Henry Ford

By David Glenn Cox

Henry Ford 1919

To accurately describe Henry Ford is nearly impossible. He was a man of his times, ahead of his time and behind his times; looking for a world that he himself had helped to destroy. It means, we can only look at Ford’s life in it’s time, and can only see the reflections of his actions. No one is all good or all bad, Henry Ford had attributes which were honorable, but there was also a dark side.

Henry Ford was born in July of 1863, on a Greenfield Michigan farm. He was the eldest son of five children, born to immigrant parents. Ford was only 14 when his mother died; leaving him to help run the household, while his father pressured young Henry to take over the family farm. Henry Ford hated the farm and farm work, at 15 he could dismantle a pocket watch and put it back together. Ford showed a streak of fiery independence, which would become a hallmark of his life. He would not be corralled or contained, if he’d already had his mind set.

At age 16, Ford left the farm and took a job as an apprentice machinist in Detroit. Three years later, Henry is back on the farm and tinkering with steam engines. Young Ford was hired by Westinghouse to service their steam engines, while attending Business College and studying accounting. A picture emerges of a natural-born mechanical engineer, ambitious and curious, working with what was at the time considered, “high tech.” In 1888, Ford married Clara Bryant, while still farming and running a saw mill to support the family.

Detroit Edison

In 1891, Ford landed a job as an engineer with the Edison Illuminating Company, two years later; Ford was promoted to Chief engineer. With his plumb job, Ford now had a few coins in his pocket and began working on his own projects, tinkering with gasoline engines. The first results of Ford’s efforts were displayed in 1896 with his “Quadricycle,” a one cylinder prototype, but it was a beginning. Immediately, Ford began to redesign the vehicle, like the pocket watch, taking it apart, over and over. Ford was trying to forward engineer; the pocket watch runs dependably, so why not transfer that technology to a motor vehicle?

1896 Quadricycle

Ford met Thomas Edison and the inventor encourages him in his ambitions. Ford then builds a second prototype in 1898. He had begun to earn a local following as a “bright young man.” Ford’s first automobile company was the Detroit Automobile Company had lasted only two years, before failing. The market for automobiles in 1899 was miniscule, without advertising or dealers; it was almost a word of mouth business. After you’d advertised in the newspaper, what was left in the way of promotion, the United States was a very, very rural country of 76,000,000 people.

Dorrance Kansas circa 1900

Ford’s next project was a 26- horse powered race car, which some Detroit Auto Company shareholders claimed was the product of their investments. Ford had a chance to race his machine versus a professional in a match race. A race Ford won, after the other car had broken down. On the heals of his acclaim, new investors bankrolled a second auto company, the Henry Ford Company in 1901. The new investors were aware of what had happened at the Detroit Auto Company, so this time, Henry Ford was only Chief engineer at the company with his name on the door. This time, the investors would hold on a little tighter and watch a little closer, the goings on. The investors hired Henry Leyland to be the chief mechanic. Leyland had apprenticed as a gunsmith during the Civil War, and was a precision machinist, witnessing the rise of mass produced firearms. Ford and Leyland had much in common only; Ford didn’t like taking advice, not from Leyland or even from the President of the United States.

Henry Leyland

Henry Leyland brought the micrometer to the automobile manufacturing floor, but in the Henry Ford Company, there was only enough room for one genius. Henry Ford quit the Henry Ford Company and in 1902, the company was renamed after the founder of Detroit, Antoine Laumet de La Mothe Cadillac. Leyland’s precision meant that Cadillac’s ran smoother and quieter, than most other cars. Initially, mid-priced cars, they were quickly priced upwards as their reputation grew.

Next, Ford produced the 80- horsepower 999 race car, which he hired auto racer Barney Oldfield to drive. Barney Oldfield was the first man to go 60 miles per hour in a vehicle, a vehicle about as safe as a run away meat slicer. No seat-belt, only rudimentary braking systems and primitive steering with the only safety procedures being, “Good luck and God bless.” Oldfield set a new land speed record of 91.3 miles per hour giving Ford even more notoriety for his engineering abilities.

Barney Oldfield in the 999 with Henry Ford

This time, Ford partnered with an acquaintance and local coal baron Alexander Malcomson, first incorporating as Ford & Malcomson in 1902. In less than a year, this third Ford Company was in financial trouble, Malcomson wanted his name off the company, fearing the worst. The company was reincorporated as the Ford Motor Company in June of 1903. Henry Ford was working on a new car, the car the investors had wanted, a car which provided basic transportation.

