Gaby
Henry Ford’s biography serves as a practical guide to management and an example of corporate social responsibility. Behind the achievements and paradoxes of one of the founders of the automotive industry lay self-belief and unwavering commitment to his dreams, steadfast principles, and acknowledged mistakes. Numerous scholarly studies have been written about the fate and philosophy of the “automobile king” from Detroit, and the remarkable entrepreneur himself shared his journey in a cult autobiographical overview that became a bestseller of the 20th century. What technological, entrepreneurial, and societal innovations did this American industrialist and urban planner, producer of land and air transportation, factory owner and media mogul, pacifist and arms manufacturer, Freemason and Hitler’s inspiration, contribute to humanity? Six books by Henry Ford about his achievements and views continue to stir historical debates even a century later – as befits an extraordinary personality.
The Engine of Progress
The son of Irish immigrants William and Mary Ford, Henry was born on July 30, 1863, in a suburb of Detroit, Michigan. His farmer father worked hard to support five children (three sons and two daughters) and was disappointed in his son, who saw no future in the family business. From a young age, Henry showed signs of being ill-suited for farming. He did not drink milk (later becoming a vegetarian), had no interest in caring for cows and chickens, and despised manual labor, realizing from his teenage years that work could be more efficient. He would later define the essence of his principle: “Successful people rise by using the time wasted by others.”
Even if his father was right to scold Henry for laziness, the son overcame this flaw through a fateful passion. After disassembling and reassembling a clock gifted by his father, the intrigued teenager acquired a useful skill that allowed him to earn money while satisfying his curiosity. He enjoyed “animating” moving mechanisms, so he began studying the workings of various devices, repairing farm equipment. At the age of 12, two significant events occurred in Henry’s life: the sad loss of his mother and the inspiring sight of a self-propelled traction engine, which would inspire his future career choice.
Henry Ford, 1888
Worker vs. Farmer
Unlike the farming income that did not compensate for the effort put in, technical creativity at least developed the mind. Ford had no other means of intellectual development. Barely finishing church school (he never received any formal education), 16-year-old Henry ran away from home to a neighboring industrial city in search of a better life. It was said that Henry Ford wrote his future books with mistakes because he never learned to read and write properly, and as the head of his own company, he could not understand contracts and blueprints without staff assistance. To this, the innovator had two responses: “It’s more important for an entrepreneur to be able to think than to know how to spell,” and “Success comes not from what you know, but from surrounding yourself with knowledgeable and skilled people.”
Gaps in knowledge did not prevent the inventor, developer, and rationalizer from becoming the author of over a hundred patents, the first of which he sold to his notable employer in his youth. After trying his hand at various jobs in Detroit, Henry Ford produced parts for streetcars at an industrial plant and later worked at a shipyard, also repairing clocks in his spare time. When his father asked him to return to the farm, offering him ownership of forty acres of land, Henry agreed but did not abandon his passion for engineering. Ford found a way to ease the manual labor of farmers by creating a gasoline-powered grain thresher, which he sold the patent for to Thomas Edison.
When Geniuses Feel Constrained
Indeed, the buyer of the product idea was the American inventor and entrepreneur who developed the incandescent light bulb. Recognizing the potential of the young developer, Edison invited Henry Ford to work for him, offering him the position of mechanical engineer and soon after, chief engineer. At the Edison Electric Company, which specialized in lighting American cities, Ford worked from 1891 to 1899, constructing an experimental automobile during breaks. This was the first quadricycle (as the author called his design on four bicycle wheels), which he completed in 1893. However, that invention cost Henry Ford his job.
Thomas Edison did not approve of the personal inventive activities of his employees. This applied to both Henry Ford and another genius working there – Nikola Tesla. Both were advised to abandon their “crazy projects” and focus on their work tasks. Ultimately, both left their patron to pursue their own paths. Specifically, Ford, not receiving support from the Edison Illuminating Company, left Edison’s firm in 1899 and became a co-owner of the Detroit Automobile Company until 1902. However, after failing to reach an agreement with other bosses regarding management and production, he was forced to resign from this position as well. It would be another ten years before Henry Ford opened his own factory.
