I watched a good PBS show tonight about Henry Ford. The story detailed his simple live as a kid and the drive as a young man. Something I knew little about since I'm far from an expert on the life of Ford. In my opinion, Ford was one of the most powerful individual the world ever knew. I sure wouldn't want him as my father, and he had his dark sides, but you can't deny the man was a genius. In many ways he defined the free enterprise system. He was a self-made gazillionaire as an entrepreneur, and influenced actions during WW 2 in many different ways. My question is, do you think the incredible production of the USA would have been possible in WW 2 without the innovations of mass production Ford made in the early part of the 1900's ? Could the USA have supplied our war effort, and be as generous with the Lend Lease program, without the Willow Run and River Rouge plants all ready existing ?
The T-Ford has been and will always be a model. Ford was also a prohibitionist and had a private police who fired drinkers .
There is an enduring story concerning Henry Ford and his manipulation of the workforce under him at the plant at River Rouge. Ford insisted that the different national groups that he had hired should all work together. Besides the obvious benefits from having people around you that speak the same base language, it left Ford able to bend them to his will, in a simple process that he demonstrated to be wildly effective. Put simply, Ford would approach the leaders of the various national 'gangs', and in conversation with them, give them a little incentive in the most direct manner possible. Talking to them individually enabled Ford to make up stories about them. He would tell the German gang leader that the Italians further down the line had been gossipping to him, and had told him that, should they be moved to the german section of the line, their productivity would be better. This simple trick was played in a myriad of different ways, but it achieved the same result....better productivity, faster, more accurate work, and a feeling that each 'gang' was the best in the plant. It is said that this idea came to Ford whilst reading about working 'gangs' on the Great Pyramid, and how their productivity was increased by their own competitiveness towards other gangs. Whilst on holiday in New Zealand, I chanced upon a replica of Ford's very first design, a 'Quadribike'. Ford had built the original from spare parts, taking him months of intensive work, and occupying his loungeroom in what would become a very classic case of what was later to happen with people that built their own motorcycles, the generation that gave birth to the book, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintainence." It is said that on completion of this first Ford vehicle, it was too big to get out of the loungeroom. So, taking an ax to the doorframe, and watched by his incredulous and angry wife, Ford proceeded to chop bits from the door until a hole had been made, large enough for the prototype machine to be pushed out without dismantling it. Ford's wife, was far from impressed. The ax marks and the hole in the door stayed with the house until it was sold.
He helped fuel the fires that inspired Germany to blame the Jew for everything that was wrong in society. Yes that sound was heard on our continent first isn't it remarkable to find that out.... and the source was his own little newspaper. How widely we admire his production ideas, but the major defect becomes just another peccadilloe.
Maybe I should of phrased my question a different way. My point was without the existing technology in mass produced goods invented by Ford, how long would the war been extended ? How could there even be a Lend Lease ? World War 2 would of necessitated improvements in mass production, but without this existing technology and the massive production facilities, how much longer would WW 2 been extended until we got up and running ? Without question, Ford was a tyrant, a professional bully and an antisemitic. But IMO, he had a major role in WW 2 and the defeat of the Axis.
I do concede he was a great help to our production as we began to produce for the war.....I also give a great deal of credit however to the resolve and special drive this generation of post depression people had to better themselves and their families with their hard work to accomplish all that was possible. The American people motivated themselves to work at the jobs available, grow the foods they could, save every resource possible to further our war efforts. Perhaps we will never see such a motivation of a people again but I do hope for it. I grew up hearing the stories of frugality, saw my folks practice it.....grow and share massive garden produce with those around them especially those who had less. In a way, their way sort of became their life's habit and I so admired them for it...perhaps I myself practice some same economies and have only continued to some degree their life-long habits. Their generation are the only ones who know how hard they may have had in those long years of depression only to meet the challenge of World War to see it come to an end.
That PBS show was decent, and pretty informative for a video. If you really want to investigate the "good, bad, and the ugly" of Henry Ford see if you can find a copy of Ford: The Men and the Machine by Robert Lacey. I have used mine for a reference to both Fords (the machines), and the family and company. Sometimes you find out that what he is "famous" for saying, isn't what he said in reality. He and the company are fascinating subjects.
When you look at the Great Captain's of Industry, past and present, you will find much to admire and in most cases as much to find dis-aggreeable. Money and power do not make better men or women, it just grants them a greater canvas to demonstrate their character flaws. Flaws that befuddle the common man as well, but we generally do not take notice of.
