Henry ford cause of death
The Henry Ford Heritage Association can provide an informative talk tailored to your audience. Explore the accomplishments and contradictions of Henry Ford from his birth place to his resting place Henry Ford changed the world. The industrial colossus Ford created and the affordable cars he produced, affected society in ways that most could never have imagined.
Four drivers started; again, the main opposition was Winton. Oldfield led from the start, as he opened up and didn't let off. His lead grew to the point of lapping the two lagging cars, and Oldfield soundly beat Winton, who dropped out on the fourth lap. Ford's , with its 70, perhaps 80 horsepower, was described as "low, rakish, and makes more noise than a freight train.
Both went on to become the most recognized figures in early motoring-Ford as a builder, Oldfield as a driver. The excitement that Henry Ford's products generated became the source of explosive growth in motorsport throughout the 20th century. 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 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? 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 , 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. The Trimotor first flew on June 11, , and was the first successful U. Several variants were also used by the U. The Smithsonian Institution has honored Ford for changing the aviation industry.
In , Ford was posthumously inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame for his impact on the industry. Ford opposed war, which he viewed as a terrible waste, [ 56 ] [ 57 ] and supported causes that opposed military intervention. He led other peace activists. Ford's Episcopalian pastor, Reverend Samuel S. Marquis, accompanied him on the mission.
Marquis headed Ford's Sociology Department from to 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. 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.
Henry ford awards and honors
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's British factories produced Fordson tractors to increase the British food supply, as well as trucks and warplane engines. When the U. His company became a major supplier of weapons, especially the Liberty engine for warplanes and anti-submarine boats.
In , 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. Wilson believed that Ford could tip the scales in Congress in favor of Wilson's proposed League. Ford wrote back: "If they want to elect me let them do so, but I won't make a penny's investment.
Ford remained a staunch Wilsonian and supporter of the League. When Wilson made a major speaking tour in the summer of to promote the League, Ford helped fund the attendant publicity. Ford opposed the United States' entry into World War II [ 51 ] [ 66 ] 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 , he went so far as to claim that the torpedoing of U. In the run-up to World War II and when the war erupted in , 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.
Ford continued to do business with Nazi Germany , including the manufacture of war materiel. Beginning in , with the requisitioning of between and French POWs to work as slave laborers, Ford-Werke contravened Article 31 of the Geneva Convention. When Rolls-Royce sought a U. He "lined up behind the war effort" when the U. Before the U.
Ford broke ground on Willow Run in the spring of , B component production began in May , and the first complete B came off the assembly line in October At 3,, sq ft , m 2 , it was the largest assembly line in the world at the time. At its peak in , the Willow Run plant produced Bs per month, and by Ford was completing each B in eighteen hours, with one rolling off the assembly line every 58 minutes.
When Edsel Ford died of cancer in , at age 49, Henry Ford nominally resumed control of the company, but a series of strokes in the late s had left him increasingly debilitated, and his mental ability was fading. Ford was increasingly sidelined, and others made decisions in his name. Ford grew jealous of the publicity Sorensen received and forced Sorensen out in Nothing happened until 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 he had no choice but to give in. Ford was a conspiracy theorist who drew on a long tradition of false allegations against Jews. Ford claimed that Jewish internationalism posed a threat to traditional American values, which he deeply believed were at risk in the modern world.
In , Ford purchased his hometown newspaper, The Dearborn Independent. Every Ford dealership nationwide was required to carry the paper and distribute it to its customers. Ford later bound the articles into four volumes entitled The International Jew: The World's Foremost Problem , which was translated into multiple languages and distributed widely across the US and Europe.
With around , readers of his newspaper, Ford emerged as a "spokesman for right-wing extremism and religious prejudice. In a letter written in , Heinrich Himmler described Ford as "one of our most valuable, important, and witty fighters". Adolf Hitler wrote, "only Ford, [who], to [the Jews'] fury, still maintains full independence Max Wallace has stated, "History records that Ludecke asked Ford for a contribution to the Nazi cause, but was apparently refused.
