Henry Ford

Henry Ford

Henry Ford was an entrepreneur as far as introducing the world to the assembly line, but was also seen as a compassionate business by his work force. Henry Ford founded his automobile company in 1903. He had dreams of not only the wealthy purchasing his automobile, but for the common man also.
His dream was realized with unveiling of his famous model T in 1908. The price of the model T was in 1909 $850. The prices dropped in the following years due to the adaptation of an assembly line: 1913 ($550), 1915 ($440) and by the 1920s ($300).
Ford was introduced to this new idea of mass production upon visiting “PA Klann’s” slaughter house in Chicago. While inside the slaughter house Ford saw the effectiveness of one person repeating the same task, cutting off a certain part of meat, standing beside a conveyor. Henry Ford wasn’t the first person drive a car off the new assembly line. PA Klan was honored with that privilege. Ford then moved his company to Highland Park Complex. Once Ford adopted this process he had the ability to build cars on about three minute intervals. He could do this due to the assembly line and with interchangeable parts.
Henry Ford had created cars that everyone could afford and his workers benefited from the companies success. That is if you could stay employed under the Ford umbrella. His company would hire 300 people yearly to fill only 100 positions. He was determined to keep only the best workers to keep up efficiency. Ford raised the pay of his high quality workers from minimum wage ($2.35 an hour) to around 5$ an hour. Ford also shorted the work week to six 8 hour shifts (48hrs. a week) in 1922 and again around 1926 to five 8 hour shifts (40 hours a week). Not many other industrial companies agreed with his methods, but Ford believed that paying the workers more would allow them to buy their own automobiles. Profit sharing was given to workers with more than six months with the company.
There is no arguing the fact that Ford did not...

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