When did henry ford die
Ford began production of a Model A, which imitated the Oldsmobile, and followed with other models, to the letter S. The public responded, and the company flourished. Ford also defeated the Selden patent the legal rights given to a company or person for the sole use, sale, or production of an item for a limited period of time , which had been granted on a "road engine" in Rather than challenge the patent's legal soundness, manufacturers secured a license to produce engines.
When Ford was denied such a license, he fought back; after eight years of legal action, the courts decided the patent was valid but not violated. The case gave the Ford Company valuable publicity, with Ford cast as the underdog, but by the time the issue was settled, the situation had been reversed. In Ford made the important decision to manufacture only one type of car—the Model T, or the "Tin Lizzie.
Within four years Ford was producing over forty thousand cars per year. Henry Ford. During this rapid expansion Ford held firmly to two principles: cutting costs by increasing productivity and paying high wages to his employees. In production methods Ford believed the work should be brought by a conveyor belt to the worker at waist-high level.
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This assembly-line technique required seven years to perfect. In he startled the industrial world by raising the minimum wage to five dollars a day, almost double the company's average wage. Ford was now an internationally known figure, but his public activities were less successful than his industrial ones. His suit against the Chicago Tribune for calling him an anarchist a person who desires to change the existing government received unfortunate publicity.
In his race for the U. Senate as a Democrat met a narrow defeat. Ford's worst mistake was his approval of an anti-Semitic anti-Jewish campaign waged by the Ford-owned newspaper, the Dearborn Independent.
Biography in context henry ford
When the United States entered World War I, Ford's output of military equipment and his promise to give back all profits on war production which he never did silenced the critics. By the end of the conflict his giant River Rouge plant, the world's largest industrial facility, was near completion. Ford gained total control of the company by buying the outstanding stock.
In the early s the company continued its rapid growth, at one point producing 60 percent of the total United States output. But problems began to arise. Ford was an inflexible man and continued to rely on the Model T, even as public tastes shifted. He finally saw his error and in stopped production of the Model T. However, since the new Model A was not produced for eighteen months, there was a good deal of unemployment among Ford workers.
The new car still did not permanently overtake the GM competition, Chevrolet, and Ford remained second. In , Ford also purchased Lincoln Motor Co. The Lelands briefly stayed to manage the company, but were soon expelled from it. It was replaced by the modernized Model K in By the mids, 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 Ford would not have a true equivalent of the GM styling department for many years.
By , 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. The result was the Ford Model A , introduced in December and produced through , 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 s 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 — For 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 and Henry had initially considered a radical X-8 engine before agreeing to a conventional design.
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It gave Ford a reputation as a performance make well-suited for hot-rodding. 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.
Also, at Edsel's insistence, Ford launched Mercury in as a mid-range make to challenge Dodge and Buick, although Henry also displayed relatively little enthusiasm for it. 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 men per year to fill slots.
Biography reference bank: Henry Ford, founder of Ford Motor Company, was born in Springwells Township, Wayne County, Michigan, on July 30, , to Mary (Litogot) and William Ford. He was the eldest of six children in a family of four boys and two girls.
Efficiency meant hiring and keeping the best workers. Detroit was already a high-wage city, but competitors were forced to raise wages or lose their best workers. He viewed the increased wages as profit-sharing linked with rewarding those who were most productive and of good character. 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".
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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 memoir, he spoke 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.
In addition to raising his workers' wages, Ford also introduced a new, reduced workweek in The decision was made in , when Ford and Crowther described it as six 8-hour days, giving a hour week, [ 46 ] but in it was announced as five 8-hour days, giving a hour week. On May 1, , the Ford Motor Company's factory workers switched to a five-day, hour workweek, with the company's office workers making the transition the following August.
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.
Ford was adamantly against labor unions. He explained his views on unions in Chapter 18 of My Life and Work. 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. Bennett employed various intimidation tactics to quash union organizing. The Dearborn police department and Ford security guards opened fire on workers leading to over sixty injuries and five deaths.
In the late s and early s, 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 [ 52 ] makes clear that Ford's purpose in putting Bennett in charge was to make sure no agreements were ever reached. Sorensen recounted [ 53 ] 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 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. 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. On call 24 hours a day for his job at Edison, Ford spent his irregular hours on his efforts to build a gasoline-powered horseless carriage, or automobile. Determined to improve upon his prototype, Ford sold the Quadricycle in order to continue building other vehicles.
He received backing from various investors over the next seven years, some of whom formed the Detroit Automobile Company later the Henry Ford Company in After his departure, it was reorganized as the Cadillac Motor Car Company. The following year, Ford established the Ford Motor Company. At the time, only a few cars were assembled per day, and groups of two or three workers built them by hand from parts that were ordered from other companies.
Ford was dedicated to the production of an efficient and reliable automobile that would be affordable for everyone; the result was the Model T , which made its debut in October As a result, he put into practice techniques of mass production that would revolutionize American industry, including the use of large production plants; standardized, interchangeable parts; and the moving assembly line.
Mass production significantly cut down on the time required to produce an automobile, which allowed costs to stay low. Even as production went up, demand for the Tin Lizzie remained high, and by , half of all cars in America were Model Ts. Unsatisfied with farm work, Ford left home at the age of 16 to take an apprenticeship as a machinist at a shipbuilding firm in Detroit.
In the years that followed, he would learn to skillfully operate and service steam engines and would also study bookkeeping. In , Ford married Clara Ala Bryant. The couple had a son, Edsel, in In , Ford was hired as an engineer for the Detroit Edison Company. In , his natural talents earned him a promotion to chief engineer. All the while, Ford developed his plans for a horseless carriage.
In , Ford built his first gasoline-powered buggy, which had a two-cylinder, four-horsepower engine.
In , he constructed his first model car, the Ford Quadricycle. In the same year, he attended a meeting with Edison executives and found himself presenting his automobile plans to Thomas Edison. The lighting genius encouraged Ford to build a second, better model. By , Ford was awarded with his first patent for a carburetor.
In , with money raised from investors following the development of a third model car, Ford left Edison Illuminating Company to pursue his car-making business full-time.