Economic Influencers between 1900 and 1929 looking at Henry Ford:

by Robert Hupel:

Henry Ford is a unique and interesting subject to analyze. Henry Ford was born in 1863 and was raised on a farm in Michigan near Detroit. Henry Ford had a natural affinity for working on things and building mechanical items, which led to a fascination with gas powered engines. He had moved to Detroit to work as an apprentice at a couple of machine shops. The first one did not work out very well, but the tale has it that it was because he solved a problem that his boss could not. His father would draw him back to working on the farm with a bribe of forty acres of wooded land, of which he used part of the lumber that was harvested to build his home. The rest would be cut down and sold from the sawmill that he started. He then got married and was lured back to Detroit to work for the Edison Illuminating Company as an engineer there. While serving as the head engineer at the company, Ford worked on the horseless carriage during his spare time. At the end of the 1800s, Ford left the Edison company to start his own company with the blessing of Thomas Edison. It took him three times to get the company up and going, but with a backing of $28,000 from different investors, he started the company that later became the Ford Motor Company. Ford, unlike other individuals who created different automobile companies, was able to retain control over the company through manipulation of the investors to fight amongst themselves, and by duping investors to believe that he and his son were going to split the business which influenced the other investors to sell Ford their stock.

Ford was the first to create an assembly line production for automobiles. Henry Ford was able to streamline its productions and assembly line so that it was completing a car every ninety-three minutes in 1913 which was an improvement from when he first started, and it would take 738 minutes to build a car. The assembly line that he created did have some issues due to the process and needed to produce so many cars so fast. The one issue, though minor, would become a noted irritation to the buyers and that was that a Model T came only in black at the height of its production. When the Model T was originally being produced, it was available in many different colors, but black was used because it dried more quickly than any other color. The buyout that the Ford family had done to take control of their company had given them some advantages. One of the advantages that it provided is that it removed competitors who had bought a portion of their stocks from interfering in their activities, which would affect the sales of said competitor’s product. Ford had decided to increase their production time and cut out the middleman his car was being produced from the ore mined in his company’s mines and made at steel mills that were also own by the Ford family, and this was the case with all of the components that went into the vehicles which Ford was making. Ford also was a pioneer in combustion engine production, as he designed all the engines that were used in his cars from the four-cylinder ones all the way to the eight-cylinder engine that is seen in many of the modern combustion engines that have been made.

Ford also was one of the first businessmen who believed in paying his employees a fair wage if he could afford it and offering good cheap products which his employees were able to buy. That would be one of the issues that he had been taken to court about by his investors and one of the reasons that he took over control of the company. His innovation concerning the wages served to encourage his employees to come to work and to stay at his factories. Ford also attempted to form factories in the rural areas of the country to counter the overpopulation of cities, as well as trying to promote agricultural growth in the country as it was on the decline, with people leaving the farms to go and work in the city. Ford in his later years also created a healthcare system and hospital which were nonprofit and charge people based on their income. Henry Ford as well as Thomas Edison were some of the early critics of smoking cigarettes and the dangers associated with them.

Henry Ford had done many good things, but he did have some issues as well that had been brought up over the years, starting with his taking over of the company. Though it did serve to allow him to produce vehicles cheaper and undercutting his competition, it also allowed the company to go stagnant. Ford removed anyone who disagreed with him, that was not family or his choices, and as other companies were evolving and coming up with new innovations. Henry Ford was sticking to what had worked in the past such as the production of the Model T, which was no longer the premier car that it had been. Henry Ford was also resistant to the introduction of labor unions into his company. The reasoning would be the same as with all parts of the company and that was that Henry Ford did not want to have someone telling him how to run his company or pay his employees.

In the end, Henry Ford shaped many things from consumerism, to production, and even to humanitarianism. His engineering know how, coupled with the values that he learned on the farm created a man who shaped industry as well as the way people live and continues to affect today’s society.

Resources:

Primary:

“1896 Ford Quadricycle Runabout, First Car Built by Henry Ford.” The Henry Ford. Accessed May 15, 2025. https://www.thehenryford.org/collections-and-research/digital-collections/artifact/252049/#slide=gs-212197.

