Balasaheb photo biography about henry ford

Adolf Hitler. We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us! Prince Harry. Kate Middleton, Princess of Wales. Jimmy Carter. Aaron Judge. Dolly Parton. Michael J. Alec Baldwin. Tyler Childers. Prince William. Michelle Obama. In an effort to put prices from bygone eras into perspective, this book uses a formula provided by the U.

Bureau of Labor Statistics to compare prices now with prices then. The formula, and the statistics used to calculate the difference, can be found on a Web site maintained by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. For about a century, the steam engine developed by James Watt ; see entry was the chief source of energy besides flowing water in a river or stream for machines in factories and for mechanical transportation like railroads and steam ships.

The steam engine let steam inside a cylinder in the space under a solid tubular piece of metal called the piston. As the steam expanded, it pushed the piston up in the cylinder; as soon as the source of heat was removed, steam condensed back into liquid, forming a vacuum that sucked the piston back down. A rod attached to the upper end of the piston thus moved up and down and, through a series of gears, caused wheels to turn.

The internal combustion engine worked in the same basic way, except that it substituted an explosion of burning gasoline for the expanding steam under the piston. Gasoline, a chemical derived from crude oil, was mixed with oxygen and sprayed into the cylinder, whereupon an electric spark ignited the mixture which exploded with great force, which pushed the piston up.

Internal combustion engines promised many advantages over steam engines. For one thing, they did not require a separate fire usually burning coal to heat water and create steam. Gasoline carried more energy per ounce gram than a comparable amount of coal. And there was no need for someone to tend a coal fire; the internal combustion engine worked automatically, with a part called the spark plug repeatedly igniting the gasoline.

Internal combustion engines could be made in a fairly compact size and still deliver enough power to move a carriage; it seemed ideal to bring mechanical power to personal vehicles, like automobiles. Ford left the Dry Dock Engine Company when his father asked him to come back home and work on the family farm. It was during this time that he began courting Clara Bryant, the daughter of a neighboring farmer.

Three years later, in April , he and Clara were married. She proved to be a steadfast believer in Ford's dream throughout the difficult days when he was starting his automobile business. On November 6, , the Fords' only child, Edsel, was born. Ford's father had given his son a forty-acre plot of land, where he built a home for himself and his family.

Ford also built a machine shop, and he spent his spare time drawing plans to build a gasoline-powered internal combustion engine. Karl Benz — of Germany had already demonstrated a car propelled by an internal combustion engine in , and by the time Ford entered the business, many other auto pioneers were already turning out models of their own.

Ford's main idea was to make a car so inexpensive that ordinary people could afford to buy one; whereas his early competitors viewed cars as luxury items for the wealthy. In Ford again moved from the farm to Detroit—for good, this time—to pursue his dream of building a car with his engine design. It was a time when most people got around town by walking, riding horses, or traveling in buggies pulled by horses.

In the city, Ford got a job as a machinist, and equipped his own small machine shop in a shed behind the house in which he and his family lived on Bagley Avenue. He tested his first engine in It was a somewhat crude experiment: the spark plug, which is the part of an engine that creates a spark that causes a mixture of gasoline and oxygen to ignite, was powered by a cord connected to a socket in the house.

Later, a battery was used for this purpose. But it worked. Ford now turned to the task that would make him famous: using the engine to propel a vehicle. In Ford cut a hole in the wall of his shed and drove his first "car" onto the street. He called it the Quadricycle, because it had four wheels instead of two, like a bicycle. It consisted of a fuel tank with a seat bolted on top, an internal combustion engine that Ford had built, and four bicycle wheels.

The Quadricycle was noisy—horses were startled by it—and uncomfortable, but it ran successfully. Ford sold the Quadricycle and used the money to develop a new and better model. There he met the famous inventor Thomas Edison — , who admired Ford's work. Edison is said to have told Ford: "Young man, you have it, a self-contained unit carrying its own fuel.

Keep at it! Ford's bosses at Detroit Edison admired his work on cars but felt that he was spending too much time on his hobby at the expense of his job. They asked him to make a choice: a secure career as general superintendent at Detroit Edison, or making cars. For Ford, the choice was inevitable: he chose cars. Ford did not invent the automobile or the internal combustion engine.

He did, however, design a working self-propelled machine that used a gasoline engine. He also founded the company that still bears his name and developed new methods of manufacturing that drove down the cost of his cars so that ordinary working people could afford to own one. His success in business did not come instantly, however.

