Henry Ford

Henry Ford with Thomas Edison and Harvey S. Firestone. Fort 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.[13] Ford & Malcomson was reincorporated as the Ford Motor Company on June 16, 1903,[13] with $28,000 capital. The original investors included Ford and Malcomson, the Dodge brothers, Malcomson's uncle John S. Gray, Malcolmson's secretary James Couzens, and two of Malcomson's lawyers, John W. Anderson and Horace Rackham. Because of Ford's volatility, Gray was elected president of the company. Ford then demonstrated a newly designed car on the ice of Lake St. Clair, driving 1 mile (1.6 km) in 39.4 seconds and setting a new land speed record at 91.3 miles per hour (146.9 kilometres per hour). Convinced by this success, race driver Barney Oldfield, who named this new Ford model "999" in honor of the fastest 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.

The Model T debuted on October 1, 1908. It had the steering wheel on the left, which every other company soon copied. 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 ($26,870 today), with the price falling every year, that by the 1920s, a majority of American drivers had learned to drive on the Model T,[14][15] despite the fact that drivers who were only familiar with the Model T's unique foot-operated planetary transmission and steering-column operated throttle-cum-accelerator had to learn a completely different set of skills to drive any other gasoline-powered automobile of the time.

Ford assembly line, 1913

Ford created a huge 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 almost every city in North America. As independent dealers, the franchises grew rich and publicized not just the Ford but also the concept of automobiling; local motor clubs sprang up to help new drivers and encourage them to explore the countryside. Ford was always eager to sell to farmers, who looked at the vehicle as a commercial device to help their business. Sales skyrocketed—several years posted 100% gains on the previous year. In 1913, Ford introduced moving assembly belts into his plants, which enabled an enormous increase in production. Although Ford is often credited with the idea, contemporary sources indicate that the concept and development came from employees Clarence Avery, Peter E. Martin, Charles E. Sorensen, and C. Harold Wills.[16] (See Ford Piquette Avenue Plant)

Sales passed 250,000 in 1914. By 1916, as the price dropped to $360 for the basic touring car, sales reached 472,000.[17]

By 1918, half of all cars in the United States were Model Ts. All new cars were black; as Ford wrote in his autobiography, "Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black."[18] Until the development of the assembly line, which mandated black because of its quicker drying time, Model Ts 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, and was achieved in 19 years from the introduction of the first Model T (1908).[19]

Henry Ford turned the presidency of Ford Motor Company over to his son Edsel Ford in December 1918. Henry retained final decision authority and sometimes reversed the decisions of his son. Ford 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 Ford and Edsel purchased all remaining stock from the other investors, thus giving the family sole ownership of the company.[20]

In 1922, Ford also purchased Lincoln Motor Co., founded by Cadillac founder Henry Leland and his son Wilfred during World War I. The Lelands briefly stayed to manage the company, but were soon expelled from it.[21] Despite this acquisition of a premium car maker, Henry displayed relatively little enthusiasm for luxury automobiles in contrast to Edsel, who actively sought to expand Ford into the upscale market.[22] The original Lincoln Model L that the Lelands had introduced in 1920 was also kept in production, untouched for a decade until it became too outdated. It was replaced by the modernized Model K in 1931.[23]

A 1926 Ford T Roadster on display in India

By the mid-1920s, General Motors was rapidly rising as the leading American automobile manufacturer. GM president Alfred Sloan established the company's "price ladder" whereby GM would offer an automobile for "every purse and purpose" in contrast to Ford's lack of interest in anything outside the low-end market. Although Henry Ford was against replacing the Model T, now 16 years old, Chevrolet was mounting a bold new challenge as GM's entry-level division in the company's price ladder. Ford also resisted the increasingly popular idea of payment plans for cars. With Model T sales starting to slide, Ford was forced to relent and approve work on a successor model, shutting down production for 18 months. During this time, Ford constructed a massive new assembly plant at River Rouge for the new Model A, which launched in 1927.[24]

In addition to its price ladder, GM also quickly established itself at the forefront of automotive styling under Harley Earl's Arts & Color Department, another area of automobile design that Henry Ford did not entirely appreciate or understand. Ford would not have a true equivalent of the GM styling department for many years.

