Henry Ford: An Instructive Example
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Henry Ford: An Instructive Example
Wesley Pegden
July 9, 2003
Henry Ford was, by all accounts, a bad man. An avowed anti-Semite,
he famously published articles such as “The International Jew: The World’s
Problem”, and was the first American recipient of the Nazi Grand Cross of
the German Eagle award. He was personally responsible for countless and
brutal beatings of workers, and slyly tried to pit his workers against each
other along racist lines in an attempt to thwart their attempts to organize
themselves.
In spite of all this, however, it is of course possible that Henry Ford’s
policies stand nevertheless as evidence of great good one can accomplish
for workers by working in management. Perhaps Henry Ford’s Five Dollar
Day was truly a sincere and successful attempt to align the interests of the
bosses with the interests of the workers. If true, such a possibility would have
numerous optimistic implications. Not only would such a possibility imply
that the interests of the workers and bosses can be one and the same, but
also that one is able to change the lives of working people in a very positive
way in a capacity which also lends itself to a very comfortable lifestyle.
Unfortunately, an examination of the history makes clear that Henry
Ford’s Five Dollar Day was anything but a sincere alignment of the inter-
ests of the bosses with those of the workers. The Five-Dollar day was an
experiment in cost-cutting. At the time for Ford, it was “The best cost-
cutting measure [he] ever made”. It satisfied a specific and temporal need
for the Ford plants—a way to maintain complete control over the lives and
lifestyles of Ford workers in an attempt to make labor a constant, rather
than a variable. Even if Ford’s experiment had been successful, it would
have shown not that the bosses at Ford shared their workers’ interest, but
instead merely that the bosses had a strong interest in controlling every as-
pect of their workers’ lives, rather than merely their paycheck and working
conditions.
The Five Dollar Day
Leading up to 1914, Henry Ford, while having considerable success in pro-
ductivity increases through greater mechanization of his production line, was
continually frustrated by the “human element” of his production.1 He was
frustrated with his inability to control the culture of his workers and its af-
fect on the productivity of his plants, and extremely fearful of attempts to
1 For a good discussion of Ford’s labor problems which prompted his famous wage
increase, see the fourth chapter in Stephen Meyer III’s The Five Dollar Day
12
organize his plants by the IWW, CWAWU, and AFL. As such, in a great
experiment in which he hoped to solve all of his labor “problems” at once,
Henry Ford announced the Five Dollar Day on January 5th, 1914.
The Five Dollar Day was not primarily a wage increase. It was instead a
comprehensive labor management plan which aimed to control every aspect
of workers’ lives. Out of the infamous $5, an average around $2.34 made up
the wage of a Ford worker, with the remaining $2.66 designated as “profits”
contingent on a worker’s conformity to specific norms seen as desirable by
the bosses at Ford Motor Company. Meyer states it simply in The Five
Dollar Day:
The essence of the Ford Five Dollar Day and Profit-sharing
Plan was the use of profits to alter and to control the lives and the
behavior of the Ford workers. Ford profits added the necessary
flexibility for rewarding and disciplining its work-force.
In 1920, I. Paul Taylor, commissioner of Highland Park, remarked that
“I believe that it is illegal to withhold a man’s wages if he has earned them,
but when you call part of them ‘profits’ or a ‘bonus’ you get away with the
reduction a lot easier.” Taylor clearly understood the fundamental drive
behind the Ford plan:
A man is late to work once or twice—and with the conveyor
system, that throws a monkey wrench in the machinery—and
he is threatened at once with a loss of the ‘profits’ [half of his
pay]. There are all kinds of things that you can do under this
system—from compelling men to tell how much they spend for
groceries, furniture and recreation to coming to work regularly.
With the Five Dollar Day, Ford established the Ford Sociological De-
partment whose “duty”, as put by one Ford pamphlet, was “to correct the
morals and the manner of living” of the workers failing to receive his share
of the profits. As one Ford worker told,
They went out to the home and they had a regular form that
they filled out. They picked on your life history.
They went to my home. My wife told them everything. There
was nothing to keep from them. Of course, there was a lot of
criticism of that. It was kind of a funny idea, in a free state. . . .2
This worker’s experience is what Ford’s Sociological Investigations were
all about. Even Ford’s general engine assembly foreman, William Klann,
presents a disturbing portrayal of Ford Motor Company policy when he
relates the views of his workers:
Some of the fellows felt that they didn’t want [the investiga-
tions] and they wouldn’t have the fellows come to their house
[thus forfeiting more than half their pay]. They asked them
whether they were married or not, and if they weren’t they
would have a minister marry them. And they didn’t like those
things. . . . They felt they were interfering in their private lives.3
2 Detroit
Labor News, April 24, 1914, p. 3, quoted in Meyer.
