[A-List] Henry Ford

[Charles Brown]

Henry Ford
>From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
This article is about the early industrialist. For other uses, see
Henry Ford (disambiguation).
Henry Ford 


Henry Ford, c. 1919 
Born July 30, 1863(1863-07-30)
Greenfield Township, Dearborn, Michigan, U.S. 
Died April 7, 1947 (aged 83)
Fair Lane, Dearborn, Michigan, U.S. 
Occupation Business 
Net worth ▲$188.1 billion, according to Wealthy historical figures
2008, based on information from Forbes – February 2008. 
Spouse(s) Clara Jane Bryant 
Children Edsel Ford 
Parents William Ford and Mary Ford 
Henry Ford (July 30, 1863 – April 7, 1947) was the American founder
of the Ford Motor Company and father of modern assembly lines used in
mass production. His introduction of the Model T automobile
revolutionized transportation and American industry. He was a prolific
inventor and was awarded 161 U.S. patents. As owner of the Ford Company
he became one of the richest and best-known people in the world. He is
credited with "Fordism", that is, the mass production of large numbers
of inexpensive automobiles using the assembly line, coupled with high
wages for his workers. Ford had a global vision, with consumerism as the
key to peace. Ford did not believe in accountants; he amassed one of the
world's largest fortunes without ever having his company audited under
his administration. Henry Ford's intense commitment to lowering costs
resulted in many technical and business innovations, including a
franchise system that put a dealership in every city in North America,
and in major cities on six continents. Ford left most of his vast wealth
to the Ford Foundation but arranged for his family to control the
company permanently.

Contents [hide]
1 Early years 
2 Ford Motor Company 
2.1 Model T 
2.2 "Model A" and Ford's later career 
2.3 Labor philosophy 
2.4 Labor Unions 
3 Ford Airplane Company 
3.1 Willow Run 
4 Politics 
4.1 World War I era 
4.2 World War II era 
5 Dearborn Independent 
6 International business 
7 Racing 
8 Later career 
9 Death 
10 Sidelights 
10.1 Interest in materials science and engineering 
10.2 Georgia residence and community 
10.3 Preserving Americana in museums and villages 
10.4 The "invention of the automobile" 
10.5 The "invention of the assembly line" 
10.6 Miscellaneous 
11 Popular culture 
12 Honors 
13 See also 
14 Notes 
15 References 
15.1 Memoirs by Ford Motor Company principals 
15.2 Biographies 
15.3 Specialized studies 
15.4 Further reading 
16 External links 
 


[edit] Early years
Ford was born July 30, 1863, on a farm next to a rural town west of
Detroit, Michigan (this area is now part of Dearborn, Michigan).[1] His
father, William Ford (1826–1905), was born in County Cork, Ireland.
His mother, Mary Litogot Ford (1839–1876), was born in Michigan; she
was the youngest child of Belgian immigrants; her parents died when Mary
was a child and she was adopted by neighbors, the O'Herns. Henry Ford's
siblings include Margaret Ford (1867–1868); Jane Ford (c.
1868–1945); William Ford (1871–1917) and Robert Ford
(1873–1934).

His father gave Henry a pocket watch in his early teens. At fifteen,
Ford dismantled and reassembled the timepieces of friends and neighbors
dozens of times, gaining the reputation of a watch repairman.[2] At
twenty, Ford walked four miles to church every Sunday.[3]

Ford was devastated when his mother died in 1876. His father expected
him to eventually take over the family farm but Henry despised farm
work. He told his father, "I never had any particular love for the
farm—it was the mother on the farm I loved."[4]

In 1879, he left home to work as an apprentice machinist in the city of
Detroit, first with James F. Flower & Bros., and later with the Detroit
Dry Dock Co. In 1882, he returned to Dearborn to work on the family farm
and became adept at operating the Westinghouse portable steam engine. He
was later hired by Westinghouse company to service their steam engines.

 
Henry Ford at twenty five years old in 1888.Ford married Clara Ala
Bryant (c. 1865–1950) in 1888 and supported himself by farming and
running a sawmill.[5] They had a single child: Edsel Bryant Ford
(1893-1943).[6]

In 1891, Ford became an engineer with the Edison Illuminating Company,
and after his promotion to Chief Engineer in 1893, he had enough time
and money to devote attention to his personal experiments on gasoline
engines. These experiments culminated in 1896 with the completion of his
own self-propelled vehicle named the Ford Quadricycle, which he
test-drove on June 4. After various test-drives, Ford brainstormed ways
to improve the Quadricycle.[7]