By 1926, flagging sales of the Model T finally convinced Ford to make a new model. He pursued the project with a great deal of interest in the design of the engine, chassis, and other mechanical necessities, while leaving the body design to his son. Although Ford fancied himself an engineering genius, he had little formal training in mechanical engineering and could not even read a blueprint. A talented team of engineers performed most of the actual work of designing the Model A (and later the flathead V8) with Ford supervising them closely and giving them overall direction. Edsel also managed to prevail over his father's initial objections in the inclusion of a sliding-shift transmission.[25]

The result was the Ford Model A, introduced in December 1927 and produced through 1931, with a total output of more than four million. Subsequently, the Ford company adopted an annual model change system similar to that recently pioneered by its competitor General Motors (and still 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. Henry Ford still resisted many technological innovations such as hydraulic brakes and all-metal roofs, which Ford vehicles did not adopt until 1935–36. For 1932 however, Ford dropped a bombshell with the flathead Ford V8, the first low-price eight-cylinder engine. The flathead V8, variants of which were used in Ford vehicles for 20 years, was the result of a secret project launched in 1930 and Henry had initially considered a radical X-8 engine before agreeing to a conventional design. It gave Ford a reputation as a performance make well-suited for hot-rodding.[26]

Ford did not believe in accountants; he amassed one of the world's largest fortunes without ever having his company audited under his administration. Without an accounting department, Ford had no way of knowing exactly how much money was being taken in and spent each month, and the company's bills and invoices were reportedly guessed at by weighing them on a scale. Not until 1956 would Ford be a publicly-traded company.[27]

Also, at Edsel's insistence, Ford launched Mercury in 1939 as a mid-range make to challenge Dodge and Buick, although Henry also displayed relatively little enthusiasm for it.[22]

Time magazine, January 14, 1935

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.[28]

Ford astonished the world in 1914 by offering a $5 per day wage ($146 in 2022), which more than doubled the rate of most of his workers.[29] A Cleveland, Ohio, newspaper editorialized that the announcement "shot like a blinding rocket through the dark clouds of the present industrial depression".[30] The move proved extremely profitable; instead of constant employee turnover, the best mechanics in Detroit flocked to Ford, bringing their human capital and expertise, raising productivity, and lowering training costs.[31][32] Ford announced his $5-per-day program on January 5, 1914, raising the minimum daily pay from $2.34 to $5 for qualifying male workers.[33][34]

Detroit was already a high-wage city, but competitors were forced to raise wages or lose their best workers.[35] Ford's policy proved that paying employees more would enable them to afford the cars they were producing and thus boost the local economy. He viewed the increased wages as profit-sharing linked with rewarding those who were most productive and of good character.[36] It may have been Couzens who convinced Ford to adopt the $5-day wage.[37]

Real profit-sharing 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 on what are now called deadbeat dads. The Social Department used 50 investigators and support staff to maintain employee standards; a large percentage of workers were able to qualify for this "profit-sharing".[38]

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 had spoken of the Social Department and the private conditions for profit-sharing in the past tense. He admitted that "paternalism has no place in the industry. Welfare work that consists in prying into employees' private concerns is out of date. Men need counsel and men need help, often 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 the industry and strengthen the organization than will any social work on the outside. Without changing the principle we have changed the method of payment."[39]

In addition to raising his workers' wages, Ford also introduced a new, reduced workweek in 1926. The decision was made in 1922, when Ford and Crowther described it as six 8-hour days, giving a 48-hour week,[40] but in 1926 it was announced as five 8-hour days, giving a 40-hour week.[41] The program apparently started with Saturday being designated a workday, before becoming a day off sometime later. On May 1, 1926, the Ford Motor Company's factory workers switched to a five-day, 40-hour workweek, with the company's office workers making the transition the following August.[42]

Ford had decided to boost productivity, as workers were expected to put more effort into their work in exchange for more leisure time. Ford also believed decent leisure time was good for business, giving workers additional time to purchase and consume more goods. However, charitable concerns also played a role. Ford explained, "It is high time to rid ourselves of the notion that leisure for workmen is either 'lost time' or a class privilege."[42]

Ford was adamantly against labor unions. He explained his views on unions in Chapter 18 of My Life and Work.[43] He thought they were too heavily influenced by leaders who would end up doing more harm than good for workers despite their ostensible good motives. 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 economic prosperity to exist.

