The problem of distributing staff within the wage rates scale should be regularly given a new solution depending on the enterprise’s technical and technological development, the relationship between employees of different categories and the attitude that the «gold fund» workers of the enterprise (managers, specialists and workers important in the future perspective) have towards the business. These issues belong to coordinating the enterprise’s financial and personnel policy and lie beyond the scope of this work.

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Having made this digression let us go back to the book by H. Ford:

«For the day’s work is a great thing — a very great thing! It is at the very foundation of the world; it is the basis of our self-respect. And the employer ought constantly to put in a harder day’s work than any of his men (put in bold type by the authors)[98]. The employer who is seriously trying to do his duty in the world must be a hard worker (put in bold type by the authors). He cannot say, “I have so many thousand men working for me.” <only a slave-owner dares to say so> The fact of the matter is that so many thousand men have him working for them — and the better they work the busier they keep him disposing of their products. (Separate paragraph is provided by the authors)[99]

Wages and salaries are in fixed amounts, and this must be so, in order to have a basis to figure on. Wages and salaries are a sort of profit-sharing fixed in advance, but it often happens that when the business of the year is closed, it is discovered that more can be paid. And then more ought to be paid. When we are all in the business working together, we all ought to have some share in the profits — by way of a good wage, or salary, or added compensation (put in bold type by the authors). And that is beginning now quite generally to be recognized.

There is now a definite demand that the human side of business be elevated to a position of equal importance with the material side. And that is going to come about (put in bold type by the authors). It is just a question whether it is going to be brought about wisely — in a way that will conserve the material side which now sustains us, or unwisely and in such a way as shall take from us all the benefit of the work of the past years. Business represents our national livelihood, it reflects our economic progress[100], and gives us our place among other nations. We do not want to jeopardize that. What we want is a better recognition of the human element in business. And surely it can be achieved without dislocation, without loss to any one, indeed with an increase of benefit to every human being. And the secret of it all is in recognition of human partnership (put in bold type by the authors). Until each man is absolutely sufficient unto himself, needing the services of no oilier human being in any capacity whatever, we shall never get beyond the need of partnership.

Such arc the fundamental truths of wages. They are partnership distributions <and the second aspect of this issue consists in the price level on products directly consumed by people that have formed in the macroeconomic system>.

The wage carries all the worker’s obligations outside the shop; it carries all that is necessary in the way of service and management inside the shop. The day’s productive work is the most valuable mine of wealth that has ever been opened. Certainly it ought to bear not less than all the worker’s outside obligations. And certainly it ought to be made to take care of the worker’s sunset days when labor is no longer possible to him — and should be no longer necessary. And if it is made to do even these, industry will have to be adjusted to a schedule of production, distribution, and reward, which will stop the leaks into the pockets of men who do not assist in production. In order to create a system which shall be as independent of the good-will of benevolent employers as of the ill-will of selfish ones (put in bold type by the authors)[101], we shall have to find a basis in the actual facts of life itself.

(…)

If only the man himself were concerned, the cost of his maintenance and the profit he ought to have would be a simple matter. But he is not just an individual. He is a citizen, contributing to the welfare of the nation. He is a householder. He is perhaps a father with children who must be reared to usefulness on what he is able to earn. We must reckon with all these facts. How are you going to figure the contribution of the home to the day’s work? You pay the man for his work, but how much does that work owe to his home? How much to his position as a citizen? How much to his position as a father? The man does the work in the shop, but his wife does the work in the home. The shop must pay them both. On what system of figuring is the home going to find its place on the cost sheets of the day’s work? Is the man’s own livelihood to be regarded as the “cost”? And is his ability to have a home and family the “profit”? Is the profit on a day’s work to be computed on a cash basis only, measured by the amount a man has left over after his own and his family’s wants are all supplied? Or are all these relationships to be considered strictly under head of cost, and the profit to be computed entirely outside of them? That is, after having supported himself and family, clothed them, housed them, educated them, given them the privileges incident to their standard of living, ought there to be provision made for still something more in the way of savings profit? And are all properly chargeable to the day’s work? I think they are (put in bold type by the authors). Otherwise, we have the hideous prospect of little children and their mothers being forced out to work[102].

(…)

County-wide high wages <in comparison with the given price of products which are consumed by people> level spell country-wide prosperity, provided, however, the higher wages are paid for higher production.

(…)

In this first plan the standards insisted upon were not petty — although sometimes they may have been administered in a petty fashion. We had about fifty investigators in the Social Department; the standard of common sense among them was very high indeed, but it is impossible to assemble fifty men equally endowed with common sense. They erred at times — one always hears about the errors. It was expected that in order to receive the bonus married men should live with and take proper care of their families. We had to break up the evil custom among many of the foreign workers of taking in boarders — of regarding their homes as something to make money out of rather than as a place to live in. Boys under eighteen received a bonus if they supported the next of kin. Single men who lived wholesomely shared (put in bold type by the authors: in essence H. Ford financed the moral and healthy way of living). The best evidence that the plan was essentially beneficial is the record. When the plan went into effect, 60 per cent. of the workers immediately qualified to share; at the end of six months 78 per cent. were sharing, and at the end of one year 87 per cent. Within a year and one half only a fraction of one per cent failed to share» (Ch. 8. “Wages”).

In other words, Ford introduced an 8-hour working day and secured payment by the hour at his plants and railway. He kept perfecting his business drawing on this organizational scheme and paid out bonuses to the whole staff out of the profits gained from those improvements. His system of bonus payments consisted in financially encouraging (remunerating) conscientious work and beneficial initiative. And this system was aimed at ensuring the collective’s welfare and satisfying the society’s demand for the manufactured products, not on satisfying the insatiable greed of investors who constitute the minority in the society. H. Ford says the following on that subject: