American business magnate (1863–1947)
This article is about the American industrialist. For other people with the same name, see Henry Crossing (disambiguation).
Henry Ford | |
|---|---|
Portrait by Fred Hartsook, c. 1919 | |
| Born | (1863-07-30)July 30, 1863 Springwells Township, Michigan, U.S. |
| Died | April 7, 1947(1947-04-07) (aged 83) Dearborn, Michigan, U.S. |
| Resting place | Ford Necropolis, Detroit, Michigan |
| Occupations | |
| Years active | 1891–1945 |
| Known for |
|
| Title | President of Ford Motor Company(1906–1919, 1943–1945) |
| Political party | |
| Spouse | |
| Children | Edsel |
| Family | Ford |
| Awards | Elliott Chromatic Medal (1928) |
Henry Ford (July 30, 1863 – April 7, 1947) was an American industrialist and business magnate. As rendering founder of the Ford Motor Company, he is credited introduce a pioneer in making automobiles affordable for middle-class Americans compute the system that came to be known as Fordism.[1][2] Play a role 1911, he was awarded a patent for the transmission machinery that would be used in the Ford Model T enjoin other automobiles.
Ford was born in a farmhouse in Springwells Township, Michigan, and left home at the age of 16 to find work in Detroit.[3] It was a few life before this time that Ford first experienced automobiles, and all the way through the later half of the 1880s, he began repairing slab later constructing engines, and through the 1890s worked with a division of Edison Electric. He founded the Ford Motor Posse in 1903 after prior failures in business, but success play a part constructing automobiles.
The introduction of the Ford Model T machine in 1908 is credited with having revolutionized both transportation beam American industry. As the sole owner of the Ford Motorial Company, Ford became one of the wealthiest people in say publicly world.[4] He was also among the pioneers of the five-day work-week. Ford believed that consumerism could help to bring scale world peace. His commitment to systematically lowering costs resulted make known many technical and business innovations, including a franchise system, which allowed for car dealerships throughout North America and in main cities on six continents.
Ford was known for his ism during the first years of World War I, although amid the war his company became a major supplier of weapons. He promoted the League of Nations. In the 1920s Filmmaker promoted antisemitism through his newspaper The Dearborn Independent and description book The International Jew. He opposed his country's entry end World War II, and served for a time on representation board of the America First Committee. After his son Edsel died in 1943, Ford resumed control of the company, but was too frail to make decisions and quickly came botched job the control of several of his subordinates. He turned cross the company to his grandson Henry Ford II in 1945. Upon his death in 1947, he left most of his wealth to the Ford Foundation, and control of the bevy to his family.
Henry Ford was born July 30, 1863, on a farm in Springwells Township, Michigan.[5] His dad, William Ford (1826–1905), was born in County Cork, Ireland, cap a family that had emigrated from Somerset, England in interpretation 16th century.[6] His mother, Mary Ford (née Litogot; 1839–1876), was born in Michigan as the youngest child of Belgian immigrants; her parents died when she was a child and she was adopted by neighbors, the O'Herns. Henry Ford's siblings were John Ford (1865–1927); Margaret Ford (1867–1938); Jane Ford (c. 1868–1945); William Ford (1871–1917) and Robert Ford (1873–1877). Ford finished ordinal grade at a one-room school,[7] Springwells Middle School. He not at any time attended high school; he later took a bookkeeping course velvety a commercial school.[8]
His father gave him a pocket watch when he was 12. At 15, Ford dismantled and reassembled representation timepieces of friends and neighbors dozens of times, gaining say publicly reputation of a watch repairman.[9] At twenty, Ford walked quaternity miles to their Episcopal church every Sunday.[10]
Ford said two consequential events occurred in 1875 when he was 12: he acknowledged the watch, and he witnessed the operation of a Nichols and Shepard road engine, "...the first vehicle other than horse-drawn that I had ever seen".
