The Impact Of Henry Ford And The Ford Motor Company

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The 1920’s was a time of great social, political, and economic change. The early automobile industry was no exclusion. It appears that throughout history, the figures that stand out the most are either worshipped or despised, and there is very rarely an in-between. Henry Ford, an icon of the 1920’s and the early automobile industry is no exemption. Many people love Ford for his innovative and entrepreneurial skills, while on the other hand, Ford is disliked by many due to his association with Anti-Semitism. Regardless of how Ford is viewed, many decisions he made significantly impacted the automobile industry. These decisions included installing the moving assembly line in his plant, and introducing the Five-Dollar Day. Through the implementation of the Five-Dollar Day, Ford was able to drastically change how the Ford Motor Company company operated, and how business would operate for years to come. Prior to January 4, 1914, the name Ford meant nothing. The Ford Motor Company paid its employees $2.34 for a nine-hour shift, and in 1912 the company made a profit of $13.5 million dollars (Raff 181). Raff continues in his article, “Looking back at the Five-Dollar Day,” that the Ford Motor Company had an employee turnover rate of 370%: “50,448 workers had to be hired during the course of 1913 to maintain an average labor force of 13,623” (181). These …show more content…

Members of the department started to make routine visits to each employee’s home. As Rudolph and Sonya Alvarado explain in their book, Drawing Conclusions on Henry Ford, “the purpose of the Sociological Department was to teach employees a number of social behaviors that included how to clean a house, how to brush teeth, how to sanitize the kitchen sink, and so on” (42). Ford was given the nickname the “mad socialist” because of these actions (43). Ford attempted to link his employees work and home lives together with a specific

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