Henry Ford’s Greatest Accomplishments and Impacts on the United States Henry Ford born on July 30, 1863 on a farm in the Greenfield Township of Michigan lived and worked in one of the most fraudulent and problematic times in the history of the United States, the Gilded Age. Throughout all the greed and wrongdoing of the wealthy leaders of industry, Ford stayed true to his roots and virtues of caring for the average person. Henry Ford impacted the entire production industry by designing the assembly line and incorporating the ideas of standardization and interchangeable parts, which allowed the Ford Motor Company to mass produce vehicles.
This in turn led to Ford’s greatest contribution to the United States, his dedication to his employees and the common man. This dedication led to the creation of the middle class, which began to balance the spread of the countries’ wealth. Henry Ford’s determination for improvement and innovation while still caring for his workers and the ordinary person enabled him to be one of the greatest and most impactful people of the Guiled Age.
In 1908, Five years after Henry Ford started Ford Motor Company, the company introduced its second vehicle named the Model T. Ford designed the car with the thoughts of the customer in mind, by making the Model T an affordable vehicle that was tough enough to endure rough county roads and easy enough to understand where anyone with rudimentary mechanical knowledge could repair it. This design made the Model T an immediate top seller. The influx of orders forced Ford to create a new way of producing the Model T. Therefore, he created the assembly line, “a conveyor system that drew the chassis through the factory and drastically reduced production time.
Savings in production allowed Ford to lower the price of the Model T, thus making it available to a wider market. ” The assembly line was put into Ford Motor Companies’ new massive plant in Dearborn, Michigan. Here Ford centralized his company, the plant included a glass factory and a steel mill. In these factories and mills, the company produced standard, interchange able parts that would be brought to the assembly line for production. Ford’s innovations in production enabled a Model T to be produced every twenty-four seconds, a time that competitors like the Dodge brothers could only dream of.
The assembly line and standardization of parts facilitated the extensive growth in production, “Ford’s output grew from just over 32,000 cars in 1910 to nearly 735,000 cars in 1916. ” By the time the Model T’s run ended in 1927 fifteen million been built and sold, which is just over 2,000 cars built and sold each day. During the early 1900s, the Model T was the nations most successful car making up half of all cars in America. Another part of Henry Ford’s philosophy, also called “Fordism”, was his devotion to his workers and to the ordinary person.
In 1914, along with the addition of the assembly Line, Ford announced his boldest plan that stunned the nation. He introduced a $5 per-day wage for an eight hour day, the standard of this time period was $2. 34 for a nine hour day. This is equivalent to $110 per day in 2011, which is still higher than the present day minimum wage. He also offered and introduced the idea of profit sharing for employees who stayed with the Ford Motor Company for six months and conducted their lives in a respectable manner.
Both the ideas of cutting hours and increasing pay along with profit sharing were unheard of during the Gilded Age. Ford introduced this plan to create a strong workforce loyal to the company and he did just that over night. The high turnover rates quickly disappeared and Ford had created a dedicated workforce that would allow Ford Motor Company to continue to be the nation number one selling car company. Along with paying his workers better than all of his competitors, Ford was dedicated to make the automobile available for the common man.
No other company was able to produce cars at a low price, making them only assessable for the wealthy. The cost of most early automobiles was over two thousand dollars, way out of reach for the common person. Ford’s goal was to change this and create an affordable car. He was able to do this by combining the other aspects of his philosophy, the mass production of the assembly lines and a committed work force. Therefore, when the Model T first came out in 1908 it was priced a $850, a far cry from other cars of the time.
By the early 1920s the mass production of the assembly lines and committed workforce allowed the price of the Model I to come down to under $300. This made it the most affordable car in America, but also the best selling. Ford’s workers were able to purchase the cars they worked on with their high salaries, further devoting them to their job. Ford was so devoted to making the automobile affordable that the Dodge brothers and other stockholders brought a suit against Ford for the reduction of profits for the investors and board members.
Unlike Ford, the Dodge brothers along with the other leaders of industry during the Gilded Age did not care for their workers, nor their consumers. Therefore, Ford’s ideas off lessoning his own profits to allow for better pay to employees and a more affordable car were so foreign and threatening to these other business tycoons that they brought a suit to him. During the trial when asked about what to do with profits Ford replied, “To do as much as possible for everybody concerned, give employment, and send out the car where the people can use it.
Ford continued by saying in an interview after the trial, “And let me say right here, that I do not believe that we should make such an awful profit on our cars. A reasonable profit is right, but not too much. ” Henry Ford did not let greed overcome him like his contemporaries, instead his affection for his workers and for the common man throughout the adversity of fighting his fellow leaders in industry proved to be paramount. Henry Ford’s devolution to the common man led to the creation of the middle class.
During the Gilded Age the spread of wealth in the United States was extremely unequal, no other business tycoon began to spread the wealth like Ford. He raised wages which enabled the lower class workers to have some money left to spread. Also by lowering the prices of his vehicles, he made it possible for lower class family to afford a car. The Ford Motor Companies’ attractive salaries and good working conditions initiated a large flow of people from farms to urban manufacturing jobs in Michigan causing cities to emerge. These cities encompassed well paid skilled factory workers, which therefore created the middle class.
Henry Ford went from fixing classmates watches, at the age of 13, to creating the most efficient and profitable system of production in the history of the United States. Ford’s innovation not only revolutionized the production and vehicle industry, but he also created a healthy work environment for his employees and affordable cars, which led to the creation of the middle class. By staying true to his virtues, Henry Ford made several contributions that saved the United States from turning into a country were the rich leaders of industry dominated and the average citizen.