With the backing of several investors, he formed the Detroit Automobile Company in ; it was later renamed the Henry Ford Company. But his backers grew impatient with Ford, who insisted on constantly improving his car without manufacturing any to sell. They eventually abandoned him, and he himself left the Henry Ford Company in ; it later was reorganized and renamed the Cadillac Motor Car Company.

Finally, in , Ford formed the Ford Motor Company. It was during this year that Ford introduced his first model: the Model A. From a factory on Mack Avenue in Detroit, Ford produced a small volume of cars. Two or three workers produced each car from parts ordered from other firms as Ford continued to introduce new models. By the factory was turning out about one hundred cars per day, and the company investors were thrilled.

But Ford had a much larger dream: he wanted to reach a productivity level of one thousand cars per day. The big break came in with his ninth model: the Model T. When he unveiled the Model T in October , Ford declared: "I will build a motor car for the great multitude"; and so he did. Over the next nineteen years, the Ford Motor Company sold more than fifteen million cars in the United States , almost a million more in Canada, and a quarter of a million in Britain.

The total production of Ford cars amounted to about half the world's cars during that period. Ford's achievement was not just selling a lot of cars. The low prices for the Model T made it possible for ordinary workers to buy one, which resulted in not only a high sales volume for the Ford Motor Company but also a profound change in the car industry.

Because of Henry Ford, cars became practical for everyone, instead of a luxury reserved for the wealthy. Six years after introducing the Model T, Ford introduced another innovation that was perhaps even more startling. In he offered to pay his workers five dollars per day—more than twice the average daily salary paid by other companies. Moreover, he reduced the working day from nine hours to eight hours, which allowed the company to run three shifts to keep up with demand for the Model T.

Henry Ford's Model T was the first car produced for a mass market, and it was one of the most successful cars ever manufactured. Between and , Ford produced fifteen million Model Ts; in alone, Ford produced ,, more than the total of all of the other U. Production of the Model T symbolized advances in industrial production pioneered by Henry Ford.

In , after five years of producing the car, the time required to assemble a Model T had dropped from twelve hours and eight minutes to one hour and thirty-three minutes. To achieve this, Ford hired supervisors to constantly monitor every step in the process in order to increase worker productivity and drive down the production costs. Although Henry Ford famously said that customers could buy a Model T in any color so long as it was black, in fact black was not even offered before The first Model Ts came in green, red, blue, and gray.

This action made Ford a hero to workers. Some people praised him as a great humanitarian. Others concluded that he was a madman, or worse, a socialist one who believes in a political system where workers control businesses and the government. Behind this action lay a character trait that helped build his company in the early years, but later radically changed the world's opinion.

Ford was a stubborn man who insisted on doing things his way. His financial backers had learned that, and he continued to exercise his strong opinions on what was best, both for the Ford Motor Company and for his employees, even for the United States as a nation. In Ford ran for the U. Senate at the request of President Woodrow Wilson — , but he lost in a close election.

The next year Ford lost a lawsuit in which stockholders had complained that he did not distribute enough of the company's profits in the form of dividends stockholder's share of profits. Furious, Ford threatened to quit the company and start another one. The price of shares in his company began falling, and Ford arranged for shares to be bought at greatly reduced prices.

This allowed him to gain complete control of his company, and Ford was said to have danced a jig when the last stock transfer agreement was signed on July 11, In the mids Ford's golden touch in the automobile business lost some of its power. Sales of the Model T began to fall, despite constantly declining prices. Whereas Ford had once boasted that for the Model T, "Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants, so long as it is black," in the s, Ford started offering the famous Tin Lizzie nicknamed so because it used lightweight sheet metal for the body in green, brown, or blue, as well as black.

Finally, in , Ford introduced a new model, dubbed the Model A, like his company's very first offering. But the Model A never rivaled the Model T; four years after its introduction, it lost out to the new and more powerful eight-cylinder engine offered by Ford's main competitors, General Motors and Chrysler. The days when Ford dominated the automobile industry were essentially over, even though his company remained—and continues to remain in the twenty-first century—a vital competitor.

Henry Ford became wealthy as a car maker, and he sometimes dabbled in other areas, where his reputation was severely tarnished. In , he sued the Chicago Tribune for libel publishing false information that harmed his reputation. During the trial, a lawyer for the newspaper subjected Ford to a cross-examination questions that showed Ford had a minimal education and knew little about subjects unrelated to making cars.

