If cities could select their weather as man selects his necktie to match his socks, Dearborn would have undoubtedly selected, to match its two-storied brick houses, an inclement day with a greyish-yellow stripe of rain. The day was awful. A cold mist was in the air, covering with its repulsive sheen the roofs and sides of automobiles and the low buildings on Michigan Avenue, which connects Dearborn with Detroit. Through the rain could be seen drug-store signs lighted since early morning.
"On just such a day," said Mr. Adams, turning to us, "a certain gentleman, as Dickens tells us, put on his top-hat as usual and departed for his office. I must tell you that the business affairs of this gentleman were in excellent order. He had a beautiful wife, blue-eyed children, and he was making a lot of money. That was evident at least from the fact that he wore a top-hat. Not every man in England goes to work in a silk hat. Yet suddenly, one day, while passing the bridge across the Thames, the gentleman silently jumped into the water and drowned. Gentlemen, you must understand this: A happy man on the way to his office throws himself into the water! A gentleman in a top-hat flings himself into the Thames! Don't you think that in Dearborn one is also inclined to put on his top-hat ?"
The street came to an end. From the height of the embankment could be seen a sombre industrial vista. The signal bells of engines coursing between shops rang out. A large steamship glided down the canal, whistling, going toward the middle of the creek. In brief, here we saw everything that distinguishes an industrial district from a kindergarten— a lot of smoke, steam, clatter, few smiles and little happy chatter. Here one sensed a special kind of seriousness, as in a theatre of military action in the region of the front-line trenches. Somewhere near by people participate in something significant—the manufacture of automobiles.
While Mr. Adams and Mr. Grozny, who was not at all a mister, but was Comrade Grozny, representative of our Avtostroi in Dearborn, were getting permission for us to visit the factory we stood in a hall of the information bureau and examined the new model Ford on the hardwood floor. In the hall it seemed larger than on the street. It seemed incredible that Ford's factories produce each day seven thousand such complicated and beautiful machines.
Although it was the end of 1935, all of Dearborn and Detroit were full of the advertising samples of the 1936 models. They stood in hotel vestibules, in the stores of the dealers, even in the show windows of drugstores and confectionery shops, among cakes, syringes, and cigar-boxes. Automobile wheels turned on thick Firestone tires. Mr. Henry Ford made no mystery of his production. He displayed it wherever he could. In his laboratory, however, stood the one sacred object—Model 1938, concerning which the most contradictory rumours were afloat.
In that model the motor was presumably located at the rear, there was presumably no radiator, the coupe presumably was twice as large, and, in brief, all of it was a thousand and one automobile nights. For the time being no one was to see it, certainly not the General Motors people who, a few miles from Ford, manufacture Chevrolets, machines of the Ford class.
Our permit was granted very quickly. The management placed at our disposal a Lincoln for guests, in which there was even a bear rug, evidently because of the desire to provide the guests from the distant North with surroundings as close and native to them as possible. With the Lincoln were a chauffeur and a guide. We drove into the factory yard.
Along a glass-covered gallery which connected two buildings, in the yellowish light of day, slowly floated automobile parts hung on conveyor chains. This slow, stubborn, irrevocable movement could be seen everywhere. Everywhere, overhead, on the level of the shoulder or almost at the level of the floor rode automobile parts—stamped sides of hoods, radiators, wheels, motor blocks; sand forms in which the liquid metal still shone; brass horns, lights, fenders, steering wheels, gears. They either went up or came down or turned the corner. At times they came out into the fresh air and moved under a little wall, swaying on their hooks like the bodies of sheep. Millions of objects floated simultaneously. It took one's breath away to behold this spectacle.
This was no factory; this was a river, sure of itself, a trifle deliberate, which increases the rate of its flow as it reaches its mouth. It flowed day and night, in inclement weather and on sunny days. Millions of parts were carried by this river to one point, where the miracle happened— the hatching of an automobile.
On the chief Ford conveyor the work proceeds with feverish speed. We were amazed by the gloomy and worried appearance of people busy at a conveyor. Their work absorbed them completely. There was not even time enough to raise their heads. But it was not only a matter of physical fatigue. These people seemed to be depressed in spirit, seemed to be overcome at the conveyor with a state of daily madness that lasts for six hours, after which, upon returning home, they must rest for a long time, get well, recuperate, in order on the next day again to grow mad for a while.
The work is so divided here that the men on the conveyors don't know how to do anything, have no professions, no trades. Workers here do not manage the machines; they merely tend them. Therefore, one does not see here that sense of self-esteem which is found among trained American workers with a trade. The Ford employee receives a good wage. He himself represents no technical value. Any minute he can be dismissed, replaced by somebody else. In twenty-two minutes his successor will learn to manufacture automobiles. Working for Ford gives a man a livelihood, but does not raise his qualifications and does not assure his future. That is why Americans try not to work for Ford; and when they do, they go as mechanics or as clerks. The men who work for Ford are Mexicans, Poles, Czechs, Italians, Negroes.
The conveyor moves. One after the other excellent cheap machines roll off. They drive through the wide gates into the world, into the prairie, into freedom. The people who have made them remain behind, in confinement. Here is an astounding picture of the triumph of technique and the misfortune of man.
Down the conveyor came automobiles of all colours—black, Washington blue, green, gun-metal (so they are officially designated), even, oh, oh, of a sedate mouse colour. There was one bright orange hood, apparently a future taxi.
Through the commotion of assembly and the clatter of automatic bolt wrenches, only one man maintained a grandiose calm. He was the painter whose duty it was to draw with his thin brush a coloured line around the hood. He had no accessories, not even a maulstick, to hold up his arm. On his left arm hung little jars with various pigments. He was in no hurry. He even had the time to regard his work with an appraising glance. Around the mouse-coloured automobiles he passed a green stripe. Around the orange taxi he passed a blue stripe. He was a free artist, the only man in a Ford factory who has no relation to technique, a kind of Nuremberg Meistersinger, a freedom-loving master of the paint shop. The Ford laboratory must have discovered that it paid best to have these stripes drawn in this medieval way.
A bell rang out. The conveyor stopped. Little automobile trains with lunch for the workers drove into the building. Without washing their hands, the workers walked up to the little wagons, bought their sandwiches, tomato juice, oranges, and sat down on the floor.
Mr. Adams suddenly came to life. " Gentlemen, do you know why in Mr. Ford's plant the workers have their lunch on the cement floor? This is very, very interesting! It is of no moment to Mr. Ford how his workers lunch. He knows that the conveyor will compel them to do their work irrespective of where they eat, on the floor, at a table, or don't eat at all. Take, for example, General Electric. It would be foolish to think, gentlemen, that the management of General Electric loves its workers more than Mr. Ford does; maybe, even less. Nevertheless, it has excellent dining-rooms for its workers. The point is that at General Electric are employed qualified and trained workers, and one must take their wishes into consideration. They might go away to another factory. It is a purely American characteristic not to do any more than necessary. Don't doubt for a moment that Mr. Ford regards himself as a friend of the workers; but he will not spend one extra penny on them."