Let's not forget that even though he despised unions, he fought them by raising the wages of his workers far above the union demands. Who would want a union if it meant cutting their pay? His anti-Semitic views were well known, but it wasn't at the level of German or eastern European prejudices of the late 19th and early 20th century. Henry Ford didn't create the Nazi's. It was rather the other way around with them influencing him, and then he published some of the anti-Jewish propaganda that had been circulating in Europe. The most that can be said is that he introduced some of this poison into the US.
His wage level was in place before any of the automakers had unionized, and it was almost impossible to earn that $5 without jumping through a bunch of Ford hoops, including church going, un-announced home inspections, and other onerous restrictions. It has been estimated that only about 3 in 10 workers actually got the full five bucks. But it was a "wise" idea in another way too, with that pay scale he was producing not only the cars, but the customers for the cars as well. Goto: http://web.bryant.edu/~ehu/h364proj/summ_99/armoush/page3.html
I believe if you look at "home visits" and churches and so on, you'll find those only applied in his model communities, not to general workers in Detroit. I remember visiting an old ghost town in northern Michigan when I was a kid (got covered with wood ticks wandering around there!). This had been a Ford community where they logged and milled wooden parts for early cars. The homes were large and pleasant (what remained of them) and there was an overgrown ball field and other recreational structures - it wasn't like some of those rural slums full of shacks that you see around company coal towns in Appalachia. I suppose if you were housing people, you'd want to make sure the premises were clean and maintained. He really did (I think) want his workers to be happy, though that sort of control seems overbearing in today's world. I grew up outside of Detroit in a blue collar family of factory workers. I remember my grandfather once saying that Henry Ford and he used the same barber in Dearborn. Ford would come in and wait his turn like everyone else, reading the magazines and chatting with the other patrons. Whatever he was, he was no snob. Of course, my grandad was a pleasant little Irishman who never said a bad word about anyone. If he had critical thoughts about Ford, he would never have said them out loud. It's fashionable to demonize prominent people of the past, but we should remember that they were products of their time and carried the prejudices of their time. Lincoln would have been shocked and appalled if his daughter had wanted to marry a black man - should we hold that against him in light of today's society? And Ford was an anti-Semite which saddens me, but doesn't make me hate everything else about him.
Then they should correct it. Ford built "company towns" in several places. The workers in and around Detroit lived in their own homes. I don't want to get roped into defending Fords bigotry, I just think some of the rhetoric is overstated.
Mass production wasnt an apple in the head kind of moment...it was going on all over the place...with a rise in disposable income came goods people could buy...the middle class rises and so does production...in other words neccesity would have "invented" it elsewhere many times over... My Thoughts on Ford are that he was initially a failure...if it wasnt for the American system of "bankruptcy" and the ability to start again, we would never have heard of Ford (A win right there for the American system). One of my favourite quotes come from him from memory..."He who cuts his own fire wood, heats himself twice.." A lesson for all there.
Yes, necessity would of invented it, but without Ford would WW 2 be the necessity ? Would it have changed the outcome of the early stages of WW 2 ? Ford created the idea of having masses building a part of a component verses a craftsman building a component. By the time we entered WW 2, mass production in America was a well oiled machine. I would hate to think of The UK and Russia without our well oiled machine providing Lend Lease supplies.
Demand for consumer goods would have been the neccessity...prior to WW2. Worth noting that products relevant to war have always been able to be mass produced...(swords and helms example)
There wasn't a lot of consuming being done in the 1930's. The world was in a deep depression. Roosevelt gave us a start with his New Deal and public works projects. I don't have figures, but I doubt there was too much investing in tooling and plants prior to the war. We had no need for durable goods until Pearl harbor. Then we geared up almost over night by utilizing EXISTING plants like River Rouge. We basically nationalized our domestic production. Glad we had Ford's facilities and know how (and others). Building small arms and bombs would not be difficult, but building trucks, tanks, aircraft for the world, that's different. Best Regards
Still plenty of consuming outside the depression...and dont forget mass production creates smaller overheads for the producer...something every company around the world would be interested in...As said before, if you look hard enough there were any number of companies even in Europe that had created a level of mass production, (but hadnt called it that) simlpy as a means to reduce overheads...As the consuming population grew, demand could not keep up, especially as you say, for the big ticket items...
