of still more thousands of 
useful things—that is the real industrial idea. The negation of the industrial 
idea is the effort to make a profit out of speculation instead of out of work. 
There are short-sighted men who cannot see that business is bigger than any 
one man’s interests. Business is a process of give and take, live and let live. It 
is cooperation among many forces and interests. Whenever you find a man 
who believes that business is a river whose beneficial flow ought to stop as 
soon as it reaches him you find a man who thinks he can keep business alive 
by stopping its circulation. He would produce wealth by this stopping of the 
production of wealth.
The principles of service cannot fail to cure bad business. Which leads us 
into the practical application of the principles of service and finance.

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125
10
How Cheaply Can Things Be Made?
This book has already shown that a business’s objective should always be 
to lower its prices while increasing wages and profits. This chapter is espe-
cially important because it provides most of the principles with which to 
reconcile these seemingly contradictory goals. It begins, however, with the 
dangers inherent in speculation.