Henry Ford, the friend of the worker

Orville Wright and Henry Ford

Henry Ford was not the inventor of a car, nor did he find a production line. He got the idea of ​​how to assemble when visiting a beef workshop in Chicago. At the beef factory, the animals are killed and skinned is finished, hung on the hooks of a slow line. At each stop, the workers cut each piece of meat until only the animal remains at the end station. Henry Ford reversed the process and applied this assembly method to the car industry.

From 1910 at the Highland Park, Henry Ford and efficiency experts, each day survey new methods to increase production and improvement work for 17 years. . Mr. Ford's motto is "Everything can always be better than the way you are doing." In the carpet assembly method, timing and coordinating movements are very important. The carpet passes the parts to the worker's place and each person does some special work, such as screwing some screws, attaching some parts. This new system reduced the time to assemble a car from 12.5 hours in 1912 to 1 hour and 15 minutes in 1914. Also by the end of the year, Ford's 13,000 workers made 260,720 cars compared to other companies need 66,350 workers to produce 286,770 cars.

Many people have criticized Henry Ford for turning workers into thoughtless machines, because workers no longer need mechanical skills like before and the method of skill-taking lines out of work. But Henry Ford answered that high skills (skills) are used at stages of planning, management and production of parts and as a result, a skilled worker can still use those skills.

In the early part of the 20th century, the majority of workers were migrant, unskilled people, often working 9 hours a day with a daily wage of US $ 2.38.

Due to the poor ability of workers, the number of people rejected after the probationary period is very high. In 1913, Ford Company had to choose 963 people to have 100 workers in the payroll. Wanting to maintain the number of 13,000 workers for factories, Henry Ford must constantly spend money on short-term technical training. In addition, Ford Company also started a program to provide bonuses, health insurance, a factory with a ballpark for workers and a garden for their families.

On January 5, 1914, Henry Ford announced that the workers' minimum wage was $ 5 a day working 8 hours, in addition to a profit-sharing program. Mr. Henry Ford has been praised by many cities as a friend of the workers, an open society. But other entrepreneurs, including some shareholders of Ford Company, consider Mr. Ford to bring the company to bankruptcy and Mr. Ford's solution is irresponsible. In fact, Mr. Ford recognized the human factor in the mass production method, because a happy workforce would lead to higher production levels. From 1914 to 1916, Ford's income increased from 30 million to 60 million, not only that, the new salary of Ford Company workers made the workers themselves become car buyers. Steam of the company.

The success of T-type Ford cars has affected social, economic and cultural scopes and Henry Ford is considered a hero. As for himself, Henry Ford was not satisfied. Just before the United States participated in World War I, Henry Ford joined 170 other people, subscribing to the "Peace" ship through France without the permission of the US government, with the intention to be innocent. poetry is preventing war. In 1918, Mr. Henry Ford took the position of Senator of the Democratic Party in Michigan, but despite failing, Ford continued to speak on political issues. In 1919, Henry Ford bought The Dearborn Independent newspaper (The Independent newspaper Dearborn) and the newspaper brought many notoriety in the attacks on Jews.

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