Henry Ford and the $5 Day: Geraldine O’Reilly
Geraldine O’Reilly
“Is this five dollar a day plan good? I don’t know. Will it last? I don’t know. But what I do know is that has killed our plans of forming a union. That’s right, Sarah. How can you form a union to get higher wages when the company is already giving higher wages? And wages that are higher than we ever thought about asking for. I mean, my God, five dollars a day. That’s twice what the average worker is making now! Twice! Why would anyone want to join a union if the most they were going to get was less than the company was giving them?
And that is just the beginning of the bad news. This is coming at the worst possible time in our nation’s history! The worst time! We are right at the brink of passive revolution from Atlantic to Pacific. Yes, Hansel, that’s correct. The Progressives! We were finally going to be a real working man’s political party. A party with real muscle. We were right at the cusp of success! Success! Look at it this way, that is, look at us as a growing power, a workingman’s power. In the last election Theodore Roosevelt walloped the other Republican. And together the Republicans and the Progressives took in more than seven million votes, a million and half more than Woodrow Wilson. Wilson only won because he got the electoral votes. But we’ve got two years to turn that around. We HAVE the popular votes so it only follows that we can get the electoral votes too. Wilson is NOT a popular fellow. He doesn’t drink. He doesn’t smoke. He’s a college professor, for God’s sake. We are a nation of working people, not intellectuals! He is not going to be re-elected. There are just too many people who want our agenda, our list of priorities for America!
Look at it this way, Hadassah, we are the future. Hand me that flier. See, look at these demands. We are not one, two, three issue candidates. We are going to be re-shaping America, top to bottom. See, see, see, here are out 21 changes, changes to America so fundamental that the Democratic Party and the Republican Party and jumping through hoops to steal some of them for themselves. Let me read them:
1. Establishment of the Initiative, Referendum and Recall
2. Establishment of a mechanism to amend the United States Constitution
3. Minimum health and safety standards
4. Prohibition of child labor
5. Minimum wage for working women
6. Eight-hour day for women and children
7. Sunday’s off for all wageworkers
8. Standards of compensation for on-the-job death and injury
9. Universal education for all children
10. Protection of the national forests
11. Construction of the Panama Canal
12. Opening of Alaska for development
13. Formation of an Interstate Commerce Commission
14. Regulation of the railways
15. Women’s suffrage
16. Campaign contribution limits and lobbyist registration
17. Establishment of a Department of Labor
18. Establishment of an income tax
19. Pensions for soldiers and sailors
20. Establishment of parcel post
21. Establishment of a Securities and Exchange Commission
We are going to change America top to bottom, from the richest to the poorest. Henry Ford and the five-dollar day is only a bump in the road. That’s way money is. It does not solve problems; it creates them. Right now you have several thousand working me who think that doubling their wages is going to make them rich. It will give them cash in their pockets right now but over the long run I predict three things. First, it will not be long before they realize that they are still poor and the company is still getting rich off their labor. Second, money always comes with strings attached. It won’t be long before we find out what those strings are. Third, over the long run, a union is the only thing that is going to save the working class from the owner class. And that, Bojana, is why we are NOT going to stop talking about forming a union; we are just going to have to wait and see what happens. Every worm has a tendency to turn.”
[This story is from Steven Levi’s collection of Henry Ford short stories FIND A REMEDY on Kindle.]
