Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I've been doing some researching and Henry Ford is a fascinating person with some really nice positives and some really bad negatives.
Religion and spirituality is to some extent a moral code. How should we remember such a man?
Ford on "Welfare Capitalism"
Ford believed it was the duty of industrialists to look out for the welfare of workers and their families. He was already considered an above average payer when he was paying $2.35 for a 9 hour day. He then increased his pay to $5.00 for an 8 hour day in 1914 at 6 days a week. By the mid 1920s, Ford was paying $6.00 a day for just Five 8 hour days. For comparison, as late as the late 1890s, Andrew Carnegie was paying $10 a week for 84 hour work weeks with 0 days off a week and just 1 day off a year.
Before health insurance existed, Ford worked out sweetheart deals with the local hospital to lower costs for his employees. Built cheaper grocery stores in the neighborhoods his employees worked in.
Ford would encourage other industrialists to compensate workers better and offer more time off claiming that well taken care of workers were more productive, less likely to quit, and then could turn around and buy more products with their extra cash and leisure time.
Ford on Worker Privacy
Ford believed it was duty to ensure proper living among his employees. He had people who could inspect homes to make sure they were tidy, look for spousal or child abuse. He had access to bank statements to make sure his workers were saving money and paying down their house. Ford would punish people at work if their children weren't attending school (most factory worker's kids did not attend school back then), or if they were caught drunk in public, or beating their wife and kids. Sometimes, the punishment would be physical in nature, such as big goons beating up a worker for beating his wife.
Ford on Religion
Not super religious, but would pray. At a time when many industrialists would work their workers 7 days a week, Ford would always give Sundays off. He hired all religions and paid them the same, this includes hiring Jewish workers such as his chief architect. He believed some Jews controlled banks and used banks to start wars for profit. In fact, he published writings on these conspiracies that the Nazis in Germany embraced. Ford built a large rubber plantation in Brazil, and Brazil asked him to make a Catholic Church there and his response was that Catholicism wasn't a true form of Christianity.
He claimed that industrialists that didn't take care of workers weren't real Christians.
Ford on Race
Ford hired all races and paid them equally. His black workers were said to be his most loyal workers in his fight against the union, because no other factory in the city would both hire blacks and pay them equal wages. But, his factories were segregated as he claimed he pays them to work and not have conflict. He believed that some races were inferior as they had never built up a city like Paris.
Ford on Modernity
Ford took the assembly line from merely a meat packing plant thing to big industry and changed the world forever. Mass production took off. Some historians think Ford is the most responsible for modern world from mass production to worker rights.
Ford on Politics
Ran for US Senate out of Michigan by running as BOTH a Democrat and a Republican. He won the Democratic Primary, but then lost the Republican Primary and the general election.
Tried to start a Peace Party to promote world peace and be anti-war.
Traveled to Europe during WWI to try and end WWI by arguing that the war would harm all sides including the winners with dead, debt, and it a lack of production of consumer goods in favor of weapons.... it failed.
Ford on Women
Donated large sums to women's suffrage in Michigan. Michigan became just the 2nd state east of the Mississippi River to have 100% equality between men and women voting in 1918 in large part due to Ford's push.
However, he believed that women were to be protected by men. Would hire single women and especially single mothers and pay them high wages, but for office jobs as he thought women were too frail to work in a factory.
Ford Interesting Tidbits
In the 1920s he was voted the 3rd greatest human being of all time. Jesus #1, Napoleon #2, Ford #3. Worked his way up from a Michigan farm to one of the richest people in human history. At one point half of all automobiles on earth were Ford produced. He opposed banks and could have potentially made a run at Rockefeller as the richest American, but his company was full of theft from his refusal to use banks and accountants for awhile as he believed banks were part of a Jewish conspiracy to start wars for profit. Despite always talking about proper morals, he had an affair on his wife. At one point had built the fastest car ever and claimed FORD meant First On Race Day, not Fix Or Repair Daily. The first car he built didn't have brakes!!!
Ford on Charity
The Ford Foundation still donates to this day about half a billion dollars a year to charity, much of it from his investments for charitable giving.
Ford on the Mafia
After someone tried to kidnap and hold his grandson for ransom, Ford gave the mafia exclusive right to sell fruit in his factories and grocery stores in exchange for protection of his grandchildren.
Ford on Unions
Believed all unions were communist thieves that were trying to steal his factories. Was willing to use violence to stop them from pushing into his factories as he was merely protecting his property from thieves.
