BIOGRAPHY:

Henry Ford, born on July 30, 1863, was the first-born in a large family of immigrant farmers who owned a farm near the city of Detroit (Michigan, USA). William Ford, the father of the future entrepreneur, belonged to a family that moved from England to Ireland in the 16th century, and his mother, Mary, had Belgian roots.

Henry, who was burdened by farm work that did not bring much income, developed a difficult relationship with his father, who wanted to transfer his business to his eldest son. But it was William Ford, perhaps unwittingly, who turned Henry on to mechanics, giving him a pocket watch, which the teenager immediately began to disassemble and reassemble. Curiosity went hand in hand with what would now be called a business approach, and Henry opened an adjoining watch repair shop. At the age of 13, I became “sick” with more complex mechanisms when I encountered a Nichols and Shepard steam car on the road. Also in 1876, Henry’s mother died. Having become famous, he would write: “I never had a particular craving for farming, but my mother, whom I loved, worked on the farm.” After the sad event, leaving his father’s house was only a matter of time. It came when Henry turned 15. Then the young man went to Detroit to undergo “internship” at several factories… and return to his father’s farm. The reason was the desire to marry Clara Bryant, whose parents, also farmers, would not agree to marry a penniless man. And just then William Ford promised the prodigal eldest son a 40-acre plot for his return… The deal seemed worthwhile to Henry. In 1888, he married Clara, whom he impressed not only with his ability to dance well, but also with his negative attitude towards alcohol, which was rare in the American outback, and, of course, as a watchmaker. It was a marriage for life, which was facilitated by Clara’s ability to take an interest in her husband’s affairs without interfering in them. Henry appreciated this, and once, when asked by journalists whether he wanted to live another life, he answered: “Only if you can marry Clara again.”

On the farm, Henry was mainly engaged in the construction of various mechanisms, including a steam tractor, but at the same time he was looking for an alternative to the bulky and heavy steam engine. An option with electric traction was also considered, but laying overhead power lines turned out to be too expensive, and there were no sufficiently lightweight batteries with suitable characteristics at that time. As a result, Henry opted for a gasoline engine. It was with this that he would equip a grain thresher, the patent for which he would sell to the famous inventor Thomas Edison, who in 1891 would invite him to his company, which was engaged in arranging a city lighting system in Detroit.

Already in 1893, Henry would become its chief engineer… without having a higher education. The highly paid position allowed him to continue the development of a self-propelled carriage with an internal combustion engine, which resulted in the appearance in 1896 of the Ford Quadricycle, which will be discussed in more detail below.

At some point, Ford had to choose between his job responsibilities and his passion, but the choice in favor of the latter was made thanks to the moral support of his wife and the finances of William Murphy, a Detroit tycoon who made his fortune in the lumber industry. So, on August 5, 1899, the Detroit Automobile Company was formed, a pilot automobile plant in the future “motor city,” with Henry Ford as its manager. But the first pancake came out lumpy. Having produced only 20 cars, which did not differ in quality at a fairly high price, the company went bankrupt in January 1901.

However, this failure gave Ford not only the experience of managing production, but also gave him an extremely valuable acquaintance with the professional engineer Harold Wills for a person who could not (and then never learned) to read blueprints. The result of the collaboration of this duo was the appearance of a successful model with a 26-horsepower engine, which attracted the attention of sponsors, and the creation of the Henry Ford Company on November 30, 1901, where Henry took the post of chief engineer. And a side effect was the emergence of… the Cadillac company. After investors invited engineer Henry Leland as a consultant, a stung Ford left the company that bore his name, after which it became known as the Cadillac Automobile Company. Serious blow to pride!

But Henry professed the principle “Honest failure is not humiliating, it is the fear of failure that is humiliating,” and after the vicissitudes of finding new sponsors, in parallel with the design of the successful racing car No. 999, he became a co-founder of the Ford Motor Company formed on June 16, 1903, and in 1905 the owner of a controlling stake and the president of the company, which is still led today by the heirs of the founder. Thus, the chairman of the board of directors is his great-grandson, William Clay “Bill” Ford Jr.

The last years of Henry Ford’s life were marred by the death of his only son, Edsel, the company’s president from 1919-1943, from cancer, a series of strokes and the pre-bankruptcy of Ford Motor in 1945, which prompted his immediate family, including his wife Clara, to demand the transfer of powers in an ultimatum. eldest grandson, Henry Ford II. This angered the automobile king, but the situation left him no choice.

