Реферат: Henry Ford

Henry Ford is a man who literally transformed theworld. The car he built and the changes he made on the techniques of industrialproduction revolutionized the lives of people everywhere. At the height of hisfame, in the 1920s, Ford was a name known universally. «Fordismus»entered the European vocabulary as a word for mass production; and acorrespondent in the Soviet Union in 1927 commented that Ford's name was aswell known as Lenin's or Trotsky's. He was regarded as a symbol of industrialtechnology.

Ford himself came from a humble farming background. Born July 30, 1363,in Dearborne, Michigan, near Detroit, young Henry hated almost everything aboutfarming except the machinery. When he was 16, he went to Detroit to serve as anapprentice in a machine shop. He held a series of jobs and became completelyknowledgeable of the way different types of machines operated.

He began to experiment with internal combustion machines in his home workshopin 1891. He was one of manywould-be-inventors working on plans for the automobile; and he discussed hisproject with other mechanics and businessmen working in Detroit. In 1896 Fordsucceeded in building an automobile powered by a gasoline engine which he hadbuilt in his kitchen sink. Running on four horsepower, the car could reach aspeed of 25 miles per hour.

Ford organized the Detroit Automobile

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Company in1899 and produced a small number of cars before the company collapsed two yearslater. He designed and manufactured racing cars, and in 1900, raced one modelat 70 miles per hour.

In 1903, at the age of 40, and withan

investment of $28,000, Henry Fordestablished the Ford Motor Company. The automobile was still considered a toyof the rich, and Ford set about to change this situation.

Ford's philosophy of manufacturing andbusiness is set forth in his autobiography:

«Ask a hundred people how they want aparticular article made. About eighty will not know; they will leave it to you.Fifteen will think that they must say something, while five will really havepreferences and reasons. The ninety-five, made up of those who do not know andadmit it and the fifteen who do not know but do not admit it, constitute thereal market for any product. The majority will consider quality and buy thebiggest dollar's worth of quality. If therefore you discover what will givethis 95 percent of the people the best all-round service and then arrange tomanufacture at the very highest quality and sell at the very lowest price, youwill be meeting a demand which is so large that it may be calleduniversal....The only further step required is to throw overboard the idea ofpricing on what the traffic will bear and instead go to the common-sense basisof pricing on what it costs to manufacture and then

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reducingthe cost of manufacture..."

In the early years of the company'sexistence, Ford was involved in legal battles challenging patents whichrestricted his freedom to alter the internal combustion engine to better suitthe car he wished to build. Winning a clear victory in the courts, Henry Fordestablished an early reputation as a foe of monopolies and the champion of thecommon man.

The Model T Ford was introduced in 1908.It was boxy and tinny-looking, as its nickname, the «Tin Lizzie,»implied; but it was within the purchasing power of people who were not rich. Itfulfilled the goal which Ford had set for himself:

«I will build a motor car for thegreat multitude. It will be large enough for the family but small enough forthe individual to run and care for. It will be constructed of the bestmaterials by the best men to be hired, after the simpliest designs that modernengineering can devise. But it will be so low in price that no man making agood salary will be unable to own one — and enjoy with his family the blessingof hours of pleasure in God's great open spaces.»

Ford was able to lower the price of theModel T from the $850, which it cost when it first appeared, to $360 in 1916.He did this by introducing mass production assembly line techniques. In 1913Ford conducted his first test of assembly line manufacture. He drew up thetechniques which he had observed in a Chicago meat packing plant

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wherean overhead trolley moved the carcasses of animals from one butcher to another;since each butcher had a special job, he could do his cutting work faster andmore efficiently than when he had to cut up the whole animal by himself.

The assembly line revolutionized car production. A chassis that formely took 12,5 hours to build in the shop,now rolled off the assembly line in an hour and a half. This made it possibleto triple the production of Model T's within three years.

Ford also introduced the $5.00 wage for aneight-hour day. Such a salary was unheard of in 1914, and he attracted bothnational and international attention when he began this practice. He alsointroduced a plan which allowed his workers to share in the profits of thecompany — the profit sharing plan which

is used by many companies today.

Ford's early accomplishments fit in wellwith the optimism and idealism of the period. Alongside of the politicalreforms of the Progressive Era, as the years preceeding World War I werecalled, Ford's commitment to the free market, to making a socially usefulproduct, and to technological advancement suggested that a new and better wayof life was at hand.

Following the outbreak of war, Ford paidfor the voyage of the Oscar // (popularly known as the Ford Peace Ship)which brought a group of pacifists and feminists to Scandinavia in 1916 to worktoward

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endingthe war through neutral mediation. He also offered a large prize for a historyof war that would «show war in all its horrors, instead of glorifying theslaughter — a history that shall discourage war by telling of the great thingsof peace.»

Ford was a genuine folk hereto theAmerican people. He represented the virtues of an older, simpler agrariansociety—hard work, self-reliance, and thrift even though he contributed to thedemise of agrarian life. He was a colorful figure, and stories of his love of running(long before the days of jogging) and his strange notions about diet (hesometimes ate grass sandwiches) were well known. People had an idea of whoHenry Ford was — and he in turn, seemed to know what the American people wantedin terms of a product.

During the 1920s, however, the Ford MotorCompany lost much of its popularity with the American public. When othermanufacturers introduced more stylish, relatively inexpensive cars, Fordautomobile sales began to drop. Though he closed his factories for 18 months in1927-28 to prepare for a new Ford car, the Model A, he never regained hisposition of leadership in the car industry.

This was due either to Ford'sunwillingness or inability to change with the time. Already in his sixties, hisideas seemed to become fixed. He said, at this time: «I don't like books.They muss up my mind.» And to a great extent, he became isolated

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anda prisoner of his own prejudices. An early leader in, labor-managementrelations, Ford later resisted the efforts of his workers to unionize

andenter into collective bargaining. Only after a strike by his workers in 1941,did Ford, at the age of 78, accept union membership for his employees.

As owner of the Ford Motor Company, HenryFord accumulated more than $1 billion. Between the years 1908 and 1947, when hedied, he contributed more than $40 million to charitable causes, such as publichospitals, and research institutions. He established the Ford Foundation whichcontinues to support various programs in education, media, and culture. And heconstructed Greenfield Village, near his birthplace in Michigan, as a livingmuseum representing the industrialization of America.

A controversial figure, Ford saw his ideasadopted and applied throughout the world. Yet Ford himself was frequently thetarget of criticism. When he ran for public office in 1918, as Democraticcandidate for Senator for the state of Michigan, he was defeated. In hissatire, Brave New World, Aldus Huxley used Ford's name as a curse, andeven the comic genius Charles Chaplin ridiculed Ford's

contributionsin his film Modern Times. Without a doubt, however, Ford was atechnological genius.

Nota great inventor, he was able to borrow ideas and apply them to newuses. In bringing the automobile to the average worker, he altered thestructure of society, its cities, and the nations of the

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