ing his most stupendous plants within sight of his own home and within sight of his birth-place.

One day when I visited this great plant I saw four great piles of raw material which had just been dumped from Mr. Ford's own ships. Recently he has dredged the River Rouge and has made it deep enough so that his own ships may come up to within a few hundred feet of his River Rouge plant.

It is a striking cycle that he works out in this plant. From his own coal fields in West Virginia and Kentucky, he hauls his own coal, over his own railroad, in his own specially made coal-cars, and in his own ships, and dumps his own coal in great piles back of the blast furnace at the River Rouge.

Second: he takes his own cars, and his own ships and hauls his own iron ore from his own mines up at Iron Mountain, Mich., and he dumps these huge piles of iron ore back of the blast furnace at the River Rouge.

Third: he cuts his own timber from his own forests up in Michigan; hauls it in his own ships and over his own roads, in his own cars and dumps it in great stacks back of the blast furnace at the River Rouge.

I stood on the top of the blast furnace, one winter's day with Edwin Markham, the great American poet, and to our back we saw four great piles of raw material: iron ore, limestone, coal, and lumber.

Turning around we could see, about a half a mile away finished tractors running out of the factory on their own wheels and under their own power. From where we stood we could see the miracle under our

very eyes.

They dumped that raw material into the blast fur nace. It was melted into flowing metal by direct process. That flowing metal was run in streams into the foundry which was just below us and in front of us. There it was moulded into engines. These, in turn were shot into the tractor factory and within fortyeight hours those four piles of raw material were converted into tractors by the thousands.

"Talk about the miracle of the loaves and fishes, said Mr. Markham, the poet, "this is more of a miracle than that. This is the great industrial miracle of all time going on before our very eyes this day as we look down upon it."

To give my readers some idea of the comparative size of the new River Rouge plant with the original Highland Park plant, which most visitors see when they come to Detroit, I will say that there is one great electric dynamo in the River Rouge plant which will generate more power than all of the Highland Park plant put together, and, there are to be eight or ten of these dynamos in the River Rouge plant when it is completed.

Mr. Ford has been a leader, not only in industrial efficiency, but he has also been a leader in industrial justice.

It was he who startled the world, first of all, by announcing a Profit-Sharing Plan in 1914 which meant a distribution of from ten to thirty million dollars annually among his employees, whom he calls his "pardners" and will have none other term applied to them. Mr. Ford is a great Democratic industrial brother at heart. He has lead the world in industrial justice.

"People before profits" is the motto of his organization. He has never announced himself in favor of "Industrial Democracy" but he is not far from this social millenium when he looks upon his workers as his "pardners" and when he insists upon their receiving a fair share of the income of the company.

His industrial bank system is another expression of industrial justice which has interested the industrial world. He allows his employees to deposit a certain percentage of their wages on every pay day in a bank. They are given certificates of deposit. They have always received at least ten percent on their deposits and sometimes as high as fifteen.

His minimum wage scale of five dollars a day when it was announced was considered revolutionary but to-day many of the great industrial plants have fol

lowed his leadership. Nobody doubts that Henry Ford has lifted the standards of living 90 percent since he entered the industrial world with his humane ideas about a fair and a living wage. The rest of the world has had to follow.

A good illustration of this is his recent purchase of a glass plant in Pittsburgh.

Immediately upon purchasing this plant he announced that Ford wages would go into operation at once. There was consternation in industrial circles in the Pittsburgh area, especially in the glass manufacturing end of it. This meant a sudden leap upward of ninety percent in the wage scale over what was being paid at that time. It took the glass industry in the Pittsburgh area a long time to adjust itself to this living wage scale.

Mr. Ford said to me at that time: "I am merely putting the regular Ford wages into operation. I have no intention of doing anything revolutionary. I am not trying to create a sensation."

"Start where you stand!" is one of Mr. Ford's famous sentences.

He was talking to an ex-convict when he said it. The convict had come to him for work and was speaking of his past, and of how he wanted to make good. Mr. Ford was not interested in his past. He was only interested in the man's future and he said: "I don't

care about your past. I don't even care about your criminal record. Start where you stand!"

That is the spirit of the Ford industry.

There is a place for two thousand tuberculars, with well lighted, well ventilated rooms and a special menu. There is a place for the blind and they receive as much wages as a man who can see. There is a place for men who have lost their arms, their legs, and their hands. There is a place for the widow woman who has to stay at home and care for her children. Work is carried to her home so that she can work there and not have to go to the factories.

There is a place for the halt, the maimed, the blind, the ex-convict, the sick, and the widow.

I have said, and I say again, that Mr. Ford is doing more to carry Christian principles into industry than any other large industrial executive in America. He is doing all that the Church Federation in the social creed of the churches asks for except industrial democracy and he is going a long way in that direction,

"A chance but no charity," is another one of his mottoes which is deeply Christian and which is greatly misunderstood. He does not give much money as an outright gift; but he believes in giving every man a chance to work out his own salvation.

"What are you going to do with your money, Mr. Ford?" I asked him, at the suggestion of the late Mr. Siddal of the American Magazine.