As for Henry Ford’s socio-political views, they look incredibly contradictory, but at the same time they are always clearly expressed:

At the beginning of the First World War, Henry Ford was part of a group of pacifists who arrived in Europe on the ship Oscar 2 to persuade the warring parties to end the conflict. This initiative, to put it mildly, did not find understanding, and after the United States entered the war in the spring of 1917, Henry Ford became involved in fulfilling military orders, promising to return to the state all the profits received from them. History is silent about whether this actually happened, but the industrialist’s PR move received a wide public response.
Henry Ford, long before Stalin, realized that personnel decides everything, but to combat the turnover of specialists he used not draconian methods, but an incentive system. In 1914, the rates of most company employees were more than doubled, and a shortened work week was introduced, first 48 hours, and then 40 hours (5 days of 8 hours). In addition, those who worked for the company for more than six months received the right to participate in profits, which made it possible, for example, to purchase cars produced by the company. Those caught in alcohol abuse, gambling, non-payment of alimony and other unseemly acts were deprived of this privilege, which was monitored by a special “public department” of the company until 1922. At the same time, Henry Ford was an ardent opponent of the creation of trade unions in his domain, the activities of which, as he believed, were detrimental to the profitability of the company. Only under intense pressure did Ford change his position in 1941.

Henry Ford already in the early 1920s began collaborating with the USSR, where they first organized localized production of Ford tractors, and then cars and trucks at a car plant specially built for this in the early 1930s in Nizhny Novgorod/Gorky.
At the same time, Henry Ford sympathized with the Nazi movement in Germany, and for his anti-Semitic views, he was the only American to receive a laudatory mention in the book Mein Kampf (in Russia classified as extremist materials and not subject to publication or distribution) by Adolf Hitler. Ford’s portrait hung above the Fuhrer’s desk, and on the occasion of his 75th birthday, the entrepreneur was awarded the highest award of the Third Reich for foreigners, the Order of Merit of the German Eagle, which he accepted with gratitude. After the outbreak of World War II, Ford factories in the German-occupied part of Europe produced products for the Wehrmacht. Before the United States entered the war in December 1941, Ford was a prominent figure in the isolationist ranks, arguing that the conflict was the result of a conspiracy of “greedy financiers profiting from the misfortunes of the people.” However, then Ford factories actively became involved in the production of various equipment and weapons for the US Army and its allies in the anti-Hitler coalition.
Henry Ford from the end of the 19th century. was a member of Masonic organizations, and in 1940, at the ceremony of elevation to the highest, 33rd degree of the Scottish Rite, becoming Grand Power Inspector General, he declared: “Freemasonry is the best balancing wheel that we have in the United States.”

Henry Ford’s first car The result of two years of experimentation was the appearance in 1896 of Henry Ford’s first car, the Quadricycle. The car received this name because it was mounted on four bicycle wheels driven by a chain. The two-cylinder gasoline engine transmitted power of 4 hp. to a two-speed gearbox that did not have a reverse gear. The maximum speed of the horseless carriage was 32 km/h. The original Quadricycle is now kept at the Henry Ford Museum in the Detroit suburb of Dearborn, where the Ford Motor Group is headquartered.

Henry Ford’s achievements:

It’s not just the cars his company made that make Henry Ford great.

Destroyed patent monopoly in the automotive industry
After an eight-year legal battle, Henry Ford emerged victorious against the Association of Licensed Automobile Manufacturers (ALAM), which paid royalties to George Seldon, an American inventor, patent lawyer, and wheeler-dealer who, on November 5, 1895, received a patent for the general concept of an engine-powered road vehicle. internal combustion. The total volume of the case materials was 14,000 pages. In 1911, having won his case after appealing the original court decision in favor of Seldon, Henry Ford stated: “It may be said with complete certainty that George Seldon never did anything concrete to develop the automobile industry… and perhaps she would be further along than I am now if he had never been born.” This victory led to the collapse of the ALAM monopoly, and Henry Ford earned a reputation as a fighter for the interests of consumers.

First to implement the concept of a mass-produced car
Henry Ford broke the system of the automobile as a toy for the upper classes, making it accessible to the middle class by streamlining design and maximizing production efficiency. This concept was fully realized in the production of the Ford T model, designed by the already mentioned Harold Wills. The Model T was the first car in the world to be produced in millions of copies (about 15 million from 1908 to 1927), and the first global model, produced by Ford plants not only in the USA, but also in several European countries, as well as in Australia. “I am quite sure that it is much more profitable to sell a large number of cars at a reasonable price than a small number at an inflated price,” Henry Ford wrote in his autobiographical book “My Life, My Achievements.”

