Henry Ford

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Henry Ford (July 30, 1863 - April 7, 1947) was the founder of the Ford Motor Company and the Henry Ford Company (which later became Cadillac). He was one of the first to apply assembly line manufacturing to the mass production of affordable automobiles. This achievement not only revolutionized industrial production in the United States and the rest of the world, but also had such tremendous influence over modern culture that many social theorists identify this phase of economic and social history as "Fordism." Some credit him with contributing to the creation of a middle class in American society.

Contents 1 Childhood 2 Adult years 3 Ford as engineer 4 Ford Motor Company 5 Model T 6 Model A 7 Ford's labor philosophy 8 Death 9 Historical timeline 10 Quotes

[edit] Childhood

The story of Henry Ford is not of a prodigy entrepreneur or an overnight success. Ford grew up on a farm and might easily have remained in agriculture. But something stronger pulled at Ford's imagination: mechanics, machinery, understanding how things worked and what new possibilities lay in store. As a young boy, he took apart everything he got his hands on. He quickly became known around the neighborhood for fixing people's watches.

Henry Ford, born July 30, 1863, was the first of William and Mary Ford's six children. He grew up on a prosperous family farm in what is today Dearborn , Michigan . Henry enjoyed a childhood typical of the rural nineteenth century, spending days in a one-room school and doing farm chores.

During the summer of 1873, Henry saw his first self-propelled road machine, a Nichols, Shepard & Co., stationary steam engine that could be used for threshing or to power a saw mill. The operator, Fred Reden, had mounted it on wheels connected with a drive chain. Henry was fascinated with the machine and Reden over the next year taught Henry how to fire and operate the engine. Ford later said, it was this experience "that showed me that I was by instinct an engineer."

[edit] Adult years

His mother died in 1876. It was a blow that devastated Henry. His father expected Henry to eventually take over the family farm, but Henry dispised farm work. And with his mother dead, little remained to keep him on the farm. He later said, "I never had any particular love for the farm. It was the mother on the farm I loved."

In 1879, sixteen-year-old Ford left home for the nearby city of Detroit to work as an apprentice machinist, although he did occasionally return to help on the farm. He remained an apprentice for three years and then returned to Dearborn . During the next few years, Henry divided his time between operating or repairing steam engines, finding occasional work in a Detroit factory, and over-hauling his father's farm implements, as well as lending a reluctant hand with other farm work. Upon his marriage to Clara Bryant in 1888, Henry supported himself and his wife by running a sawmill.

[edit] Ford as engineer

In 1891, Ford became an engineer with the Edison Illuminating Company in Detroit . This event signified a conscious decision on Ford's part to dedicate his life to industrial pursuits. His promotion to Chief Engineer in 1893 gave him enough time and money to devote attention to his personal experiments on internal combustion engines.

These experiments culminated in 1896 with the completion of his own self-propelled vehicle - the Quadricycle. The Quadricycle had four wire wheels that looked like heavy bicycle wheels, was steered with a tiller like a boat, and had only two forward speeds with no reverse.

In 1896, Ford invented the Quadricycle. It was the first "horseless carriage" that he actually built. It's a far cry from today's cars and even from what he produced a few years later, but in a way it's the starting point of Ford's career as a businessman. Until the Quadricycle, Ford's tinkering had been experimental, theoretical - like the gas engine he built on his kitchen table in the 1890's, which was just an engine with nothing to power. The Quadricycle showed enough popularity and potential that it launched the beginning of Ford's business ventures.

Although Ford was not the first to build a self-propelled vehicle with a gasoline engine, he was, however, one of several automotive pioneers who helped this country become a nation of motorists.

[edit] Ford Motor Company

After two unsuccessful attempts to establish a company to manufacture automobiles, Ford Motor Company entered the business world on June 16, 1903, when Henry Ford and 11 business associates signed the company's articles of incorporation. With $28,000 in cash, the pioneering industrialists gave birth to what was to become one of the world's largest corporations. When founded, Ford Motor Company was just one of 15 car manufacturers in Michigan and 88 in the US . But as it began to turn a profit within its first few months, it became clear that Henry Ford's vision for the automotive industry was going to work, and work in a big way.

