Henry Ford 18631947

1
Henry Ford (1863-1947)

• History 106
• April 17, 2009

2
Reminders

• Readings for this week (Week 3) Bentley and
  Ziegler, chapter 35, first part, pp.977-990
  watch video on Model T and  video on Ford and
  European auto manufacturing. (Finish reading
  Things Fall Apart.)
• Your Things Fall Apart paper is due April 20 or
  21 in section. You can link to instructions here.
• Midterm exam is Wednesday, May 6. Instructions
  will be coming soon.

3
Some Websites of Interest

• Ford biography from the Henry Ford Museum
• Lots of pictures of Model T Fords and other
  models
• A video about a visit to Fordlandia (8 min, 9
  secpart on Fordlandia begins around 220, ends
  650)
• History of Ford Motor Company on vintage car
  site.

4

• But first, a word from our sponsor, Consumer
  Culture, Inc

5
Experiences of Consumer Culture

• The Department Stores
• The Movies
• The New Woman

• Consumer culture as Americanization?
• Consumer culture as modern culture?

6
Department Stores Cathedrals of Consumption
7
Department Stores Left Galleries Lafayette,
Paris Right Mitsukoshi, Tokyo Marks Spencer,
London
8
Department Stores KaDeWe,Berlin Harrods,
Buenos Aires Meier Frank, Portland
9
Movies, Modernization and Consumer Culture

• By the 1920s, the film industry had become global
• Talkies raise problems of translation.
• Movies as consumer products
• Movies display consumer images
• Italys white telephone movies of the 1930s
  show lives of leisure and comfort through
  consumer products.

A Chinese Movie Actress Advertises Colored Fabrics
10
World-wide celebrity culture 1920s-30s movie
stars from top left, Paul Robeson, Greta Garbo,
Marlene Dietrich, Sessue Hayakawa, Rudolph
Valentino.
11
Who Was the New Woman?
MogaModern Girlsstreet scene in Tokyo, 1920s
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Who Was the New Woman?
Tango, Shanghai 1920s
13
Who Was the New Woman?
Flappers doing the Charleston, USA 1920s
14
Who Was the New Woman
Fun By the Pool, Chinese Advertising Poster,
1930s
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Who Was the New Woman?
New Woman on a Bike, Southern Africa, c. 1900
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Who Was the New Woman?
Girl in Automobile, Shanghai, China, 1916
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Who Was the New Woman?

• Mobility
• Individual Freedom
• Display
• Celebrity
• Leisure
• Expression through Consumer Products

18
A Midwestern Farm Boy

• Grows up on a farm in Michigan, near the small
  city of Detroit.
• Ford romanticized farm life, but once told an
  interviewer, I never had any particular love for
  the farm it was the mother on the farm that I
  loved.You know, farm work is drudgery of the
  hardest sort.

19
A Tinkerer and an Engineer

• Ford experiments with motorized transportation in
  1890s, works as an engineer
• Progress depends, Ford said, on the engineering
  type of mind. Everything is an engine.

Fords Quadricycle 1896
20
Automobiles as Novelties and Luxuries

• Literary Digest magazine "The ordinary
  'horseless carriage' is at present a luxury for
  the wealthy and although its price will probably
  fall in the future, it will never, of course,
  come into as common use as the bicycle."
• Woodrow Wilson, 1906 "Nothing has spread
  socialistic feeling more than the automobile ...
  a picture of the arrogance of wealth.

Ford race car, 1902
21
The Model T Ford 1908
22
Mass Production

• Standardization
• Interchangeable parts
• Assembly Line
• Five-dollar day
• There are thousands of men out there in the
  shop who are not living as they should.
  Blindfold me and lead me down thereand let me
  lay my hands by chance on the most shiftless,
  worthless fellow in the crowd and Ill bring him
  here, give him a job with a wage that offers some
  hope for the futureand Ill guarantee that Ill
  make a man out of him.

23
And Mass Distribution

• Model T sales
• 1908 10,000
• 1923 2,100,000
• Model T prices
• 1908 825
• 1923 290

24
Fordism Mass Production Mass Distribution
"Where human beings do appear they seem dwarfed
by the giant machinery, purely ancillary to the
kettles, furnaces, ladles, and dynamos they
serve.Miles Orvell Photos of River Rouge
Factory of Ford Motor Company, 1927, by Charles
Sheeler.
25

• I hold that it is better to sell a large number
  of cars at a reasonably small margin than to see
  fewer cars at a large margin of profit. I hold
  this because it enables a larger number of people
  to buy and enjoy the use of a car and because it
  gives a larger number of men employment at good
  wagesThis policyis good policy because it
  works.

26
Ford and the Great War

• Ford states that the was caused by bankers,
  munitions makers, alcoholic drink, Kings and
  their henchmen.

Fords Peace Ship sails off to Europe to end
the war, January 1916. (War ends November 1918.)
27
Ford and the Dearborn Independent

• Ford became increasingly convinced that the war
  and other world problems were caused by a Jewish
  conspiracy.
• He promoted an anti-Semitic newspaper, the
  Dearborn Independent, to spread his bigotry.

Nazi medal awarded to Ford
28
Fordlandia, Brazil

• In response to the high rubber prices Fords
  suppliers charged, he decided to set up a
  company-owned rubber plantation in the Brazilian
  Amazon region.

Amazon jungle as suburban America Homes for
American managers at Fordlandia.
29
Workers tapped rubber plants with machetes.
30
Video about a visit to Fordlandia
31
General Motors Passes Ford

• A car for every purse and purpose
• Closed cars, colors
• Annual model change
• Consumer credit
• Toward the era of flexible specialization

Alfred Sloan of General Motors
Whos in front now? A Prius on sale in India.