Thomas Edison and Henry Ford
If I Had a Second Life
Henry Ford left the Detroit Automobile Company for the same reason – a lack of support for his own developments, which were more important to him than his position. Despite financial losses, freedom allowed him to pursue his inventive creativity. He had a strong ally in his supportive wife, who shared the risks and approved of her husband’s relentless innovations. Clara Bryant was truly Henry Ford’s muse. He met the woman who would inspire and amplify his successes long before he became one of the world’s first dollar billionaires. Henry Ford met his future wife at a country dance, where he impressed her with his own dance moves and a fashionable pocket watch.
The young suitor married the girl, who also grew up in a farming family, in 1887. From then on, the couple lived together until the end of their lives, and Henry Ford noted that he would marry his muse Clara again if fate granted him another life. In November 1893, the couple welcomed their only son, Edsel. As an adult, Edsel helped his father develop the business but did not inherit the automotive empire, as he died of stomach cancer at the age of 49. Henry still had to live through the era of the Ford automotive conglomerate. Meanwhile, young Henry Ford resembled an obsessed oddball, astonishing Americans with his homemade “iron horse” and nurturing plans to create his own automobile factory.
Henry Ford with his wife Clara Bryant
Aspiring Goals
While some mocked the incorrigible dreamer daring to compete with the automotive monopoly, Ford justified his ambition with a socially beneficial idea: to create a competitive environment in the automotive industry to make cars not a luxury but a widely accessible means of transportation. His strong desire to achieve this noble goal fueled his determination to streamline automobile production. Henry Ford aimed to create a reliable, economical, and universally accessible vehicle for every American by simplifying the bulky designs of contemporary cars and standardizing parts and mechanisms. But first, he needed to promote the automobile.
To draw attention to the four-wheeled marvel of conservative society, Henry Ford decided in 1902 to modify his invention to personally participate in auto racing. Outpacing the reigning champion of America on a speedway, the fervent enthusiast with the first driver’s license in his city achieved his goal – to captivate the public with the car’s capabilities. After that impressive presentation, Henry Ford was ready to open his own automobile factory. The future automotive giant Ford was born in 1903 – founded by Henry Ford with the help of five investors, the Ford Motor Company (which still exists today) began its operations by producing its first model, the Ford A.
Henry Ford and racer Barney Oldfield in 1902
Increasing Productivity
Subsequent achievements multiplied almost every year. In 1908, the legendary Ford Model T was released. In 1910, Henry Ford launched the most innovative automotive enterprise of the time, Highland Park – with unprecedented lighting and advanced ventilation. In 1913, the innovator began testing the assembly line, first assembling a generator at his factory and later applying the principles of its operation to motor production. The following year, Henry Ford raised the assembly line to waist height and launched two lines – one for shorter workers and another for taller ones. Ergonomic equipment and improved working conditions reduced the production time of a Ford Model T from twelve hours to two.
At the same time, Ford introduced the “full cycle production” technology, consolidating all necessary processes for automobile production (from smelting iron ore to assembling finished products) within his own enterprises. In 1914, the “father of the automotive industry” implemented the highest minimum wage in the U.S. – $5 a day. This helped eliminate the high turnover rate in the industry, where employers had to hire three times more staff than needed for the production process to guard against worker shortages. Ultimately, the Ford company transitioned to round-the-clock production, with employees working in three shifts, which were reduced to eight hours. Henry Ford’s new approaches allowed for the creation of thousands of new jobs.
Henry Ford’s Assembly Line
“The Plane Takes Off Against the Wind”
The industrialist with a Puritan worldview instilled a culture of healthy living among his staff, demanding sobriety and prohibiting his employees from consuming alcohol and smoking. Employees who violated contractual obligations and corporate culture did not last long – thanks to high wages and good working conditions, there were always plenty of candidates for their positions. Ford fired not only poor workers, drunks, and violators of labor discipline but also those who neglected their families and failed to pay child support (later, attention to employees’ personal lives would be reduced). Henry Ford built a model workers’ village for his employees and outpaced competitors by allowing workers to share in the company’s profits for the first time.
