Frank Turner FTHC

 Ford's Follies

In 1879, a young teenager named Henry Ford left his parent’s farm in Springwells Township, Michigan to work in the machine shops of Detroit. His father had given him a pocket-watch at age 12 and by 15 he had gained a reputation as an expert watch-smith. In 1893, Henry Ford became the chief engineer at the Edison Illuminating Company. Ford’s high-pressure job was keeping the electricity flowing through the city. He was on call 24 hours a day, every day of the year. Ford had no regular schedule, which took a toll upon his personal life, as well as his actual goal of building a gasoline-powered vehicle. 

Working in his spare time, Ford produced his first working gasoline engine in 1893, and three years later he had completed his first horseless carriage called the Quadricycle. In 1898, Ford received his first patent for a carburetor. In 1899, Henry Ford found a group willing investors that allowed him to quit his job at the power company and join the Detroit Automobile Company as the mechanical superintendent. It wasn’t a simple move for the engineer and inventor. He took an over 90% decrease in his monthly salary to leave that shitty job. There were sixty startup auto manufacturing companies in America that were fiercely competing to gain traction in the fledgling industry. The Detroit Automobile Company failed in its second year of operation. Many of the investors still believed in Ford, however, and in 1901 they established the Henry Ford Motor Company with Ford serving as chief engineer. That company failed as well. 

In 1903, Henry Ford took everything that he had left and gambled it all on his third make-or-break venture - the Ford Motor Company. In 1908, Ford’s now famous Model T or “Tin Lizzy” rocketed the Ford Motor Company into the ranks of America’s largest automakers. Henry Ford’s contributions to American manufacturing were even greater than his sizable engineering prowess. Ford was a pioneer of “welfare capitalism”. He believed in making useful products that were affordable to middle-class Americans, and he was committed to making more middle-class Americans by paying manufacturing workers a living wage. In 1914, Ford shocked the world by establishing a $5 per day minimum wage (the equivalent of $148 per day in today’s economy), more than doubling the rate of most of his workers. He offered profit-sharing and created the first “Social Department” and an early form of mental health care in the form of peer mentorship. In 1926, Ford again upended the manufacturing industry by establishing the first 40-hour work week, consisting of five 8-hour days. 

Despite his unprecedented support for manufacturing workers, Ford despised labor unions. He believed they inevitably served the interests of their powerful leaders by working to restrict production in order to foster employment. To Ford, this was a self-defeating goal that created a perverse incentive in the marketplace. Ford promoted Harry Bennett, a former Navy boxer, to head his service department, which led the effort to use intimidation to crush union activity. On March 7, 1932, three years into the Great Depression, unemployed Detroit auto workers staged a “Ford Hunger March” and presented a list of 14 demands to Ford at the company’s River Rouge Complex. Ford’s security guards, and some Dearborn police officers, opener fire on the workers, killing five and wounding over sixty people. On May 26, 1937, Bennett’s security men beat members of the United Auto Workers with clubs in what became known as The Battle of the Overpass. Henry Ford had hired Harry Bennett to make sure that no agreement with a union was ever reached.

Ford Motor Company was the last Detroit automaker to recognize the UAW, over the forceful opposition of Henry Ford, who remained the de facto leader at Ford long after his official departure. It was ultimately the threat of divorce from his wife Clara that got the manufacturing pioneer to relent his opposition in July 1941. A series of strokes led to serious mental impairment for Ford during the later years of his life. Clara and Ford’s daughter-in-law confronted him in 1945 and demanded he cede control of the company to his grandson, Henry Ford II. Ford furiously agreed when the pair threatened to sell their combined 3/4 ownership of the company’s stock, which would have destroyed the Ford family legacy. Henry Ford II’s first act of business as President of Ford Motor Company was to fire Harry Bennett.

For most of his life, Ford was an antisemitic conspiracy theorist. In 1918, Ford purchased a weekly newspaper, The Dearborn Independent, which became his platform for distributing racist and antisemitic information. In 1924, Heinrich Himmler, the leader of the infamous Nazi SS protection squadron, said Henry Ford was “one of our most valuable, important, and witty fighters”. In 1931, Adolph Hitler explained keeping a life-sized portrait of Ford next to his desk by saying that Ford was his “inspiration.” On his 75th birthday, the German Consul gave Henry Ford the Grand Cross of the German Eagle, the highest honor that Nazi Germany could give to a foreigner. 

Henry Ford died of a stroke on April 7, 1947 at his 1,300 acre estate in Dearborn called Fair Lane. People attended the public viewing of his body at a rate of 5,000 people per hour. The young Michigan farm boy, whose passion for engineering was inspired by a watch given to him as a childhood gift from his father, died as one of the world’s richest men. Ford’s great-grandson, William Clay Ford Jr., is the current Executive Chairman of Ford Motor Company, which is still headquartered in Dearborn, Michigan. The Ford family keeps 40% of the board’s voting power.