Sleepy History: Henry Ford’s Assembly Line | A SleepWise Story

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Good evening, and welcome back
to Sleepwise.

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Tonight.
We drift toward a single

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building in Highland Park, MI,
in the autumn of 1913, and

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toward the man whose name was
painted across its gates.

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We will move slowly, as we
always do, through a story that

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is partly about machines and
partly about people, partly

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about generosity and partly
about harm.

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Before that autumn, building an
automobile was a slow, almost

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ceremonial affair.
A chassis would rest on wooden

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trestles inside a quiet shop,
and skilled workers would gather

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around it with their tools,
fitting parts carried by hand

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from bins along the wall.
To complete one Model T chassis,

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from frame to finished form,
took roughly 12 1/2 hours of

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human labor.
The man whose name was painted

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across those gates was Henry
Ford.

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He had not invented the
automobile, nor would he ever

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claim to, but he was about to
redesign the way one was made.

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Cars in those years were costly,
scarce, and largely the property

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of people who already had
property.

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The idea that an ordinary worker
might drive home in something he

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had helped to build was still
mostly a Daydream.

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By the spring of 1914, the same
chassis would take about 93

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minutes.
A chain had been laid through

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the factory floor, and the car
had been taught to move past the

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worker rather than the worker
moving toward it.

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It was a small change in
geometry and a vast change in

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the world.
Ford had been born on a Dearborn

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farm in 1863, raised among
horses and hand tools, restless

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from boyhood with the inner
workings of small machines.

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By 1913, he was already wealthy,
already famous, already the

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founder of a company that bore
his name.

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But Highland Park was about to
make him something larger and

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stranger than a manufacturer, a
figure of the modern age.

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Tonight we will follow him, but
gently.

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We will walk through the early
Detroit that shaped him, the

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architecture of the Crystal
Palace plant that housed his

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ambition, the moving line that
altered the rhythm of human

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labor, and the January 1914
announcement that doubled wages

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overnight.
We will also walk more carefully

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through the darker chapters that
followed, the newspaper he

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purchased in 1918, the articles
it published, and the prejudice

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that travelled the world
alongside his automobiles.

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It is not a story of a hero and
not a story of a villain.

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It is a story of one man 1
factory, 1 chain in motion and

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how the consequences of all
three are still woven into the

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century we are still leaving
behind.

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There is nothing to solve to
night, only a long quiet Rd.

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through a noisy time.
If these slow journeys through

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history help you settle towards
sleep, you are welcome to follow

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Sleep Wise and share the show
with someone who might enjoy

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drifting off while learning
something new.

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And now, with the lamps low and
the century still murmuring

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softly behind us, let us begin.
Long before any chain moved

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through a factory, Detroit was
already a city of making.

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By the turn of the 20th century,
it sat along its broad river

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with a population approaching
300,000, a Great Lakes port

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whose docks and rail yards had
been delivering raw material

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into busy hands for generations.
The city had a particular

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reputation.
It built things from wood and

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iron and brass, and it built
them well.

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Detroit was, among other
industries, one of the great

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stove making centers in the
country, sending heavy iron

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stoves into kitchens across the
continent.

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It was also a carriage town.
Wagon and buggy makers worked in

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long brick shops along the
streets that ran toward the

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river, fitting wheels, stitching
leather, painting bodies with

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patient brushes.
When the automobile arrived,

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Detroit already had the skill
and the supply chain that an

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early car required.
The first decade of the new

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century made all of this
visible.

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In 1899, Ransom E Olds founded
the Olds Motor Works, and after

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a fire destroyed his Detroit
factory in March of 19 O1, his

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small curved dash Oldsmobile
became one of the first cars

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produced in real quantity in
America.

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He used a system of progressive
assembly that already pointed

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toward the future without quite
arriving there.

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Other companies followed
quickly.

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Henry Leland founded Cadillac in
19 O2, building cars whose parts

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were so precisely made that any
one of them could be exchanged

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for another, a small miracle in
an age of rough fittings.

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Packard, Studebaker, Hudson,
Dodge and dozens of smaller

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firms appeared and competed and
sometimes vanished in the same

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brick neighborhoods.
In those early years, even the

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most ambitious factory was still
essentially A sophisticated

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workshop.
A car came together in one place

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and workers walked toward it,
carrying parts from storage

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rooms or from neighboring shops.
They bolted, fitted, hammered

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and adjusted, often working in
small teams around a single

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chassis on the floor.
The pace of work was bound by

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the human body.
A man bent over a frame could

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only move so quickly, and the
parts he reached for had to be

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brought to him by another set of
hands.

