The Life of Henry Ford

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The Life of Henry Ford

Henry Ford once said, “I will build a motorcar for the masses…constructed of the best materials, by the best me to be hired, after the simplest designs that modern engineering can devise…so low in price that no man making a good salary will be unable to own one and enjoy with his family the blessing of hours of pleasure in God’s great open spaces.” (Willamette 1) This is one of his most memorable yet earliest public quotes in history, that can easily sum up his whole life. Ford was much more than a person who made cars.

Henry Ford was born on July 30, 1863 on a farm near Greenfield Michigan where he lived a normal childhood. At thirteen years old Ford became obsessed with the “horseless carriage”, after he witnessed a steam engine rolling down the street on its own (Lacey 8). Ford, was a curious child, one day he ran up to the engineer and asked him many questions. After getting all his answers the engineer actually let him drive the engine (Robert 9). Four years later, he went to work in Detroit as a machinist (Sahlman 1). One year later, he met Thomas Edison and earned a job at Detroit Edison Illuminating Co. (Caldwell 21).

Ford and Edison became life long friends, and because of Edison’s continued encouragement Ford built the first quadricycle gas powered car in 1896 (Salhman 1). In 1903 he founded his company The Ford Motor Co. (Caldwell 21). Ford invented the assembly line in 1913 to be able to produce his cars more rapidly then any other company (Willamette 1). He was the first to use the moving conveyor belt in his factories (Encarta). In 1908, he introduced the Model T. The Model T’s were sold at an affordable

price of $850 (Willamette 2). In 1920, 4 million Model T’s were sold nationwide.

When Ford came out with the assembly line for the Model T the price dropped to $490. Due to mass production in 1925 from the assembly line profits were increased. This enabled the price to be decreased to $260. (Willamette 2). However, Ford never gave up on the Model T even when he

should have because the car’s popularity was disappearing (Iacocca 2). In 1919 Ford turned the company over to his son Edsel until he died and Ford once again took over the company until he was forced to retire because of old age (Salhman 3). He died two years later on Apr...

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...out of it. They wanted to make sure that they were using it to change their lives (Jarold). The Ford Foundation had four goals: to strengthen democratic values, to reduce poverty and injustice, to promote international cooperation, and advance human achievement (Iacocca 2). All these goals were set up by Henry Ford and his son, and the foundation was up and running in 1936. Te Ford foundation started in the state of Michigan, but by 1950 it became a national and international foundation(Willamette 4).” The foundation still provides many grants for charitable causes such as scholarships, aiding charities to fight poverty, and providing for many more charities around the world.

Ford also set up his own hospital, which to this day has grown into a network of hospitals (Willamette 4). “Ford started this in 1914 to 1926 and spent over 11 million dollars of his own money to fund this hospital” (Lacey 93). Ford also took a lot of environmental responsibility in making his cars and decided to use steel instead of wood to preserve forests (Iacocca 6). He set many other rules in his factories to avoid wasting wood and lumber. He thought that everyone should live in a healthy environment.

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