Also in 1896, Ford attended a meeting of Edison executives, where he
was introduced to Thomas Edison. Edison approved of Ford's automobile
experimentation; encouraged by Edison's approval, Ford designed and
built a second vehicle, which was completed in 1898.[8] Backed by the
capital of Detroit lumber baron William H. Murphy, Ford resigned from
Edison and founded the Detroit Automobile Company on August 5, 1899.[9]
However, the automobiles produced were of a lower quality and higher
price than Ford liked. Ultimately, the company was not successful and
was dissolved in January 1901.[9]

With the help of C. Harold Wills, Ford designed, built, and
successfully raced a twenty six horsepower automobile in October 1901.
With this success, Murphy and other stockholders in the Detroit
Automobile Company formed the Henry Ford Company on November 30, 1901,
with Ford as chief engineer.[10] However, Murphy brought in Henry M.
Leland as a consultant. As a result, Ford left the company bearing his
name in 1902. With Ford gone, Murphy renamed the company the Cadillac
Automobile Company.[10]

Ford also produced the 80+ horsepower racer "999", and getting Barney
Oldfield to drive it to victory in October 1902. Ford received the
backing of an old acquaintance, Alexander Y. Malcomson, a Detroit-area
coal dealer.[10] They formed a partnership, "Ford & Malcomson, Ltd." to
manufacture automobiles. Ford went to work designing an inexpensive
automobile, and the duo leased a factory and contracted with a machine
shop owned by John and Horace E. Dodge to supply over $160,000 in
parts.[10] Sales were slow, and a crisis arose when the Dodge brothers
demanded payment for their first shipment.


[edit] Ford Motor Company
 
Henry Ford with Thomas Edison and Harvey Firestone. Ft. Myers, Florida,
February 11, 1929.In response, Malcomson brought in another group of
investors and convinced the Dodge Brothers to accept a portion of the
new company.[11] Ford & Malcomson was reincorporated as the Ford Motor
Company on June 16, 1903,[11] with $28,000 capital. The original
investors included Ford and Malcomson, the Dodge brothers, Malcomson's
uncle John S. Gray, Horace Rackham, and James Couzens. In a newly
designed car, Ford gave an exhibition on the ice of Lake St. Clair,
driving 1 mile (1.6 km) in 39.4 seconds, setting a new land speed record
at 91.3 miles per hour (147.0 km/h). Convinced by this success, the race
driver Barney Oldfield, who named this new Ford model "999" in honor of
a racing locomotive of the day, took the car around the country, making
the Ford brand known throughout the United States. Ford also was one of
the early backers of the Indianapolis 500.

Ford astonished the world in 1914 by offering a $5 per day wage, which
more than doubled the rate of most of his workers. The move proved
extremely profitable; instead of constant turnover of employees, the
best mechanics in Detroit flocked to Ford, bringing in their human
capital and expertise, raising productivity, and lowering training
costs. Ford called it "wage motive." The company's use of vertical
integration also proved successful when Ford built a gigantic factory
that shipped in raw materials and shipped out finished automobiles.


[edit] Model T
The Model T was introduced on October 1, 1908. It had the steering
wheel on the left, which every other company soon copied and is standard
today. The entire engine and transmission were enclosed; the four
cylinders were cast in a solid block; the suspension used two
semi-elliptic springs.

The car was very simple to drive, and easy and cheap to repair. It was
so cheap at $825 in 1908 (the price fell every year) that by the 1920s a
majority of American drivers learned to drive on the Model T.

Ford created a massive publicity machine in Detroit to ensure every
newspaper carried stories and ads about the new product. Ford's network
of local dealers made the car ubiquitous in virtually every city in
North America. As independent dealers, the franchises grew rich and
publicized not just the Ford but the very concept of automobiling; local
motor clubs sprang up to help new drivers and to explore the
countryside. Ford was always eager to sell to farmers, who looked on the
vehicle as a commercial device to help their business. Sales
skyrocketed—several years posted 100% gains on the previous year.
Always on the hunt for more efficiency and lower costs, in 1913 Ford
introduced the moving assembly belts into his plants, which enabled an
enormous increase in production. Although Henry Ford is often credited
with the idea, contemporary sources indicate that the concept and its
development came from employees Clarence Avery, Peter E. Martin, Charles
E. Sorensen, and C. Harold Wills. (See Piquette Plant)

 
Ford Assembly Line, 1913Sales passed 250,000 in 1914. By 1916, as the
price dropped to $360 for the basic touring car, sales reached
472,000.[12]

By 1918, half of all cars in America were Model T's. However, it was a
monolithic block; as Ford wrote in his autobiography, "Any customer can
have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it is black".[13]
Until the development of the assembly line, which mandated black because
of its quicker drying time, Model T's were available in other colors
including red. The design was fervently promoted and defended by Ford,
and production continued as late as 1927; the final total production was
15,007,034. This record stood for the next 45 years.

This record was achieved in just 19 years flat from the introduction of
the first Model T (1908).

