Mr. Ford and the New Age
436 T H E C O M M O N W E A L September 4, I929 when Lee freed him, but he remained to build forts and then to bury the dead. Bewildered and aging he saw the nation's heroes, "each in his...
...nature will be brought further under control...
...What he had quite mysteriously forgotten was the fact that his business and his fortune were pretty soundly established some years before the Eighteenth Amendment was passed, and that at the present time he is doing everything possible to put the products of Ford into the hands of the Irish, the English, the French, the Germans and the Russians, not all of whom are chiefly celebrated for sobriety...
...Everyone knows it is the dream of all high-minded inventors who, like Mr...
...Walker...
...New York's absent mayor," "Jimmie, the well-dressed mayor," and "the man who does nothing, gracefully" have been so often repeated that these glib appraisals and dismissals of Mr...
...We have no quarrel with the hours of work or the wages paid in the best of our factories, but we find it wrong that the machines which have made those hours and wages possible have put some two million citizens of this country out of work...
...We enjoy advantages of which our ancestors dreamed, and we spend most of our leisure puzzling out answers to problems with which they had no concern...
...If the new age which Mr...
...436 T H E C O M M O N W E A L September 4, I929 when Lee freed him, but he remained to build forts and then to bury the dead...
...that the coaches are drafty...
...Bewildered and aging he saw the nation's heroes, "each in his narrow cell forever laid," join the white headstone ranks, but he stayed on...
...but we do complain that crack trains are seldom on time...
...MR...
...Men, freed from the slavery of manual labor and from the capriciousness of the elements, will be able to live for the first time as men...
...Ford's machine development is not beyond the general comprehension...
...These and other queries have been widely commented upon, and it seems desirable that as many citizens as possible should gain some clear view of the matter...
...As we look back over the century of progress, we see what has made us all a little happier has been an expansion of the social consciousness...
...Walker has to his credit real achievements, notably his forcing state legislation as a necessary first step in subway building and other public improvements...
...Some people have even examined the record and found that Mr...
...The airplane annihilates time...
...He himself is responsible for the superficial estimation of his administration...
...Mr...
...The government of the United States will, it is true, enter into no official association with the proposed bank...
...In general it is also to be concerned with providing "additional facilities for the international movement of funds...
...We are less likely to attribute aberrations of conduct to an innate viciousness, more willing to seek, in sympathy, an understanding of the varying ways of life about us, not quite so sure that we ought to make over everyone else to conform to ourselves...
...To him, for instance, prohibition is progress...
...that one is not safe from cinders even in his berth...
...It is true that Mr...
...THE INTERNATIONAL BANK O ASPECT of the plan drawn up under the auspices of Mr...
...LaGuardia whose friends go so far in their zeal as to contrast his war record with that of his opponent, must have also discovered the same fact...
...We cannot complain because the journey from New York to Chicago takes two months...
...And they will so regard it...
...If the world is in some respects a better place than it was Ioo years ago, the improvement is hardly to be attributed to the industrial arts...
...According to the language of the Experts' Committee, this bank will affect German reparations by performing "as trustee for the creditor countries, the entire work of external administration of the plan, [and] shall act as the agency for the receipt and distribution of funds, and shall supervise and assist in the commercialization and mobilization of certain portions of the annuities...
...the way is now open for the appointment of a management qualified to deal with the situation in the most efficient manner possible ; and the need sensed long since for co6peration between the separate banking institutions of the world may be met, at least in a measure...
...Meanwhile we may well be grateful for the progress toward sanity that has obviously been made...
...Mr...
...This is already being repudiated by historians, and one may doubt if any large number of citizens in the former Allied countries really cling to it...
...Despite Neitzsche we are somewhat tenderer of the weak and the infirm than our great-grandfathers were...
...The most important question is this: will the institution wax so large that it will endanger other banking institutions and eventually "corner" a significant portion of the world's funds...
...ANALYSISof a public figure often runs afoul of the pat characterizations which have been fastened on him after consideration of his more Accepting spectacular activities or omissions...
...Under the Dawes plan, one of the important methods was the sequestration of funds by the agent-general until the normal ebb and flow of capital had been restored...
...Edison, are concerned with the burdens of mankind...
...That agency is the proposed "international bank...
...Jeremiah Smith, jr...
...Smith does not resemble the prophet whom his surname recalls...
...There can be no doubt that such a personnel will be able to cope with affairs in a competent manner...
...The new age about which we like to think is one informed by tolerance and friendship, in which humanity will not be denied the criminal, the errant and the weak, in which it will be actively recognized that men are created equal, that they are endowed with inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and in which the notion that progress lies in interfering with these rights will have become more extinct than any Dodo...
...As was said in a paper contributed to The Commonweal some months ago by Mr...