3 Ford Motor Company Archives, The Reminiscences of Mr. William C.
Klann.quoted in Meyer.3
“The workers.” William Logan of the Auto Workers’ Union reminds us,
“are not little children who need some fatherly minds to guide them, to tell
them how much they may earn and what they shall do with it.” Ford clearly
had a different point of view.
The Ford Sociological Investigations were not merely an exercise—In April
1914, only half the Ford workers were receiving the half of their pay desig-
nated as “profits”. While Ford was more than halving the pay of 10% of his
workers on the basis of age or sex, the other 40% were being denied pay for
their inability to satisfy their investigators of the worthiness of their personal
lives.
As we examine the true history of Ford Motor Company and the Five
Dollar Day, it becomes clear that that history is not a history of worker’s
and bosses united under common interest, but instead merely a history in
which bosses were finding uncommon ways of manipulating their workers
lives in an attempt to maximize profits. And of all the auto workers in the
first half of the century, there is no doubt that none had a worse time on the
job than the workers of Henry Ford.
In one instance, for example, a Ford office worker, George Brown, wit-
nessed a worker in a Ford plant cut off a finger in a machine. When his
superiors urged him to show him what happened with the machine, the ter-
rified worker misunderstood and actually cut off another finger to show them.
“He understood,” Brown tells us, “they actually wanted him to demonstrate
how he cut the tip of his finger off.” Ford Motor Company was obviously a
very scary place to work.4
Another worker wrote in the Detroit Journal about the hellhole that was
a Ford factory:
If you forget to ring up your clock card in the morning and
evening you lose a day’s wages even if you have a time card to
show. Four or five minutes late, two hours docked. No helpers for
mechanics. Multitudes of unwritten laws. No redress for wrongs.
No safety first, although there is a mere pretense. . . . In fact,
Ford’s factory is a grouch hole and no place for a sane man.5
William Logan reminds us, “There is a limit to human endurance. Any
man or set of men who are keyed up to the last notch will eventually break
down, it matters not whether they get $1 or $10 per day for their work.”
When America entered World War II, the Ford’s Sociological Department
became an efficient machine for the promotion of American patriotism and
had no toleration for worker’s that refused to donate money to the YMCA
or purchase Liberty Bonds to support the effort for a war many of them
did not support. In other cases, German workers who refused to give such
financial support to a war fought against their brothers at home were fired
on the job.
4 Ford Motor Company Archives, The Reminiscences of Mr. George Brown (p 101).
quoted in Meyer.
5 “Disgruntled Writers Criticize Ford Plant Employing System,” Detroit Journal, Sept
20, 1915 p. 8. quoted in Meyer.4
In sum, the Five Dollar Day speaks for itself—as a labor management
plan, rather than an alignment of the interests of workers and bosses. Unfor-
tunately, though not surprisingly, Ford’s Five Dollar Day represented noth-
ing but an new method of control of the workers by the bosses, a disgusting
and disturbing routine invasion of the personal privacy of workers, and a
comprehensive attempt to fix as a constant all aspects of the lives of the
Ford workers, as if fine-tuning a machine, rather than compensating people
for their labor.
The Speedup: The Bosses vs. The Workers
In 1934, The Research and Planning Division of the National Recovery Ad-
ministration published its “Preliminary Report on the Study of Regular-
ization of Employment and Improvement of Labor Conditions in the Au-
tomobile Industry.” Even this “establishment” oriented report based on
interviews with auto workers conducted in closed sessions across the country
could not ignore the truth of workers’ grievances in automobile factories:
Everywhere workers indicated that they were being forced to
work harder and harder, to put out more and more products
in the same amount of time with less workers doing the job.
There was a tendency to excuse the automobile manufacturer
for a lack of steady work. . . but when it comes to increasing their
work loads they are vigorous in denouncing management as slave
drivers, and worse. If there is any one cause for conflagration in
the Automobile Industry, it is this one.
Even as early as 1926–1927, the economic researcher Robert Dunn was
witnessing the horrid effects of the speedup.
Increased operations per individual. . . at first only one oper-
ation; then after 3 months has four. His particular job causes
continual bending and stretching. No time for rest. . . Causing
physical and nervous relapse. Was off work Thursday. Unable
to get up. Could hardly walk. Strain on leg and back muscles
causing great pain. Afraid to tell boss about it; “If you can’t
do the job there are plenty of men who will.” Cannot eat his
lunches because of bad physical effects.6
It is this horrid speedup, especially in the period from 1935 to 1941, which
was, and still is, in many forms, the bane of the American auto-worker. And
nowhere was the speedup worse than in the factories of the Ford Motor
Company.
