Henry Ford

　　Henry Ford, c.1919

　　Born：July 30, 1863　Greenfield Township, Michigan, U.S.

　　Died：April 7, 1947 　Fair Lane, Dearborn, Michigan, U.S.

　　Occupation：Business, Engineering

　　Net worth：

　　$188.1 billion, based on information from Forbes, February 2008.

　　Religion：Protestant Episcopal

　　Spouse：Clara Jane Bryant

　　Children：Edsel Ford

　　Parents：William Ford and Mary Ford

　　Henry Ford was an American industrialist, the founder of the Ford Motor Company, and sponsor of the development of the assembly line technique of mass production. His introduction of the Model T automobilerevolutionized transportation and American industry. As owner of the Ford Motor Company, he became one of the richest and best-known people in the world. Ford spent most of his life making headlines, good, bad, but never indifferent. Celebrated as both a technological genius and a folk hero, Ford was the creative force behind an industry of unprecedented size and wealth that in only a few decades permanently changed the economic and social character of the United States. He is credited with Fordism: mass production of inexpensive goods coupled with high wages for workers. Ford had a global vision, with consumerism as the key to peace. His intense commitment to systematically lowering costs resulted in many technical and business innovations, including a franchise system that put dealerships throughout most of North America and in major cities on six continents. Ford left most of his vast wealth to the Ford Foundation but arranged for his family to control the company permanently.

　　Ford was also widely known for his pacifism during the first years of World War I and for being the publisher ofantisemitic texts such as the book The International Jew.

　　Early years

　　Ford was born July 30, 1863, on a farm in Greenfield Township . His father, William Ford , was born in County Cork, Ireland, of a family originally from western England, who were among migrants to Ireland as the English created plantations. His mother, Mary Litogot Ford , was born in Michigan; she was the youngest child of Belgian immigrants; her parents died when Mary was a child and she was adopted by neighbors, the OHerns. Henry Fords siblings include Margaret Ford ; Jane Ford ; William Ford and Robert Ford .

　　In 1879, he left home to work as an apprentice machinist in the city of Detroit, first with James F. Flower Bros., and later with the Detroit Dry Dock Co. In 1882, he returned to Dearborn to work on the family farm, where he became adept at operating the Westinghouse portable steam engine. He was later hired byWestinghouse company to service their steam engines. During this period Ford also studied bookkeeping at Goldsmith, Bryant Stratton Business College in Detroit.

　　Henry Ford in 1888, aged 25.Marriage and family

　　Ford married Clara Ala Bryant in 1888 and supported himself by farming and running a sawmill. They had one child:Edsel Ford .

　　Career

　　In 1891, Ford became an engineer with the Edison Illuminating Company. After his promotion to Chief Engineer in 1893, he had enough time and money to devote attention to his personal experiments on gasoline engines. These experiments culminated in 1896 with the completion of a self-propelled vehicle which he named the Ford Quadricycle. He test-drove it on June 4. After various test-drives, Ford brainstormed ways to improve the Quadricycle.

　　Also in 1896, Ford attended a meeting of Edison executives, where he was introduced to Thomas Edison. Edison approved of Fords automobile experimentation. Encouraged by Edison, Ford designed and built a second vehicle, completing it in 1898. Backed by the capital of Detroit lumber baron William H. Murphy, Ford resigned from the Edison Company and founded the Detroit Automobile Company on August 5, 1899. However, the automobiles produced were of a lower quality and higher price than Ford wanted. Ultimately, the company was not successful and was dissolved in January 1901.

　　With the help of C. Harold Wills, Ford designed, built, and successfully raced a 26-horsepower automobile in October 1901. With this success, Murphy and other stockholders in the Detroit Automobile Company formed the Henry Ford Company on November 30, 1901, with Ford as chief engineer. In 1902, Murphy brought inHenry M. Leland as a consultant; Ford, in response, left the company bearing his name. With Ford gone, Murphy renamed the company the Cadillac Automobile Company.

　　Teaming up with former racing cyclist Tom Cooper, Ford also produced the 80+ horsepower racer 999 which Barney Oldfield was to drive to victory in a race in October 1902. Ford received the backing of an old acquaintance, Alexander Y. Malcomson, a Detroit-area coal dealer. They formed a partnership, Ford Malcomson, Ltd. to manufacture automobiles. Ford went to work designing an inexpensive automobile, and the duo leased a factory and contracted with a machine shop owned by John and Horace E. Dodge to supply over $160,000 in parts. Sales were slow, and a crisis arose when the Dodge brothers demanded payment for their first shipment.