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Production was measured in cars
per day, sometimes per week, and

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the cost of each vehicle
reflected the patients inside

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it.
Yet beneath this familiar

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arrangement, the conditions for
change were quietly

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accumulating.
The skilled workforce was

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already there.
The foundries and metal shops

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were already there.
The river and the rail lines and

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the suppliers were already
there.

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Detroit was a city ready for an
idea that had not yet been

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spoken aloud.
In one of those small brick

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buildings on a street called
Piquet, a young company would

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soon begin assembling cars of
its own, and among its founders

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walked the man whose name would
in time transform the meaning of

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every word above.
Long before the Highland Park

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gates were painted, the boy who
would put his name on them was

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learning the language of small
machines.

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Henry Ford was born on a summer
morning in 1863 on a farm in

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what is now Dearborn, MI, the
eldest of six children in a

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family of Irish and Belgian
descent.

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The Civil War was still being
fought when he was born, and the

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world he grew up in still moved
largely on hooves and human

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shoulders.
He was, by every account, more

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curious about machinery than
about farming.

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As a child he took apart
watches, gathered tools and

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listened with serious attention
when neighbors brought their

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broken devices for him to
inspect.

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The story is often told that as
a boy of 12 he saw a

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self-propelled steam engine on a
country Rd. and the encounter

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never left him.
In his 16th year, he left the

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farm and walked into Detroit
looking for work.

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He apprenticed in the city's
machine shops, including James F

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Flower and Brothers and the
Detroit Dry Dock Company,

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learning to repair, file and
shape the iron parts of an

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industrial age.
For several years afterward, he

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moved between Detroit and the
family farm, repairing steam

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engines for neighbors, marrying
a young woman named Clara Bryant

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and quietly continuing to study
mechanics in the evenings.

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In time, he took a position with
the Edison Illuminating Company

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in Detroit.
Within a few years he had risen

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to chief engineer at Edison's
Detroit station, a steady roll

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with respectable pay.
But in his off hours, he was

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working on something else.
In a small brick shed behind his

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home on Bagley Ave. he was
building a vehicle of his own.

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On a quiet morning in the summer
of 18 knot Arctics, he wheeled

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his quadricycle out into the
alley.

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It was a slight contraption
balanced on bicycle wheels with

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a small 2 cylinder engine and a
tiller for steering.

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And it worked.
He drove it through the early

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streets of Detroit, and the air
of the future passed briefly

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through the alleys of the past.
Later that season, at a

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convention in Manhattan Beach,
Ford met Thomas Edison and

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described his gasoline powered
design.

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Edison, who had been pursuing
electric vehicles, reportedly

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pounded the table and told the
younger man to keep going.

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Encouragement from such a figure
carried weight. 2 Early ventures

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followed, and both faltered.
The Detroit Automobile Company,

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his first attempt, dissolved
within a couple of years after

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producing only a handful of
vehicles, and the Henry Ford

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Company, his second, lost his
involvement quickly after

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disagreements with investors.
The remnants of that second

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company would soon be
reorganized under Henry Leland

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and become Cadillac.
Then, in the early summer of 19

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O3, with a small group of
backers in modest capital, Henry

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Ford founded the Ford Motor
Company.

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He was nearly 40 years old,
twice removed from his own

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ventures, with no certainty this
third attempt would last.

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The company that bore his name
had only just begun.

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The first cars to roll out of
Ford's new company were called

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by simple letters.
The Model A, introduced in the

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company's first year, was A2
cylinder runabout, meant for

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early buyers who already had
means and curiosity.

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It sold reasonably well, and the
company survived its first

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uncertain year.
What followed was a quiet

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experiment in product strategy.
Ford and his small team produced

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a sequence of lettered models,
the B, the C, the F, the K, the

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N, the R and the S, each aimed
at slightly different buyers and

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price points.
Some, like the six cylinder

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Model K, were heavy and
expensive.

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Others, like the lighter Model
N, hinted at where Ford's

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instincts truly lay.
He had been arguing for some

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time, often against the wishes
of his investors, that the great

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future of the automobile lay not
in luxury but in availability.

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Most buyers, he believed, were
not wealthy collectors but

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ordinary working people who
needed something useful, durable

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and affordable.
He wanted to build for them.