In many cases, the pace of work was so drastic that it neatly resulted in
unpaid time for the bosses. In NRA hearings in Detroit on December 14,
1934, an A. F. of L official testified of the conditions at the Ford Highland
Park plant that
6 Notes on worker interview, Dodge-Dept 68, Box 2, Robert Dunn Papers. quoted in
Meyer.5
The speed on the final assembly line was so terrific that the
men could not cope with the production in eight hours [for which
they were paid]. These men went in sometimes a half an hour or
three quarters of an hour before the starting time. . . and it took
them just about the same time at night to get the stuff away.
The workers’ safety, of course, was of no concern to the bosses. Ken
Bannon, who would eventually head the Ford Department of the UAW, later
recalled his time working large Bullard lathes machining metal castings. The
castings were inherently dangerous to handle, being sharp and rough in many
places, but Bannon and the other workers were forced to accept mutilation
as a routine part of the job.
After a few hours on this job your fingers would bleed. They
would bleed from the beginning of the week really until the end
of the week. You were not allowed to wear gloves. Gloves were
supposedly a safety hazard, although today [1963] people who
run machines. . . wear rubber gloves. . . . We would get cloths and
make bandages out of them and wrap them around our fingers
and then from a dime store buy a package of rubber bands. . . to
put around the bandage so that it would hold our fingers. . . .
However we were always fearful of a foreman coming by and
seeing us with the cloths on our fingers, for which we were subject
to discharge or some other type of penalty.7
Ford workers in the pre-World War II era led brutal lives, plagued with
problems of safety and abuse, both physical and mental. Of course, while
Ford’s Five Dollar Day labor management plan may have allowed him to get
away with a bit more brutality than his competitors, Ford workers’ were not
alone in their particularly bad treatment—at least not until the end of the
1930’s. While Ford and the other bosses cared not (and care still not) at all
for the workers’ needs, the situation of workers today is significantly better
in certain ways and in certain industries than it was in the early part of the
last century.8
That change, of course, came not from some benevolent shift in thinking
on the part of the bosses, but instead from the unions which fought first for
their existence, and then for the concerns of their workers. While unions are
today becoming increasingly bureaucratized and alienated from the interests
of workers, it has been militant organized labor, history makes clear, that has
brought about the positive changes workers have seen in their lives. And it is
especially with regard to his workers’ desire for an organization to represent
their interests that Ford, much like the other big auto bosses, shows his true
colors.
7 Kenneth G. Bannon, UAW Oral History Project interview, 1963, 2-3, WRL. Empha-
sis added. quoted in Meyer.
8 . . . though there have been very disturbing steps backward in most industries over
the past three decades. Workers today still labor in unsafe conditions, under bosses
unconcerned for their well-being past the extent that it affects profits. For many workers’,
the 40 hour work week is (still) not a reality.6
Figure 1: UAW organizers before during, and after the massacre on the over-
pass. Ford Motor Company Men from the Sociological Department are seen
approaching from the left in the first photo, then attacking in the second.
The last is of Walter Reuther and Richard Frankenstein after the beating.
Ford and Labor—The Inescapable Truth
Here I present an excerpt from the “Battle of the Overpass, May 26, 1937”
exhibit of the Henry Ford Museum, available at http://www.hfmgv.org/
exhibits/fmc/battle.asp
in May 1937, union organizers obtained a permit to distribute
handbills at the gates of the Rouge plant. Over fifty union rep-
resentatives, including many women, arrived at the plant to dis-
tribute circulars which cited the Wagner Act and entreated work-
ers to join the UAW. Walter P. Reuther, Richard T. Franken-
steen, Richard Merriweather, Ralph Dunham, and Rev. Ray-
mond P. Sanford among others left for the plant early in the
afternoon and arrived an hour before the change of shifts at the
main entrance of the Rouge, Gate 4. The entrance was at the
end of an overpass that the company had built across Miller
Road so the shift changing would not interfere with traffic. The
UAW representatives talked with reporters and posed for pho-
tographers of the Detroit newspapers. Meantime, several men
had been stationed around the entrance to the Rouge including
Angelo Caruso, boss of the Down River gang, wrestlers Warshon
Sarkisien and Ted Gries, boxer Oscar Jones, and Ford service-
men. The organizers were ordered to leave, but witnesses say,
before they even had a chance, the attack began.
Frankensteen’s coat was pulled over his arms. He was then
kicked in the head, kidneys, and groin. Witnesses also testified
that as he lay on the ground, the attackers ground their heels in
his stomach. Reuther was picked up and thrown down repeat-
edly and was kicked in the face and body. He was then thrown
down the steps of the overpass. Merriweather’s back was broken,
and Dunham was also severely injured. The women too were
attacked. Newspapers and magazines published the photographs
all over the country and several witnesses testified before the
National Labor Relations Board. The NLRB found Ford in vio-
lation of the Wagner Act and ordered it to stop interfering with7
union organization. Henry Ford and the company denied the
charges, but the Battle of the Overpass had already become a
lasting symbol in the labor struggle.