　　Ford Motor Company

　　Henry Ford with Thomas Edisonand Harvey Firestone. Ft. Myers, Florida, February 11, 1929.

　　In response, Malcomson brought in another group of investors and convinced the Dodge Brothers to accept a portion of the new company. Ford Malcomson was reincorporated as the Ford Motor Company on June 16, 1903, with $28,000 capital. The original investors included Ford and Malcomson, the Dodge brothers, Malcomsons uncle John S. Gray, Malcolmsons secretary James Couzens, and two of Malcomsons lawyers, John W. Anderson and Horace Rackham. Ford then demonstrated a newly-designed car on the ice of Lake St. Clair, driving 1 mile in 39.4 seconds and setting a new land speed record at 91.3 miles per hour . Convinced by this success, the race driver Barney Oldfield, who named this new Ford model 999 in honor of the fastest locomotive of the day, took the car around the country, making the Ford brand known throughout the United States. Ford also was one of the early backers of the Indianapolis 500.

　　Model T

　　The Model T was introduced on October 1, 1908. It had the steering wheel on the left, which every other company soon copied. The entire engine and transmission were enclosed; the four cylinders were cast in a solid block; the suspension used two semi-elliptic springs. The car was very simple to drive, and easy and cheap to repair. It was so cheap at $825 in 1908 that by the 1920s, a majority of American drivers had learned to drive on the Model T.

　　As independent dealers, the franchises grew rich and publicized not just the Ford but the very concept of automobiling; local motor clubs sprang up to help new drivers and to encourage exploring the countryside.

　　Ford Assembly Line, 1913Sales passed 250,000 in 1914. By 1916, as the price dropped to $360 for the basic touring car, sales reached 472,000.

　　Model A and Fords later career

　　By 1926, flagging sales of the Model T finally convinced Henry to make a new model. He pursued the project with a great deal of technical expertise in design of the engine, chassis, and other mechanical necessities, while leaving the body design to his son. Edsel also managed to prevail over his fathers initial objections in the inclusion of a sliding-shift transmission.

　　The result was the successful Ford Model A, introduced in December 1927 and produced through 1931, with a total output of more than 4 million.

　　Ford did not believe in accountants; he amassed one of the worlds largest fortunes without ever having his company audited under his administration.

　　Labor philosophy

　　The five-dollar workday

　　Time Magazine, January 14, 1935.Ford was a pioneer of welfare capitalism, designed to improve the lot of his workers and especially to reduce theheavyturnover that had many departments hiring 300 men per year to fill 100 slots. Efficiency meant hiring and keeping the best workers.

　　Ford astonished the world in 1914 by offering a $5 per day wage , which more than doubled the rate of most of his workers. Ford and Crowther in 1922 described it as six 8-hour days, giving a 48-hour week, while in 1926 they described it as five 8-hour days, giving a 40-hour week.

　　Detroit was already a high-wage city, but competitors were forced to raise wages or lose their best workers. Fords policy proved, however, that paying people more would enable Ford workers to afford the cars they were producing and be good for the economy. Ford explained the policy as profit-sharing rather than wages. It may have been Couzens who convinced Ford to adopt the $5 day.

　　Ford Airplane Company

　　Ford, like other automobile companies, entered the aviation business during World War I, building Liberty engines. After the war, it returned to auto manufacturing until 1925, when Ford acquired the Stout Metal Airplane Company.

　　Ford 4-AT-F of the Spanish Republican Airline, L.A.P.E.

　　Fords 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 ofduralumin. The plane was similar to Fokkers V.VII-3m, and some say that Fords engineers surreptitiously measured the Fokker plane and then copied it. The Trimotor first flew on June 11, 1926, and was the first successful U.S. passenger airliner, accommodating about 12 passengers in a rather uncomfortable fashion. Several variants were also used by the U.S. Army. Ford has been honored by the Smithsonian Institution for changing the aviation industry. 199 Trimotors were built before it was discontinued in 1933, when the Ford Airplane Division shut down because of poor sales during the Great Depression.

　　Peace and war

　　World War I era

　　Ford opposed war, which he thought was a terrible waste. Ford became highly critical of those who he felt financed war, and he tried to stop them. In 1915, the pacifist Rosika Schwimmer gained favor with Ford, who agreed to fund a peace ship to Europe, where World War I was raging. He and about 170 other prominent peace leaders traveled there. Fords Episcopalian pastor, Reverend Samuel S. Marquis, accompanied him on the mission. Marquis headed Fords Sociology Department from 1913 to 1921. Ford talked to President 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.