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By the autumn of 19 O 8, that
argument had won.

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After secret development in a
small upstairs room at the

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Paquette Ave. plant, the company
introduced the car that would

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change its destiny.
The Model T was announced to the

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public.
With a starting price of around

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$850.
The Model T was not the most

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refined automobile of its era,
and it was not the most

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powerful.
Its appeal was something quieter

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and more radical.
It was designed to be simple to

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operate, simple to repair, and
capable of crossing the rutted,

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unpaved roads that still defined
most of America outside the

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cities.
Its frame used a new vanadium

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steel alloy, strong without
being heavy.

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Its planetary transmission,
while unusual, could be mastered

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without years of experience, and
its high ground clearance let it

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climb out of mud that defeated
more elegant cars.

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Farmers, country doctors and
rural shopkeepers found in it a

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kind of mechanical mule that fit
the country they lived in.

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Buyers responded almost
immediately.

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Within a year, demand was
outstripping the Paquette Ave.

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plant's ability to produce.
Letters poured in from every

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state, asking when shipments
would arrive, asking when prices

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might fall, asking for parts and
instructions and any promise of

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delivery.
The car had also been designed

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with affordability in mind.
From the beginning, Ford and his

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engineers had simplified the
design wherever possible,

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choosing fewer parts over many
common bolts over special ones,

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and a single basic body style
over a catalog of variations.

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The savings were real, and they
would only grow as production

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methods caught up to ambition.
Ford had set out to build a car

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for the multitude, and the
multitude had arrived faster

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than the factory could meet.
A new building would be needed,

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and a new way of making things
inside it.

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The building that housed Ford's
first major success still stands

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00:16:49,280 --> 00:16:54,600
today on Detroit's east side.
Its dark red bricks settled into

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a new century without fanfare.
The Paquette Ave. plant was

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newly built when Ford Motor
Company moved in, three stories

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of mill style architecture
stretching about 400 feet along

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its namesake St. with tall
windows that drew daylight on to

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the workshop floors.
The plant was modest by the

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standards of what would come.
But in those first years it was

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already among the larger
automobile factories in the

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country.
Its long, open floors gave room

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for assembly stations, part
storage and the steady traffic

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of workmen between them.
It was at Paquette Ave. in a

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curtained corner of the third
floor, that the Model T was

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developed.
Across the better part of two

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years, a small team worked in
semi secrecy on prototypes,

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sketches and Dr. trains,
refining the car that would soon

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astonish the country.
When the model was finally

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announced in the autumn of 19 O
eight, production was planned

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00:18:10,360 --> 00:18:14,840
for the very building in which
it had been imagined.

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00:18:15,240 --> 00:18:20,160
The first Model T rolled out of
Piquette Ave. in late autumn,

231
00:18:20,560 --> 00:18:23,400
with regular production
beginning soon after.

232
00:18:24,600 --> 00:18:29,720
For about two years, this brick
building was the heart of Ford's

233
00:18:29,720 --> 00:18:34,480
growing automobile empire, and
the cars that emerge from it

234
00:18:35,000 --> 00:18:39,200
began making their way across
America's rough roads.

235
00:18:39,600 --> 00:18:45,200
But the work itself, for all its
volume, was still essentially

236
00:18:45,640 --> 00:18:50,120
craft production.
A chassis would be set in place

237
00:18:50,120 --> 00:18:54,200
on the floor of one of the
assembly bays, and a team of

238
00:18:54,200 --> 00:18:59,880
workers would gather around it.
They would walk to the bins or

239
00:18:59,880 --> 00:19:04,360
storage areas where the parts
were kept, carry them back and

240
00:19:04,360 --> 00:19:08,800
fit them by hand.
A man might fit an axle, then

241
00:19:08,800 --> 00:19:14,040
walk 20 feet for a bracket, then
walk 30 more for a fastener,

242
00:19:14,480 --> 00:19:19,840
then return to install it.
The day was a series of journeys

243
00:19:19,840 --> 00:19:25,360
between the chassis and the
supply, each one short, each one

244
00:19:25,360 --> 00:19:31,280
almost unnoticed but altogether
adding up to enormous unused

245
00:19:31,280 --> 00:19:34,440
minutes.
This was the inheritance of

246
00:19:34,440 --> 00:19:39,480
every automobile factory of the
time, not a flaw of Paquette