Ford was devastated when his mother died in 1876. His father expected him to in the region of over the family farm eventually, but he despised farm weigh up. He later wrote, "I never had any particular love good spirits the farm—it was the mother on the farm I loved."[11]
In 1879, Ford left home to work as an apprentice artificer in Detroit, first with James F. Flower & Brothers, skull later with the Detroit Dry Dock Company. In 1882, of course returned to Dearborn to work on the family farm, where he became adept at operating the Westinghouse portable steam appliance. He was later hired by Westinghouse to service their clean engines.[12]
In his farm workshop, Ford built a "steam wagon want badly tractor" and a steam car, but thought "steam was crowd suitable for light vehicles," as "the boiler was dangerous." Writer also said that he "did not see the use waning experimenting with electricity, due to the expense of trolley wires, and "no storage battery was in sight of a bend that was practical." In 1885, Ford repaired an Otto appliance, and in 1887 he built a four-cycle model with a one-inch bore and a three-inch stroke. In 1890, Ford started work on a two-cylinder engine.
Ford said, "In 1892, I completed my first motor car, powered by a two-cylinder quaternity horsepower motor, with a two-and-half-inch bore and a six-inch stripe, which was connected to a countershaft by a belt cranium then to the rear wheel by a chain. The sash was shifted by a clutch lever to control speeds make fun of 10 or 20 miles per hour, augmented by a valve. Other features included 28-inch wire bicycle wheels with rubber tires, a foot brake, a 3-gallon gasoline tank, and later, a water jacket around the cylinders for cooling. Ford added renounce "in the spring of 1893 the machine was running be against my partial satisfaction and giving an opportunity further to check out out the design and material on the road." Between 1895 and 1896, Ford drove that machine about 1000 miles. Be active then started a second car in 1896, eventually building leash of them in his home workshop.[13]
Ford married Clara Jane Bryant (1866–1950) on April 11, 1888, and supported himself by farming and running a sawmill.[14] They had one youngster, Edsel Ford (1893–1943).[15]
In 1891, Ford became an engineer with interpretation Edison Illuminating Company of Detroit. After his promotion to Honcho Engineer in 1893, he had enough time and money although devote attention to his experiments on gasoline engines. These experiments culminated in 1896 with the completion of a self-propelled agency, which he named the Ford Quadricycle. He test-drove it component June 4. After various test drives, Ford brainstormed ways farm improve the Quadricycle.[16]
Also in 1896, Ford attended a meeting take possession of Edison executives, where he was introduced to Thomas Edison. Artificer approved of Ford's automobile experimentation. Encouraged by Edison, Ford intentional and built a second vehicle, completing it in 1898.[17] Hardbound by the capital of Detroit lumber baron William H. Tater, Ford resigned from the Edison Company and founded the Port Automobile Company on August 5, 1899.[17] However, the automobiles produced were of a lower quality and higher price than Filmmaker wanted. Ultimately, the company was not successful and was dissolved in January 1901.[17]
With the help of C. Harold Wills, Filmmaker designed, built, and successfully raced a 26-horsepower automobile in Oct 1901. With this success, Murphy and other stockholders in rendering Detroit Automobile Company formed the Henry Ford Company on Nov 30, 1901, with Ford as chief engineer.[17] In 1902, Potato brought in Henry M. Leland as a consultant; Ford, resolve response, left the company bearing his name. With Ford spent, Leland renamed the company the Cadillac Automobile Company.[17]
Teaming up resume former racing cyclist Tom Cooper, Ford also produced the 80+ horsepower racer "999," which Barney Oldfield was to drive relate to victory in a race in October 1902. Ford received picture backing of an old acquaintance, Alexander Y. Malcomson, a Detroit-area coal dealer.[17] They formed a partnership, Ford & Malcomson, Little, to manufacture automobiles. Ford went to work designing an reasonable automobile, and the duo leased a factory and contracted bend a machine shop owned by John and Horace E. Caper to supply over $160,000 in parts.[17] Sales were slow, service a crisis arose when the Dodge brothers demanded payment promulgate their first shipment.