During the first five years of Ford Motor Company's existence, Henry Ford, as chief engineer and later as president, directed a development and production program that started in a converted wagon shop. The infant company produced only a few cars a day at the Ford factory on Mack Avenue in Detroit . Groups of two or three men worked on each car from components made to order by other companies.

[edit] Model T

Henry Ford realized his dream of producing an automobile that was reasonably priced, reliable, and efficient with the introduction of the Model T in 1908. This vehicle initiated a new era in personal transportation. It was easy to operate, maintain, and handle on rough roads, immediately becoming a huge success.

By 1918, half of all cars in America were Model Ts. To meet the growing demand for the Model T, the company opened a large factory at Highland Park , Michigan , in 1910. Here, Henry Ford combined precision manufacturing, standardized and interchangeable parts, a division of labor, and, in 1913, a continuous moving assembly line. Workers remained in place, adding one component to each automobile as it moved past them on the line. Delivery of parts by conveyor belt to the workers was carefully timed to keep the assembly line moving smoothly and efficiently. The introduction of the moving assembly line revolutionized automobile production by significantly reducing assembly time per vehicle, thus lowering costs. Ford's production of Model Ts made his company the largest automobile manufacturer in the world.

Soon the company began construction of the world's largest industrial complex along the banks of the Rouge River in Dearborn , Michigan , during the late 1910s and early 1920s. The massive Rouge Plant included all the elements needed for automobile production: a steel mill, glass factory, and automobile assembly line. Iron ore and coal were brought in on Great Lakes steamers and by railroad, and were used to produce both iron and steel. Rolling mills, forges, and assembly shops transformed the steel into springs, axles, and car bodies. Foundries converted iron into engine blocks and cylinder heads that were assembled with other components into engines. By September 1927, all steps in the manufacturing process from refining raw materials to final assembly of the automobile took place at the vast Rouge Plant, characterizing Henry Ford's idea of mass production.

[edit] Model A

By 1926, flagging sales of the Model T convinced Henry of what Edsel had been suggesting for some time: a new model was necessary. The elder Ford pursued the project with a great deal of technical expertise in design of the engine, chassis, and other mechanical necessities, while leaving it to his son to develop the body design. Edsel also managed to prevail over his father's initial objections in the inclusion of a sliding-shift transmission. The result was the highly successful Ford Model A, introduced December, 1927 and produced through 1931, with a total output of over four million automobiles. Subsequently, the company adopted an annual model change system similar to that in use by automakers today.

During the thirties, Ford also overcame his objection to finance companies, and the Ford-owned Universal Credit Company became a major car financing operation.

Henry Ford long had an interest in plastics developed from agricultural products, especially soybeans. Soybean-based plastics were used in Ford automobiles throughout the 1930s in plastic parts such as car horns, in paint, etc. This project culminated in 1942, when on January 13 Ford patented an automobile made almost entirely of plastic, attached to a tubular welded frame. It weighed 30% less than a standard car of the same size, and was said to be able to withstand blows ten times greater than could steel. Furthermore, it ran on grain alcohol (ethanol) instead of gasoline. Unfortunately, the design never caught on.

[edit] Ford's labor philosophy

Henry Ford had very specific thoughts on relations with his employees. On January 5, 1914 Ford announced his five-dollar a day program. The program called for a reduction in length of the workday from 9 to 8 hours and a raise in minimum daily pay from $2.34 to $5 for qualifying workers. Ford labeled the increased compensation as profit sharing rather than wages. The wage was offered to men over the age of 22, who had worked at the company for 6 months or more, and, importantly, conducted their lives in a manner of which Ford approved. The company established a Sociological Department complete with 150 investigators and support staff in order to verify this last point. Even with these requirements a large percentage of workers were able to qualify for the profit sharing.

In 1926, Ford instituted the five-day, forty-hour work-week, effectively inventing the modern weekend. In granting workers an extra day off, Ford ensured leisure time for the working class. The "short week," as Ford called it in a contemporary interview, was required so that the country could "absorb its production and stay prosperous."