President Woodrow Wilson asked Ford to run as a Democrat for the United
States Senate from Michigan in 1918. Although the nation was at war,
Ford ran as a peace candidate and a strong supporter of the proposed
League of Nations.[14]

Henry Ford turned the presidency of Ford Motor Company over to his son
Edsel Ford in December 1918. Henry, however, retained final decision
authority and sometimes reversed his son. Henry started another company,
Henry Ford and Son, and made a show of taking himself and his best
employees to the new company; the goal was to scare the remaining
holdout stockholders of the Ford Motor Company to sell their stakes to
him before they lost most of their value. (He was determined to have
full control over strategic decisions). The ruse worked, and Henry and
Edsel purchased all remaining stock from the other investors, thus
giving the family sole ownership of the company.

By the mid-1920s, sales of the Model T began to decline due to rising
competition. Other auto makers offered payment plans through which
consumers could buy their cars, which usually included more modern
mechanical features and styling not available with the Model T. Despite
urgings from Edsel, Henry steadfastly refused to incorporate new
features into the Model T or to form a customer credit plan.


[edit] "Model A" and Ford's later career
By 1926, flagging sales of the Model T finally convinced Henry to make
a new model. Henry pursued the project with a great deal of technical
expertise in design of the engine, chassis, and other mechanical
necessities, while leaving the body design to his son. Edsel also
managed to prevail over his father's initial objections in the inclusion
of a sliding-shift transmission.

The result was the successful Ford Model A, introduced in December 1927
and produced through 1931, with a total output of more than 4 million.
Subsequently, the company adopted an annual model change system similar
to that in use by automakers today. Not until the 1930s did Ford
overcome his objection to finance companies, and the Ford-owned
Universal Credit Corporation became a major car-financing operation.


[edit] Labor philosophy
 
Time Magazine, January 14, 1935.Henry Ford was a pioneer of "welfare
capitalism" designed to improve the lot of his workers and especially to
reduce the heavy turnover that had many departments hiring 300 men per
year to fill 100 slots. Efficiency meant hiring and keeping the best
workers.

Ford announced his $5-per-day program on January 5, 1914. The
revolutionary program called for a raise in minimum daily pay from $2.34
to $5 for qualifying workers. It also set a new, reduced workweek,
although the details vary in different accounts. Ford and Crowther in
1922 described it as six 8-hour days, giving a 48-hour week,[15] while
in 1926 they described it as five 8-hour days, giving a 40-hour
week.[16] (Apparently the program started with Saturdays as workdays and
sometime later made them days off.) Ford says that with this voluntary
change, labor turnover in his plants went from huge to so small that he
stopped bothering to measure it.[17]

When Ford started the 40-hour work week and a minimum wage he was
criticized by other industrialists and by Wall Street. He proved,
however, that paying people more would enable Ford workers to afford the
cars they were producing and be good for the economy. Ford explained the
change in part of the "Wages" chapter of My Life and Work.[18] He
labeled the increased compensation as profit-sharing rather than wages.

The wage was offered to employees who had worked at the company for six
months or more, and, importantly, conducted their lives in a manner of
which Ford's "Social Department" approved. They frowned on heavy
drinking, gambling, and what we today would call "deadbeat dads". The
Social Department used 50 investigators, plus support staff, to maintain
employee standards; a large percentage of workers were able to qualify
for this "profit-sharing."

Ford's incursion into his employees' private lives was highly
controversial, and he soon backed off from the most intrusive aspects;
by the time he wrote his 1922 memoir, he spoke of the Social Department
and of the private conditions for profit-sharing in the past tense, and
admitted that "paternalism has no place in industry. Welfare work that
consists in prying into employees' private concerns is out of date. Men
need counsel and men need help, oftentimes special help; and all this
ought to be rendered for decency's sake. But the broad workable plan of
investment and participation will do more to solidify industry and
strengthen organization than will any social work on the outside.
Without changing the principle we have changed the method of
payment."[19]


[edit] Labor Unions
Ford was adamantly against labor unions. He explained his views on
unions in Chapter 18 of My Life and Work.[20] He thought they were too
heavily influenced by some leaders who, despite their ostensible good
motives, would end up doing more harm than good for workers. Most wanted
to restrict productivity as a means to foster employment, but Ford saw
this as self-defeating because, in his view, productivity was necessary
for any economic prosperity to exist.

He believed that productivity gains that obviated certain jobs would
nevertheless stimulate the larger economy and thus grow new jobs
elsewhere, whether within the same corporation or in others. Ford also
believed that union leaders (most particularly Leninist-leaning ones)
had a perverse incentive to foment perpetual socio-economic crisis as a
way to maintain their own power. Meanwhile, he believed that smart
managers had an incentive to do right by their workers, because doing so
would actually maximize their own profits. (Ford did acknowledge,
however, that many managers were basically too bad at managing to
understand this fact.) But Ford believed that eventually, if good
managers such as himself could successfully fend off the attacks of
misguided people from both left and right (i.e., both socialists and
bad-manager reactionaries), the good managers would create a
socio-economic system wherein neither bad management nor bad unions
could find enough support to continue existing.