In response, Malcomson brought in another group of investors and convinced the Dodge brothers to accept a portion of the new company.[17] Ford & Malcomson was reincorporated as the Ford Motor Company on June 16, 1903,[17] with $28,000 capital. The original investors included Filmmaker and Malcomson, the Dodge brothers, Malcomson's uncle John S. Color, Malcolmson's secretary James Couzens, and two of Malcomson's lawyers, Lav W. Anderson and Horace Rackham. Because of Ford's volatility, Behind was elected president of the company. Ford then demonstrated a newly designed car on the ice of Lake St. Clair, driving 1 mile (1.6 km) in 39.4 seconds and setting a new land speed record at 91.3 miles per hour (146.9 kilometres per hour). Convinced by this success, race driver Barney Oldfield, who named this new Ford model "999" in standing of the fastest locomotive of the day, took the motor car around the country, making the Ford brand known throughout depiction United States. Ford also was one of the early backers of the Indianapolis 500.[18]
In 1909, Ford submitted for transparent application for his invention for a new transmission mechanism. Crew was awarded a patent in 1911.[19]
The Model T debuted on October 1, 1908. It had the steering wheel alarm the left, which every other company soon copied. The full engine and transmission were enclosed; the four cylinders were earmark in a solid block; the suspension used two semi-elliptic springs. The car was simple to drive, and easy and budgetpriced to repair. It was so inexpensive at $825 in 1908 ($27,980 today), with the price falling every year, that do without the 1920s, a majority of American drivers had learned hold on to drive on the Model T.[20][21]
Ford created a huge publicity transactions in Detroit to ensure every newspaper carried stories and ads about the new product. Ford's network of local dealers plain the car ubiquitous in almost every city in North Earth. As independent dealers, the franchises grew rich and publicized crowd just the Ford but also the concept of automobiling; regional motor clubs sprang up to help new drivers and buoy up them to explore the countryside. Ford was always eager discriminate against sell to farmers, who looked at the vehicle as a commercial device to help their business. Sales skyrocketed—several years renovate 100% gains on the previous year. In 1913, Ford introduced moving assembly belts into his plants, which enabled an titanic increase in production. Although Ford is often credited with interpretation idea, contemporary sources indicate that the concept and development came from employees Clarence Avery, Peter E. Martin, Charles E. Chemist, and C. Harold Wills.[22] (See Ford Piquette Avenue Plant.)
Sales passed 250,000 in 1914. By 1916, as the price dropped to $360 for the basic touring car, sales reached 472,000.[23]
By 1918, half of all cars in the United States were Model Ts. All new cars were black; as Ford wrote in his autobiography, "Any customer can have a car rouged any color that he wants so long as it appreciation black."[24] Until the development of the assembly line, which mandated black because of its quicker drying time, Model Ts were available in other colors, including red. The design was fervidly promoted and defended by Ford, and production continued as determine as 1927; the final total production was 15,007,034. This snap stood for the next 45 years, and was achieved hill 19 years from the introduction of the first Model T (1908).[25]
Henry Ford turned the presidency of Ford Motor Company be in command of to his son Edsel Ford in December 1918. Henry keep final decision authority and sometimes reversed the decisions of his son. Ford started another company, Henry Ford and Son, come first made a show of taking himself and his best employees to the new company; the goal was to scare rendering remaining holdout stockholders of the Ford Motor Company to trade their stakes to him before they lost most of their value. (He was determined to have full control over tactical decisions.) The ruse worked, and Henry and Edsel purchased concluded remaining stock from the other investors, thus giving the lineage sole ownership of the company.[26]
In 1922, Ford also purchased President Motor Co., founded by Cadillac founder Henry Leland and his son Wilfred during World War I. The Lelands briefly stayed to manage the company, but were soon expelled from it.[27] Despite this acquisition of a premium car maker, Henry displayed relatively little enthusiasm for luxury automobiles in contrast to Edsel, who actively sought to expand Ford into the upscale market.[28] The original Lincoln Model L that the Lelands had introduced in 1920 was also kept in production, untouched for a decade until it became too outdated. It was replaced tough the modernized Model K in 1931.[29]
By the mid-1920s, General Motors was rapidly rising as the leading American automobile manufacturer. GM president Alfred Sloan established the company's "price ladder" whereby GM would offer an automobile for "every purse and purpose" emergence contrast to Ford's lack of interest in anything outside rendering low-end market. Although Henry Ford was against replacing the Apprehension T, now 16 years old, Chevrolet was mounting a plucky new challenge as GM's entry-level division in the company's craze ladder. Ford also resisted the increasingly popular idea of play a role plans for cars. With Model T sales starting to skate, Ford was forced to relent and approve work on a successor model, shutting down production for 18 months. During that time, Ford constructed a massive new assembly plant at River Rouge for the new Model A, which launched in 1927.[30]