247
00:19:39,480 --> 00:19:43,960
Ave. alone.
It was simply how cars were

248
00:19:43,960 --> 00:19:47,680
made.
The notion that a car might be

249
00:19:47,680 --> 00:19:51,440
made to come to the worker,
rather than the worker walking

250
00:19:51,480 --> 00:19:56,360
endlessly toward the car, had
not yet been put into practice

251
00:19:56,360 --> 00:19:59,240
anywhere.
Ford himself was beginning to

252
00:19:59,240 --> 00:20:02,920
think differently.
He had visited slaughter houses

253
00:20:02,920 --> 00:20:07,240
in Chicago, where overhead rails
carried carcasses past

254
00:20:07,400 --> 00:20:12,520
stationary workers, each one
performing a specific cut.

255
00:20:13,480 --> 00:20:17,520
He had studied bicycle
factories, sewing machine plants

256
00:20:17,520 --> 00:20:21,240
and watch shops.
Gathering ideas about

257
00:20:21,560 --> 00:20:27,000
specialization and flow.
Within a couple of years, demand

258
00:20:27,000 --> 00:20:31,920
for the Model T was exceeding
even the building's expanded

259
00:20:31,920 --> 00:20:35,440
capacity.
Ford ordered a new plant,

260
00:20:35,440 --> 00:20:40,680
designed this time on land in
Highland Park, just outside the

261
00:20:40,680 --> 00:20:46,240
Detroit city limits.
Piquette Ave. was about to be

262
00:20:46,240 --> 00:20:51,320
left behind, and the modern
factory, in something like the

263
00:20:51,320 --> 00:20:56,320
form we still recognize, was
about to be born.

264
00:20:56,840 --> 00:21:01,480
The new plant rose on flat
ground north of the Detroit city

265
00:21:01,480 --> 00:21:05,600
line in a small village called
Highland Park.

266
00:21:06,440 --> 00:21:10,680
Ford had purchased the land a
few years earlier, sensing that

267
00:21:10,680 --> 00:21:15,400
Piquette Ave. could no longer
hold what the Model T was

268
00:21:15,400 --> 00:21:19,280
becoming.
To design the building, he

269
00:21:19,280 --> 00:21:24,040
turned to a young architect
named Albert Kahn, whose work

270
00:21:24,040 --> 00:21:27,920
was beginning to change how
American factories looked.

271
00:21:28,400 --> 00:21:33,440
Kahn had been born in Germany
and brought to Detroit as a

272
00:21:33,440 --> 00:21:37,320
child.
He had no formal architectural

273
00:21:37,320 --> 00:21:41,320
degree, having learned the
discipline through long

274
00:21:41,320 --> 00:21:44,200
apprenticeship and patient
observation.

275
00:21:45,080 --> 00:21:51,000
He had become a quiet master of
industrial design, fluent in

276
00:21:51,000 --> 00:21:56,320
concrete and glass and willing
to question the heavy, dim

277
00:21:56,320 --> 00:22:00,360
conventions of the typical
Victorian factory.

278
00:22:00,680 --> 00:22:06,600
For Highland Park, he proposed a
building unlike anything Ford

279
00:22:06,600 --> 00:22:10,680
had used before.
The walls were poured in

280
00:22:10,680 --> 00:22:14,560
reinforced concrete strong
enough to support heavy

281
00:22:14,560 --> 00:22:19,560
machinery without the bulky
internal columns of brick mills.

282
00:22:20,560 --> 00:22:25,120
The exterior was almost more
glass than wall, with great

283
00:22:25,120 --> 00:22:28,800
rectangular windows running
across every floor.

284
00:22:29,200 --> 00:22:32,960
The result, when it opened in
the early years of the new

285
00:22:32,960 --> 00:22:36,960
decade, was startling.
Sunlight poured into spaces

286
00:22:36,960 --> 00:22:41,040
where workers had once squinted
under gas lamps and overhead

287
00:22:41,040 --> 00:22:44,880
bulbs.
Reporters and visiting engineers

288
00:22:45,120 --> 00:22:50,040
soon began calling it the
Crystal Palace, after the famous

289
00:22:50,040 --> 00:22:53,320
iron and glass structure that
had once dazzled London.

290
00:22:53,640 --> 00:22:59,160
It was 4 stories tall along its
main length, with auxiliary

291
00:22:59,160 --> 00:23:02,280
buildings spreading across a
sprawling site.

