Most great figures in American history reveal great contradictions,
and Henry Ford is no exception. He championed his workers, offering
unprecedented wages, yet crushed their attempts to organize.
Virulently anti-Semitic, he never employed fewer than 3,000 Jews.
An outspoken pacifist, he made millions producing war materials. He
urbanized the modern world, and then tried to drag it back into a
romanticized rural past he'd helped to destroy.
As the American auto industry struggles to reinvent itself, Vincent
Curcio's timely biography offers a wealth of new insight into the
man who started it all. Henry Ford not only founded Ford Motor
Company but institutionalized assembly line production and, some
would argue, created the American middle class. By constantly
improving his product and increasing sales, Ford was able to lower
the price of the automobile until it became a universal commodity.
He paid his workers so well that, for the first time in history,
the people who manufactured a complex industrial product could own
one. This was "Fordism"--social engineering on a vast scale. But,
as Curcio displays, Ford's anti-Semitism would forever stain his
reputation. Hitler admired him greatly, both for his anti-Semitism
and his autocratic leadership, displaying Ford's picture in his
bedroom and keeping a copy of Ford's MyLife and Work by his
bedside. Nevertheless, Ford's economic and social initiatives, as
well as his deft handling of his public image, kept his popularity
high among Americans. He offered good pay, good benefits, English
language classes, and employment for those who struggled to find
jobs--handicapped, African-American, and female workers. Such was
his popularity that in 1923, the homespun, clean-living, xenophobic
Henry Ford nearly won the Republican presidential nomination.
This new volume in the Lives and Legacies series explores the full
impact of Ford's indisputable greatness, the deep flaws that
complicate his legacy, and what he means for our own time.
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