More than probably anything else, Ford was fanatically anti-labor—anti-
union—to the point of brutality. Longer than any of the other big auto man-
ufacturers, Ford succeeded in thwarting attempts at organization through
espionage, intimidation, and violence. Towards the end of the 1930’s, when
Ford’s Five Dollar Day experiment was winding down, his systematic crack-
down on his workers’ attempts to secure representation for themselves was
really picking up. And the Ford Sociological Department turned its ener-
gies from investigating and regulating the romantic relationships of Ford’s
employees to beating them into fearful submission.
Probably more than any other worker in the industry, the Ford worker
dreadfuly needed a voice if he was to survive. By many accounts, he was
the most overworked, intimidated worker in the industry whose safety was
at the greatest jeopardy. It is no surprise that every auto manufacturer
frantically resisted unionization in an attempt to preserve their (still today)
priviledged position to maximize their profts at their workers’ expense, but
Ford was positively ruthless at the matter. Meyer’s The Five Dollar Day
quotes Jonathon Norton Leonard’s “sketch of what it meant” to work in the
Ford factory:
No one who works for Ford is safe from spies—from superin-
tendents on down to the poor creature who must clean a certain
number of toilets an hour. There are spies who ask embarrassing
questions of visitor’s guides, spies who worm their way into la-
bor unions, spies who speak every language under the sun. The
system does not stop at the factory gates. An anonymous letter
accusing a man of stealing Ford parts is enough to bring him
before the ‘Service Department.’ He is forced to sign a ‘Per-
mission for Search’ which allows Ford detectives to ransack his
home, turn out all his poor possessions in hopes of finding a Ford
incandescent lamp or a generator armature. There are spies to
watch these in turn
For Ford, his elaborate network of spies and informants was a very effec-
tive and economical method of maintaining control over his workers. “The
repressive policies, which emerged during the war,” Meyer writes, “proved
the most effective means to discipline the Ford workforce. They made eco-
nomic sense. . . a few spies and informers were much less expensive than a
full-fledged welfare program.”
A Conclusion
The auto industry’s unionization really began with the Flint, Michigan sit-
down strke at General Motors in 1936-1937. In his discussion of the indus-
try’s unionization in his conclusion, Meyer quotes one Flint striker who had
initially been opposed to the sit-down.8
The inhuman speed is no more. We now have a voice, and
have slowed the speed of the line. And [we] are now treated
as human beings, and not as part of the machinery. The high
pressure is taken off. . . . It proves clearly that united we stand,
divided or alone we fall.
Unfortunately, of course, this worker’s optimism has not become reality.
Today, unionization is on the decline, and for a reason. The radical unions
that organized the industry, fought for change, and achieved it (to some
extent), were at least largely organizations of the rank and file worker. The
fighting then was for and by the worker on the assembly line. Now, however,
the unions have become big beauracratic machines, consistantly negotiating
with the bosses, on the bosses terms. For all practical purposes, many
unions have become completely decapitated—not in the sense that they have
literally lost their leadership, but instead in the sense that the unions are
now led from without, rather than from within. Most unions today are not
in a position to make a good fight to secure the safety of their workers or
decent conditions for their labor. And it is not clear how the unions today,
run by officials often with more connections to the business the union should
be fighting against than to the workers themselves, will be able to return to
the militant organizations necessary to secure decent lives for the workers of
America, and of the world.
The advanced industrial age does not eliminate, nor does it even really
reduce, the “problem” of labor and labor representation. Ford’s infamous
mechanization of the production of cars did not ease the strain on his work-
ers, but, to the contrary, put Ford in a position to more easily be able to
constantly demand more, more, more, from his laborers in terms of pro-
duction and sacrifice. Meyer reminds us that it was “Not until 1941, when
the United Automobile Workers organized the recalcitrant Ford Motor Com-
pany, [that] Ford automobile workers [came] full circle to express their version
of industrial democracy and to define their requirements for an American
standard of living”.
So the “problem of labor” is with us to stay, and how it is eventually
resolved will undoubtedly be the greatest single influence on the “human
condition” determined by human society itself. Look around you where you
are reading this paper. Unless you are a hermit in the wilderness, someone
labored to secure the ground beneath you, the clothes on your body, the
buildings surrounding you, and the food in your stomach. Workers labored
in the paper factory to produce the pages on which this manuscript is printed,
or on the screen on which it is being displayed. Worker’s labored to produce
the printer I used when proofreading its contents, and the ink on the page
I circled and crossed out. The workers of the world are here, and here to
stay, and their well-being is dependent on a sytem of production which is
concerend for their intersts, rather than solely for proft.You can also read
