Henry Ford Project Questions

Project Questions Who was Henry Ford? Henry Ford was an American industrialist, the founder of the Ford Motor Company, and sponsor of the development of the assembly line technique of mass production. What did he make? the modern assembly line also he is credited for having the idea of using generic parts to manufacture his automobiles so that one part could fit different models And also the model n, model a and the model t How did he change life as we know it? Ford simplified the production process of the T by making them all the same color. Henry Ford made it possible for every part of the automobile to be manufactured on sight; this method made it achievable for savings to be passed on to the customers. Ford was also the first person to pay his workers five dollars a day, and shorten work days to eight hours. In 1913, the model T was 450$; despite the price Ford was able to make a substantial profit. How many model t's where made? Over fifteen million Model Ts were produced. How did henry ford bring Hitlers views to the United States? The most controversial and least admirable aspect of Fords career was his descent into anti-Semitism. Henry Ford did not bring Hitlers anti-Semitic views to the United States. Unfortunately these opinions were fairly widely held in the 1800s and early 1900s. Convinced that bankers and the Jews were responsible for a whole range of things he didnt like, from the World War (World War I) to short skirts to jazz music, Ford used his newspaper, the Dearborn Independent, to carry on an anti-Semitic campaign. Between 1920 and 1922 a series of articles denounced all things Jewish. While officially apologizing for the articles in 1927, Ford never really gave up his anti-Jewish opinions.

How did he treat employees and his son over time and why did that affect his companies? As you know, Henry Ford paid factory workers $5 a day to work on the assembly line, much more than they would be paid at other factories. But he didnt pay them well just to be nice. He had to pay them that well so they wouldnt quit. Working on Henrys assembly line was boring and hard work. Factories that didnt have such an innovative, advanced moving assembly line were more pleasant to work at because you did more than one task, and didnt stand in one place all day, working at the pace of the conveyor belt bringing parts to you. But paying the employees enough so that they stayed helped the company, so they didnt have to spend time and money training new workers all the time. But in order to earn that $5 a day, you had to meet certain criteria. You had to be the head of a household (not just single), for instance. Also if you didnt speak English (there many immigrants working for Ford), you had to enroll in the Ford English School classes. You also had to have certain behaviors, including having an account at a bank, not drinking alcohol too much, and even keeping your house clean and organized in a certain way. Ford had employees called investigators who visited workers homes to make sure this was happening. Ford felt that he was helping his workers learn to live in a better way, so that the $5/day wages werent wasted. However I personally am not sure how having the house clean and organized would matter much to his business. Having the workers learn English made things safer in the factory. Most employers at this time didnt really care much about worker safety. And making sure the workers werent drunk at work would obviously help too. You can learn more about the requirements for the $5 day by reading the pages in this booklet: http://collections.thehenryford.org/Collection.aspx?objectKey=255638 During the Great Depression, Ford had to decrease wages because they werent selling enough cars. Workers tried to form a union, just like they were for the other auto companies. Henry Ford was really against the union. He felt the workers should appreciate what they did have rather than ask for more. Ford Motor Company sent people to beat up the union organizers. You can see pictures of it here: http://collections.thehenryford.org/Collection.aspx?keywords=%22Franken steen%2c+Richard+T.%2c+1907-1977%22 What is his legacy?

Henry Ford laid the foundation of the twentieth century (the 1900s). The assembly line became the way everything was made, eventually applied to everything from phonographs to hamburgers. The war material (weapons, planes, etc.) turned out on those assembly lines were crucial to the Allied victory in World War II. High wage, low skilled factory jobs pioneered by Ford increased both immigration from overseas and the movement of Americans from the farms to the cities. The same jobs also helped those people move into the growing middle class. While Ford definitely did not intend it, the creation of huge numbers of low skilled workers gave rise in the 1930s to industrial unionism as a potent social and political force. The Model T made almost everyone auto-mobile, altering where and how we lived, what did for fun, our landscape, even our atmosphere. How did the assembly line help his companies? The assembly line allowed his company to produce cars faster, so they could make as many cars as they could sell. It also decreased the price, so more people could afford to have a car. It was also easier to train workers to work on the assembly line; they just had to learn one task rather than a lot of things. How did motion pictures affect his life? When you think about the movies, you think about the great Hollywood studios and men like Louis B. Mayer and the Warner brothers who oversaw their operation. But in the early years of the 20th century, there was another movie maniac far from the west coast in the industrial city of Detroit. His name was Henry Ford and his studio was the Ford Motor Company. In the years between 1914 and 1920 Henry Fords films were shown in over 4,000 theaters to five million peopleroughly one-seventh of the nations weekly movie-going audience. His films were even translated into eleven different languages and shown around the world. By 1918, Henry Ford was spending $600,000 annually on production and Ford Motor Company was the largest motion picture distributor on earth. 6. Driving Question(s) What did Henry do to change America?