The Expanded and Annotated My Life and Work

a man. Business may slacken tomorrow—he is still a man. He goes through 
the changes of circumstances, as he goes through the variations of tempera-
ture—still a man. If he can only get this thought reborn in him, it opens new 
wells and mines in his own being. There is no security outside of himself. 

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Why Charity?  •  201
There is no wealth outside of himself. The elimination of fear is the bringing 
in of security and supply.
Let every American become steeled against coddling. Americans ought to 
resent coddling. It is a drug. Stand up and stand out; let weaklings take charity.

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203
16
The Railroads
“Making a Railroad Pay” (Ford and Crowther, 1926, Chapter 17) goes into 
greater detail on how Ford turned the decrepit Detroit, Toledo, & Ironton 
(DTI) Railroad into a highly profitable operation. This reference (p. 199) 
cites the Ford principles of management:
  (1) The overriding goal is to get the job done. Job definitions, red tape, 
and departmental boundaries are irrelevant to this objective.
  (2) Pay high wages, and limit the work week to 48 hours.
  (3) Keep all equipment in good condition, which includes preventive 
maintenance and the utmost cleanliness. This principle contains the 
major elements of 5S-CANDO (Clearing up, Arranging, Neatness, 
Discipline, Ongoing Improvement. 5S stands for the corresponding 
Japanese words Seiri, Seitori, Seiso, Shitsuke, and Seiketsu.) Ford and 
Crowther (1926, p. 201) add explicitly that there were standard racks 
for tools and materials, which is another aspect of 5S: a place for 
everything, and everything in its place.
Ford adds to these principles the rule of the situation: Everybody takes 
direction from the needs of the job as opposed to a superior. There were 
also no restrictive job classifications that prevented anybody from doing 
work that he or she could do.
Some of this chapter’s lessons could easily be applicable to passen-
ger rail service in the United States. The airlines’ history of unreliable 
service has, during the past 15 years, included stranding passengers 
on runways in unsanitary conditions. Airlines are adding fees for lug-
gage, whose carriage was once part of the ticket price. This is a per-
fect opportunity for safer, cheaper, and more reliable trains to compete 
with them.

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204  •  The Expanded and Annotated My Life and Work
* * *
Nothing in this country furnishes a better example of how a business may be 
turned from its function of service than do the railroads. We have a railroad 
problem, and much learned thought and discussion have been devoted to the 
solution of that problem. Everyone is dissatisfied with the railways. The public 
is dissatisfied because both the passenger and freight rates are too high. The 
railroad employees are dissatisfied because they say their wages are too low 
and their hours too long. The owners of the railways are dissatisfied because 
it is claimed that no adequate return is realized upon the money invested. All 
of the contacts of a properly managed undertaking ought to be satisfactory. 
If the public, the employees, and the owners do not find themselves better off 
because of the undertaking, then there must be something very wrong indeed 
with the manner in which the undertaking is carried through.