friendships with writers and painters and, while his activities brought him in touch with many distinguished people of the academic world and public life, he was probably happiest with artistic people. At one period he was at the centre of the literary circle which used to be known as ‘Bloomsbury’ – Lytton Strachey, Virginia Woolf, and their intimate friends. More than fame and worldly honours he valued the good esteem of this very cultivated and fastidious society.
And finally there was the man himself – radiant, brilliant, effervescent, gay, full of impish jokes. His entry into the room invariably raised the spirits of the company. He always seemed cheerful; his interests and projects were so many and his knowledge so deep that he gave the feeling that the world could not get seriously out of joint in the end while he was busy in it. He did not suffer fools gladly; he often put eminent persons to shame by making a devastating retort which left no loophole for face-saving. He could be rude. He did not expect others to bear malice and bore none himself in the little or great affairs of life. He had many rebuffs but did not recriminate. When his projects were rejected, often by mere obstructionists, he went straight ahead and produced some more projects. He was a shrewd judge of men and often plumbed the depths in his psychology. He was a humane man genuinely devoted to the cause of the common good.
Henry Ford
Motor manufacturer and idealist
7 April 1947
Mr Henry Ford, the motor-car manufacturer, who died suddenly at his home, Dearborn, near Detroit, on Monday night at the age of 83, was for many years one of the world’s outstanding individuals.
In his own sphere as a maker of machines Ford effected the greatest revolution of his day. It was due largely to him that the motor-car, instead of continuing for years to be a luxury for the rich, was brought speedily within the reach of comparatively humble folk. In the course of this accomplishment the process of mass production was carried to new and unheard-of lengths and a novel conception of its possibilities was created. The industrial empire which Ford’s imagination and drive established was in due course to yield him an immense fortune; but wealth was at no period his goal. He was in fact an emotional visionary, ignorant of much that quite ordinary people know, but with real good will for all and a power of handling the practical things of life which has never been surpassed. Thus for many years he was a continuing astonishment to his contemporaries, who, marvelling one day at his new designs for motor-cars or his new schemes for still vaster factories, would find him on the next with startling proposals for higher wages, shorter hours, or better methods of salesmanship, or, just as likely, attacking the bankers or preaching pacifism, bickering with his own Government, or at issue with organized labour. In all that he did or said moreover, he remained his independent and opinionative self, satisfied, as was indeed quite often true, that he was serving his age as successfully as he was supplying it with tractors, motor-cars, and aeroplanes.
Henry Ford was born on July 30, 1863, on a farm at Dearborn, Michigan, the son of William Ford, a prosperous farmer, who was of Irish stock. His mother was of mixed Dutch and Scandinavian origin and had been adopted by one Patrick O’Hearn. He went to the local school, where he seemed a normal boy, good but not exceptionally brilliant at his studies. At an early age, however, he disclosed a remarkable mechanical bent and an eager curiosity in regard to the working of machines. At 17 he became an apprentice in a machine shop in Detroit, but after nine months he felt he had learned all he could there and went on to another firm. After a time his employment failed to satisfy him and he returned to Dearborn, reconciled to it by the fact that Clara Bryant, whom he married in 1888, was a neighbour. Years of happiness followed: but he nevertheless continued to be haunted by an early ideal of a machine which would do the heavy work of a farm. In the country he kept a machine shop of his own and worked in summer for a harvester company by repairing their portable farm engines. However, the promptings of his genius became too strong for him and eventually he decided to go back to Detroit where in 1890 he secured a post with the Detroit Edison Electric Company.
Ford had realized in his earlier Detroit days that the public were more interested in road vehicles than in tractors; but scheme as he would the weight of a steam engine had thwarted him. Then in an English paper, the World of Science, he had read of a ‘silent gas engine’ which used gas for fuel. A little later he had been asked to repair one of these Otto engines. Convinced by his study of it that its principles were sound, he had in 1887 built his first gas engine, and had kept on building more. After he returned to Detroit, however, he worked in his spare time on his first ‘gasoline buggy’, and in 1893 it was ready for public trial, at which it attained a speed of 25 miles an hour. In 1896 he began work on a second car. In 1899 he resigned his position and organized a local company in which, holding one sixth of the stock, he became chief engineer. The company made cars on the model of his first one. Ford, whose governing idea was to provide automobiles for the masses, was soon in disagreement with his associates, who thought chiefly of profits, and in 1902 he resigned, ‘determined never again to put myself under orders’. At that time the public interest was centred on racing cars and Ford determined to enter the racing field. He proved astonishingly successful with some racing machines of his design and thus drew attention to his own car. In 1903, therefore, he was able to found the Ford Motor Company with 12 shareholders and a capital of $100,000, of which $20,000 was put into the company, the only cash investment in its long career which did not come from earnings. In 1908 Ford himself became the controlling owner and president, and in 1924 he and his son, Edsel, were to acquire all the stock. Ford had long had his own ideas about quantity production, and with control in his own hands was able to put them into effect. Sales began to rise and his products to enter foreign markets. His success in the Scottish Reliability Trials of 1905 had already helped him considerably in establishing himself in Great Britain. He also developed a new agency policy which included an agreement to maintain service stations. The car itself had, moreover, been steadily improving, and in 1908 and 1909 his famous model ‘T’ was put on sale. Standardization became thenceforward his settled policy, and the ‘assembly line’ was devised; but in this, as in all else, his ruling notion was service to the ordinary man.
In 1915 Ford was able to turn his attention to his first love, the farm tractor. The European war seemed to him to impose a delay in placing it on the market: but victory depended upon British agriculture making good the food shortage which the German submarines were causing, and Ford sent his Fordson tractor to the rescue. He also rendered notable service by fulfilling his undertaking to build Eagle submarine chasers by the same methods he employed in regard to his cars. From war, however, he refused to profit. At this period indeed the magician in production stood in strange contrast to the unrealistic pacifist who as leader of a group of cranks went in the Peace Ship to Scandinavia in order to have the ‘boys out of the trenches by Christmas, never to return’. It was the foolishness of a child, but the intention was entirely sincere. Ford had his difficulties and in the slump of 1920 faced a serious financial situation: but he found his own way out and his vast undertaking went on from strength to strength. In 1924 its annual production reached the towering peak of 2,000,000 cars, trucks, and tractors. His achievements were, moreover, by no means in the material sphere alone. Of humble origin himself he had a deep feeling for his employees, and worked out rough and ready principles in regard to labour which he consistently applied. One was to pay the highest possible wages, and in this he was a true reformer; another to accept applicants for work without questions or references. Ex-prisoners were welcomed: but once a would-be employee was accepted he came under a rigid discipline which followed him even into his home. For years Ford would have nothing to do with unions. His passion for the perfect organization of production led him indeed into an effort to mechanize the human material he employed. It was, however, a deterrent to many independent-minded Americans and numbers of his workers were drawn from recent emigrants to the United States.
In 1918 Ford, who was a supporter of President Wilson, had run unsuccessfully for the Senate and in 1923 there was some talk – it caused alarm among the professional politicians – that he would run for the Presidency, and a movement to support him was started; but before long he himself announced his refusal to stand against Mr Coolidge. In the next year his acquisition of the Dagenham site in addition to his Trafford Park and Cork works was announced. It was part of a post-war policy of expansion, and between