The first to organize large-scale conveyor production
Contrary to popular belief, Henry Ford did not invent the assembly line method and was not even the first to use it in the automobile industry (Ransom Eli Olds did this back in 1901 with the production of the Oldsmobile Curved Dash), but he improved this technology and introduced it into a truly widespread scale, which was crucial for reducing the cost of production, increasing its volumes (assembly time for one car was reduced by about six times) and reducing the selling price of cars. So, if a Model T in 1908 cost $850, then after the launch of the first assembly line at Ford’s Highland Park plant in 1913 it was already $550, in 1916 $360, and in 1926 another $70 cheaper. This is partly due to the reduction of the color range of all Ford models produced in the USA to a single option by 1914. Henry Ford famously said: “The buyer can choose a car of any color, provided it is black.” What is less known is that such a limitation has a completely rational justification: after numerous tests, it turned out that it then took two days for black paint to dry, compared to about two weeks in the case of alternative options. Color variety returned to the palette of the increasingly powerful Ford Motor Company only in the second half of the 1920s.

Actively explored the possibility of using new technologies
Already in the 1930s, soy-based plastics were used in the production of a number of Ford model components. And in 1942, Henry Ford patented a car with a plastic body mounted on a steel tubular frame. Ford was also interested in the possibility of using chipboard and corn for biofuel production in the automotive industry. In total, Henry Ford received 161 US patents for various inventions.

Contributed to the development of passenger air travel in the United States
Created in 1925, the company’s aviation division designed the Ford 4AT Trimotor, the most successful passenger aircraft in the United States until the introduction of the Douglas DC2 and the legendary DC3 in the mid-1930s. In 1984, Henry Ford was posthumously inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame for his services to the industry.

Successfully participated in auto racing

In the initial period of his career, Henry Ford participated in auto racing for advertising purposes and to receive prize money, although only once as a driver. In 1901, Ford emerged victorious in a race against Alexander Winton, the most famous American racing driver of the time, at the Grosse Pointe Oval in Detroit. Until 1911, hired drivers in Ford models set a number of records and won the transcontinental Ocean to Ocean race (1909). In 1913, Henry Ford tried to enter the Model T in the Indianapolis 500 Mile, but after being ordered to make the car heavier by 1,000 pounds, he withdrew from the competition, saying, “We build racing cars, not trucks.” Later in his memoirs, Henry Ford spoke very briefly and disparagingly of motor racing, since, in his opinion, winning in competitions could only serve as a measure of the value of a car’s design to the ignorant. However, in 1996, Henry Ford was inducted into the American Motorsports Hall of Fame, half a century and 19 years after being inducted into the National Automotive Hall of Fame and the US Business Hall of Fame, respectively.

Automotive concern Ford Motor Company
In 2022, Ford Motor Company, the world’s fourth-largest automobile manufacturer by volume throughout its history, was ranked 53rd among the world’s largest companies on the Fortune Global 500 list. Ford Motor has been controlled by the Ford family for over a century. At the same time, Ford Motor Company is a public company whose shares are listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

Henry Ford built his empire on two key principles. On the one hand, to ensure tight control over product costs, huge vertically integrated structures were created, such as the River Rouge full-cycle plant in Dearborn. On the other hand, Ford created production facilities outside the United States, believing that international trade and cooperation would contribute to the establishment of lasting peace. Ford Motor’s first foreign enterprise was a plant opened in Canada in August 1904, and by 1929 Henry Ford’s empire had branches on all continents except Antarctica. In the early 1930s, Ford factories produced almost every third car in the world. After the collapse of the USSR, Ford became the first foreign automobile company to open production in Russia (2002). Details in our material at the link.

Today the company is divided into three geographical structures: Ford North America, Ford Asia Pacific and Ford of Europe. In 2022, 3,438,272 Ford vehicles were sold worldwide. Another 163,747 were sold by the luxury division of Lincoln, which became part of Ford Motor in 1922.

Books by Henry Ford:

Two books by Henry Ford received wide popularity—though with contrasting assessments.