Ransom E. Olds and David Buick were also building cars, and since Henry Leland was now occupied with Cadillac, Ford turned to what was considered the second-best, machine shop in Detroit to supply their parts. The owners, brothers Horace and John, had cut their teeth working on steam engines, and like the Wright Brothers, they had built bicycles. They’d sold their bicycle company and opened the Dodge Brothers Machine Shop. At first, they would work on anything and everything, but in 1902, they began to supply exclusively to their best customer, Ransom Olds, who had sold over 2,000 of his curved-dash Olds models, making him the top car producer in the country.

1905 Curved Dash Olds

The Dodge Brothers had their own ideas about making cars, so when Henry Ford came to see them, hat in hand, they listened politely. Ford laid out his drawings for a new model called the model "A" Fordmobile. The brothers liked the concept and showed Ford their own plans for a new transmission and a fragile partnership developed. The Dodge Brothers would supply Ford with parts, but they demanded cash up front on the first order, and rather than 60 days to pay, Ford was given 15 days. If, after that time, Ford defaulted on the debt, all parts installed or uninstalled, reverted back to the Dodge Brothers. Ford had no choice; it was this or nothing.

Available in any color you want as long as its red.

Malcomson offered to sell a 10% stake in Ford to the Dodge Brothers for $7,000 in parts and $3,000 in cash. Eventually, the Dodge brothers netted $34.5 million for that $10,000 investment, which had bought the Ford Motor Company badly needed time. By July of 1903, the Ford Motor Company was $223 away from out of business. When Ford sold a Model A Fordmobile to a dentist for $895 cash and from there the numbers just sort of exploded.

1906 – 1599 cars sold

1907 – 8,000 cars sold

1912 – 78,000 cars sold

1910 Model T

1913 Touring Car

1919 Model T

By 1914, the Ford Motor Company was building 1,000 model T Ford cars per day. Henry Ford had gone from farm boy tinkerer to mogul and was fast on his way to becoming the richest man in the world. The first Model T sold in 1908 for $825, by 1916, the price had dropped to $360. The more cars Ford built, they cheaper it became to build them, buying 20,000 tires a week, gives you buying power. Ford became obsessed with control; he bought coal mines and steel mills in a quest to have complete control of the entire manufacturing process. Ford bought huge tracts of land in South America to build a giant rubber plantation, he called Fordlandia.

Fordlandia Brazil

The plantation lost $2 billion dollars in today’s dollars, because despite Henry Ford’s explicit orders, the rubber plants refused to grow in neat rows on command. In the end, the problem was solved by a scientist, creating synthetic rubber in a laboratory, for less than a million dollars. Again, Henry Ford wouldn’t listen to anyone once he’d made up his mind. His River Rouge factory had become the largest manufacturing plant in the world. Raw materials entered at one end and out came finished automobiles at the other end. A 1920 a public opinion poll placed Henry Ford as the third most influential man in history, behind Jesus Christ and Napoleon Bonaparte.

Everything had changed in his life, from the 20 year old farm boy who walked four miles to church every Sunday, to hiring spies in his workforce and bugging the restrooms of his factories. His thousands of dealers were required to sell Ford’s newspaper, “The Dearborn Independent” where the company chairman began to put his anti-Semitic opinions in to print. Where had this come from, had Ford just been raised that way? Were these just the left-over, uneducated country boy opinions? His attacks were ugly and mean spirited, but found an audience with a rising German politician named Adolf Hitler.

Ford had famously paid his factory workers $5.00 per day and he’d garnered a lot of good publicity and good will from the policy. Ford was not being generous or altruistic, his company was making money by the train car load and if he paid $5.00 per day his competitors would be forced to do likewise. Ford’s profit margin allowed him to do it, so by driving up wages, Ford made it harder for his competition to turn a profit. The program also allowed the Ford company to “cherry pick” the work force. By now, the company had factories all over the globe, as half the cars in the world were Ford’s. Henry Ford was dwarfed by his own enterprise and as always, refused any advice. Famously, Ford had said, "Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black." He said this because other car company’s were offering models in different colors. The Chevrolet 490 offered electric lights, a gas gauge and a spare tire for only $50.00 more than Ford’s Model T.

Waiting for the paint to dry

Edsel Ford begged his father, along with company executives to upgrade the Model T and to expand the product base, but the old man had said no. He had reached a pinnacle; he was on top of the world. Henry Ford turned the company over to his son Edsel in 1918, while still retaining the final authority. One can only imagine the chaos, of committee meetings and planning, only to have it all overturned by a meddling old man. The car business which had quickly made Henry Ford the richest man in the world had changed again, just as fast. By 1922, the Chevrolet 490 out sold the Model T and still, it took four more years to convince Henry Ford that the Model T was finished.

End of Part One