Henry Ford
Power point created by Robert L. Martinez
Primary Source Content:
A History of US: Revised Third Edition, An Age of Extremes 1880-1917, Joy Hakim
• Not many people get to change the world
they live in. Henry Ford did. He did it
because he had an idea he believed in, and
he never gave up, even when people
laughed at him.
• Henry Ford’s idea was to build an
automobile so cheap that almost everyone
could own one. A car that would cost about
the same as a horse and buggy.
• Henry Ford went to J.P. Morgan’s bank and
asked for a loan to get started. The House
of Morgan was the biggest bank in the
nation, and he turned Ford down.
Automobiles, they told him, were for rich
people.
• As a boy, Ford got a job with Thomas
Edison’s company. He told Edison about an
inexpensive automobile powered by liquid
fuel. Edison liked it, and encouraged Ford,
“Young man, keep at it.”
Henry Ford pictured with his childhood boss Thomas Edison
• Ford went to work on his idea. He designed
several cars. Then he designed a car he
called the Model T. It was just what he was
aiming for, a car that worked well and was
easy to build.
• Ford needed to find a way to build it so the
cost would be very low. Ford took Eli
Whitney’s idea of interchangeable parts
and adapted it to cars. All the Model T’s
were exactly alike.
• Then Ford made the factory system work
better than it had ever worked before.
• In Ford’s factory, a wide, moving belt,
called a “conveyor belt,” brought the car
parts to the worker. With this system,
called the “mass-production assembly
line,” cars could be built quickly by
relatively unskilled workers.
• The first Model T, which came out in 1908,
cost $850. Many Americans could afford
that. In 1915, Henry Ford drove his
millionth car off the assembly line.
• Some friends who had lent him money to
get started became rich, J.P. Morgan must
have been turning in his grave.
J.P. Morgan
• Ford showed that making products for
average people was much more profitable
than making products for rich people.
There are only a few rich people, but there
are many, many average folks.
• Ford’s idea led to the building of American
factories that were soon turning out
washing machines, refrigerators, and
other appliances, at prices ordinary people
could afford.
• Those ordinary people driving around in
their cars would eventually need motels
and want supermarkets. Automobiles
created industries that no one could have
imagined.
• Henry Ford understood that if ordinary
people were going to buy the new products
they needed to earn reasonable pay. So, in
1914, when the average American worker
earned $2.40 a day for a nine-hour day,
Henry Ford announced that he would pay
his workers $5 for an eight-hour day.
• That $5 a day meant that workers at the
Ford Motor Company could afford to buy
Ford cars. Henry Ford was creating his
own customers. Soon other manufacturers
and businessmen followed his ideas.
1925 Price List
• America became a nation of consumers.
Ford, who always enjoyed simple living,
helped bring about our complex modern
way of life.
• Henry Ford created a revolution. He wanted
to build a car “for the multitude (many).”
He did that, and much, much more.