Ford, Henry Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young. —Henry Ford
Henry Ford (1863–1947), American automobile manufacturer and industrialist, is best known as the man who “put America on wheels.” His work changed the lives of millions of people. He was born in Springwells, Michigan, on July 30, 1863. Ford introduced the concept of mass production through use of the assembly line. The assembly line was a development that in just a few years changed the entire structure of the manufacturing industry. Mass production lowered manufacturing costs for the automobile. This meant that even average citizens could afford to own one. As a result, the Model T, Ford’s first mass-produced car, dominated the automobile market for nineteen
years. Ford was also known for promoting fair labor policies that included a higher minimum wage, a shorter workday, and profit sharing for employees. Henry Ford died in Dearborn, Michigan, on April 7, 1947. Henry Ford was born in Springwells, Michigan, on July 30, 1863. Springwells later became part of Dearborn, Michigan. His father, William Ford, was a prosperous farmer and a warden of the village church. He operated his farm successfully and lived at peace. William had none of the restless, visionary daring that characterized his son. Henry’s mother, on the other hand, was a firm and decisive woman. She was devoted to orderliness, cleanliness, and the welfare of her family. She died when Henry was twelve years old. Young Henry Henry attended the local rural school until he was fifteen years old. When he was not in school he performed chores. But, he said, “I never had any particular love for the farm.” In his free time, he tinkered with clocks and watches. He became so skillful at repairing them that he was in great demand throughout the neighborhood. Engines of all kinds fascinated him. Henry never let pass an opportunity to observe them, or to take them apart and study them.
At age sixteen, Henry left the farm and went to Detroit, where he became a machinist’s apprentice. He found employment with the Dry Dock Engine Company. He spent the next two years working there. During this time, Ford greatly increased his mechanical knowledge. He borrowed a copy of a magazine called World of Science from one of his friends.
In the magazine, Ford read about an internal-combustion engine that had been invented by a German man named Nicholaus Otto. The engine made a profound impression on his mind and he thought about it constantly. He began to dream about finding a way to make watches efficiently and cheaply. This was the first of Ford’s many ideas. Fascinated by Engines Farming is a family business and many hands are needed to keep a farm running. Back home, Ford’s father needed his help. So, after three years in the city, Ford returned to Dearborn. He wanted to help, but he did not like farming. Devoting as little time as possible helping on the farm, Ford focused his energy on using his machinist’s skills on steam engines for farmers. Using an old mowing machine his father had discarded, Ford constructed a “farm locomotive.” It was basically a tractor powered by steam. The “farm locomotive” ran only forty feet that first trip and never ran again. Nevertheless, Ford was not discouraged. He later said, “There was too much hard hand labor on our and all other farms of the time…To lift the drudgery off flesh and blood and lay it on steel and motors has been my most constant ambition.” On New Year’s Day, 1888, Ford met Clara Bryant, the daughter of a prosperous farmer in a neighboring township. Ford and Clara quickly fell in love and within three months they were married and living in their own home. His friends hoped that Ford had finally settled down, but ideas kept fermenting in Ford’s head. Before long, however, he confessed to Clara, “What I would like to do is make an engine that will run by gasoline, and have it do the work of a horse. But I can’t do it here on the farm. It would mean moving to Detroit.” And so, on September 25, 1891, the young couple packed their belongings on a hay wagon and drove to Detroit. Ford found work as a steam engineer with the Edison Illuminating Company. There, his mechanical gifts were soon recognized and he was promoted to chief engineer. With this demanding position, would Ford find time to pursue his own ideas? The “Horseless Carriage” Somehow Ford found time to experiment. He was obsessed with the idea of a “horseless carriage.” When he wasn’t at Edison Illuminating, he could be found in a shed behind his home, building things and experimenting. In 1893 his son (and only child), Edsel, was born. Ford continued to work in the shed behind the family home. In 1896, Ford built his first car, which he called the