...Machines will become more and more human...
...Invariably, in their old age, they see visions of a future in which mechanics will have made enchanting all the circumstances of existence...
...We do not believe that there will be no problems...
...He has genuine potentialities, which it is disappointing that he has not realized...
...Edison, speaks of a future development "so vast" that it is "beyond our powers of comprehension...
...the bank paves the way for a definitive settlement of the whole problem, eliminating as it does all personal and political factors of the kind attached to the Reparations Commission...
...Monroe expressed the hope that the office of agent-general would "not be abolished unless some agency is set up to take over this important function...
...The case for the bank rests, therefore, upon several points...
...The sponsors of the idea refrained from drawing up a detailed constitution...
...Of course all students of machinery agree that eventually the new methods will create new jobs...
...A. E. Monroe, the difficulty underlying Germany's activity as a debtor nation is to effect "transfer of reparation moneys" so that the flow of funds into a high-interest-paying market will not be impeded...
...the radio annihilates space, plumbing annihilates dirt, and so on...
...We hold no particular brief for Mr...
...Young is either more interesting or more nebulous than the "international bank...
...He is relatively well satisfied (and we believe correctly) that the "international bank" embodies a remarkable and practical idea...
...Ford, of course, does not think with us here...
...Ford and Mr...
...We are more generally eager for peace, at least we are doing more to guarantee it...
...In practice, of course, this weapon was not frequently resorted to, because of the needs of a German industry in process of reconstruction...
...What we cannot foresee, however, are the special social and economic problems which will accompany the new age...
...Recently he declared that if the Eighteenth Amendment were repealed he could not continue making automobiles because, in the first place, his workmen would lose their efficiency, and in the second, he could not conscientiously put motor cars in the hands of a drinking people...
...The victory insisted upon it, however...
...Whether the men of this time possess electrical conveniences beyond our powers of comprehension will be a trifling circumstance...
...Germany cannot herself manage the reparations enterprise, owing to the difficulties involved in distributing payments so that the money market as a whole will not be unduly affected...
...It confronts it with the same policy which has governed American relations with other agencies of international co6peration developed since the war--a policy which favors private participation in such endeavors but takes cognizance of the public desire for isolation from Europe...
...the Craig F. Thompson's article, New Superficial York's Jimmie, in the Nation of August 28, is a case in point...
...Thus the bank is to become a kind of "international advisory council," similar in a few respects to the Council of the League of Nations itself, the immediate business of which will be the handling of German reparations...
...Either he was speaking carelessly or he was underestimating the popular imagination...
...Walker as an executive are finally defeating themselves...
...It is pointed out in reply that the amount of capital stock is relatively small, and that its available funds would ordinarily never equal those manipulated by any one of the large New York banks...
...A more serious objection grows out of the fact that the whole Young plan, like precedent arrangements, is based upon the assumption of Germany's full guilt...
...They merely agreed that the governors of central banks in the several countries interested would constitute the best board of directors, and that the stock for the institution should be subscribed by those banks...
...One must pause to applaud the action of the War Department, which is not too often swayed by sentiment, in lifting the ban against civilian burials at Arlington so that Uncle Jim might rest "at home...
...The future developments for which we most earnestly long are of another order...
...Then there will be comparatively little unemployment for five years or ten years--until methods and machines, are further improved-when every sixth man will lose his job again...
...But supposedly detached writers should not play the politician's game of disguising facts...
...True we may be unable to visualize the details of his development, but we know to what order they will belong...
...The plan also specifies a number of other restrictions designed to maintain freedom from competition...
...In these respects life is more agreeable, and when we see signs that such progress is not constant or uniform, when, here and there, we see law attempt to cancel, instead of protect, human liberties, even the invention of the electric light, the automobile, the radio and the airplane cannot console us for what we must regard as retrogression in matters more important than industry...
...As in the past, technical improvements will call for a new technique of living, and there will be suffering in the change...
...It is no secret...
...We may remark incidentally that one of the best discussions we have seen is that contributed to the August Quarterly Journal of Economics by Mr...
...Why are the several nations so eager to see it established in that place which each considers most advantageous ? In what ways will it solve the haughty puzzles which confront the financial world...
...Ford welcomes is to be September 4, 1929 THE COMMONWEAL 437 remarkable only for its marvels of machinery, we are well content to have escaped it...
...and while the machinery proposed might tend to establish the European status quo more firmly, eventual modification must be expected not from conferences of diplomats but from the natural order of political and economic developments...
...FORD AND THE NEW AGE R. HENRY FORD, commenting on the marvels of the present, made manifest to us through Mr...
...That is what his development would do...
...If one may summarize all the available information, it would seem that this part of the Young plan is distinctly worthy of approval...
Vol. 10 • September 1929 • No. 18