He won the suit, though, and was rewarded six cents. A few years later, in , he established a newspaper of his own, the Dearborn Independent in Michigan, which started printing anti-Semitic anti-Jewish articles so extreme that some libraries and newsstands refused to carry the paper. A Jewish lawyer from Chicago and prominent organizer of farmers, Aaron Sapiro, sued Ford for libel, claiming the newspaper hurt his reputation among farmers.

Ford's defense was that he had not written articles signed by him; indeed, he said he did not even read the newspaper. Ford reached a secret settlement with Sapiro, publicly apologized for any harm he might have caused, and stopped publishing the paper. Nevertheless, the charge of anti-Semitism stuck to Ford for many years afterward, and it was renewed in when, on his seventy-fifth birthday, Ford accepted the Grand Cross of the German Eagle, the highest medal that Nazi Germany could bestow on a foreigner, from the government of Adolf Hitler.

It was one of many awards from other countries that Ford accepted, but when Hitler's genocidal campaign attempt to annihilate a race of people against Jews in the s and s, known as the Holocaust, became known, the old articles in Ford's newspaper again became controversial, and his association with Hitler and the Nazi regime was widely condemned.

Workers also complained that the company secretly investigated the private lives of its employees and fired workers who were found to engage in activities that were unacceptable to Ford, such as smoking, drinking, and being politically active. Ford workers tried to join the United Automobile Workers Union UAW , but Henry Ford employed labor spies and company police in a long effort to weed out union organizers and discourage his employees from joining a union.

Like many business owners, Ford did not want his hands tied on issues of how much to pay workers, or how long they should work. Long after his major competitors, General Motors and Chrysler, had signed contracts with the union, Ford resisted. Unions, in his mind, went against his philosophy of rugged individualism, relying on the collective instead.

The union's victory came only after the National Labor Relations Board ordered the company to hold an election, in which 70 percent of Ford workers voted in favor of being represented by a union. In his later years, Ford expressed contempt for unions. But his employees, who once hailed Ford as a hero, now complained that they had to work too fast and under great tension.

It is absolutely a give-and-take relationship," Ford declared. In his life, Henry Ford came to symbolize the best and worst of the Industrial Revolution, a period of fast-paced economic change that began in Great Britain in the middle of the eighteenth century. Putting his mechanical genius to work on the issue of efficient production, Ford utilized the moving assembly line, which made possible enormous savings in the cost of making a car.

On the other hand, he himself ascribed the success of his process to "the reduction of the necessity for thought on the part of the worker, and the reduction of the movement to a minimum. He [the worker on an assembly line] does as nearly as possible only one thing with only one movement. As social commentator Will Rogers — said, "It will take a hundred years to tell whether he helped us or hurt us, but he certainly didn't leave us where he found us.

In Ford's son, Edsel, the president of Ford Motor Company at the time, died suddenly of pancreatic cancer. Henry Ford, at the age of eighty, immediately stepped in and resumed active leadership of the company. But by that time, the elderly Ford had already suffered two strokes; after two years he appointed his grandson, Henry Ford II, president of the company.

Two years after that, on April 7, , Henry Ford died at his home in Dearborn. Aird, Hazel B. Henry Ford: Young Man with Ideas. Alvarado, Rudolph, and Sonya Alvarado. Drawing Conclusions on Henry Ford. Batchelor, Ray. Manchester, U. Gourley, Catherine. Brookfield, CT: Millbrook Press, Middleton, Haydn. Wamsley, James S. Gross, Daniel. New York: J. Wiley and Sons, Cite this article Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography.

January 8, Retrieved January 08, from Encyclopedia. Then, copy and paste the text into your bibliography or works cited list. Because each style has its own formatting nuances that evolve over time and not all information is available for every reference entry or article, Encyclopedia. The important role of the automobile in contemporary U.

It was during this decade that owning an automobile began to seem like a necessity, for it allowed freedom and convenience and affected such issues as where people worked and lived and what they did for fun. The man who was largely responsible for this trend was Henry Ford. Rising from a Michigan farm boy to become one of the richest people in the world, Ford was a popular hero to millions.

He revolutionized the infant automobile industry by producing a reliable car that a wide variety of people could afford to buy. Yet Ford was a man of personal contradictions. He paid his workers more and cut their hours, but he also forced them to follow his own rules of morality and behavior, and he fiercely resisted their efforts to unionize join labor unions, which allowed workers to negotiate for higher wages and better working conditions.