To forestall union activity Ford promoted Harry Bennett, a former Navy
boxer, to head the Service Department. Bennett employed various
intimidation tactics to squash union organizing.[citation needed] 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.

In the late 1930s and early 1940s, Edsel (who was president of the
company) thought it was necessary for Ford to come to some sort of
collective bargaining agreement with the unions, because the violence,
work disruptions, and bitter stalemates could not go on forever. But
Henry (who still had the final veto in the company on a de facto basis
even if not an official one) refused to cooperate. For several years, he
kept Bennett in charge of talking to the unions that were trying to
organize the Ford company. Sorensen's memoir[21] makes clear that
Henry's purpose in putting Bennett in charge was to make sure no
agreements were ever reached.

The Ford company was the last Detroit automaker to recognize the United
Auto Workers union (UAW). A sit-down strike by the UAW union in April
1941 closed the River Rouge Plant. Sorensen said[22] a distraught Henry
Ford was very close to following through with a threat to break up the
company rather than cooperate but that his wife, Clara, told him she
would leave him if he destroyed the family business that she wanted to
see her son and grandsons lead into the future. Henry complied with his
wife's ultimatum, and Ford went literally overnight from the most
stubborn holdout among automakers to the one with the most favorable UAW
contract terms. The contract was signed in June 1941.


[edit] Ford Airplane Company
Ford, like other automobile companies, entered the aviation business
during World War I, building Liberty engines. After the war, it returned
to auto manufacturing until 1925, when Henry Ford acquired the Stout
Metal Airplane Company.

 
Ford 4-AT-F (EC-RRA) de L.A.P.E.Ford's most successful aircraft was the
Ford 4AT Trimotor — called the “Tin Goose” because of its
corrugated metal construction. It used a new alloy called Alclad that
combined the corrosion resistance of aluminum with the strength of
duralumin. The plane was similar to Fokker's V.VII-3m, and some say that
Ford's engineers surreptitiously measured the Fokker plane and then
copied it. The Trimotor first flew on June 11, 1926, and was the first
successful U.S. passenger airliner, accommodating about 12 passengers in
a rather uncomfortable fashion. Several variants were also used by the
U.S. Army. Henry Ford has been honored by the Smithsonian Institution
for changing the aviation industry. About 200 Trimotors were built
before it was discontinued in 1933, when the Ford Airplane Division shut
down because of poor sales during the Great Depression.


[edit] Willow Run
President Franklin D. Roosevelt referred to Detroit as the "Arsenal of
Democracy." The Ford Motor Company played a pivotal role in the Allied
victory during World War I and World War II.[23] With Europe under
siege, the Ford company's genius turned to mass production for the war
effort. Specifically, Ford examined the B-24 Liberator bomber, still the
most-produced Allied bomber in history, which quickly shifted the
balance of power.

Before Ford, and under optimal conditions, the aviation industry could
produce one Consolidated Aircraft B-24 Bomber a day at an aircraft
plant. Ford showed the world how to produce one B-24 an hour at a peak
of 600 per month in 24-hour shifts. Ford's Willow Run factory broke
ground in April 1941. At the time, it was the largest assembly plant in
the world, with over 3,500,000 square feet (330,000 m2).

Mass production of the B-24, led by Charles Sorensen and later Mead
Bricker, began by August 1943. Many pilots slept on cots waiting for
takeoff as the B-24 rolled off the assembly line at Ford's Willow Run
facility.[24]


[edit] Politics

[edit] World War I era
Henry Ford was an Episcopalian Christian who opposed war, which he
thought was a waste of time.[25][26][27] Ford became highly critical of
those who he felt financed war, and he seemed to do whatever he could to
stop them. He felt time was better spent making things.[citation
needed]

In 1915, Jewish pacifist Rosika Schwimmer had gained the favor of Henry
Ford, who agreed to fund a peace ship to Europe, where World War I was
raging, for himself and about 170 other prominent peace leaders. Ford's
Episcopalian pastor, Reverend Samuel S. Marquis, accompanied him on the
mission. Marquis also headed Ford's Sociology Department from 1913 to
1921. Ford talked to President Wilson about the mission but had no
government support. His group went to neutral Sweden and the Netherlands
to meet with peace activists there. As a target of much ridicule, he
left the ship as soon as it reached Sweden.

