The Expanded and Annotated My Life and Work

Natural Law, or the Constitution of the Universe
A thorough comprehension of the behavioral aspects of Ford’s univer-
sal code relies on what Ford (1922, p. 248) called “the Constitution of the 
Universe.”
So, while the people are indeed supreme over the written Constitution, 
the spiritual constitution is supreme over them. The French Revolutionists 
wrote constitutions too—every drunken writer among them tossed off 
a constitution. Where are they? All vanished. Why? Because they were 
not in harmony with the constitution of the universe. The power of the 
Constitution is not dependent on any Government, but on its inherent 
rightness and practicability.
This means that it is no more possible to legislate natural laws of human 
and economic behavior than it is to repeal the laws of thermodynamics. 
These laws are natural and right, and “the way life must go if it is to go at 
all” (Ford and Crowther, 1926, p. 273). The foundation of Ford’s business 
system therefore rested on impartial and inarguable laws of economic 
and behavioral science as well as technology.

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xxx  •  Henry Ford’s Introduction
Hindus call the Constitution of the Universe Dharma (the Right Way), 
while Chinese and Japanese call it Tao and Do (the Way). Hinduism 
warns that Dharma protects those who uphold it, and destroys those 
who go against it. Kipling’s “The Gods of the Copybook Headings” con-
veys exactly the same lesson, and Ford (1922, p. 230) echoes this prin-
ciple as follows:
There is still a higher law which gets all without exception—it is the moral 
law. You may violate man-made law, and no one be the wiser and, appar-
ently, no one the worse. You may violate economic law and still be carried 
through by the momentum of society’s economic soundness. But the moral 
law you can never evade. You cannot even break it! 
…The law stands there in its eternal integrity. You have not broken it, 
but you have broken something in yourself against it. In conflict with the 
moral law all that we can break is ourselves.
*
 
…Many men have escaped man-made law, they have escaped economic 
law—so far, at least (nobody need be too cocksure about this, for the end of 
the test has not come), but no man ever lived without receiving sentence in 
himself upon every violation of the moral law. It gets us all, for sentence or 
reward. High or low, none escape. It is godlike in its impartial operation. It 
cannot be postponed, nor fought to a higher court, nor bribed. …It has the 
final word, and its word is final.
This chapter adds explicitly, “We learn also that while men may decree 
social laws in conflict with natural laws, Nature vetoes those laws more 
ruthlessly than did the Czars.” It is simply not possible to legislate pros-
perity, enact it through collective labor bargaining, or achieve it through 
any means other than creation of genuine wealth. 
Ford (1922, p. 132) adds his observation of what is perhaps the big-
gest problem in America today: “Too many people believe that Success 
consists in getting your bread and butter by dickering or talking instead 
of producing.” There was and perhaps still is a definite tendency among 
business school students to specialize in finance, marketing, or indeed 
anything but manufacturing. Hayes, Wheelwright, and Clark (1988, 
p. 15) cited one business manager who actually said, “Oh, business would 
be fine if only we didn’t have to make the stuff.” 
Managers have avoided the need to make the stuff by outsourcing the 
jobs to China, but the United States is now borrowing billions of dollars 
* 
Covey, Stephen (1991, p. 94) quotes Cecil B. DeMille to emphasize this idea. “It is impossible for us 
to break the law. We can only break ourselves against the law.”

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Henry Ford’s Introduction  •  xxxi
from that country with which to buy, whether directly or indirectly, the 
products in question. Coburn (2012) warns explicitly that the resulting 
national debt is very likely to result in economic catastrophe. The only 
way to avoid this catastrophe is to accept and internalize Ford’s prin-
ciples, which are in turn expressions of impartial and inarguable laws of 
economics, science, and human behavior.