He believed that productivity gains that obviated certain jobs would nevertheless stimulate the broader economy and grow new jobs elsewhere, whether within the same corporation or in others. Ford also believed that union leaders had a perverse incentive to foment perpetual socio-economic crises to maintain their power. Meanwhile, he believed that smart managers had an incentive to do right by their workers, because doing so would maximize their profits. However, Ford did acknowledge that many managers were basically too bad at managing to understand this fact. But Ford believed that eventually, if good managers such as he could 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 quash union organizing.[44] On March 7, 1932, during the Great Depression, unemployed Detroit auto workers staged the Ford Hunger March to the Ford River Rouge Complex to present 14 demands to Henry Ford. The Dearborn police department and Ford security guards opened fire on workers leading to over sixty injuries and five deaths. On May 26, 1937, Bennett's security men beat members of the United Automobile Workers (UAW), including Walter Reuther, with clubs.[45] While Bennett's men were beating the UAW representatives, the supervising police chief on the scene was Carl Brooks, an alumnus of Bennett's Service Department, and [Brooks] "did not give orders to intervene".[45]^: 311The following day photographs of the injured UAW members appeared in newspapers, later becoming known as The Battle of the Overpass.

In the late 1930s and early 1940s, Edsel—who was president of the company—thought Ford had to come to a collective bargaining agreement with the unions because the violence, work disruptions, and bitter stalemates could not go on forever. But Ford, 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 trying to organize the Ford Motor Company. Sorensen's memoir[46] makes clear that Ford's purpose in putting Bennett in charge was to make sure no agreements were ever reached.

The Ford Motor Company was the last Detroit automaker to recognize the UAW, despite pressure from the rest of the U.S. automotive industry and even the U.S. government. A sit-down strike by the UAW union in April 1941 closed the River Rouge Plant. Sorensen recounted[47] that a distraught Henry Ford was very close to following through with a threat to break up the company rather than cooperate. Still, his wife Clara told him she would leave him if he destroyed the family business. In her view, it would not be worth the chaos it would create. Ford complied with his wife's ultimatum and even agreed with her in retrospect. Overnight, the Ford Motor Company went from the most stubborn holdout among automakers to the one with the most favorable UAW contract terms. The contract was signed in June 1941.[47] About a year later, Ford told Walter Reuther, "It was one of the most sensible things Harry Bennett ever did when he got the UAW into this plant." Reuther inquired, "What do you mean?" Ford replied, "Well, you've been fighting General Motors and the Wall Street crowd. Now you're in here and we've given you a union shop and more than you got out of them. That puts you on our side, doesn't it? We can fight General Motors and Wall Street together, eh?"[48]

Ford 4-AT-F (EC-RRA) of the Spanish Republican Airline, L.A.P.E.

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

Ford's most successful aircraft was the Ford 4AT Trimotor, often 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. The Smithsonian Institution has honored Ford for changing the aviation industry. 199 Trimotors were built before it was discontinued in 1933, when the Ford Airplane Division shut down because of poor sales during the Great Depression.

In 1985, Ford was posthumously inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame for his impact on the industry.[49]

Ford opposed war, which he viewed as a terrible waste,[50][51] and supported causes that opposed military intervention.[52] Ford became highly critical of those who he felt financed war, and he tried to stop them. In 1915, the pacifist Rosika Schwimmer gained favor with Ford, who agreed to fund a Peace Ship to Europe, where World War I was raging. He led 170 other peace activists. Ford's Episcopalian pastor, Reverend Samuel S. Marquis, accompanied him on the mission. Marquis headed Ford's Sociology Department from 1913 to 1921. Ford talked to President Woodrow Wilson about the mission but had no government support. His group went to neutral Sweden and the Netherlands to meet with peace activists. A target of much ridicule, Ford left the ship as soon as it reached Sweden.[53] In 1915, Ford blamed "German-Jewish bankers" for instigating the war.[54]

