Henry Ford Research Paper

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“The twentieth century was the century of the automobile.” This statement could not be more true. After the start of the twentieth century the number of cars on the road dramatically increased. Based on the statistics found in Sustainability Perspectives for Resources and Business, 1998, "Before 1900 there were only 8,000 registered cars on the road in the United States of America. Production of the Model T began in 1908. The number of registered cars increased to 9 million by 1920. By the end of the twentieth century the number of cars registered just in the United States was 190 million." (O. Loucks, O. Erekson, J. Bol, R. Gorman, P. Johnson, T. Krenhbiel, 283) The automobile changed the face of the American landscape and helped build the …show more content…

Henry Ford became a leader in manufacturing when he perfected the assembly line. He was able to produce Model Ts at a very fast rate. This increased production and decreased labor costs per car, overall making the Model T more affordable for working class Americans. Ford produced Model Ts so that each one was alike. He said, “The way to make automobiles is to make one automobile just like another automobile, to make them all alike, to make them come through the factory alike” (Henry Ford, 1903) Consequently, Henry Ford changed American automobile manufacturing and production. The term Fordism describes just how he changed it. According to Britannica, Fordism is defined as "a term widely used to describe the system of mass production that was pioneered in the early 20th century by the Ford Motor Company or the typical postwar mode of economic growth and its associated political and social order in advanced …show more content…

Suburbanization is "the growth of areas on the fringes of cities. It is one of the many causes of the increase in urban sprawl. Many residents of metropolitan regions work within the central urban area, and choose to live in satellite communities called suburbs and commute to work via automobile or mass transit." Before the mass production of the Model T, Americans primarily lived and worked in the cities. Ford's $5 a day wage meant that his employees were making more money and could afford his cars. With this new technology and increased wages, the population began to shift from cities to the

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