It was done by a sociological department made up at that time of some eighty men all taken out of the factory itself, for Mr. Ford’s theory was then that, no matter what you wanted done, you could always find somebody among the eighteen thousand “down there,” as he called it, that was qualified. So they had selected eighty for social service work and these men were doing it with a thoroughness and a frankness which was almost as important as the five dollars a day had been. “Paternal” was the adjective generally applied to the Ford method; but one of the interesting things about Mr. Ford is the little effect a word has on him. Call a thing what you like, it is the idea, the method, that he is after. If that seems to him to make sense, you may have your word—it doesn’t trouble him. So they went energetically about their determination to add to what they were doing for the making of men inside of the factory a thorough overhauling of the men’s lives outside. There were certain things that were laid down as essential. You had to be clean—cleanliness had played no part in the lives of hundreds of these men. But when they did not get their “big envelope” and asked why, they were told it was because their hands were dirty, they didn’t wash their necks, didn’t wear clean clothes. Ford’s men must be clean. Already it had made an astonishing difference in the general look of the factory. And this cleanliness was carried by the sociological department into the home. The men must be kept clean, and the women must do their part. Many of the women as well as the men were discovering for the first time the satisfaction of cleanliness. “Feels good,” said a working woman to me, reluctant but thorough convert according to my conductor. “Feels good to be clean.” They were enemies of liquor, and no man who drank could keep his place. But he was not thrown out: he must reform. And some of the most surprising cures of habitual drunkenness that I have ever come across I found in the Ford factory in 1915. There was a strong sympathy throughout the factory for derelicts. There were four hundred men in Ford’s when I was there who had served prison terms. Nobody knew them, but each had his special guardian; and no mother ever looked after a child more carefully than these guardians looked after their charges. In this social work Mr. Ford was constantly and deeply interested. As nearly as I could make out, there was nothing of which they all talked more.