According to biographer Steven Watts, Ford's status as a leading industrialist gave him a worldview that warfare was wasteful folly that retarded long-term economic growth. The losing side in the war typically suffered heavy damage. Small business were especially hurt, for it takes years to recuperate. He argued in many newspaper articles that a focus on business efficiency would discourage warfare because, “If every man who manufactures an article would make the very best he can in the very best way at the very lowest possible price the world would be kept out of war, for commercialists would not have to search for outside markets which the other fellow covets.” Ford admitted that munitions makers enjoyed wars, but he argued the most businesses wanted to avoid wars and instead work to manufacture and sell useful goods, hire workers, and generate steady long-term profits.[55]

Ford's British factories produced Fordson tractors to increase the British food supply, as well as trucks and warplane engines. When the U.S. entered the war in 1917, Ford went quiet on foreign policy. His company became a major supplier of weapons, especially the Liberty engine for warplanes and anti-submarine boats.[9]^{: 95–100, 119}[56]

In 1918, with the war on and the League of Nations a growing issue in global politics, President Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat, encouraged Ford to run for a Michigan seat in the U.S. Senate. Wilson believed that Ford could tip the scales in Congress in favor of Wilson's proposed League. "You are the only man in Michigan who can be elected and help bring about the peace you so desire," the president wrote Ford. Ford wrote back: "If they want to elect me let them do so, but I won't make a penny's investment." Ford did run, however, and came within 7,000 votes of winning, out of more than 400,000 cast statewide.[57] He was defeated in a close election by the Republican candidate, Truman Newberry, a former United States Secretary of the Navy. Ford remained a staunch Wilsonian and supporter of the League. When Wilson made a major speaking tour in the summer of 1919 to promote the League, Ford helped fund the attendant publicity.[58][59]

Ford opposed the United States' entry into World War II[45][60] and continued to believe that international business could generate the prosperity that would head off wars. Ford "insisted that war was the product of greedy financiers who sought profit in human destruction". In 1939, he went so far as to claim that the torpedoing of U.S. merchant ships by German submarines was the result of conspiratorial activities undertaken by financier war-makers.[61] The financiers to whom he was referring was Ford's code for Jews; he had also accused Jews of fomenting the First World War.[45][62]

In the run-up to World War II and when the war erupted in 1939, he reported that he did not want to trade with belligerents. Like many other businessmen of the Great Depression era, he never liked or entirely trusted the Franklin Roosevelt Administration, and thought Roosevelt was inching the U.S. closer to war. Ford continued to do business with Nazi Germany, including the manufacture of war materiel.[45] However, he also agreed to build warplane engines for the British government.[63] In early 1940, he boasted that Ford Motor Company would soon be able to produce 1,000 U.S. warplanes a day, even though it did not have an aircraft production facility at that time.[64]^: 430 Ford was a prominent early member of the America First Committee against World War II involvement, but was forced to resign from its executive board when his involvement proved too controversial.[65]

Beginning in 1940, with the requisitioning of between 100 and 200 French POWs to work as slave laborers, Ford-Werke contravened Article 31 of the 1929 Geneva Convention.[45]

When Rolls-Royce sought a U.S. manufacturer as an additional source for the Merlin engine (as fitted to Spitfire and Hurricane fighters), Ford first agreed to do so and then reneged. He "lined up behind the war effort" when the U.S. entered in December 1941.[66]

Before the U.S. entered the war, responding to President Roosevelt's call in December 1940 for the "Great Arsenal of Democracy", Ford directed the Ford Motor Company to construct a vast new purpose-built aircraft factory at Willow Run near Detroit, Michigan. Ford broke ground on Willow Run in the spring of 1941, B-24 component production began in May 1942, and the first complete B-24 came off the line in October 1942. At 3,500,000 sq ft (330,000 m²), it was the largest assembly line in the world at the time. At its peak in 1944, the Willow Run plant produced 650 B-24s per month, and by 1945 Ford was completing each B-24 in eighteen hours, with one rolling off the assembly line every 58 minutes.[67] Ford produced 9,000 B-24s at Willow Run, half of the 18,000 total B-24s produced during the war.[67][64]^: 430