An article G. K. Chesterton wrote for the December 12, 1916, issue of
Illustrated London News, shows why Ford's effort was ridiculed.
Referring to Ford as "the celebrated American comedian," Chesterton
noted that Ford had been quoted claiming, "I believe that the sinking of
the Lusitania was deliberately planned to get this country [America]
into war. It was planned by the financiers of war." Chesterton expressed
"difficulty in believing that bankers swim under the sea to cut holes in
the bottoms of ships," and asked why, if what Ford said was true,
Germany took responsibility for the sinking and "defended what it did
not do." Mr. Ford's efforts, he concluded, "queer the pitch" of "more
plausible and presentable" pacifists.

On the other hand H.G. Wells, in The Shape of Things to Come, devoted
an entire chapter to the Ford Peace Ship, stating that "despite its
failure, this effort to stop the war will be remembered when the
generals and their battles and senseless slaughter are forgotten." Wells
claimed that the American armaments industry and banks, who made
enormous profits from selling munitions to the warring European nations,
deliberately spread lies in order to cause the failure of Ford's peace
efforts. He noted, however, that when the U.S. entered the war in 1917,
Ford took part and made considerable profits from the sale of
munitions.

The episode was fictionalized by the British novelist Douglas Galbraith
in his novel King Henry.[28]


[edit] World War II era
Ford and Adolf Hitler admired each other's achievements.[29] Adolf
Hitler kept a life-size portrait of Ford next to his desk.[29] "I regard
Henry Ford as my inspiration," Hitler told a Detroit News reporter two
years before becoming the Chancellor of Germany in 1933.[29] In July
1938, four months after the German annexation of Austria, Ford was
awarded the Grand Cross of the German Eagle, the highest medal awarded
by Nazi Germany to foreigners.[29]

Ford disliked the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and
did not approve of U.S. involvement in the war. Therefore, from 1939 to
1943, the War Production Board's dealings with the Ford Motor Company
were with others in the organization, such as Edsel Ford and Charles
Sorensen, much more than with Henry Ford. During this time Henry Ford
did not stop his executives from cooperating with Washington, but he
himself did not get deeply involved. He watched, focusing on his own pet
side projects, as the work progressed.[30] After Edsel Ford's passing,
Henry Ford resumed control of the company in 1943.

After years of the Great Depression, labor strife, and New Deal, he
suspected people in Washington were conspiring to wrest the company from
his control. Ironically, his paranoia was trending toward
self-fulfilling prophesy, as his attitude inspired background chatter in
Washington about how to undermine his control of the company, whether by
wartime government fiat or by instigating some sort of coup among
executives and directors.[31] In 1945, the war ended, Henry Ford II
became company president, and the storm was past.


[edit] Dearborn Independent
 
The non-Ford publication The International Jew, the World's Foremost
Problem. Articles from The Dearborn Independent, 1920In 1918, Ford's
closest aide and private secretary, Ernest G. Liebold, purchased an
obscure weekly newspaper, The Dearborn Independent for Ford. The
Independent ran for eight years, from 1920 until 1927, during which
Liebold was editor. The newspaper published "Protocols of the Learned
Elders of Zion," which was discredited by The Times of London as a
forgery during the Independent's publishing run. The American Jewish
Historical Society described the ideas presented in the magazine as
"anti-immigrant, anti-labor, anti-liquor, and anti-Semitic." In February
1921, the New York World published an interview with Ford, in which he
said "The only statement I care to make about the Protocols is that they
fit in with what is going on." During this period, Ford emerged as "a
respected spokesman for right-wing extremism and religious prejudice,"
reaching around 700,000 readers through his newspaper.[32]

Along with the Protocols, anti-Jewish articles published by The
Dearborn Independent also were released in the early 1920s as a set of
four bound volumes, in a non-Ford publication in Weimar Republic Germany
cumulatively titled The International Jew, the World's Foremost Problem.
Vincent Curcio wrote of these publications that "they were widely
distributed and had great influence, particularly in Nazi Germany, where
no less a personage than Adolf Hitler read and admired them." Hitler,
fascinated with automobiles, hung Ford's picture on his wall; Ford is
the only American mentioned in Mein Kampf. Steven Watts wrote that
Hitler "revered" Ford, proclaiming that "I shall do my best to put his
theories into practice in Germany, and modeling the Volkswagen, the
people's car, on the model T."[33]

Denounced by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the articles
nevertheless explicitly condemned pogroms and violence against Jews
(Volume 4, Chapter 80), preferring to blame incidents of mass violence
on the Jews themselves.[34] None of this work was actually written by
Ford, who wrote almost nothing according to trial testimony. Friends and
business associates have said they warned Ford about the contents of the
Independent and that he probably never read them. (He claimed he only
read the headlines.)[35] However, court testimony in a libel suit,
brought by one of the targets of the newspaper, alleged that Ford did
know about the contents of the Independent in advance of
publication.[36]