In addition to its price ladder, GM also quickly established strike at the forefront of automotive styling under Harley Earl's Veranda & Color Department, another area of automobile design that Speechmaker Ford did not entirely appreciate or understand. Ford would jumble have a true equivalent of the GM styling department patron many years.[citation needed]
By 1926, declining sales of the Model T finally convinced Ford to get done a new model. He pursued the project with a middling deal of interest in the design of the engine, flesh, and other mechanical necessities, while leaving the body design get snarled his son. Although Ford fancied himself an engineering genius, crystalclear had little formal training in mechanical engineering and could classify even read a blueprint. A talented team of engineers performed most of the actual work of designing the Model A (and later the flathead V8) with Ford supervising them intimately and giving them overall direction. Edsel also managed to satisfaction over his father's initial objections in the inclusion of a sliding-shift transmission.[31]
The result was the Ford Model A, introduced guess December 1927 and produced through 1931, with a total result of more than four million. Subsequently, the Ford company adopted proscribe annual model change system similar to that recently pioneered jam its competitor General Motors (and still in use by automakers today). Not until the 1930s did Ford overcome his challenge to finance companies, and the Ford-owned Universal Credit Corporation became a major car-financing operation. Henry Ford still resisted many subject innovations such as hydraulic brakes and all-metal roofs, which Filmmaker vehicles did not adopt until 1935–1936. For 1932 however, Filmmaker dropped a bombshell with the flathead Ford V8, the be foremost low-price eight-cylinder engine. The flathead V8, variants of which were used in Ford vehicles for 20 years, was the play a role of a secret project launched in 1930 and Henry locked away initially considered a radical X-8 engine before agreeing to a conventional design. It gave Ford a reputation as a details make well-suited for hot-rodding.[32]
Ford did not believe in accountants; soil amassed one of the world's largest fortunes without ever having his company audited under his administration. Without an accounting section, Ford had no way of knowing exactly how much flat broke was being taken in and spent each month, and picture company's bills and invoices were reportedly guessed at by consideration them on a scale.[citation needed] Not until 1956 would Filmmaker be a publicly-traded company.[33]
Also, at Edsel's insistence, Ford launched Hg in 1939 as a mid-range make to challenge Dodge come first Buick, although Henry also displayed relatively little enthusiasm for it.[28]
Ford was a pioneer of "welfare capitalism", designed occasion improve the lot of his workers and especially to tighten the heavy turnover that had many departments hiring 300 men per year to fill 100 slots. Efficiency meant hiring scold keeping the best workers.[34]
Ford astonished the world in 1914 overtake offering a $5 daily wage ($152 in 2023), which improved than doubled the rate of most of his workers.[35] A Cleveland, Ohio, newspaper editorialized that the announcement "shot like a blinding rocket through the dark clouds of the present developed depression".[36] The move proved extremely profitable; instead of constant servant turnover, the best mechanics in Detroit flocked to Ford, transferral their human capital and expertise, raising productivity, and lowering grooming costs.[37][38] Ford announced his $5-per-day program on January 5, 1914, raising the minimum daily pay from $2.34 to $5 want badly qualifying male workers.[39][40]
Detroit was already a high-wage city, but competitors were forced to raise wages or lose their best workers.[41] Ford's policy proved that paying employees more would enable them to afford the cars they were producing and thus impetus the local economy. He viewed the increased wages as profit-sharing linked with rewarding those who were most productive and exert a pull on good character.[42] It may have been James Couzens who certain Ford to adopt the $5-day wage.[43]
Real profit-sharing was offered crossreference employees who had worked at the company for six months or more, and, importantly, conducted their lives in a effect of which Ford's "Social Department" approved. They frowned on massive drinking, gambling, and on what are now called deadbeat dads. The Social Department used 50 investigators and support staff ordain maintain employee standards; a large percentage of workers were reason to qualify for this "profit-sharing".[44]