Thus, there was nothing offensive to people in the fact that Henry Ford treated workers as “cogs.” The creator of the first industrial assembly line for complex machinery considered himself a “cog” as well, as he built his production empire like a powerful machine, where each part had to ensure the reliable operation of the entire assembly. Only the inventor’s steely will allowed the realization of his cherished dream of providing the middle class with an affordable means of transportation. The innovator feared neither enemies nor difficulties. Many can find inspiration in Henry Ford’s quotes, including his famous saying: “The plane takes off against the wind.”
For Peace and War
Interestingly, Henry Ford also had experience in aircraft production. In 1925, he founded Ford Airways and purchased from William Stout the production of designing and manufacturing airliners. The first product of Ford’s airline was the three-engine Ford 3-AT Air Pullman. In 1927, Henry Ford launched the mass production of the passenger plane Ford Trimotor, affectionately nicknamed the “Tin Goose.” By 1933, nearly two hundred of these liners had been produced. The Ford Trimotor was successfully operated until 1989. Thus, it was entirely deserved that in 1928, the living millionaire Henry Ford was awarded the prestigious Franklin Institute Medal for his revolutionary achievements in the automotive industry and industrial production.
Not only civilian products were produced at various times by Henry Ford’s enterprises. When his country entered World War I on the side of the Allies, the industrialist sacrificed his pacifist stance for military contracts. The entrepreneur mastered the production of not only cars for military needs, cylinders for aircraft engines, gas masks, and helmets but also light tanks and even submarines. Henry Ford managed his enterprises until the 1930s, after which disputes with partners and unions forced him to hand over management to his son Edsel. After losing his son in 1943, Henry Ford regained control of the corporation he founded and stepped back from business two years later, passing management to his eldest grandson, Henry Ford II, in 1945.
Ford Receives an Award
Henry Ford and Hitler
The founder of the automotive giant overcame accusations of anti-Semitism that could have cost him dearly in business. Henry Ford’s career was also unaffected by the fact that Adolf Hitler considered him his inspiration. In 1918, the entrepreneur purchased the newspaper The Dearborn Independent, which published the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” (allegedly secret documents about the aspirations of world Jewry for global domination) starting in 1920. Later, a selection of those materials was released as Henry Ford’s book “The International Jew,” which fueled the ideology of German Nazism. Although Ford and Hitler never met in person, the Nazi leader hung a portrait of the American industrialist in his Munich residence and wrote admiringly about his inspiration in Mein Kampf.
Even two high honors in 1946 – the Gold Medal from the American Petroleum Institute “For Merits to American Society” and the Honorary Award “For Merits to the Automotive Industry” – did not shield Henry Ford from accusations of anti-Semitic views and support for the Nazis during World War II. He was accused of financially supporting the National Socialist German Workers’ Party and producing goods in occupied France for the needs of the Wehrmacht (Ford’s plant in Poissy was not confiscated). Nevertheless, the industrialist had to publicly apologize “for the unfounded harm caused to the Jewish community” as early as 1927 when Ford renounced the inflammatory accusations and guaranteed future loyalty.
Henry Ford on Success
To understand the extraordinary individual often referred to as the ideologue of “welfare capitalism,” one should read his works. Henry Ford’s autobiography “My Life and Work” (also known as “My Life, My Achievements”) contains a detailed description of labor organization in his enterprises. The book “Secrets of Success” is a collection of Henry Ford’s vivid quotes on ways to mobilize for achievements. The “automobile king’s” book “Moving Forward” presents his vision for the future development of society. Henry Ford’s books “Today and Tomorrow” and “Time is Money” (the latter co-authored with billionaire John Rockefeller) discuss the role of wealth, material, and moral values in the life of an entrepreneur.
Among the interesting facts about Henry Ford is his lack of prioritization of personal wealth. The main focus for the production organizer was always the development of his business. Starting with a charter capital (formed by investors) of $100,000, of which only $28,000 was in cash, he earned at least $1.16 billion (equivalent to $40 billion at today’s rates). Of that amount, $37 million was donated to charitable causes. The founder and owner of the Ford Motor Company was a member of a Masonic lodge and considered Freemasonry “the best balancing wheel in America.” At the gates of his enterprises was his own aphorism: “A man has no spare parts.” And he framed tasks for his subordinates not as “Do this,” but as “I wonder if you can do this?”
