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Ford, Henry, 1863-1947

"My Life and Work"

It turned out at the time of
the inquiry that there were then 7,882 different jobs in the factory. Of
these, 949 were classified as heavy work requiring strong, able-bodied,
and practically physically perfect men; 3,338 required men of ordinary
physical development and strength. The remaining 3,595 jobs were
disclosed as requiring no physical exertion and could be performed by
the slightest, weakest sort of men. In fact, most of them could be
satisfactorily filled by women or older children. The lightest jobs were
again classified to discover how many of them required the use of full
faculties, and we found that 670 could be filled by legless men, 2,637
by one-legged men, 2 by armless men, 715 by one-armed men, and 10 by
blind men. Therefore, out of 7,882 kinds of jobs, 4,034--although some
of them required strength--did not require full physical capacity. That
is, developed industry can provide wage work for a higher average of
standard men than are ordinarily included in any normal community. If
the jobs in any one industry or, say, any one factory, were analyzed as
ours have been analyzed, the proportion might be very different, yet I
am quite sure that if work is sufficiently subdivided--subdivided to
the point of highest economy--there will be no dearth of places in which
the physically incapacitated can do a man's job and get a man's wage.


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