FORD, HENRY

born July 30, 1863, Wayne county, Mich., U.S. died April 7, 1947, Dearborn, Mich. American industrialist who revolutionized factory production with his assembly-line methods. The son of Irish immigrants, Ford dropped out of school and was employed at the age of 15 as a machinist's apprentice in Detroit. He intermittently returned to his father's farm, where he set up a small machine shop and sawmill. He then worked as chief engineer of the Edison Company in Detroit until 1899, when he and others formed the Detroit Automobile Company. He soon left this company to build racing cars. In 1903 he and his partners formed the Ford Motor Company (q.v.). The Model T appeared in 1908, and in 1913 Ford introduced the successful assembly-line method of production. In that year mass production enabled him to sell the Model T for as little as $500, thus putting automobile ownership within the economic reach of a large segment of the middle class for the first time. Ford's business philosophy was to reduce the unit cost of each car built and thereby increase the volume of sales. After ceasing production of the Model T in 1927, he produced the entirely new Model A (an earlier one had been introduced in 1902). In 1932 he introduced the V-8 engine. He opposed unionization, but in 1941 he signed the first union shop and dues checkoff contract in the automotive industry with the United Auto Workers. Ford ran for the U.S. Senate but lost. He was the author, with Samuel Crowther, of My Life and Work (1922) and Today and Tomorrow (1926). born July 30, 1863, Wayne county, Mich., U.S. died April 7, 1947, Dearborn, Mich. American industrialist who revolutionized factory production with his assembly-line methods. Ford spent most of his life making headlines, good, bad, but never indifferent. Celebrated as both a technological genius and a folk hero, Ford was the creative force behind an industry of unprecedented size and wealth that in only a few decades permanently changed the economic and social character of the United States. When young Ford left his father's farm in 1879 for Detroit, only two out of eight Americans lived in cities; when he died at age 83, the proportion was five out of eight. Once Ford realized the tremendous part he and his Model T automobile had played in bringing about this change, he wanted nothing more than to reverse it, or at least to recapture the rural values of his boyhood. Henry Ford, then, is an apt symbol of the transition from an agricultural to an industrial America. Additional reading Ford was the nominal coauthor of three books in collaboration with Samuel Crowther: My Life and Work (1922, reprinted 1987), Today and Tomorrow (1926, reprinted 1988), and Moving Forward (1930). Especially recommended studies of his life and activities are Allan Nevins and Frank Ernest Hill, Ford: The Times, the Man, the Company (1954), Ford: Expansion and Challenge, 19151933 (1957), and Ford: Decline and Rebirth, 19331962 (1963); Carol W. Gelderman, Henry Ford: The Wayward Capitalist (1981), a full-length biography and a study of his company's development; Robert Lacey, Ford: The Men and the Machine (1986), beginning with a biography of Ford and progressing to a history of the following generations of the Ford family; Roger Burlingame, Henry Ford (1955, reissued 1969), a short profile; William Greenleaf, Monopoly on Wheels (1961), a discussion of the Selden patent case; Louis P. Lochner, Henry Ford: America's Don Quixote (1925), about the Peace Ship voyage to Europe; Barbara S. Kraft, The Peace Ship (1978), a more recent treatment; and Reynold M. Wik, Henry Ford and Grass-Roots America (1972), a catalog of fan letters received by Ford. David L. Lewis, The Public Image of Henry Ford (1976), examines the media's portrayal of Ford and his company as well as the company's efforts to influence that portrayal. Carol W. Gelderman