ESCUELA COLOMBIANA DE INGENIERÍA JULIO GARAVITO
Course: ENGLISH 4
READING COMPREHENSION
Period: 01-2021
Mode: Remote
Teacher: Paula Medina Pacheco – [email protected]
Henry Ford the man who
changed the world
It was in 1896 that Henry Ford built his first motor car. In this article,
Linguapress looks at one of the men whose ideas and achievements had the
greatest impact on the American way of life in the twentieth century.
Henry Ford, with a Model T, in Buffalo, New York, 1921
.
In January 1914, Henry Ford decreed that all his factory-workers should be
paid at least $5 a day, for 8 hours' work.
Any classic economist must have thrown up his hands in dismay at this radical
decision, since it amounted to more than doubling wages overnight. In 1913, the
average paid to workers in the Ford factory had been just $2.40.
ESCUELA COLOMBIANA DE INGENIERÍA JULIO GARAVITO
Course: ENGLISH 4
READING COMPREHENSION
Period: 01-2021
Mode: Remote
Teacher: Paula Medina Pacheco – [email protected]
But then Henry Ford was not interested in doing things the way other people
said he should do them, and he was not the sort of man to stick to classic concepts
and tried and trusted theories. He believed that by paying his workers more, he
would get them to work better, and become better consumers. History seems to
show that in this particular case at least he was right. In spite of the wage increase,
his company grew and prospered.
Had Ford not been determined to do what he wanted to do, and to do it his way,
twentieth century America might have developed rather differently, or more slowly.
Ford would have complied with his father's wishes and become a farmer in
Michigan, and no-one today would have heard of him. Instead, he transformed the
automobile from an expensive gadget for the rich, into an everyday vehicle which
ordinary Americans could afford.
Henry Ford was born in 1863 on a farm in Dearborn, Michigan, where his
English grandfather had settled after leaving Ireland in 1847. Though Henry's
father was determined that his son should become a farmer, Henry had other
ideas. By his early teens, he had developed a passion for mechanics and was set
on becoming an engineer. Leaving home at 16, he walked to Detroit and became
an apprentice, working for various employers and learning about mechanics, steam
engines and, in due course, the internal combustion engine.
Nevertheless, his father's influence was strong, and at the age of 23, Henry
returned to Dearborn to get married and settle down on the farm his father had
promised him. The agricultural interlude in his life, however, was short; and within
less than two years, Ford was back in Detroit, to take up a job with the Edison
Illuminating Company.
In 1892, the first automobile was built in the United States. Within weeks, Ford,
having studied the designs carefully, was hatching plans to manufacture his own
horseless carriages. His first hand-built car was completed in 1896.
By 1899, Ford had built three automobiles, using the profits from each one to
help him refine his techniques and improve the performance of the next. In 1900,
he helped to found his first car company, which failed within a year. His second
venture was no more successful, and after it collapsed, Ford went back to building
hand-made cars at home.
Yet Ford still had ambitions to launch a company that would produce cars in a
ESCUELA COLOMBIANA DE INGENIERÍA JULIO GARAVITO
Course: ENGLISH 4
READING COMPREHENSION
Period: 01-2021
Mode: Remote
Teacher: Paula Medina Pacheco – [email protected]
way that no other manufacturer was doing; by mass production.
Rightly, he reasoned that mass production would drastically cut production
costs, and thus the price of cars. The first cars produced by the Ford Motor
Company in 1903 had a price tag of $850; nevertheless, though there were plenty
of prospective buyers for cars at this price, and over 1,700 were sold in the
company's first year, Ford was not satisfied. He wanted to increase production to
the point at which the cost of a car would fall to $500.
In 1907, the first "Model T" Ford emerged from Ford's factory. Its success was
immediate, and within four years the company had brought a second production
plant into operation. Then, in 1912, Ford introduced what was his most radical
contribution to manufacturing; the moving production line.
From that time onwards, instead of having workers move round a factory to work
on each new vehicle, vehicles were moved round the factory on continuous lines
and workers remained at fixed work stations, where each had all the tools, parts
and equipment he needed. Car production was revolutionized, and by 1914, Ford
boasted that his factory could build a car in 93 minutes!
By 1915, over a million Model T's had been built, and seven years later the price
had fallen to under $300! By the time the vehicle went out of production in 1927,
almost 16 million Model T's had been built, and Ford had achieved his ambitions,
beyond his wildest dreams.