When Edsel Ford died of cancer in 1943, aged only 49, Henry Ford nominally resumed control of the company, but a series of strokes in the late 1930s had left him increasingly debilitated, and his mental ability was fading. Ford was increasingly sidelined, and others made decisions in his name.[68] The company was controlled by a handful of senior executives led by Charles Sorensen, an important engineer and production executive at Ford; and Harry Bennett, the chief of Ford's Service Unit, Ford's paramilitary force that spied on, and enforced discipline upon, Ford employees. Ford grew jealous of the publicity Sorensen received and forced Sorensen out in 1944.[69] Ford's incompetence led to discussions in Washington about how to restore the company, whether by wartime government fiat, or by instigating a coup among executives and directors.[70]

Nothing happened until 1945 when, with bankruptcy a serious risk, Ford's wife Clara and Edsel's widow Eleanor confronted him and demanded he cede control of the company to his grandson Henry Ford II. They threatened to sell off their stock, which amounted to three quarters of the company's total shares, if he refused. Ford was reportedly infuriated, but had no choice but to give in.[71][72] The young man took over and, as his first act of business, fired Harry Bennett.

Henry Ford had a long-held interest in materials science and engineering. He enthusiastically described his company's adoption of vanadium steel alloys and subsequent metallurgic R&D work.[122]

Ford also had a long-standing interest in plastics developed from agricultural products, particularly soybeans. He cultivated a relationship with George Washington Carver for this purpose.[123][124][125] Soybean-based plastics were used in Ford automobiles throughout the 1930s in plastic parts such as car horns, in paint and other components. The 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 steel. It ran on grain alcohol (ethanol) instead of gasoline. The design never caught on.[126]

Ford was interested in engineered woods ("Better wood can be made than is grown"[127]) (at this time plywood and particle board were little more than experimental ideas); corn as a fuel source, via both corn oil and ethanol;[128] and the potential uses of cotton.[127] Ford was instrumental in developing charcoal briquets, under the brand name "Kingsford". His brother-in-law, Edward G. Kingsford, used wood scraps from the Ford factory to make the briquets.

In 1927, Ford partnered with Thomas Edison and Harvey Samuel Firestone (each contributing $25,000) to create the Edison Botanic Research Corp. in Fort Myers, Florida to seek a native source of rubber.

Ford was a prolific inventor and was awarded 161 U.S. patents.

Ford had a vacation residence in Fort Myers, Florida, next to that of Thomas Edison, which he bought in 1915 and used until c. 1930. It still stands today as a museum.[129]

He also had a vacation home (known today as the "Ford Plantation") in Richmond Hill, Georgia, which is now a private community. Ford started buying land in this area and eventually owned 70,000 acres (110 square miles) there.[130] In 1936, Ford broke ground for a beautiful Greek revival style mansion on the banks of the Ogeechee River on the site of a 1730s plantation. The grand house, made of Savannah-gray brick, had marble steps, air conditioning, and an elevator. It sat on 55 acres (22 ha) of manicured lawns and flowering gardens. The house became the center of social gatherings with visitations by the Vanderbilts, Rockefellers, and the DuPonts. It remains the centerpiece of The Ford Plantation today.[131] Ford converted the 1870s-era rice mill into his personal research laboratory and powerhouse and constructed a tunnel from there to the new home, providing it with steam. He contributed substantially to the community, building a chapel and schoolhouse and employing numerous local residents.

Ford had an interest in Americana. In the 1920s, he began work to turn Sudbury, Massachusetts, into a themed historical village. He moved the schoolhouse supposedly referred to in the "Mary Had a Little Lamb" nursery rhyme from Sterling, Massachusetts, and purchased the historic Wayside Inn. The historical village plan never came to fruition. He repeated the concept of collecting historic structures 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. The museum has been greatly modernized and is still open today.