HENRY FORD: HUMANITARIAN AND BUSINESSMAN?
Other American industrialists and factory managers were stunned when
automobile manufacturer Henry Ford announced in 1914 that he would pay his
assembly line workers $5.00 a day and reduce the working day from nine to eight
hours. The average daily wage in American industry at the time was $2.34. He
became world famous almost overnight. Opponents derided Ford as a socialist,
while supporters called him a great humanitarian. Actually, Ford had simply come to
understand that mass production required a society composed of many consumers,
not just a few wealthy people amid a multitude of poor. He was making cars for the
middle class and knew that sales depended on the existence of a middle class able
to afford them, preferably including his own workers. This notion went against the
grain of most American businessmen, who believed that low wages, coupled with the
highest possible prices, were necessary to make a profit.
Dostları ilə paylaş: