Competition
？亨利·福特 / Henry Ford
Take competition； I found that competition was supposed to be a menace and that a good manager circumvented his competitors by getting a monopoly through artificial means. The idea was that there were only a certain number of people who could buy and that it was necessary to get their trade ahead of someone else.
Some will remember that later many of the automobile manufacturers entered into an association under the Selden Patent just so that it might be legally possible to control the price and the output of automobiles. They had the same idea that so many trades unions have—the ridiculous notion that more profit can be had doing less work than more. The plan， I believe， is a very antiquated one. I could not see then and am still unable to see that there is not always enough for the man who does his work； time spent in fighting competition is wasted； it had better be spent in doing the work.
There are always enough people ready and anxious to buy， provided you supply what they want and at the proper price—and this applies to personal services as well as to goods.
During this time of reflection I was far from idle. We were going ahead with a four-cylinder motor and the building of a pair of big racing cars. I had plenty of time， for I never left my business. I do not believe a man can ever leave his business. He ought to think of it by day and dream of it by night. It is nice to plan to do one’s work in office hours， to take up the work in the morning， to drop it in the evening—and not have a care until the next morning. It is perfectly possible to do that if one is so constituted as to be willing through all of his life to accept direction， to be an employee， possibly a responsible employee， but not a director or manager of anything.
A manual labourer must have a limit on his hours， otherwise he will wear himself out. If he intends to remain always a manual labourer， then he should forget about his work when the whistle blows， but if he intends to go forward and do anything， the whistle is only a signal to start thinking over the day’s work in order to discover how it might be done better.