Born on a farm in Springwells, Michigan near what is now Dearborn , Henry Ford was the first of six children born to. William and Mary Ford. He was expected to help with the work on the family farm, but he did not like it much. Instead, he was fascinated with gadgets and liked to spend his time taking things apart. Through tinkering with various farm machines, Ford became a self-taught mechanic.

He quit attending his one-room village school when he was fifteen, and the next year he walked to Detroit, a thriving city about 8 miles First Ford became an apprentice in a machine shop that made valves and fire hydrants, working twelve hours a day, six days a week. In his next job, he worked on steam engines, which burned fuel to create the steam that, in turn, powered the pistons that made the engine work.

But Ford was more interested in a new invention called the internal combustion engine, which burned fuel inside the cylinder that housed the piston, creating energy more efficiently than by using steam. Ford learned more about internal combustion engines when, in , he became an engine expert for the Westinghouse Company. His job was to travel around southeastern Michigan and repair farm machinery.

In Ford married Clara Bryant, a young woman he had met at a country dance. His father offered him 40 acres 16 hectares of tree-covered land next to the family farm, so Ford settled into cutting and selling lumber and firewood. Five years later, his son Edsel was born. Meanwhile, Ford had set up a small engineering workshop in his back yard, and he spent as much time as he could there, conducting experiments with both steam- and gas-driven engines.

His first attempt to create a motor-powered vehicle resulted in a two-cylinder internal combustion engine that he mounted on a bicycle. Bored with rural life, Ford moved his family to Detroit in His skills made it easy for him to get a job at the Detroit Illuminating Company, an electrical company headed by inventor Thomas Alva Edison — Ford started out making an impressive one hundred dollars per month, and by he had been made chief engineer and had befriended Edison himself, with whom he would maintain a close relationship for many years to come.

Ford continued to experiment with making what were then called "horseless carriages," early versions of automobiles. In June Ford produced a vehicle he called a Quadricycle, testing it on the streets of Detroit to the amazement of onlookers. It weighed only pounds kilo-grams and rolled on bicycle wheels. It had two speeds but no reverse gear, and it was steered with a tiller, like a boat.

The Quadricyle was not the first automobile in existence, however. Earlier models had already been produced by the Duryee brothers of Massachusetts and by German engineer Gottlieb Daimler — Even though the company failed, it gave Ford some valuable experience in manufacturing automobiles. By he had produced a racing car called the that, with Ford at the wheel, won a race against what was then the fastest automobile in the world.

This feat caught the attention of another wealthy investor, coal dealer Alexander Malcomson, who offered to finance Ford's next venture. The next year Ford used resources pooled from several investors to form the Ford Motor Company , through which he finally achieved success. At first he continued to produce racing cars, which tended to attract positive publicity.

Eventually, though, Ford's company moved toward making ordinary street cars, although these were still large, expensive vehicles that only rich people could afford. Ford's Model A was very popular, selling seventeen hundred cars in The company produced more models, all named after letters of the alphabet, and by it had made more than one million dollars in profits.

Ford was not satisfied, though. He believed that he could make and sell smaller, cheaper automobiles that would appeal to a much wider market of average U. These cars, he knew, would have to come with inexpensive, easily replaceable parts. The answer came in , when Ford released the Model T. Fondly known as the Tin Lizzy, this car would dominate the automobile industry for the next two decades.

Ford sold 8, Model Ts the first year and , in , the year of its highest production. The Tin Lizzy was a light, durable car that was perfectly suited to travel on bad roads and thus particularly loved by farmers. People joked that it was available in any color, as long as that color was black. It came with no extras, such as windshield wipers, and tended to break down a lot, but its simple design made repairs fairly easy.

The phenomenal success of the Model T could be attributed in large part to Ford's reforms in both manufacturing and management. Finding it difficult to keep up with the demand for the Model T, he had looked for ways to streamline and speed up production. Ford was intrigued by the theory of "scientific management" that had been proposed by industrial engineer Frederick Taylor — , who had done careful studies to determine both the most effective ways to manage employees and the most efficient uses of workers' time and motions.

Ford put these practices to work in his Detroit factory, and he introduced another innovation: the assembly line. The assembly line had already been used in the manufacture of small machines like typewriters, but never on such a large scale or for a machine that had five thousand parts, as an automobile did. The assembly line moved the parts along a waist-high conveyor belt past workers, each of whom performed a single task.