A libel lawsuit brought by San Francisco lawyer and Jewish farm
cooperative organizer Aaron Sapiro in response to anti-Semitic remarks
led Ford to close the Independent in December 1927. News reports at the
time quoted him as being shocked by the content and having been unaware
of its nature. During the trial, the editor of Ford's "Own Page,"
William Cameron, testified that Ford had nothing to do with the
editorials even though they were under his byline. Cameron testified at
the libel trial that he never discussed the content of the pages or sent
them to Ford for his approval.[37] Investigative journalist Max Wallace
noted that "whatever credibility this absurd claim may have had was soon
undermined when James M. Miller, a former Dearborn Independent employee,
swore under oath that Ford had told him he intended to expose
Sapiro."[36]

Michael Barkun observed, "That Cameron would have continued to publish
such controversial material without Ford's explicit instructions seemed
unthinkable to those who knew both men. Mrs. Stanley Ruddiman, a Ford
family intimate, remarked that 'I don't think Mr. Cameron ever wrote
anything for publication without Mr. Ford's approval.'"[38] According to
Spencer Blakeslee,

The ADL mobilized prominent Jews and non-Jews to publicly oppose Ford's
message. They formed a coalition of Jewish groups for the same purpose
and raised constant objections in the Detroit press. Before leaving his
presidency early in 1921, Woodrow Wilson joined other leading Americans
in a statement that rebuked Ford and others for their antisemitic
campaign. A boycott against Ford products by Jews and liberal Christians
also had an impact, and Ford shut down the paper in 1927, recanting his
views in a public letter to Sigmund Livingston, ADL.[39]

 
Grand Cross of the German Eagle, an award bestowed to Mr. FordFord's
1927 apology had been well received, "Four-Fifths of the hundreds of
letters addressed to Ford in July of 1927 were from Jews, and almost
without exception they praised the Industrialist."[40] In January 1937,
a Ford statement to the Detroit Jewish Chronicle disavowed "any
connection whatsoever with the publication in Germany of a book known as
the International Jew."[40]

In July 1938, prior to the outbreak of war, the German consul at
Cleveland gave Ford, on his 75th birthday, the award of the Grand Cross
of the German Eagle, the highest medal Nazi Germany could bestow on a
foreigner,[29] while James D. Mooney, vice-president of overseas
operations for General Motors, received a similar medal, the Merit Cross
of the German Eagle, First Class.[41]

Distribution of International Jew was halted in 1942 through legal
action by Ford despite complications from a lack of copyright,[40] but
extremist groups often recycle the material; it still appears on
antisemitic and neo-Nazi websites.

One Jewish personality who was said to have been friendly with Ford is
Detroit Judge Harry Keidan. When asked about this connection, Ford
replied that Keidan was only half-Jewish. A close collaborator of Henry
Ford during World War II reported that Ford, at the time being more than
80 years old, was shown a movie of the Nazi concentration camps.[42]


[edit] International business
Ford's philosophy was one of economic independence for the United
States. His River Rouge Plant became the world's largest industrial
complex, even able to produce its own steel. Ford's goal was to produce
a vehicle from scratch without reliance on foreign trade. He believed in
the global expansion of his company. He believed that international
trade and cooperation led to international peace, and he used the
assembly line process and production of the Model T to demonstrate
it.[43] He opened Ford assembly plants in Britain and Canada in 1911,
and soon became the biggest automotive producer in those countries. In
1912, Ford cooperated with Agnelli of Fiat to launch the first Italian
automotive assembly plants. The first plants in Germany were built in
the 1920s with the encouragement of Herbert Hoover and the Commerce
Department, which agreed with Ford's theory that international trade was
essential to world peace.[44] In the 1920s Ford also opened plants in
Australia, India, and France, and by 1929, he had successful dealerships
on six continents. Ford experimented with a commercial rubber plantation
in the Amazon jungle called Fordlândia; it was one of the few failures.
In 1929, Ford accepted Stalin's invitation to build a model plant (NNAZ,
today GAZ) at Gorky, a city later renamed Nizhny Novgorod, and he sent
American engineers and technicians to help set it up, including future
labor leader Walter Reuther.

 
Edsel Ford, Charles Lindbergh, and Henry Ford pose in the Ford hangar
during Lindbergh's August 1927 visit.The technical assistance agreement
between Ford Motor Company, VSNH and the Soviet-controlled Amtorg
Trading Corporation[45] (as purchasing agent) was concluded for nine
years and signed on May 31, 1929, by Ford, FMC vice-president Peter E.
Martin, V. I. Mezhlauk, and the president of Amtorg, Saul G. Bron. The
Ford Motor Company worked to conduct business in any nation where the
United States had peaceful diplomatic relations:

Ford of Australia 
Ford of Britain 
Ford of Argentina 
Ford of Brazil 
Ford of Canada 
Ford of Europe 
Ford India 
Ford South Africa 
Ford Mexico 
By 1932, Ford was manufacturing one third of all the world’s
automobiles.

