16 Remarks on the business organization
2(While there are those who believe sufficient capital will be readily available for more direct procedure, the following covers the situation. Many of the steps have been already taken, but they will serve to clarify the possibilities of the situation to the reader.)
3 4-D will, after preliminary legal and patent entrenchment, and alignment with life insurance companies, the most interested capital control group, make its contact by licensing reliable and progressive contractors to sell, through the architectural profession, which will be itself tremendously aided thereby, standardized residential chassis of nine foot bays or cubical units (center to center measurement) of reinforced concrete or fireproofed steel, together with their floors, at fixed prices plus differential from their operating base. These chassis will include excavations and all fireproof framework, but being on an absolute standard unit can be rapidly organized into some measure of production methods.
4 Though absolutely novel from an organization standpoint this is unpatentable and will be taken up like ‘‘hot cakes’’ when proven profitable. It will be the transition form of contracting, for which the road builders are better equipped than the home builders. In fact, as it will be seen throughout the discourse, the home builders at present are equipped for nothing but the scrap heap. They are the only static survival in moving age.
5 Irrespective of the overcoat of the house finally to be applied, in its stylistic manner, (for the world can’t be changed overnight) these chassis can be erected and a roof thereby provided in a period of but a few days, as compared to the excessively long periods now involved in house building, which makes the architects inspection and supervision so long and costly. All drawing and specifications can then start with the standardized chassis, eliminating untold hours of waste in architectural offices. As these contractors progress and gain more and more business and production, (and we have been assured by many leading architects of their own personal need for such a service, and their certain application of it) we will give to them a standardized roughing plumbing layouts, to conform to the, as yet unrevealed, ‘‘Utility unit’’ hookup, and bit by bit production speed can be applied to performing these and other job functions. Then will come the time, when the mechanics are offered the alternative of performing the same time unit of work in the factory at double the pay per hour as that received on the job, and the transition will be made from doing the last bit of cutting and fitting on the job. This is the process that must take place as labor must not be inflamed, into blocking its own progress and salvation, which it invariably does, when given its head, so self-consciousness is it and so busy minding the other fellows’ business.
6 Then will the architects (who are responsible for but 5% of the home building, and who will always have their monumental and tailor made jobs to do; and yet, as the most altruistic of professions, are willing to lend themselves to progress and its harmonization, and are therefore the group through which transformation will have to take place), begin to recommend to clients various employment of isolation panels, arterial systems or masts, which the vested interests have in the meantime been licensed and instructed in. These interests will, perforce of their candid natures be little impressed with the future until such orders begin to roll in. Then will begin to take place the ‘‘pooled’’ advertising provided in the licensing contracts, and the industry will be launched. All a matter of clearly conceived functions of life and organizable to the finest degree. The bulk of capital necessary is already invested. All that is needed, is for safe patent entrenchment, legal contract fabrication, and skillfully meted out propaganda in the controlling circles. Funds, then, to employ the best patent attorneys, lawyers, and establishment of tactical headquarters sorting and filing details and funds for development literature. It will be the set policy of 4-D to force the vested capital of competitive groups, within each function, to make all experiments, the contract calling for same, if they are to enjoy patent license and trade name, all 4-D’s activities being confined to as wide an observation of mechanical and scientific progress as is possible, together with application of all shortcuts, observable on paper. Abstract critical or mental control, by the fast developing good faith of business, will be the policy.
7 Now proceeding in still further detail of the business considerations, we must take up the following, craving indulgence for necessary repetition.
8 In our great new era its professional specialists, particularly in the chemical, electrical, mechanical and artistic fields, are providing multitudinous benefits for mankind, in all but the most important function, that of the individualistic home. Some group of minds (and to this purpose 4-D has been organized) must translate the necessity into the minds of the industrialists, who are controlled by the conservators of their capital, which is time, machinery, formulas, organization, etc., and force industry into provision of the media for solution of this housing problem, by appeal to the selfish temporal gain of the industrialists themselves. It is the economic law of capital that it must demand self-increase rather than decrease, and long after the time when the individual capitalists involved have ceased to exist, the world will continue to benefit thereby. It is unfortunate that we must recognize the truth of the selfishness which still controls some groups of capital, for the capital itself, and even many of the so-called capitalists, are not selfish. Capital is entirely inanimate material. It is very much the essence of the fourth dimension or time-saving organization. Capital can purchase human time, but capital, which is vested time-saving machinery and organization (commonly misimplying persons who oppose or treat with labor, instead of the labor saver which it actually is) must be invoked in the solution of the house problem.
