Throughout all the Ford industries, we now have a minimum wage of $6 a day. We used to have a minimum of $5 a day. Before that, we paid whatever it was necessary to pay. It would be bad morals to go back on the old market rate of paying, but also it would be the worst sort of bad business.
It ought to be the employer’s ambition, as leader, to pay better wages than any similar line of business, and it ought to be the workman’s ambition to make this possible.
But if they see the fruits of hard work in their pay envelope, proof that harder work means higher pay, then also they begin to learn that they are part of the business, and that its success depends on them and their success depends on it.
In 1914 when the plan first went into effect, wet had 14,000 employees and it had been necessary to hire at the rate of about 53,000 a year in order to keep a constant workforce of 14,000. In 1915 we had to hire only 6,508 men and the majority of these new men were taken on because of the growth of the business.
If you expect a man to give his time and energy, fix his wages so that he will have no financial worries. It pays. Our profits, after paying good wages and a bonus, which bonus used to run around ten millions a year before we changed the system - show that paying good wages is the most profitable way of doing business.
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