Conversely, Ford was adamantly against labor unions in his plants. To forestall union activity, he promoted Harry Bennett, a former Navy boxer, to be the head of the Service Department. Bennett employed various intimidation tactics to squash union organizing. The most famous incident, in 1937, was a bloody brawl between company security men and organizers that became known as The Battle of the Overpass.

Ford was the last Detroit automaker to recognize the United Auto Workers union (UAW). A sit-down strike by the UAW union on April 2, 1941 closed the River Rouge Plant. Under pressure from Edsel and his wife, Clara, Henry Ford finally agreed to collective bargaining at Ford plants, and the first contract with the UAW was signed in June 1941.

[edit] Death

Ford suffered an initial stroke in 1938, after which he turned over the running of his company to Edsel. Edsel's 1943 death brought Henry Ford out of retirement. In ill health, he ceded the presidency to his grandson Henry Ford II on September 21, 1945, and went into retirement. He died in 1947 of a cerebral hemorrhage at the age of 83 in Fair Lane, his Dearborn estate, and is buried in the Ford Cemetery in Detroit.

[edit] Historical timeline

(TO DO)

[edit] Quotes

• "Life is a series of experiences, each one of which makes us bigger, even though it is hard to realize this. For the world was built to develop character, and we must learn that the setbacks and griefs which we endure help us in our marching onward."

• "I am looking for a lot of men who have an infinite capacity to not know what can't be done."

• "It is all one to me if a man comes from Sing Sing or Harvard. We hire a man, not his history."

• "Whether you think you can or think you can't – you are right."

• "When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it."

• "History is more or less bunk. It's tradition. We don't want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker's damn is the history we made today."

• "Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off the goal."

• "The best we can do is size up the chances, calculate the risks involved, estimate our ability to deal with them, and then make our plans with confidence."

• "A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business."

• "Enthusiasm is the yeast that makes your hopes shine to the stars. Enthusiasm is the sparkle in your eyes, the swing in your gait. The grip of your hand, the irresistible surge of will and energy to execute your ideas."

• "Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small jobs."

• "Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young."

• "Don't find fault, find a remedy; anybody can complain."

• "Money is like an arm or leg – use it or lose it."

• "Time and money spent in helping men to do more for themselves is far better than mere giving."

• "There is one rule for the industrialist and that is: Make the best quality of goods possible at the lowest cost possible, paying the highest wages possible."

• "You can't build a reputation on what you are going to do."

• "Whether you think that you can, or that you can't, you are usually right."

• "Most people spend more time and energy going around problems than in trying to solve them."

• "You can do anything if you have enthusiasm."

• "Thinking is the hardest work there is. Which is the probable reason why so few engage in it."

• "What we call evil is simply ignorance bumping its head in the dark."

• "When I can't handle events, I let them handle themselves."

• "There are two fools in this world. One is the millionaire who thinks that by hoarding money he can somehow accumulate real power, and the other is the penniless reformer who thinks that if only he can take the money from one class and give it to another, all the world's ills will be cured."

• "My best friend is the one who brings out the best in me."

• "History is more or less bunk."

• "The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young."

• "I cannot discover that anyone knows enough to say definitely what is and what is not possible."

• "If money is your hope for independence you will never have it."

• "The question "Who ought to be boss?" is like as "Who ought to be the tenor in the quartet?" Obviously, the man who can sing tenor."

• "The high wage begins down in the shop. If it is not created there it cannot get into pay envelopes. There will never be a system invented which will do away with the necessity for work."

• "Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success."

• "Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently."

• "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 has been my observation that most people get ahead during the time that others waste."

• "It is not the employer who pays the wages. Employers only handle the money. It is the customer who pays the wages."

• "Money doesn't change men, it merely unmasks them. If a man is naturally selfish or arrogant or greedy, the money brings that out, that's all."

• "One of the greatest discoveries a man makes, one of his great surprises, is to find he can do what he was afraid he couldn't do."

• "Quality means doing it right when no one is looking."

• "The competitor to be feared is one who never bothers about you at all, but goes on making his own business better all the time."

• "The only real security that a man will have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability."

• "Wealth, like happiness, is never attained when sought after directly. It comes as a by-product of providing a useful service."