This greatly improved the speed of production while lowering costs. Meanwhile, Ford forbade his workers from doing anything, such as talking or sitting down, that distracted them from their jobs. He walked around the factory constantly, looking for ways to improve procedures even more. These changes allowed Ford to reduce production time on the Model T from one car every twelve and a half hours to one every ninety minutes or better in , the company released 10, cars per week, and on the day of its highest production, October 31, , Ford produced 9, cars, or one every ten seconds.

The lower costs for the company allowed Ford to do something even more revolutionary than the assembly line. But Ford did not stop there. He also reduced his workers' workday from nine to eight hours. Working in a Ford automobile plant was not easy, not only due to the boss's rigid rules and the sometimes unpleasant conditions, but also because of the depressing boredom of working on an assembly line.

In addition, the company's notorious Sociological Department tried to control workers' lives by checking up on their behavior outside work. Ford disapproved of smoking and alcohol use, and he expected his workers to accept his ideas about morality. Nevertheless, men lined up to apply for jobs with Ford, and, once hired, they tended to stay for years.

Ford was strongly admired, in fact, for the way he had risen from farm boy to billionaire despite a lack of formal education. And he had done so by making sure that the workers who toiled in his factories could afford to buy the cars they built there. By war was raging in Europe as Germany continued its drive to take over areas controlled by other nations.

Always a committed pacifist someone who believes that war and violence are never justifiable , he decided to employ his considerable wealth and influence in a bid for peace. He sponsored a mission of pacifists who sailed on a ship called the Oskar II to Sweden, intending to hold peace talks with all of the European nations. When Germany refused to participate, however, the mission failed.

In Ford made his son Edsel president of the Ford Motor Company although he still wielded control from behind the scenes while he ran on the Democratic ticket for the U. Ford was not elected, and he returned to running his company. His desire to control all aspects of the automobile manufacturing process was realized in , when he opened his state-of-the-art Rouge River plant, the largest such facility in the world.

By this time Ford was growing his own rubber on plantations in Brazil, and he owned ships, coal and iron-ore mines, and thousands of acres of woodlands. Thus he brought all of his own raw materials to his plant, which was equipped with a steel mill and glass factory as well as the usual assembly shops. Nearly , workers were employed at the Rouge River plant.

During the s, the automobile first assumed the major role in U. And during that crucial decade, Ford made 60 percent of all U. The automobile industry provided jobs for about five million people, who worked not only in the actual manufacturing of vehicles but also in the making and selling of parts and supplies, in the gasoline industry, and in service stations.

The suburbs expanded, as automobiles allowed people to live farther from their workplaces. Recreation opportunities also increased, as families took outings and vacations in their cars, and young people found their social lives vastly improved by the greater mobility and privacy afforded by the automobile. The Federal Highway Act of made funds available to the states to replace or improve the nation's network of terrible roads, many of them unpaved and built for horses, not cars.

From now on, the United States would be a car-driving, car-loving nation. During the late s it became clear that the public's enthusiasm for the Model T was starting to dwindle. Ford had concentrated all his efforts on only one car, but now consumers were looking for more choices and more style. The other major automobile companies, General Motors and Chrysler, were gaining quickly on Ford.

In response to this competition, Ford halted production on the Model T and went to work on a new car called the Model A. Car fanciers across the nation were abuzz with speculation about the new model. On the day of its unveiling, December 2, , Ford ran full-page advertisements in newspapers and magazines. Dealers all over the country reported huge crowds gathering in showrooms to get a glimpse of the Model A.

The car was simple to drive, and easy and inexpensive to repair. 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. In , 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. Sales passed , in By , 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. The design was fervently promoted and defended by Ford, and production continued as late as ; the final total production was 15,, This record stood for the next 45 years, and was achieved in 19 years from the introduction of the first Model T 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 Henry and Edsel purchased all remaining stock from the other investors, thus giving the family sole ownership of the company. 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.

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.

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". 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.

Balasaheb photo biography about henry ford

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. He returned to Dearborn and work on the family farm after three years, but continued to operate and service steam engines and work occasional stints in Detroit factories. In , he married Clara Bryant, who had grown up on a nearby farm. Did you know? In the first several years of their marriage, Ford supported himself and his new wife by running a sawmill.

In , he returned with Clara to Detroit, where he was hired as an engineer for the Edison Illuminating Company. Rising quickly through the ranks, he was promoted to chief engineer two years later. 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.