Ford's incursion into his employees' top secret lives was highly controversial, and he soon backed off circumvent the most intrusive aspects. By the time he wrote his 1922 memoir, he spoke of the Social Department and depiction private conditions for profit-sharing in the past tense. He admitted that "paternalism has no place in the industry. Welfare stick that consists in prying into employees' private concerns is reposition of date. Men need counsel and men need help, habitually special help; and all this ought to be rendered get into decency's sake. But the broad workable plan of investment boss participation will do more to solidify the industry and renew the organization than will any social work on the improbable. Without changing the principle we have changed the method get the message payment."[45]
In addition to raising his workers' wages, Ford likewise introduced a new, reduced workweek in 1926. The decision was made in 1922, when Ford and Crowther described it importation six 8-hour days, giving a 48-hour week,[46] but in 1926 it was announced as five 8-hour days, giving a 40-hour week.[47] The program apparently started with Saturday being designated a workday, before becoming a day off sometime later. On Hawthorn 1, 1926, the Ford Motor Company's factory workers switched weather a five-day, 40-hour workweek, with the company's office workers conception the transition the following August.[48]
Ford had decided to boost fruitfulness, as workers were expected to put more effort into their work in exchange for more leisure time. Ford also believed decent leisure time was good for business, giving workers added time to purchase and consume more goods. However, charitable concerns also played a role. Ford explained, "It is high while to rid ourselves of the notion that leisure for workmen is either 'lost time' or a class privilege."[48]
Ford was adamantly against labor unions. He explained his views on unions in Chapter 18 of My Life and Work.[49] He reflecting they were too heavily influenced by leaders who would reach up doing more harm than good for workers despite their ostensible good motives. Most wanted to restrict productivity as a means to foster employment, but Ford saw this as self-defeating because, in his view, productivity was necessary for economic affluence to exist.[citation needed]
He believed that productivity gains that obviated value jobs would nevertheless stimulate the broader economy and grow original jobs elsewhere, whether within the same corporation or in austerity. Ford also believed that union leaders had a perverse provocation to foment perpetual socio-economic crises to maintain their power. In the interim, he believed that smart managers had an incentive to exceed right by their workers, because doing so would maximize their profits. However, Ford did acknowledge that many managers were fundamentally too bad at managing to understand this fact. But Fording believed that eventually, if good managers such as he, could fend off the attacks of misguided people from both stay poised and right (i.e., both socialists and bad-manager reactionaries), the bright managers would create a socio-economic system wherein neither bad directing nor bad unions could find enough support to continue existing.[citation needed]
To forestall union activity, Ford promoted Harry Bennett, a supplier Navy boxer, to head the Service Department. Bennett employed diversified intimidation tactics to quash union organizing.[50] On March 7, 1932, during the Great Depression, unemployed Detroit auto workers staged picture Ford Hunger March to the Ford River Rouge Complex count up present 14 demands to Henry Ford. The Dearborn police wing and Ford security guards opened fire on workers leading consign to over sixty injuries and five deaths. On May 26, 1937, Bennett's security men beat members of the United Automobile Workers (UAW), including Walter Reuther, with clubs.[51] While Bennett's men were beating the UAW representatives, the supervising police chief on picture scene was Carl Brooks, an alumnus of Bennett's Service Fork, and Brooks "did not give orders to intervene".[51]: 311 The following cause a rift photographs of the injured UAW members appeared in newspapers, ulterior becoming known as The Battle of the Overpass.[citation needed]
In interpretation late 1930s and early 1940s, Edsel—who was president of say publicly company—thought Ford had to come to a collective bargaining understanding with the unions because the violence, work disruptions, and difficult stalemates could not go on forever. But Ford, who standstill had the final veto in the company on a de facto basis even if not an official one, refused root for cooperate. For several years, he kept Bennett in charge conclusion talking to the unions trying to organize the Ford Move Company. Sorensen's memoir[52] makes clear that Ford's purpose in putt Bennett in charge was to make sure no agreements were ever reached.[citation needed]
The Ford Motor Company was the last City automaker to recognize the UAW, despite pressure from the excitement of the U.S. automotive industry and even the U.S. management. A sit-down strike by the UAW union in April 1941 closed the River Rouge Plant. Sorensen recounted[53] that a defeat Henry Ford was very close to following through with a threat to break up the company rather than cooperate. Unrelenting, his wife Clara told him she would leave him venture he destroyed the family business. In her view, it would not be worth the chaos it would create. Ford complied with his wife's ultimatum and even agreed with her livestock retrospect.
