Soap, Shaves & Ford

Stepan Simonovich Dybets, manager of the Soviet Automobile and Tractor Trust, spent several months in the Detroit plants of Henry Ford. Last week in Izvestia he wrote of U. S. v. Soviet industry:

"Those Soviet workers who are accustomed to say that in the automotive field we have caught up with and surpassed the U. S. simply make themselves ridiculous. . . . We ought to send some of our best workers to the U. S. so they could see for themselves with what caution, accuracy and results in the form of production the Americans work.

"Our workers are accustomed to wash the shop up a bit, carry out of a few tons of rubbish, and then boast 'Our plant is just as clean as those of Ford.' This, of course, is nonsense. Ford has his smooth cement floors washed with soap three and four times a day. If the paint comes off anywhere a man shows up immediately with a brush and touches up the spot.

"It is difficult to train a man who does not shave and seldom takes a bath to make automobile parts with exactness down to one-thousandth of a millimeter. Yet exactitude is just the quality which has enabled the Americans to improve their motors and make them more powerful."

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