　　The coming of World War II and Fords mental collapse

　　Ford had opposed Americas entry into World War II 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 1939 he went so far as to claim that the torpedoing of U.S. merchant ships by German submarines was the result of conspiratorial activities undertaken by financier war-makers. The financiers to whom he was referring was Fords code for Jews; he had also accused Jews of fomenting the First World War . In the run-up to World War II and when the war erupted in 1939, he reported that he did not want to trade with belligerents.

　　At that time, which was before the U.S. entered the War and still had full diplomatic relations with Nazi Germany, Ford-Werke was under the control of the Ford Motor Company. The number of slave laborers grew as the war expanded although Wallace made it clear that companies in Germany were not required by the Nazi authorities to use slave laborers.

　　When Rolls-Royce sought a U.S. manufacturer as an alternative source for the Merlin engine , Ford first agreed to do so and then reneged. He lined up behind the war effort when the U.S. entered in late 1941. His support of the American war effort, however, was problematic. Once the U.S. entered the war, Fords Willow Run plant was converted into a B-24 factory. Production, however, was marred by incompetence and bungling.

　　International business

　　Fds philosophy was one of economic independence for the United States. His River Rouge Plant became the worlds largest industrial complex, pursuing vertical integration to such an extent that it could produce its own steel. Fords 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.

　　Edsel Ford, Charles Lindbergh, and Henry Ford pose in the Ford hangar during Lindberghs August 1927 visit.

　　He opened Ford assembly plants in Britain and Canada in 1911, and soon became the biggest automotive producer in those countries. In 1912, Ford cooperated with Giovanni Agnelli of Fiat to launch the first Italian automotive assembly plants. The first plants in Germany were built in the 1920s with the encouragement of Herbert Hoover and the Commerce Department, which agreed with Fords theory that international trade was essential to world peace. In the 1920s, Ford also opened plants in Australia, India, and France, and by 1929, he had successful dealerships on six continents. Ford experimented with a commercial rubber plantation in the Amazon jungle called Fordl it was one of his few failures. In 1929, Ford acceptedJoseph Stalins invitation to build a model plant at Gorky, a city now known under its historical nameNizhny Novgorod. He sent American engineers and technicians to the Soviet Union to help set it up, including future labor leader Walter Reuther.

　　The Ford Motor Company had the policy of doing business in any nation where the United States had diplomatic relations. It set up numerous subsidiaries that sold cars and trucks and sometimes assembled them:

　　Ford of Australia　　Ford of Argentina　　Ford of Brazil　　Ford of Britain　　Ford of Canada　　Ford of Europe　　Ford India　　Ford Mexico　　Ford Philippines　　Ford South Africa

　　Henry Ford in Germany; September 1930

　　By 1932, Ford was manufacturing one third of all the worlds automobiles. Fords image transfixed Europeans, especially the Germans, arousing the fear of some, the infatuation of others, and the fascination among all.

　　Racing

　　Ford launched Barney Oldfields career in 1902

　　Ford maintained an interest in auto racing from 1901 to 1913 and began his involvement in the sport as both a builder and a driver, later turning the wheel over to hired drivers. He entered stripped-down Model Ts in races, finishing first in an ocean-to-ocean race in 1909, and setting a one-mile oval speed record at Detroit Fairgrounds in 1911 with driver Frank Kulick. In 1913, Ford attempted to enter a reworked Model T in the Indianapolis 500 but was told rules required the addition of another 1,000 pounds to the car before it could qualify. Ford dropped out of the race and soon thereafter dropped out of racing permanently, citing dissatisfaction with the sports rules, demands on his time by the booming production of the Model Ts, and his low opinion of racing as a worthwhile activity.

　　Nevertheless, Ford did make quite an impact on auto racing during his racing years, and he was inducted into the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America in 1996.

　　Later career

　　When Edsel, president of Ford Motor Company, died of cancer in May 1943, the elderly and ailing Henry Ford decided to assume the presidency. By this point in his life, he had had several cardiovascular events and was mentally inconsistent, suspicious, and generally no longer fit for such a job.

　　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 moment was not different. The directors elected him, and he served until the end of the war. During this period the company began to decline, losing more than $10 million a month . The administration of President Franklin Roosevelt had been considering a government takeover of the company in order to ensure continued war production, but the idea never progressed.

　　Death

　　Ford grave, Ford Cemetery

　　In ill health, Ford ceded the presidency to his grandson Henry Ford II in September 1945 and went into retirement. He died in 1947 of acerebral hemorrhage at age 83 in Fair Lane, his Dearborn estate. A public viewing was held at Greenfield Village where up to 5,000 people per hour filed past the casket. Funeral services were held in Detroits Cathedral Church of St. Paul and he was buried in the Ford Cemetery in Detroit.