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​“We’d rather go without clothes than give up our car. I never feel as close to my family as I do when we are together in the car.”
​The view from an American housewife

Henry Ford - Case Study
Ford, the symbol of America’s entrepreneurial spirit.

Henry Ford set out to build a car which everyone could afford to buy. It was slow, ugly and difficult to drive, and was nick named the ‘Tin Lizzie’. The attraction of the Model T Ford was that its price never increased. It cost $1200 in 1909, but only $295 in 1928. By 1929 Ford was producing more than one car per minute in the River Rouge plant in Detroit, which employed 81,000 men. Ford was able to sell cars cheaply because they were mass-produced and every part was standardised - only one colour and one engine size were available, or as he said, “A customer can have any colour he likes for his car so long as it’s black”. Using an idea he borrowed from the meat-packing industry, Ford invented the idea of using an assembly line to speed up the process of building a car. This meant that workers stayed at a fixed station along the line and the car was brought to them. They would perform their operation on the car and it would then move on to the next station until it was completed. In 1925 Ford explained that “the thing is to keep everything in motion and take the work to the man not the man to the work” or as one worker put it, “the belt is boss.” In 1913 it took 14 hours to assemble a Model T using the old system. In 1914 at Ford’s Highland Park plant in Michigan using the new assembly line it was 93 minutes. ​
By producing large numbers of cars on an assembly line Ford needed fewer skilled workers, and that cut the cost of paying wages which helped keep the price of the car low. By 1925 Ford factories completed a car every 10 seconds. Made quickly and cheaply the cars could be sold in large numbers for a low price and a small profit on each car. This meant that more and more people could buy and enjoy a car, but it also meant more work for more people. By the 1920s other American car companies like Chrysler and General Motors copied Ford’s techniques and increased their car sales as well. During the 1920s annual car production in the USA rose from1.6 million in 1920 to 5.6 million in 1929. Car production boosted employment in other industries because it used up 20% of America’s steel, 80% of her rubber, 75% of her plate glass and 65% of her leather. By the end of the 1920s American cars used seven billion gallons of petrol a year which helped to create jobs in the oil industry and made the oil state of Texas rich. With more jobs there were more people with the money to be able to afford a car. Increasing car ownership resulted in more roads being built with more roadside diners, motels and petrol stations being built along with them. There was a massive road building programme from 1916. In 1920 there were 620,000 miles of roads and 9,000,000 cars. By 1929 there were 1,000,000 miles of roads and 26,000,000 cars.

The Model 'T'
  • The Model T is nicknamed “Tin Lizzie”.
  • The car’s body is made out of wood covered with a thin sheet of metal.
  • Ford employees were required to sign a contract that stated they had to buy a Model T as soon as they were able to afford one.
  • The first Model T’s weren’t available in black at all, whereas a couple years later they were only available in black.
  • Back when only two roads existed in the entire state of Kansas, two Model T’s managed to crash into each other at the only intersection.
  • In the later versions Ford offered an electric starter instead of a crank starter, yet nobody wanted it because of the higher cost.
  • The crank starter could be rather dangerous, it could kick back and break your arm. On rare occasions the car would launch the crank as a high velocity missile.
  • No woman were allowed on the factory floor.
  • The Model T had no speedometer.
The car industry was important because:
  • it pioneered new techniques of production which other industries copied;
  • Henry Ford’s standardisation of machine parts was also imitated;
  • it led to the expansion of cities and the development of suburbs;
  • it enabled people to travel to cinemas, which in turn stimulated the movie industry;
  • it resulted in a vast national network of roads. (During the 1920s, about $1 billion a year was spent on highways);
  • it encouraged the construction industry - petrol stations were built, as were hotels and restaurants;
  • it helped other industries to grow rapidly. For example, cars used 90 per cent of America's petrol, 80 per cent of the country's rubber and 75 per cent of its glass;
  • the car changed people’s lives. It gave them more freedom and it made them feel confident in and proud of America;
  • big manufacturers, such as Henry Ford, were so rich and famous they were able to influence government policy;
  • many of the rich businessmen became philanthropists Henry Ford built a hospital and a museum and gave millions to schools, colleges and orphanages.
  • Therefore, both the economy and society were given a substantial boost by mass production and the car industry.
However, there were a number of problems with mass production:
  • workers became bored with the monotonous work;
  • factory owners were often anti-union and encourged strong-armed tactics against their members;
  • the factories bred racism. Some owners had a whites-only policy. For most of the 1920s Henry Ford’s newspaper, The Dearborn Independent, spread anti-Semitism;
  • mechanisation led to unemployment as well as to employment;
  • some people blamed the car for increased crime and a moral decline in the young.