Henry Ford was a vocal antisemite who used his status as one of America's most well-known and trusted business leaders to systematically spread hate against Jews. His screeds and conspiracy theories against Jewish people became so well-known at home and abroad that he is the only American whom Adolf Hitler compliments by name in Mein Kampf
Today, his legacy of hate flourishes on the websites and forums of white nationalists, racists and others who hate Jews. His self-owned publications on Jews distributed across Europe and North America during the 1920s and ‘30s influenced future rulers of Nazi Germany. Adolf Hitler told a Detroit News reporter in 1931, "I regard Henry Ford as my inspiration.”
Ford’s anti-Jewish campaign provoked protests and a boycott of Ford Motor automobiles in the 1920s. Ford offered an apology ‒ received by the public with great skepticism ‒ and closed the paper in 1927. It was too late, though, as copies of “The International Jew” spread widely before and after World War II, influencing generations of anti-Semites. His legacy of hate flourishes today on the forums of white nationalists, racists and other neo-nazi hate sites.
The opening post asks "How should we remember such a man?"
well, this is the religion and spirituality section of the forum. hate is a disease of the soul. That is how he is remembered, he left a legacy of hate.
Henry Ford was a vocal antisemite who used his status as one of America's most well-known and trusted business leaders
to systematically spread conspiracy theories ...
I've been doing some researching and Henry Ford is a fascinating person with some really nice positives and some really bad negatives.
I tend to agree.
However, in reference to your poll I would not say that this means I see him as '50-50'.
For example, John Wayne Gacy was a workaholic who was apparently a very good contractor... and he murdered dozens of people for fun in his spare time.
There's no amount of good, at least for me, that can really mitigate Ford's Sociological Department (which monitored the private home lives of workers to make sure they were 'behaving morally'), his use of physical violence in anti-union efforts, and of course his rabid anti-Semitism.
He certainly was fascinating. I read Steven Watts' The People's Tycoon: Henry Ford and the American Century awhile back and highly recommend it. Ford was prone to a lot of crank ideas. He was convinced that he was reincarnated from a soldier who died at Gettysburg - he was born a couple weeks after the battle, IIRC. And at one point he determined that carrots were the perfect food, and would host dinners were everything was carrots: carrot casserole, carrots on the side, carrot juice, carrot cake for dessert, etc.
Ford is a classic example of someone who is very good at a niche activity, but through stunning success borne of that narrowly-applied talent he becomes convinced of his general genius, proceeding to launch a lot of spectacular failures (and having the resources to do so from his one fabulous success).
"Henry Ford was steadfastly committed to virulent racist and antisemitic views that he clung to for most of his life. He used his vast resources and influence in a sustained campaign to spread bigotry and conspiracy thinking throughout American society. Ford consistently refused to employ Jews in white-collar jobs within his companies, and he was a supporter of various antisemitic organizations, including the KKK."
Ford was a racist through and through. That is why racists today still adulate him.
"Ford paid Black and white employees similar wages, but hired them for different jobs, believing Black people were inherently inferior and could only advance so far in the workplace. After Ford opened the River Rouge Complex in Dearborn, Black employees commonly labored in its foundry and forge, which were some of the most dangerous places to work. This, combined with the fact that Black employees couldn’t rise to executive levels, created de facto segregation within the company. Because many other companies either wouldn’t hire Black workers or wouldn’t pay them the same wages as white workers, Ford actually got a reputation as being more progressive than he was."
from articleIt’s Time to Truly Face the Hatred of Henry Ford
"Moreover, Ford’s venom had chilling, deadly real-world consequences. Ford served as a role model to no less than Adolph Hitler, who mentioned Ford favorably in his Mein Kampf, kept a life-sized portrait of Ford in his office in Munich and considered Ford an “inspiration.”
"In 1938, as the Nazis were preparing to unleash their armies on Europe, which ultimately killed tens of millions, the Nazi regime awarded Henry Ford with the Grand Cross of the German Eagle, the highest honor it could bestow upon a non-German. Testifying at the Nuremberg trials after World War II, convicted Hitler Youth leader Baldur von Schirach who, in his role as military governor of Vienna, deported 65,000 Jews to camps in Poland, stated: “The decisive antisemitic book I was reading and the book that influenced my comrades was … that book by Henry Ford, The International Jew. I read it and became antisemitic. The book made a great influence on myself and my friends."
In Germany, Ford’s antisemitic articles from The Dearborn Independent were issued in four volumes, cumulatively titled The International Jew, the World’s Foremost Problem published by Theodor Fritsch, founder of several antisemitic parties and a member of the Reichstag.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