Ford did, however, give considerable sums of money to Boris Brasol , a member of the Aufbau Vereinigung , an organization linking German Nazis and White Russian emigrants which also financed the Nazi Party. While these articles explicitly condemned pogroms and violence against Jews, they blamed the Jews themselves for provoking them.
Friends and business associates said they warned Ford about the contents of the Independent and that he probably never read the articles he claimed he only read the headlines. A libel lawsuit was brought by San Francisco lawyer and Jewish farm cooperative organizer Aaron Sapiro in response to the antisemitic remarks, and led Ford to close the Independent in December News reports at the time quoted him as saying he was shocked by the content and 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. Miller, a former Dearborn Independent employee, swore under oath that Ford had told him he intended to expose Sapiro.
Michael Barkun observed: "That Cameron would have continued to publish such anti-Semitic material without Ford's explicit instructions seemed unthinkable to those who knew both men. Stanley Ruddiman, a Ford family intimate, remarked that "I don't think Mr. Cameron ever wrote anything for publication without Mr. Ford's approval. 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 , 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 , recanting his views in a public letter to Sigmund Livingston , president of the ADL.
Ford's apology was well received. In July , the German consul in 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. On January 7, , Ford wrote another letter to Sigmund Livingston disclaiming direct or indirect support of "any agitation which would promote antagonism toward my Jewish fellow citizens".
He concluded the letter with, "My sincere hope that now in this country and throughout the world when the war is finished, hatred of the Jews and hatred against any other racial or religious groups shall cease for all time. The distribution of The International Jew was halted in through legal action by Ford, despite complications from a lack of .
Extremist groups often recycle the material; it still appears on antisemitic and neo-Nazi websites. Testifying at Nuremberg , convicted Hitler Youth leader Baldur von Schirach who, in his role as Gauleiter of Vienna , deported 65, Jews to camps in Poland, stated: "The decisive anti-Semitic book I was reading and the book that influenced my comrades was I read it and became anti-Semitic.
The book made a great influence on myself and my friends because we saw in Henry Ford the representative of success and also the representative of a progressive social policy. Robert Lacey wrote in Ford: The Men and the Machines that a close Willow Run associate of Ford reported that when he was shown newsreel footage of the Nazi concentration camps , he "was confronted with the atrocities which finally and unanswerably laid bare the bestiality of the prejudice to which he contributed, he collapsed with a stroke — his last and most serious.
Ford's philosophy was one of economic independence for the United States.
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His River Rouge Plant became the world's largest industrial complex, pursuing vertical integration to such an extent that it could 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.
He opened Ford assembly plants in Britain and Canada in , and soon became the biggest automotive producer in those countries. In , Ford cooperated with Giovanni Agnelli of Fiat to launch the first Italian automotive assembly plants. The first plants in Germany were built in the s with the encouragement of Herbert Hoover and the Commerce Department, which agreed with Ford's theory that international trade was essential to world peace and reduced the chance of war.
In , Ford made an agreement with the Soviets to provide technical aid over nine years in building the first Soviet automobile plant GAZ near Nizhny Novgorod Gorky [ ] an additional contract for construction of the plant was signed with The Austin Company on August 23, Ford sent his engineers and technicians to the Soviet Union to help install the equipment and train the workforce, while over a hundred Soviet engineers and technicians were stationed at Ford's plants in Detroit and Dearborn "for the purpose of learning the methods and practice of manufacture and assembly in the Company's plants".
All the world is bound to catch some good from it. By , Ford was manufacturing one-third of the world's automobiles. It set up numerous subsidiaries that sold or assembled the Ford cars and trucks:. Ford's image transfixed Europeans, especially the Germans, arousing the "fear of some, the infatuation of others, and the fascination among all".
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 the 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". In My Life and Work , Ford predicted that if greed, racism, and short-sightedness could be overcome, then economic and technological 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.
Ford maintained an interest in auto racing from to and began his involvement in the sport as both a constructor and a driver, later turning the wheel over to hired drivers. On October 10, , he defeated Alexander Winton in a race car named "Sweepstakes"; it was through the wins of this car that Ford created the Henry Ford Company.