9 Through a complete knowledge of the order and scheme of life, it is possible to devise successful organization of forces to control the proper exploitation of an industrial project. We will go on to describe a complete organization, which is an arbitrary division of functions, under which will come all subclassifications of industrial activity, any and all of which are essential to complete exploitation.
10 The complete organization is divided into the following 12 departments, each and every one of which is considered of equal importance:- Administration, Advertising, Architecture, Engineering, Fabrication. Financial, Information, Legal, Service, Personnel, Sales, Transportation. The corporate activities are divided under each one of these headings, into the classifications of first, research, second, analysis, third design, and fourth, practice. The procedure of the organization as a whole will be the synchronized cycles of these functions by all departments.
11 For successful special endeavor in life we must have a singleness of purpose. Our singleness of purpose is housing. The home is a corporate soul and a corporate life in a house. Inasmuch as there is no such thing as perfection, though by adherence to truth and drawing of the abstract straight line, between two points, ever finer, we approach perfection, remembering that this straight line may be and should be harmoniously divided. Therefore, it is necessary to perform over and over again the cycles of research, analysis, design and performance. Had our automobile manufacturing industrialists waited until they had attained perfection in design, no automobiles would ever have been created.
12 Comprehensive organization at the inception of a business, such as that exhibited by the Celotex or Chrysler Companies, makes possible growth to gigantic size within a relatively short period of time, provided the project is truthfully beneficial to mankind. For many months a careful study of this organization by consultation with acknowledged experts in the departments of activity enumerated above has transpired. Complete organization has been cast on paper and its activities studied and thought out well into the future. Immediately to intelligent minds has become evident the activities of the other industries in any way related to this organization, and plans have therefore, become evident for the most successful exploitation of the project.
16.1 OBJECTS OF 4-D’S ACTIVITY
131. The first object is to acquire by lease the exclusive rights to the patents covering the 4-D house or any portion of the 4-D housing units, generally classified under the headings of Chasis, Utility Units, Isolation Panels, and arterial distributing systems, the lease terminable only by bankruptcy or disuse.
14 The second object will be to make contracts, whereby 4D will acquire patents outright, or license for the life of the patents, in conjunction with housing activity, within the engineering scope as depicted by the sign of the 4-D house, of patents now extant, with any considerable life ahead, which may now reside in other hands and pertaining to other activities, such as, for instance, the steel tennis racquet, which has patentable features useful in housing, as foreseen by the first researches, analysis and designs of the coming housing.
15 The third object will be to make contracts for the exclusive use of materials pertinent to the 4-D House, for exclusive use in production housing in exchange for 4-D’s promise to use the material involved in return for the co-operation in advertising, both by the material producer and itself.
16 The fourth object will be to make a contract with one of the national life insurance companies for the exclusive financing of the sales of the production house, as well as insurance thereof by virtue of 4-D holding the patents and contracts enumerated above, and by virtue of the self evident benefit to a life insurance company in the way of longevity brought about by scientifically correct protection of life in the home, as well as the evident greatly improved value of the recognized best loaning field of insurance company money, that to the home there is no better risk.
17 The fifth object will be to make contracts with industrial organizations for exclusive fabrication and sale of the patented units of standardized 4-D products; and assembly of the same.
18 The sixth object will be to make contract with merchandising concerns with world distribution already established for exclusive distribution of 4-D Homes or 4-D Products.
19 The seventh object will be the licensing of contracting firms to sell standard ‘‘bays’’, as already recounted, and major contact will then have been established.
20 In the first phases of activity, inasmuch as the patent claims first allowed are not published until the patent comes to issue at the extreme date of two years after first claims are allowed, the organization will be confined to the simplest possible, consisting only of the smallest clerical force for filing and assembling of valuable documents, and the drafting force for perfection of design along the prescribed lines, with claims for additional patents when novelties are disclosed, and legal entrenchment of ideas. It is a peculiar advantage of patent law that during the two-year claim period, while no publication is made of the patent, any ideas evident in industry, pertinent to the original claims allowed, may be made to accrue to the patent before final disclosure. This is extremely powerful and gives absolute protection to the originators of the idea, and makes evident the great advantage of spreading information on the subject during this two year period.
21 It will ever be the purpose of 4-D to keep as rigid a control as possible of these ideas and the material involved. Though we shall go through phases of assembly of parts and manufacture thereof by industrial firms allied only thru contract, there will come a time when royalties, etc., involved within the contracts will make preferable to the allied industrial firms, acquisition thereof, by 4-D. This development is well portrayed in the development of the two greatest companies within the automobile industry, to wit: Ford and General Motors. Every automobile company as it grows acquires one by one ownership of the source of its many assembled units.