Ford's image transfixed Europeans, especially the Germans, arousing the
"fear of some, the infatuation of others, and the fascination among
all".[46] Germans who discussed "Fordism" often believed that it
represented something quintessentially American. They saw the size,
tempo, standardization, and philosophy of production demonstrated at the
Ford Works as a national service—an "American thing" that represented
the culture of United States. Both supporters and critics insisted that
Fordism epitomized American capitalist development, and that the auto
industry was the key to understanding economic and social relations in
the United States. As one German explained, "Automobiles have so
completely changed the American's mode of life that today one can hardly
imagine being without a car. It is difficult to remember what life was
like before Mr. Ford began preaching his doctrine of salvation"[47] For
many Germans, Henry Ford embodied the essence of successful
Americanism.

In My Life and Work, Ford predicted essentially that if greed, racism,
and short-sightedness could be overcome, then eventually economic and
technologic development throughout the world would progress to the point
that international trade would no longer be based on (what today would
be called) colonial or neocolonial models and would truly benefit all
peoples.[48] His ideas here were vague, but they were idealistic and
they seemed to indicate a belief in the inherent intelligence of all
ethnicities (which some[who?] may find somewhat suspect coming from
Ford).


[edit] Racing
 
Ford (standing) launched Barney Oldfield's career in 1902Ford
maintained an interest in auto racing from 1901 to 1913 and began his
involvement in the sport as both a builder and a driver, later turning
the wheel over to hired drivers. He entered stripped-down Model Ts in
races, finishing first (although later disqualified) in an
"ocean-to-ocean" (across the United States) race in 1909, and setting a
one-mile (1.6 km) oval speed record at Detroit Fairgrounds in 1911 with
driver Frank Kulick. In 1913, Ford attempted to enter a reworked Model T
in the Indianapolis 500 but was told rules required the addition of
another 1,000 pounds (450 kg) to the car before it could qualify. Ford
dropped out of the race and soon thereafter dropped out of racing
permanently, citing dissatisfaction with the sport's rules, demands on
his time by the booming production of the Model Ts, and his low opinion
of racing as a worthwhile activity.

In My Life and Work Ford speaks (briefly) of racing in a rather
dismissive tone, as something that is not at all a good measure of
automobiles in general. He describes himself as someone who raced only
because in the 1890s through 1910s, one had to race because prevailing
ignorance held that racing was the way to prove the worth of an
automobile. Ford did not agree. But he was determined that as long as
this was the definition of success (flawed though the definition was),
then his cars would be the best that there were at racing.[49]
Throughout the book he continually returns to ideals such as
transportation, production efficiency, affordability, reliability, fuel
efficiency, economic prosperity, and the automation of drudgery in
farming and industry, but rarely mentions, and rather belittles, the
idea of merely going fast from point A to point B.

Nevertheless, Ford did make quite an impact on auto racing during his
racing years, and he was inducted into the Motorsports Hall of Fame of
America in 1996.


[edit] Later career
When Edsel, president of Ford Motor Company, died of cancer in May
1943, the elderly and ailing Henry Ford decided to assume the
presidency. By this point in his life, he had had several cardiovascular
events (variously cited as heart attack or stroke) and was mentally
inconsistent, suspicious, and generally no longer fit for such a
job.[50]

Most of the directors did not want to see him as president. But for the
previous 20 years, though he had long been without any official
executive title, he had always had de facto control over the company;
the board and the management had never seriously defied him, and this
moment was not different. The directors elected him,[51] and he served
until the end of the war. During this period the company began to
decline, losing more than $10 million a month. The administration of
President Franklin Roosevelt had been considering a government takeover
of the company in order to ensure continued war production,[31] but the
idea never progressed.


[edit] Death
In ill health, he ceded the presidency to his grandson Henry Ford II in
September 1945 and went into retirement. He died in 1947 of a cerebral
hemorrhage at age 83 in Fair Lane, his Dearborn estate, and he is buried
in the Ford Cemetery in Detroit.[52]


[edit] Sidelights

[edit] Interest in materials science and engineering
Henry Ford long had an interest in materials science and engineering.
He enthusiastically described his company's adoption of vanadium steel
alloys and subsequent metallurgic R&D work.[53]

Ford long had an interest in plastics developed from agricultural
products, especially soybeans. He cultivated a relationship with George
Washington Carver for this purpose.[citation needed] 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 Ford patented an automobile made almost entirely of plastic,
attached to a tubular welded frame. It weighed 30% less than a steel car
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. The design never caught on.[54]

Ford was interested in engineered woods ("Better wood can be made than
is grown"[55]) (at this time plywood and particle board were little more
than experimental ideas); corn as a fuel source, via both corn oil and
ethanol;[56] and the potential uses of cotton.[55] Ford was instrumental
in developing charcoal briquets, under the brand name "Kingsford". His
brother in law, E.G. Kingsford, used wood scraps from the Ford factory
to make the briquets.