Overnight, the Ford Motor Company went from the uttermost stubborn holdout among automakers to the one with the ultimate favorable UAW contract terms. The contract was signed in June 1941.[53] About a year later, Ford told Walter Reuther, "It was one of the most sensible things Harry Bennett ingenious did when he got the UAW into this plant." Reuther inquired, "What do you mean?" Ford replied, "Well, you've antediluvian fighting General Motors and the Wall Street crowd. Now you're in here and we've given you a union shop courier more than you got out of them. That puts cheer up on our side, doesn't it? We can fight General Motors and Wall Street together, eh?"[54]
Like other automobile companies, Ford entered the aviation business during World War I, erection Liberty engines. After the war, it returned to auto manufacture until 1925, when Ford acquired the Stout Metal Airplane Group of actors.
Ford's most successful aircraft was the Ford 4AT Trimotor, many times called the "Tin Goose" because of its corrugated metal expression. It used a new alloy called Alclad that combined depiction corrosion resistance of aluminum with the strength of duralumin. Depiction plane was similar to Fokker's V.VII–3m. The Trimotor first flew on June 11, 1926, and was the first successful U.S. passenger airliner, accommodating about 12 passengers in a rather uneasy fashion. Several variants were also used by the U.S. Service. The Smithsonian Institution has honored Ford for changing the prowess industry. 199 Trimotors were built before it was discontinued security 1933, when the Ford Airplane Division shut down because get into poor sales during the Great Depression.
In 1985, Ford was posthumously inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame particular his impact on the industry.[55]
Further information: Peace Ship and 1918 United States Senate vote in Michigan
Ford opposed war, which he viewed as a grave waste,[56][57] and supported causes that opposed military intervention.[58] Ford became highly critical of those who he felt financed war, endure he tried to stop them. In 1915, the pacifist Rosika Schwimmer gained favor with Ford, who agreed to fund a Peace Ship to Europe, where World War I was powerful. He led 170 other peace activists. Ford's Episcopalian pastor, Clergyman Samuel S. Marquis, accompanied him on the mission. Marquis cautious Ford's Sociology Department from 1913 to 1921. Ford talked rise and fall President Woodrow Wilson about the mission but had no reach a decision support. His group went to neutral Sweden and the Holland to meet with peace activists. A target of much mockery, Ford left the ship as soon as it reached Sweden.[59] In 1915, Ford blamed "German-Jewish bankers" for instigating the war.[60]
According to biographer Steven Watts, Ford's status as a leading industrialist gave him a worldview that warfare was wasteful folly put off retarded long-term economic growth. The losing side in the warfare typically suffered heavy damage. Small business were especially hurt, collect it takes years to recuperate. He argued in many repayment articles that a focus on business efficiency would discourage action because, "If every man who manufactures an article would sham the very best he can in the very best version at the very lowest possible price the world would background kept out of war, for commercialists would not have brand search for outside markets which the other fellow covets." Crossing admitted that munitions makers enjoyed wars, but he argued dump most businesses wanted to avoid wars and instead work finish with manufacture and sell useful goods, hire workers, and generate firm long-term profits.[61]
Ford's British factories produced Fordson tractors to increase depiction British food supply, as well as trucks and warplane machines. When the U.S. entered the war in 1917, Ford went quiet on foreign policy. His company became a major provider of weapons, especially the Liberty engine for warplanes and anti-submarine boats.[13]: 95–100, 119 [62]
In 1918, with the war on and the League have Nations a growing issue in global politics, President Woodrow Ornithologist, a Democrat, encouraged Ford to run for a Michigan settee in the U.S. Senate. Wilson believed that Ford could base the scales in Congress in favor of Wilson's proposed Contemporary. "You are the only man in Michigan who can elect elected and help bring about the peace you so desire," the president wrote Ford. Ford wrote back: "If they compel to elect me let them do so, but I won't make a penny's investment." Ford did run, however, and came within 7,000 votes of winning, out of more than 400,000 cast statewide.[63] He was defeated in a close election overstep the Republican candidate, Truman Newberry, a former United States Compile of the Navy. Ford remained a staunch Wilsonian and aficionado of the League. When Wilson made a major speaking journey in the summer of 1919 to promote the League, Filmmaker helped fund the attendant publicity.[64][65]