Quadricycle. It was made up of the body of a buggy mounted on four bicycle wheels, powered by a two-cylinder gasoline engine. Early one morning he pushed it out of the shed and drove it around the block. Emboldened by the success of his creation, a few weeks later he replaced the Quadricycle’s bicycle seat with a bench seat and dared to drive the Quadricycle, with Clara and Edsel, the full nine miles to his old homestead in Dearborn. Had he created the first automobile? The answer to that question is no. Nicolas Joseph Cugnot, working in Paris, France, built the first self-propelled vehicle in 1769. It was a heavy, threewheeled carriage driven by steam. In 1801 an Englishman, Richard Trevithick, produced a similar steam vehicle. The early steam-powered automobiles gradually disappeared because of technical problems. But Ford’s wasn’t even the first automobile to be powered by an internalcombustion engine. Around 1885 in Germany, Karl Benz and Gottlieb Daimler built the first vehicles using the internal-combustion engine. Charles and Frank Duryea, two brothers working in Springfield, Massachusetts, had built and tested an internal-combustion automobile in 1893. By 1892 there were at least fifty inventors in the United States working on the problem of a mechanical road vehicle. In fact, Ford’s 1896 Quadricycle was inferior in many respects to others already in existence in the United States and Europe. But his ideas about manufacturing efficiency and cost containment would help drive his eventual success. Will the Auto Catch On? More and more the automobile pioneers turned to the internal-combustion engine and to gasoline as the fuel, even though the early cars were noisy, uncomfortable, and unreliable. The design of automobiles still presented many challenges. Every detail of the vehicle—bearings, wheels, tires, batteries, carburetors, spark plugs, brakes, and steering gears—had to be designed, tested, and redesigned. Many wondered if the automobile would ever be more than a novelty. The obstacles faced by automobile builders were not entirely mechanical. People were not used to the idea of cars. Those who worked on motorcars were seen as eccentric or even crazy. The vehicles themselves were considered dangerous. Automobiles frightened horses. Farmers who drove
horse-drawn wagons called automobiles “devil wagons.” In 1899 the town of San Rafael, California, required cars to come to a full stop 300 feet from a moving horse. Many cities enforced a speed limit of eight miles per hour. The state of Vermont passed a law in 1909 requiring motorists to have a “person of mature age” walk ahead of a car carrying a red flag to warn of the vehicle’s approach. People wondered if the automobile would ever catch on. The Ford Motor Company Such obstacles did not dishearten Henry Ford. He was encouraged by the success of the car he had built in 1896, and devoted more and more of his time to his experiments. His wife Clara believed wholeheartedly in his abilities and never questioned his use of the family resources for his experiments. After three years and with his wife’s support, Ford resigned his position with the Edison Illuminating Company to devote himself full time to the development of a working car. He joined with others in forming the Detroit Automobile Company. This first venture was a failure. Ford then helped to organize what later became the Cadillac Motor Company. At the turn of the century automobiles were custom-made, complicated, and very expensive. They were regarded as “rich men’s toys.” Ford, however, was sure that they could be made simple, reliable, and within the reach of the average person. He could never convince his associates of this, and so he withdrew from the partnership in 1903. Together with eleven others he raised $28,000 and launched the Ford Motor Company. As the years progressed Ford bought out the other shareholders, one by one. By 1919 he was the sole owner of what would soon become one of the world’s greatest industrial giants. Low Costs, High Profits Ford had a simple formula for the operation of his business. He proposed to, reduce the price of his cars, increase the number of sales, make production more and more efficient, increase the output of the factories, and
repeat this cycle indefinitely.
To implement this formula he built the assembly line. Conveyors brought the job to the worker instead of the worker wasting time going to the job. Ford found it saved money to manufacture the parts of his cars in the Detroit area. He would then ship these parts to branch plants where they were assembled. Ford also cut costs by acquiring coal and iron mines, steel mills, railroads, a fleet of cargo ships, forests, glass-making plants, and a huge rubber plantation in Brazil. By doing these things, Ford was able to lower the price of his cars each year, while at the same time making vast profits. The Ford Motor Company produced several models in its first few years. But in 1908, the famous Model T appeared. There was nothing flashy or fancy about it. It was tough, simple, and reliable. As Ford famously quipped, “Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black.” The price was $850, equivalent to about $18,000 in 2006. How did the public receive the Model T? It was an immediate success. When production of this model was discontinued nineteen years later, more than 15 million cars had been sold. Innovation Beyond the Factory Ford is well known as the pioneer of mass production. But he also revolutionized the way products were sold by introducing the dealer-franchise system, where a dealer would be granted exclusive rights to sell a brandname product in a certain territory. This system would serve as a model for countless businesses that followed, from car companies to fast-food chains such as McDonald’s and Taco Bell. Perhaps because of his humble origins, he was also an innovator in labor policies. In 1914 he startled the world by announcing that he was doubling the minimum wage for his employees, to $5 per day. At the time the average wage for workers in U.S. manufacturing industries was $11 per week, or less than half of what Ford paid his workers. He also announced that the work day would be reduced from nine to eight hours, and promised that in the future, workers in his factories would share in the profits. This business philosophy became known as Fordism.