“1914 Ford Model T Touring Car, given to John Burroughs by Henry Ford.” The Henry Ford. Accessed May 15, 2025. https://www.thehenryford.org/collections-and-research/digital-collections/artifact/230567/.

Collected Papers by the Staff of Henry Ford Hospital; 1st series, 1915-1925. New York, New York: Paul B. Hoeber, 1926.

“Detroit Automobile Company Delivery Truck Outside Factory, 1899-1900.” The Henry Ford. Accessed May 15, 2025. https://www.thehenryford.org/collections-and-research/digital-collections/artifact/223416/.

“Employees at Edison Illuminating Company of Detroit, circa 1895.” The Henry Ford. Accessed May 15, 2025. https://www.thehenryford.org/collections-and-research/digital-collections/artifact/125725/.

Ford, Henry, and Samuel Crowther. My Life and Work. Lockport, NY: Snowball Publishing, 2012.

Ford, Henry, and Samuel Crowther. The Complete Autobiography of Henry Ford: Including My Life & Work and Today & Tomorrow. Lockport, NY: Snowball Publishing, 2012.

Ford, Henry. Case Against the Little White Slaver: Volumes I, II, III and IV (Classic reprint). London: Forgotten Books, 2022.

“Henry Ford with the First Ford V-8 Engine, March 26, 1932.” The Henry Ford. Accessed May 15, 2025. https://www.thehenryford.org/collections-and-research/digital-collections/artifact/279399/.

Humanities, National Endowment for the. “The Day Book. [Volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1911-1917, January 13, 1914, Last Edition, Image 1.” News about Chronicling America RSS. Accessed May 15, 2025. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045487/1914-01-13/ed-2/seq-1/#date1=1883&index=5&date2=1947&searchType=advanced&language=&sequence=1&words=FORD+Ford+Henry+HENRY&proxdistance=5&rows=20&ortext=&proxtext=&phrasetext=henry+ford&andtext=&dateFilterType=yearRange&page=1.

Humanities, National Endowment for the. “The Day Book. [Volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1911-1917, September 27, 1916, Last Edition, Image 1.” News about Chronicling America RSS. Accessed May 15, 2025. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045487/1916-09-27/ed-1/seq-1/#date1=1883&index=7&date2=1947&searchType=advanced&language=&sequence=1&words=FORD+HENRY&proxdistance=5&rows=20&ortext=&proxtext=&phrasetext=henry+ford&andtext=&dateFilterType=yearRange&page=1.

“Primary Sources.” Henry Ford. Accessed May 15, 2025. https://henryford-jtamprojectweek.weebly.com/primary-sources.html.

“Westinghouse Portable Steam Engine No. 345, Used by Henry Ford.” The Henry Ford. Accessed May 15, 2025. https://www.thehenryford.org/collections-and-research/digital-collections/artifact/22382/.

Secondary Articles:

Raff, Daniel M.G., and Lawrence Summers. “Did Henry Ford Pay Efficiency Wages?” Journal of Labor Economics, Part 2, 5, no. 4 (December 1986): S57–86. https://doi.org/10.3386/w2101.

Taylor, Jason E. “Did Henry Ford Mean to Pay Efficiency Wages?” Journal of Labor Research 24, no. 4 (December 2003): 683–94. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12122-003-1020-3.

Secondary Books:

MacGregor, J.R. Henry Ford, Auto Tycoon: Insight and Analysis Into the Man Behind the American Auto Industry. Sheridan, WY: CAC Publishing LLC, 2019.

Painter, Patricia Scollard. Henry Ford Hospital: The First 75 Years. Detroit, Mich: Henry Ford Health System, 1997.

Peters, Will. Henry Ford. Newbury: New Word City, 2017.

Schlichting, Nancy M. Unconventional Leadership: What Henry Ford and Detroit Taught Me About Reinvention and Diversity. London: Taylor and Francis, 2016.

Segal, Howard P. Recasting the Machine Age: Henry Ford’s Village Industries. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2008.

Snow, Richard. I Invented the Modern Age: The Rise of Henry Ford. New York: Scribner, 2014.

Watts, Steven. The People’s Tycoon: Henry Ford and the American Century. S.l.: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2009.

Wik, Reynold M. Henry Ford and Grass-Roots America. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1990.