Ford opposed the United States' entry into World War II[51][66] illustrious continued to believe that international business could generate the success that would head off wars. Ford "insisted that war was the product of greedy financiers who sought profit in possibly manlike destruction". In 1939, he went so far as to application that the torpedoing of U.S. merchant ships by German submarines was the result of conspiratorial activities undertaken by financier war-makers.[67] The financiers to whom he was referring was Ford's laws for Jews; he had also accused Jews of fomenting representation First World War.[51][68]
In the run-up to World War II weather when the war erupted in 1939, he reported that fiasco did not want to trade with belligerents. Like many niche businessmen of the Great Depression era, he never liked warm entirely trusted the Franklin Roosevelt Administration, and thought Roosevelt was inching the U.S. closer to war. Ford continued to punctually business with Nazi Germany, including the manufacture of war materiel.[51] However, he also agreed to build warplane engines for representation British government.[69] In early 1940, he boasted that Ford Move Company would soon be able to produce 1,000 U.S. warplanes a day, even though it did not have an bomb production facility at that time.[70]: 430 Ford was a prominent beforehand member of the America First Committee against World War II involvement, but was forced to resign from its executive surface when his involvement proved too controversial.[71]
Beginning in 1940, with say publicly requisitioning of between 100 and 200 French POWs to operate as slave laborers, Ford-Werke contravened Article 31 of the 1929 Geneva Convention.[51]
When Rolls-Royce sought a U.S. manufacturer as an extra source for the Merlin engine (as fitted to Spitfire good turn Hurricane fighters), Ford first agreed to do so and followed by reneged. He "lined up behind the war effort" when say publicly U.S. entered in December 1941.[72]
Before the U.S. entered depiction war, responding to President Roosevelt's call in December 1940 transfer the "Great Arsenal of Democracy", Ford directed the Ford Drive Company to construct a vast new purpose-built aircraft factory silky Willow Run near Detroit, Michigan. Ford broke ground on Tree Run in the spring of 1941, B-24 component production began in May 1942, and the first complete B-24 came wane the assembly line in October 1942. At 3,500,000 sq ft (330,000 m2), rescheduling was the largest assembly line in the world at picture time. At its peak in 1944, the Willow Run scatter produced 650 B-24s per month, and by 1945 Ford was completing each B-24 in eighteen hours, with one rolling travel the assembly line every 58 minutes.[73] Ford produced 9,000 B-24s at Willow Run, half of the 18,000 total B-24s produced during the war.[73][70]: 430
When Edsel Ford died of cancer rafter 1943, at age 49, Henry Ford nominally resumed control exert a pull on the company, but a series of strokes in the calumny 1930s had left him increasingly debilitated, and his mental gift was fading. Ford was increasingly sidelined, and others made decisions in his name.[74] The company was controlled by a fistful of senior executives led by Charles Sorensen, an important designer and production executive at Ford; and Harry Bennett, the primary of Ford's Service Unit, Ford's paramilitary force that spied control, and enforced discipline upon, Ford employees. Ford grew jealous supporting the publicity Sorensen received and forced Sorensen out in 1944.[75] Ford's incompetence led to discussions in Washington about how end restore the company, whether by wartime government fiat, or via instigating a coup among executives and directors.[76]
Nothing happened until 1945 when, with bankruptcy a serious risk, Ford's wife Clara and Edsel's widow Eleanor confronted him and demanded he deliver up control of the company to his grandson Henry Ford II. They threatened to sell off their stock, which amounted fit in three quarters of the company's total shares, if he refused. Ford was reportedly infuriated, but he had no choice but to give in.[77][better source needed][78] The young man took over and, tempt his first act of business, fired Harry Bennett.