Under Ford’s way of doing business, not only were goods more affordable because of mass production, but also more people could purchase them because they were making more money. Both the worker and the manufacturer benefited—as Ford was fond of pointing out, the men who worked in his factories were able to purchase the cars they built. Some historians say that the Ford Motor Company helped create the rise of the middle class in American twentieth-century society by increasing the purchasing power of the average citizen. However, though Ford was a strong advocate of better benefits for his workers, some critics say that he only wanted this when he could call the shots. For instance, he was opposed to labor unions. He also set up a “Sociological Department,” meant to ensure that his workers didn’t waste their $5 per day on drinking, gambling, or other activities of which he didn’t approve. In 1938 Henry Ford suffered a heart attack and stepped down from running day-to-day activities of Ford Motor Company in favor of his son Edsel. In 1943 Edsel died of cancer and Henry Ford, in his late seventies, returned to head the company. His health was poor and he could not muster the energy necessary to succeed at running the company, so in September 1945 Ford retired for good, leaving his grandson Henry Ford II as president of Ford. Other Interests Ford ventured into many fields other than industry, but his efforts were not very successful. He failed in his race for the U.S. Senate. He also wanted to run for the presidency, but no one would support him. Ford distrusted bankers, Wall Street, kings, newspapers, and textbooks. He had the tendency to make snap judgments, which were picked up by newspapers and given much publicity. For instance, he said such things as “History is bunk,” and “All the art in the world is not worth five cents.” He was undeniably eccentric, but could also be racist and narrow-minded as well. In 1919, Ford founded his own newspaper, the Dearborn Independent, and used it to launch attacks on minorities. No matter what the issue, Ford wanted to get his own way. Famous for his pacifism, he tried to end World War I by chartering a ship, the “Peace Ship.” He invited celebrities to travel with him to Europe to urge the fighting nations to negotiate their differences. The mission was a failure. Afterward, he was quoted as observing that “we learn from our mistakes.”
Ford’s charitable interests were aligned with his personal interests. In 1915 he contributed $7.5 million to establish the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit. On October 21, 1929, the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village, created by Ford, opened. Thomas Edison and President Herbert Hoover joined Ford at the opening. The museum and village reproduce an early American community, with its church, town hall, school, courthouse, general store, and firehouse, all grouped around the village green. Ford wanted to document the world-changing work of the independent American inventors and thinkers. He added Edison’s workshop and laboratory, Noah Webster’s birthplace, the Wright brothers’ cycle shop and home, and other historic items to Greenfield Village. Ford and Thomas Edison developed a friendship, and Ford hired the inventor to try to invent a usable electric storage battery for cars, although Edison wasn’t ultimately successful. In 1936 he established and endowed the Ford Foundation, which continues to support a broad range of educational, cultural, and social activities into the twenty-first century. In 2006 the Ford Foundation awarded some $530 million in grants. Legacy The Model T dominated the automobile field for two decades. But by the middle of the 1920s, roads had been improved—thanks in part to Ford’s own campaign for their increased quality—and the public’s tastes had changed. The Chevrolet, made by General Motors Corporation, became America’s bestselling car. At first Ford didn’t recognize the changing nature of the car market and continued to sell only the Model T, in just one color—black. But he was finally persuaded to evolve, and in 1925 began to produce the Model A. A few years later, he brought out the V-8 engine. Even as American sales fell, Ford maintained his presence overseas and at its peak Ford Motor Company was in thirty-three countries around the world. However, he was never able to regain the dominance in the field that he had once held. Henry Ford died in Dearborn on April 7, 1947, at the age of eighty-three. He is buried in the Ford Cemetery in Detroit. Henry Ford was a complex man, not without flaws, who did much to change the fabric of American society.
Further Study Books Bak, Richard. Henry and Edsel: The Creation of the Ford Empire . Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, 2003. (M) Batchelor, Ray. Henry Ford: Mass Production, Modernism, and design . Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994. (YA/M) Bryan, Ford R. Beyond the Model T: The Other Ventures of Henry Ford . Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1990. (YA/M) McCarthy, Pat. Henry Ford Building Cars for Everyone. Berkeley Hts., NJ: Enslow Publishers, Inc., 2002. (Y) Temple, Bob. Henry Ford Automobile Manufacturer and Innovator. Chanhassen, MN: Child’s World, 2003. (Y) Web Sites The Henry Ford Heritage Association. “The Ford Legacy.” www.hfha.org/fordlegacy.htm (accessed December 2007). The Henry Ford Museum. “The Life of Henry Ford.” www.hfmgv.org/exhibits/hf (accessed December 2007).
Source: Lincoln Library of Shapers of Society Online Lexile® measure: 1040L Reading level: 7.6 Word count: 2819 Cite this article as: "Ford, Henry." FactCite: Lincoln Library of Shapers of Society Online. Lincoln Lib. P, 2011. Web. 5 Dec. 2014.