First published in 1922, “My Life, My Achievements” is not just an autobiography, but a work that reflects in succinct, memorable phrases Ford’s system of views on the automobile business and on life in general:

“Enthusiasts are fighters. Enthusiasm is the cornerstone of all progress! Only with him is success possible. Without it, you only have possibilities.”
“Thinking about the future, constantly thinking about how to do more, creates a state of mind in which nothing seems impossible.”
“Ideas themselves are valuable, but every idea is, in the end, just an idea. The challenge is to implement it practically.”
“It seems that everyone was looking for the shortest road to money and at the same time bypassing the most direct one – the one that leads through work.”
“The best job is a highly paid hobby.”
“Failure is simply an opportunity to start again, and this time more intelligently.”
“Failures result from fear, peace, pampering and carelessness. Eliminating fear creates confidence and abundance. Arise and arm yourself, let the weak receive alms!”
“Success is 99% failure.”
“When it seems like everything is against you, remember that the plane takes off against the wind.”
“Everything can be done better than it has been done so far.”
“Quality is doing something right, even when no one is looking.”
“For some reason, they always think first of all about how to reduce the cost of production, and not how to simplify the product itself. And we must start with him.”
“I chose the following slogan: “If anyone refuses my car, I know that it’s my fault.”
“The main use of capital is not to make more money, but to make money to improve life.”
“Having money is absolutely necessary. But we must not forget that the purpose of money is not idleness, but to increase funds for serving people. I believe that there is nothing more disgusting than an idle life. None of us have a right to it. There is no place for parasites in civilization.”
“If you chop the wood yourself, it will warm you twice.”
“There is one rule for the industrialist: to produce the best quality product at the lowest possible price, paying the highest possible wage.”
“A business that only makes money is a bad business.”
“Wealth, like happiness, is never achieved when it is sought directly. It’s a by-product of providing a useful service.”
“It’s good that people don’t understand how our banking system works. Otherwise there would be a revolution tomorrow.”
“80% of the beauty of a car is in its wheels.”
“The best car is a new car.”
“Anyone who stops learning is old, whether he is twenty or eighty. Anyone who continues to learn remains young. The most important thing in life is to keep your brain young.”
“Thinking is the hardest job. That’s probably why so few people do it.”
“Gymnastics is complete nonsense. Healthy people don’t need them, but sick people are contraindicated.”
“There are three things that become more valuable with age—old wood for starting a fire, old books for reading, and old friends for pleasure.”
“Life, as I understand it, is not a stop, but a journey. Everything is in motion and was meant to be that way from the very beginning.”

It is impossible to quote Henry Ford’s second book, International Jewry, a collection of articles that were published in The Dearborn Independent newspaper owned by the automobile magnate in 1920-1922. This work, published in Russia in the 1990s, was then included twice (!) in 2009 and 2015 in the Federal List of Extremist Materials, the distribution of which is prohibited and, according to Art. 20.29 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of Russia, punishable by a fine of 1000 to 3000 rubles. or administrative arrest for up to 15 days. A widespread public campaign in the United States condemning anti-Semitic allegations contained in articles published by The Dearborn Independent and the filing of lawsuits forced Henry Ford to settle the conflict out of court with a large payment, the amount of which is still unknown, and a public written apology to the Jews.

The book International Jewry, published in several editions in Germany in the early 1920s, had a great influence on the German National Socialists. The biography of the American automobile king, written by British historian Robert Lacey, cites the testimony of one of the Ford Motor employees, who claimed that after watching the chronicle filmed in Nazi concentration camps, Henry Ford was no longer able to recover from the massive stroke that occurred. The tycoon’s descendants made a lot of efforts to make amends for his guilt before the Jewish people, in particular, they sponsored the filming of the Holocaust film “Schindler’s List” (1993) directed by Steven Spielberg. William Clay “Bill” Ford Jr., at a gala honoring him for his major donations to Jewish organizations, said: “There can be no doubt about Henry Ford’s anti-Semitism, but it is all history now.”

Death:

The “Car King” ran Ford Motor until the 1930s, after which he handed over control to Edsel. The reason for the businessman’s resignation from managing the company was conflicts with partners and trade union organizations. Ford’s son had served as acting president since 1919, so he fully coped with his new powers. After the death of his son in 1943 from stomach cancer, the old industrialist again headed the automobile empire.

But his advanced years did not allow him to manage the company at the proper level, and therefore two years later he ceded the reins to his grandson, Henry Ford II. The outstanding inventor died on April 7, 1947, the cause of death was a cerebral hemorrhage. He was 83 years old.

Ford managed to realize a childhood dream, leaving behind one of the largest automobile companies in the world. At the same time, the main task of the industrialist was not to earn money, but to improve people’s lives through his favorite hobby – inventing and producing cars.