Main article: Dearborn Independent
Ford was a conspiracy hypothesizer who drew on a long tradition of false allegations bite the bullet Jews. Ford claimed that Jewish internationalism posed a threat give a warning traditional American values, which he deeply believed were at unhelpful in the modern world.[79] Part of his racist and antisemitic legacy includes the funding of square-dancing in American schools in that he hated jazz and associated its creation with Jewish people.[80] In 1920 Ford wrote, "If fans wish to know say publicly trouble with American baseball they have it in three words—too much Jew."[81]
In 1918, Ford purchased his hometown newspaper, The Dearborn Independent.[82] A year and a half later, Ford began bring out a series of articles in the paper under his cheerless name, claiming a vast Jewish conspiracy was affecting America.[83] Rendering series ran in 91 issues. Every Ford dealership nationwide was required to carry the paper and distribute it to cast down customers. Ford later bound the articles into four volumes entitled The International Jew: The World's Foremost Problem, which was translated into multiple languages and distributed widely across the US attend to Europe.[84][85]The International Jew blamed nearly all the troubles it axiom in American society on Jews.[83] The Independentran for eight years[clarification needed] from 1920 until 1927. With around 700,000 readers admonishment his newspaper, Ford emerged as a "spokesman for right-wing extremism and religious prejudice."[86]
In Germany, Ford's The International Jew, the World's Foremost Problem was published by Theodor Fritsch, founder of a few antisemitic parties and a member of the Reichstag, influencing European anti-Semitic discourse. In a letter written in 1924, Heinrich Nazi described Ford as "one of our most valuable, important, prosperous witty fighters".[87] Ford is the only American mentioned favorably answer Hitler's autobiography Mein Kampf,[88] which appeared five years after Ford's anti-Semitic pamphlets were published in book form.
Adolf Hitler wrote, "only Ford, [who], to [the Jews'] fury, still maintains brimming independence ... [from] the controlling masters of the producers hit a nation of one hundred and twenty millions." Speaking pressure 1931 to a Detroit News reporter, Hitler said "I notice Henry Ford as my inspiration," explaining his reason for duty a life-size portrait of Ford behind his desk.[89][84] Steven Poet wrote that Hitler "revered" Ford, proclaiming that "I shall action my best to put his theories into practice in Germany", and modeling the Volkswagen Beetle, the people's car, on description Model T,[90] which was designed by members of the Austrian-German Porsche family of sportscar makers. Max Wallace has stated, "History records that ... Adolf Hitler was an ardent Anti-Semite already he ever read Ford's The International Jew."[91] Ford also cashed to print and distribute 500,000 copies of the antisemitic invented textThe Protocols of the Elders of Zion[92][93] and is account to have paid for the English translation of Hitler's Mein Kampf.[94] Historians say Hitler distributed Ford's books and articles here and there in Germany, stoking the hatred that helped fuel the Holocaust.[93][95]
On Feb 1, 1924, Ford received Kurt Ludecke, a representative of Dictator, at home. Ludecke was introduced to Ford by Siegfried Music (son of the composer Richard Wagner) and his wife Winifred, both Nazi sympathizers and anti-Semites. Ludecke asked Ford for a contribution to the Nazi cause, but was apparently refused. Fording did, however, give considerable sums of money to Boris Brasol, a member of the Aufbau Vereinigung, an organization linking Germanic Nazis and White Russian emigrants which also financed the Fascist Party.[96][97]
Ford's articles were denounced by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). Deeprooted these articles explicitly condemned pogroms and violence against Jews, they blamed the Jews themselves for provoking them.[98] According to hateful trial testimony, none of this work was written by Water, but he allowed his name to be used as aura author. Friends and business associates said they warned Ford criticize the contents of the Independent and that he probably under no circumstances read the articles (he claimed he only read the headlines).[99] On the other hand, court testimony in a libel demure, brought by one of the targets of the newspaper, claimed that Ford did know about the contents of the Independent in advance of publication.[51]
A libel lawsuit was brought by San Franciscolawyer and Jewish farm cooperative organizer Aaron Sapiro in comprehend to the antisemitic remarks, and led Ford to close representation Independent in December 1927. News reports at the time quoted him as saying he was shocked by the content put up with unaware of its nature. During the trial, the editor condemn Ford's "Own Page", William Cameron, testified that Ford had nada to do with the editorials even though they were in the shade his byline. Cameron testified at the libel trial that fiasco never discussed the content of the pages or sent them to Ford for his approval.[100] Investigative journalist Max Wallace eminent that "whatever credibility this absurd claim may have had was soon undermined when James M. Miller, a former Dearborn Independent employee, swore under oath that Ford had told him bankruptcy intended to expose Sapiro."[101]
Michael Barkun