Henry
Ford, the son of farmer, was born in Greenfield, Michigan on 30th
July, 1863. He left school at 15 to work on his father's farm but
in 1879 he moved to Detroit where he
became an apprentice in a machine shop. To help him survive on his
low wages he spent his evenings repairing clocks and watches.
Ford returned to Greenfield after his father gave him 40 acres to
start his own farm. He disliked farming and spent much of the time
trying to build a steam road carriage and a farm locomotive. Unable
to settle at Greenfield, Ford returned to Detroit
to work as an engineer for the Edison Illuminating Company.
During this period Ford read an article in the World
of Science about how the German engineer, Nicholas
Otto, had built a internal combustion engine. Ford now spent his
spare time trying to build a petrol-driven motor car. His first car,
finished in 1896, was built in a little brick shed in his garden.
Driven by a two-cylinder, four-cycle motor, it was mounted on bicycle
wheels. Named the Thin Lizzie, the car had no reverse gear or brakes.
By August, 1899, Ford had raised enough money to start his own company.
His first group of investors withdrew after Ford had spent $86,000
without producing a car that could be sold. Eventually he produced
a car that appeared at the Grosse Pointe Blue Ribbon track at Detroit.
Its performance helped him to sell 6,000 $10 dollar shares in his
new company.
This also ended in failure and in June, 1903, he found twelve more
people willing to invest a total of $28,000 in another motor company.
Ford now began production of the Model A car. The car sold well and
the company flourished and by 1907 the profits reached $1,100,000.
In 1909 Ford took the decision to manufacture only one type of car,
the Model T.
Initially it took 14 hours to assemble a Model T car. By improving
his mass production methods, Ford reduced
this to 1 hour 33 minutes. This lowered the overall cost of each car
and enabled Ford to undercut the price of other cars on the market.
Between 1908 and 1916 the selling price of the Model T fell from $1,000
to $360.
On the outbreak of the First World War in Europe,
Ford soon made it clear he opposed the war and supported the decision
of the Woman's Peace Party to organize
a peace conference in Holland. After the conference Ford was contacted
by America's three leading anti-war campaigners, Jane
Addams, Oswald Garrison Villard,
and Paul Kellogg. They suggested that
Ford should sponsor an international conference in Stockholm to discuss
ways that the conflict could be brought to an end.
Ford came up with the idea of sending a boat of pacifists
to Europe to see if they could negotiate an agreement that would end
the war. He chartered the ship Oskar II,
and it sailed from Hoboken, New Jersey on 4th December, 1915. The
Ford Peace Ship reached Stockholm in January,
1916, and a conference was organized with representatives from Denmark,
Holland, Norway, Sweden and the United States. However, unable to
persuade representatives from the warring nations to take part, the
conference was unable to negotiate an Armistice.
After the war Ford became increasingly interested in politics. He
joined the Democratic Party and in
1918 was narrowly defeated when he failed to win a seat in the U.S.
Senate.
In the 1920s the Ford Motor Company continued to grow rapidly. In
1925 Ford was producing 10,000 cars every 24 hours. This was 60 per
cent of America's total output of cars. However, his decision not
to bring out new models allowed other companies to challenge his dominance.
By 1927 Ford had sold over 15,000,000 Model T cars. However, sales
were on the decline and the General Motors's Chevrolet was the current
best-selling car.
In the 1930s Ford opposed Franklin D.
Roosevelt and the New Deal. He refused
to recognize the United Automobile Workers Union and used armed police
to deal with industrial unrest.
Ford had a stroke in 1938 but returned to run the company after his
son, Edsel Ford, died in 1943. Although initially an opponent of the
USA becoming involved in the Second World War,
after Pearl Harbour, Ford turned over his vast production resources
to his country. For example, the Ford plant at Willow Run produced
over 8,000 Liberator bombers during the war. Henry Ford died on 7th
April, 1947.
Henry
Ford drives out his 20 millionth car on 24th April 1931.
(1)
Henry Ford, Forum Magazine (October, 1928)
It has been asserted that machine production kills the creative ability
of the craftsman. This is not true. The machine demands that man be
its master; it compels mastery more than the old methods did. The
number of skilled craftsmen in proportion to the working population
has greatly increased under the conditions brought about by the machine.
They get better wages and more leisure in which to exercise their
creative faculties.
There are two ways of
making money - one at the expense of others, the other by service
to others. The first method does not "make" money, does
not create anything; it only "gets" money - and does not
always succeed in that. In the last analysis, the so-called gainer
loses. The second way pays twice - to maker and user, to seller and
buyer. It receives by creating, and receives only a just share, because
no one is entitled to
all. Nature and humanity supply too many
necessary partners for that. True riches
make wealthier the country as a whole.
Most people will spend
more time and energy in going around problems than in trying to solve
them. A problem is a challenge
to your intelligence. Problems are only
problems until they are solved, and the solution
confers a reward upon the solver. Instead
of avoiding problems, we should welcome
them and through right thinking make
them pay us profits. The discerning youth
will spend his time learning direct methods,
learning how to make his brain and
hand work in harmony with each other so
that the problem in hand may be solved in
the simplest, most direct way that he knows.
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