In , he attempted to enter a reworked Model T in the Indianapolis but was told rules required the addition of another 1, pounds kg to the car before it could qualify. Ford dropped out of the race and soon thereafter exited racing permanently, citing dissatisfaction with the sport's rules, demands on his time by the booming production of the Model T, 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 s through s, 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. Nevertheless, Ford did make an impact on auto racing during his racing years, and he was inducted into the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America in By this point, Ford, nearing 80, had experienced several cardiovascular events variously cited as heart attacks or strokes and was mentally inconsistent, suspicious, and generally no longer fit for such immense responsibilities.
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 time was no different. The directors elected him, [ ] and he served until the end of the war.
The administration of President Franklin Roosevelt had been considering a government takeover of the company in order to ensure continued war production, [ 76 ] but the idea never progressed. He died on April 7, , of a cerebral hemorrhage at Fair Lane , his estate in Dearborn, at the age of A public viewing was held at Greenfield Village where up to 5, people per hour filed past the casket.
Funeral services were held in Detroit's Cathedral Church of St. Paul and he was buried in the Ford Cemetery in Detroit. A compendium of short biographies of famous Freemasons , published by a Freemason lodge, lists Ford as a member. When he received the 33rd degree of the Scottish Rite in , he said, "Masonry is the best balance wheel the United States has.
In , Ford's pastor, and head of his sociology department, Episcopal minister Samuel S. Marquis, claimed that Ford believed, or "once believed," in reincarnation. Ford published an anti-smoking book, circulated to youth in , called The Case Against the Little White Slaver , which documented many dangers of cigarette smoking attested to by many researchers and luminaries.
Henry Ford had a long-held interest in materials science and engineering. 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. The project culminated in , when Ford patented an automobile made almost entirely of plastic , attached to a tubular welded frame.
It ran on grain alcohol ethanol instead of gasoline. The design never caught on. Ford was interested in engineered woods "Better wood can be made than is grown" [ ] at this time plywood and particle board were little more than experimental ideas ; corn as a fuel source , via both corn oil and ethanol; [ ] and the potential uses of cotton.
Some metals cannot be assimilated, refuse to mix with the molten mass of the citizenship, but remain ugly, indissoluble lumps.
How did this base metal get in? What about those aliens who have given us so much trouble, these Bolsheviki messing up our industries and disturbing our life? The Bolsheviks, widely perceived to be mostly Jews, represented a threat to industrialists like Ford, who saw in them an attack on free enterprise. It was one thing for the Jews to be responsible for the war; for them to be responsible as Ford saw it for the seizure of private property, the nationalization of resources and the encouragement of revolutionary movements across the globe was quite another matter.
Ford vigorously fought the organization of labor unions at his plants, only relenting in the s. The book contained the supposed minutes of a secret Zionist meeting in Switzerland, where Jews had plotted to take control of the world, with the goal of enslaving all non-Jews, and it warned of an upcoming final battle between Jews and Anglo-Saxons. The book turned out to be a forgery made by the Russian secret police, but that did not alter the effect it had on people already suspicious of Jews and other immigrants.
Ford also implemented a quota system for sales, leading some dealers to factor in the price of an automatic subscription to the Dearborn Independent when selling a Ford car.
What is henry ford famous for: Generally regarded as a pioneer in the automotive industry, this collection of awards and trophies illustrates the many other facets of Henry Ford: educator, philanthropist, patriot.
Pipp had left the paper by this time, leaving Liebold and Cameron in charge, both of whom had deep-rooted prejudices against Jews specifically and immigrants generally. After a series of personal attacks against him, Ford decided that the articles should shop tactics such as boycotts of Ford products hit the quintessential businessman in his wallet.
So, in —after two years of articles—they ceased or became more periodic. By , however, a second of wave of attacks were launched in response to the activities of Aaron Sapiro, who had organized a farming cooperative that helped farmers sell their products by getting rid of the middleman, thus gaining a higher profit margin. In this apology which the automaker did not write Ford claimed that he regularly delegated work to others and did not know what they were writing in the articles, and that he did not know the extent to which the Jews had been upset by his articles.
The apology was not widely believed and, in any case, many people believed that, as he remained the inspiration behind the articles, Ford simply wanted to clean up his public image.