Last post presents the first half of a newspaper column Henry Ford wrote 101 years ago this month. Upon reading it, it is beyond timely today in 2021. As promised, here is the second half of that column taken directly from "Mr. Ford's Page.."
"Revolutions are not orderly, social forces marching to the establishment of a new and better order. They are an outlet of hellish hatreds and unbridled passions, massive thefts, the death of moral and social responsibility, a most horrible debauch of all that is rottenest in human nature.
Humanity does not know of what stuff it is made until the restraint of society is taken off, and the mask is taken off, and human greeds and jealousies and ignorances and passions are given full sway.
The revolutions of which we may read comfortably in the books are not at all the revolutions the people went through. The real thing is the collapse of every element that justifies mankind considering itself as a high animal.
However, it is not alone to the disgruntled man that we must look for these destructionist influences. We are far too prone to talk as if the "Reds" were the only ones engaged in destroying social order and the solidity of social institutions.
Not at all. Any man, rich or poor, in business or in politics, who does anything that undermines men's faith in the essential justice at least of society's intentions is thereby destroying society as rapidly, as menacingly, as criminally as any "Red" could do it.
What you find at one extreme of society, that you will find at the other. Rich criminals make poor criminals. Lawless millionaires make lawless miners. Lawless statesmen make lawless citizens. It works out inevitably this way.
If you have profiteers in the big brownstone buildings, you will have hold-up men in the streets. If you have a "to hell with the people" spirit in your higher offices, you are going to have a "to hell with the government" spirit in the lower sections of your cities---and don't you forget it! What's sauce for the capitalistic gander is sauce for the laboristic goose.
It is not too much to say that the whole impetus of this present plague of lawlessness came from the top. Its whole reason for being comes from what we so wrongly call the "upper classes". These more favored classes were lawless first. And their lawlessness is coming back upon them with redoubled retribution, for the very fact that it is they who are now pleading for law and order is the reason why the plea is laughed at. Yes, law that the people may be kept in order, but no order so strict as that the privileged ones shall have to obey the law!---that is the mocking answer.
When they are trying the criminals of the Great War, they ought not to overlook the profiteers.
The profiteer is the most dangerous of all the "Reds" that have ever appeared on earth. He is more dangerous than kings---for we can get rid of kings. He is even more dangerous than militarists---militarists turn out to be very fallible men when their helmets and gold braid are removed. But the profiteer is always there, playing inside all the lines, making money out of soldiers' deaths and the distress of nations---the dirtiest money that ever found its way into a pocket!
The profiteer ought to be charged specifically with (a) defrauding the government, (b) treason to the Army, (c) giving aid and comfort to the enemy, and (d) fomenting disloyalty in time of war. It is pretty hard to gainsay the now common argument that a society which harbors the profiteer is itself in need of reform.
The profiteer is one of the excuses---one of the good excuses---which the "Reds" offer for their present attitude. And if the "Reds" would only center their attention there and help us get rid of the profiteers, that would be doing a regenerative and constructive act.
The crimes of the profiteer after the war, the increase of his already too big gains by speculating with the food of the people, certainly point him out as the one influence which more than any other has driven people into enmity toward our present form of society. This is where the destructive spirit was born.
Why would it not be a wise move to attack the destructive spirit at its source? Why not go after those men whose actions destroy the people's faith in the possibility of justice? They ought to be made to pay the penalty, and not society."
Tru dat!
Until next post....