CLASS SET!!
Henry Ford – The Assembly Line – The Model T
In the late 1880s, Ford worked as an engineer with a lighting company. In his spare time he began inventing a “horseless carriage”. In 1896, Ford perfected his first version of a lightweight, gas powered car he called the “quadricycle”. By 1903, he had started his own automobile company. Five years later, Ford sold 30, 000 of an improved vehicle that he called the Model T.
By the 1920s, the automobile had become part of American life. A 1925 survey conducted in Muncie, Indiana, found that 21 out of 26 families who owned cars did not have bathtubs with running water. As one farm wife explained, “You can’t ride to town in a bathtub”.
Ford wanted to “democratize the automobile”, producing even more cars and selling them at prices ordinary people could afford. This goal set him apart from all other car makers and made him one of the most influential people of the century. To achieve his goal, he adapted the assembly line for his factories. The moving assembly line divided operations into simple tasks and cut unnecessary motion to a minimum, where each worker does one specialized task in the construction of a final product. In the past, an individual worker might build an entire product from start to finish. Since that type of manufacturing process required each worker to master hundreds of tasks, it was too inefficient for the mass production of something as complex as an automobile. In 1913 automaker Henry Ford installed the first moving assembly line at a plant in Highland Park, Michigan. By the following year, workers were building a automobile every 93 minutes. By 1925, a Ford car was rolling off the line every 10 seconds.
By making large numbers of identical automobiles in an identical way, Ford could take advantage of economies of scale. The more automobiles he made, the less each one cost. In 1914, the first year Ford’s assembly line was in full swing, his company sold Model T’s at $490 each. This price was almost hald of what a car cost in 1910. The following year he dropped the price to $390. Mass production, or large-scale manufacturing done with machinery, made these changes possible by increasing supply and reducing costs. Workers made more and the goods they bought cost less.
“There is one rule for the industrialist and that is: Make the best quality of goods possible at the lowest cost possible paying the highest wages possible.”
-Henry Ford
Like the empire he ran, Henry Ford was complex. He had both admirable qualities and personal failings. For example, he won praise in 1914 for introducing a $5-a-day pay rate for many of his workers. In 1926 Henry Ford cut the workweek for his employees from six days to five. Yet he was not always so generous. He ran his company harshly and used violence to fight unions. During World War I, Ford devised an Americanization program for his foreign-born workers. In return for higher pay, workers had to enroll in English and civics classes and let investigators inspect their homes. The company held elaborate graduation ceremonies in which workers shed their previous ethnic identities and became “Americans”.
Ford’s mass production methods opened the door for new companies to manufacture cars. By the mid-1920s, General Motes and Chrysler competed successfully with Ford. The auto industry also spurred growth in the production of steel, petroleum, rubber, plate glass, nickel, and lead. Cars revolutionized American life. They eased the isolation of rural families and let more people live farther from work. A new kind of worker, the auto commuter, appeared. Other forms of urban transportation, such as the trolley, became less popular.