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management and the mechanism of the plant are comparatively simple because it makes but one
thing. We do not have to search for skilled employees. The skill is in the machine. The people of
the countryside can work in the plant part of the time and on the farm part of the time, for
mechanical farming is not very laborious. The plant power is derived from water.
Another plant on a somewhat larger scale is in building at Flat Rock, about fifteen miles from
Detroit. We have dammed the river. The dam also serves as a bridge for the Detroit, Toledo
&Ironton Railway, which was in need of a new bridge at that point, and a road for the public all
in one construction. We are going to make our glass at this point. The damming of the river gives
sufficient water for the floating to us of most of our raw material. It also gives us our power
through a hydroelectric plant. And, being well out in the midst of the farming country, there can
be no possibility of crowding or any of the ills incident to too great a concentration of population.
The men will have plots of ground or farms as well as their jobs in the factory, and these can be
scattered over fifteen or twenty miles surrounding for of course nowadays the workingman can
come to the shop in an automobile. There we shall have the combination of agriculture and
industrialism and the entire absence of all the evils of concentration.
The belief that an industrial country has to concentrate its industries is not, in my opinion, well-
founded. That is only a stage in industrial development. As we learn more about manufacturing
and learn to make articles with interchangeable parts, then those parts can be made under the best
possible conditions. And these best possible conditions, as far as the employees are concerned,
are also the best possible conditions from the manufacturing standpoint. One could not put a great
plant on a little stream. One can put a small plant on a little stream, and the combination of little
plants, each making a single part, will make the whole cheaper than a vast factory would. There
are exceptions, as where casting has to be done. In such case, as at River Rouge, we want to
combine the making of the metal and the casting of it and also we want to use all of the waste
power. This requires a large investment and a considerable force of men in one place. But such
combinations are the exception rather than the rule, and there would not be enough of them
seriously to interfere with the process of breaking down the concentration of industry.
Industry will decentralize. There is no city that would be rebuilt as it is, were it destroyed which
fact is in itself a confession of our real estimate of our cities. The city had a place to fill, a work to
do. Doubtless the country places would not have approximated their livableness had it not been
for the cities. By crowding together, men have learned some secrets. They would never have
learned them alone in the country. Sanitation, lighting, social organization all these are products
of men's experience in the city. But also every social ailment from which we to-day suffer
originated and centres in the big cities. You will find the smaller communities living along in
unison with the seasons, having neither extreme poverty nor wealth none of the violent plagues
of upheave and unrest which afflict our great populations. There is something about a city of a
million people which is untamed and threatening. Thirty miles away, happy and contented
villages read of the ravings of the city! A great city is really a helpless mass. Everything it uses is
carried to it. Stop transport and the city stops. It lives off the shelves of stores. The shelves
produce nothing. The city cannot feed, clothe, warm, or house itself. City conditions of work and
living are so artificial that instincts sometimes rebel against their unnaturalness.
And finally, the overhead expense of living or doing business in the great cities is becoming so
large as to be unbearable. It places so great a tax upon life that there is no surplus over to live on.
The politicians have found it easy to borrow money and they have borrowed to the limit. Within
the last decade the expense of running every city in the country has tremendously increased. A
good part of that expense is for interest upon money borrowed; the money has gone either into
non-productive brick, stone, and mortar, or into necessities of city life, such as water supplies and
sewage systems at far above a reasonable cost. The cost of maintaining these works, the cost of
keeping in order great masses of people and traffic is greater than the advantages derived from
community life. The modern city has been prodigal, it is to-day bankrupt, and to-morrow it will
cease to be.
The provision of a great amount of cheap and convenient power not all at once, but as it may be
used will do more than anything else to bring about the balancing of life and the cutting of the
waste which breeds poverty. There is no single source of power. It may be that generating
electricity by a steam plant at the mine mouth will be the most economical method for one
community. Hydro-electric power may be best for another community. But certainly in every
community there ought to be a central station to furnish cheap power it ought to be held as
essential as a railway or a water supply. And we could have every great source of power
harnessed and working for the common good were it not that the expense of obtaining capital
stands in the way. I think that we shall have to revise some of our notions about capital.
Capital that a business makes for itself, that is employed to expand the workman's opportunity
and increase his comfort and prosperity, and that is used to give more and more men work, at the
same time reducing the cost of service to the public that sort of capital, even though it be under
single control, is not a menace to humanity. It is a working surplus held in trust and daily use for
the benefit of all. The holder of such capital can scarcely regard it as a personal reward. No man
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