Henry Ford

Biography

Henry Ford was an American industrialist who founded the Ford Motor Company in 1903. Its Model T, introduced in 1908, was the first car that many ordinary families could afford.

In 1913 Ford introduced the moving assembly line at Highland Park, which cut production time and costs sharply. In 1914 he doubled the basic wage to five dollars a day. Mass production and higher wages for workers to buy products became known as Fordism.

Ford opposed trade unions and his company resisted the United Auto Workers until 1941. He also published antisemitic material in his newspaper, the Dearborn Independent, in the 1920s. He handed control of the company to his family and died in 1947.