Henry Ford

(1863-1947)

Henry Ford was born in 1863 he is known as an American industrialist, and the pioneer of the automobile industry. It is said that Henry showed a great mechanical aptitude at an early age and left his father s farm at the age of 16 to work as an apprentice in a Detroit machine shop. Henry returned to his home very soon after he left, but after many experiments with power-driven vehicles, he went to Detroit again and worked as a machinist and engineer with the Edison Company when he was 27. Henry continued working in his spare time as well, and in 1896 he completed his first automobile. Resigning 9 years later from the Edison Company he started up the Detroit Automobile Company.

The company became much larger than Henry had ever imagined. But all did not work out as planed. He had many disagreements with his associates which forced Henry to organize a partnership with James Couzens, the Dodge brothers, and others, the Ford Motor Company was then formed. In 1907 he purchased the stock of most of his associates.

The Ford family remained in control of the company. By cutting the costs of production, and soon adapting to the new conveyor belt and assembly line for automobile production, and by featuring an inexpensive, standardized car, Henry Ford was soon able to lead sales for all his competitors and become the largest automobile producer in the world. Henry soon came to be regarded as the apostle of mass production . In 1908 he designed the Model T. Almost 17 million cars were produced worldwide before the model was discontinued and a new design, the Model A was created to meet growing competition.

The Ford Company had been highly publicized for paying wages considerably above the average. The Ford Company began in 1914 the year Henry created a sensation by announcing that in future his workers would receive $5 for an 8-hr day a profit sharing plan that would distribute up to $30 million annually among his employees.

In 1915, in an effort to end World War I, he headed a privately sponsored peace expedition to Europe that failed dismally. After the American entry into the war he was a leading producer of ambulances, airplanes, munitions, tanks, and submarine chasers. In 1918 Henry ran for the U.S. Senate on the Democratic ticket but lost. Henry almost suffer a severe financial crisis in 1921, he began producing high-priced motor cars after this along with other vehicles and founded branch firms in England and in other European countries. In 1945 he retired.

After his retirement Henry Ford set up the Ford Foundation. This great foundation included $7.5 million for the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit and $5 million for a museum in Dearborn. Where in 1933 he established Greenfield Village, which was a reproduction of an early American village. Henry Ford was also an author, he wrote My Life and Work, Today and Tomorrow, Moving Forward, and Edison as I Knew Him.

Edsel Bryant Ford was Henry s son and shared the control of the vast Ford industrial interests. Edsel was president of the Ford Motor Company from 1919 until he died. This forced Henry to take over the company once again and become president of the company. Henry soon retired again when his grandson, Henry Ford II became president of the company. The younger Henry Ford moved quickly to restructure and modernize the company, which had slipped from the world s largest automobile manufacturer in 1920 to number three in the U.S. market in 1945. He removed a number of long-time Ford executives, such as Bennett, and for the first time in company history, recruited outsiders for positions of responsibility. The company spent $1 billion between 1945 and 1955 to expand its operations, introduced successful new models, and raised $690 million in capital by offering stock to the public. The Ford Company became and is still one of the greatest car companies in the world.

Bibliography

Nevins and F. E. Hill (3 vol., 1954 62),

B. Herndon (1969),. Lacey (1986); R. M. Wik,

Henry Ford and Grass-Roots America (1970); P. Collier and D. Horowitz, The Fords (1987).