[edit] Georgia residence and community
Ford maintained a vacation residence (known as the "Ford Plantation")
in Richmond Hill, Georgia. He contributed substantially to the
community, building a chapel and schoolhouse and employing numerous
local residents.


[edit] Preserving Americana in museums and villages
Ford had an interest in "Americana". In the 1920s, Ford began work to
turn Sudbury, Massachusetts, into a themed historical village. He moved
the schoolhouse supposedly referred to in the nursery rhyme, Mary had a
little lamb, from Sterling, Massachusetts, and purchased the historical
Wayside Inn. This plan never saw fruition, but Ford repeated it with the
creation of Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan. It may have
inspired the creation of Old Sturbridge Village as well. About the same
time, he began collecting materials for his museum, which had a theme of
practical technology. It was opened in 1929 as the Edison Institute and,
although greatly modernized, remains open today.


[edit] The "invention of the automobile"
Both Henry Ford and Karl Benz are sometimes oversimplistically credited
with the "invention of the automobile", although (as is the case with
most inventions) the reality of the automobile's development included
many inventors. As Ford himself said, by the 1870s, the notion of a
horseless carriage was "a common idea".[57] What the following decades
brought was the technical success of the idea, and the extension of the
idea beyond steam power to other power sources (electric motors and
internal combustion engines). Ford was, however, more influential than
any other single person in changing the paradigm of the automobile from
a scarce, heavy, hand-built toy for rich people into a lightweight,
reliable, affordable, mass-produced mode of transportation for the
masses of working people.


[edit] The "invention of the assembly line"
Both Henry Ford and Ransom E. Olds are sometimes oversimplistically
credited with the "invention of the assembly line", although (as is the
case with most inventions) the reality of the assembly line's
development included many inventors. One prerequisite was the idea of
interchangeable parts (which was another gradual technological
development often mistakenly attributed to one individual or another).
Ford's first moving assembly line (employing conveyor belts), after 5
years of empirical development, first began mass production on or around
April 1, 1913. The idea was tried first on subassemblies, and shortly
after on the entire chassis. Again, although it is inaccurate to say
that Henry Ford himself "invented" the assembly line, it is accurate to
say that his sponsorship of its development was central to its explosive
success in the 20th century.


[edit] Miscellaneous
Ford was the winner of the award of Car Entrepreneur of the Century in
1999.

An Episcopalian, Henry Ford dressed up as Santa Claus and gave sleigh
rides to children at Christmas time on his estate.[25]

Henry Ford was especially fond of Thomas Edison, and on Edison's
deathbed, he demanded Edison's son catch his final breath in a test
tube. The test tube can still be found today in Henry Ford Museum.[58]

In 1923, Ford's pastor, and head of his sociology department, the
Episcopal minister Samuel S. Marquis, claimed that Ford believed, or
"once believed" in reincarnation.[59] Though it is unclear whether or
how long Ford kept such a belief, the San Francisco Examiner from August
26, 1928, published a quote which described Ford's beliefs:

I adopted the theory of Reincarnation when I was twenty six. Religion
offered nothing to the point. Even work could not give me complete
satisfaction. Work is futile if we cannot utilise the experience we
collect in one life in the next. When I discovered Reincarnation it was
as if I had found a universal plan I realised that there was a chance to
work out my ideas. Time was no longer limited. I was no longer a slave
to the hands of the clock. Genius is experience. Some seem to think that
it is a gift or talent, but it is the fruit of long experience in many
lives. Some are older souls than others, and so they know more. The
discovery of Reincarnation put my mind at ease. If you preserve a record
of this conversation, write it so that it puts men’s minds at ease. I
would like to communicate to others the calmness that the long view of
life gives to us.


[edit] Popular culture
In Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, society is organized on 'Fordist'
lines and the years are dated A.F. (After Ford). In the book, the
expression 'My Ford' is used instead of 'My Lord'. Even human beings are
produced via an assembly line, grown in large glass jars and provided in
five models: Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta and Epsilon. As homage to the
assembly line philosophy that so defined the mass-culture society of
Brave New World, native individuals make the "sign of the T" instead of
the "sign of the cross." 
Ford is a character in several historical fiction books, notably E. L.
Doctorow's Ragtime, and Richard Powers' novel Three Farmers on the Way
to a Dance. 
In the 2005 novel The Plot Against America, Philip Roth imagines Ford
as Secretary of Interior in an imaginary Lindbergh administration. 
Ford, his family, and his company were the subjects of a 1986 biography
by Robert Lacey entitled Ford: The Men and the Machine. The book was
adapted in 1987 into a film starring Cliff Robertson and Michael
Ironside. 

[edit] Honors



This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com