292
00:23:03,040 --> 00:23:10,680
Inside, the floors were vast,
open and uninterrupted, designed

293
00:23:10,680 --> 00:23:14,880
to allow the long flow of work
without the bottlenecks of

294
00:23:14,880 --> 00:23:17,680
cramped corners.
The building was an

295
00:23:17,720 --> 00:23:21,120
architectural argument about
industry itself.

296
00:23:21,480 --> 00:23:25,640
Kahn would go on to design
hundreds of factories in his

297
00:23:25,640 --> 00:23:29,320
lifetime.
For Ford and for many others,

298
00:23:29,960 --> 00:23:34,960
his name would become so closely
tied to industrial architecture

299
00:23:35,280 --> 00:23:39,040
that some observers called him
the master of the modern

300
00:23:39,040 --> 00:23:43,000
factory.
But it was at Highland Park that

301
00:23:43,000 --> 00:23:46,080
the form took its most
influential shape.

302
00:23:46,520 --> 00:23:51,680
For Ford, the building was more
than a place to assemble cars.

303
00:23:52,360 --> 00:23:56,800
It was a declaration that a
modern factory should not feel

304
00:23:56,800 --> 00:24:02,120
like a dim cathedral of grease
and shadow, but like a clean,

305
00:24:02,320 --> 00:24:07,600
well lit space where light,
motion and material could come

306
00:24:07,600 --> 00:24:10,840
together in unprecedented
harmony.

307
00:24:11,240 --> 00:24:16,200
Of course, the architecture
alone did not make the future.

308
00:24:16,480 --> 00:24:20,520
What would happen inside The
building was still being worked

309
00:24:20,520 --> 00:24:23,440
out.
The walls and the windows were

310
00:24:23,440 --> 00:24:28,760
ready, but the chain that would
soon hum along the floor was not

311
00:24:28,760 --> 00:24:35,000
yet imagined in its final form.
In quiet rooms upstairs, in

312
00:24:35,000 --> 00:24:39,880
meetings between engineers and
time keepers, the next great

313
00:24:39,880 --> 00:24:42,560
change was already being
sketched.

314
00:24:43,600 --> 00:24:46,680
Highland Park was a beautiful
shell.

315
00:24:47,120 --> 00:24:52,280
And soon, something profoundly
new would begin to move within

316
00:24:52,280 --> 00:24:54,800
it.
The shape of Highland Park was

317
00:24:54,800 --> 00:24:59,560
new, but the methods inside it
were still mostly inherited.

318
00:25:00,480 --> 00:25:05,120
In its early days of operation,
the building looked grand but

319
00:25:05,120 --> 00:25:09,120
worked much like the older
factories Ford's team had known.

320
00:25:10,120 --> 00:25:15,480
Workers walked between bins,
carrying parts to chassis that

321
00:25:15,480 --> 00:25:19,280
sat in place on the floor.
That arrangement could not

322
00:25:19,280 --> 00:25:22,240
satisfy the demand.
The Model T had stirred.

323
00:25:22,760 --> 00:25:25,960
Orders piled higher than
production could meet.

324
00:25:26,840 --> 00:25:31,280
Engineers and floor managers
began studying every motion,

325
00:25:31,440 --> 00:25:36,080
every walk between station and
bench, looking for a time that

326
00:25:36,080 --> 00:25:40,920
was being quietly lost.
They did not invent their ideas

327
00:25:41,240 --> 00:25:45,120
in isolation.
The era was full of voices

328
00:25:45,120 --> 00:25:49,040
urging that work could be
measured, broken down and

329
00:25:49,040 --> 00:25:53,480
redesigned.
Frederick Winslow Taylor, the

330
00:25:53,480 --> 00:25:58,680
most famous of them, had argued
that any task could be timed,

331
00:25:58,800 --> 00:26:03,240
analyzed and reduced to its most
efficient sequence.

332
00:26:03,560 --> 00:26:09,000
His ideas, sometimes called
scientific management, were

333
00:26:09,000 --> 00:26:11,240
spreading through American
industry.

334
00:26:12,000 --> 00:26:17,760
Taylor's work was admired by
some and despised by others, but

335
00:26:17,760 --> 00:26:21,600
it had introduced a new
vocabulary into the workshop.

336
00:26:22,520 --> 00:26:27,920
The motions of human labor could
be studied as carefully as the

337
00:26:27,920 --> 00:26:32,440
motions of a machine.
Ford's team studied other

338
00:26:32,440 --> 00:26:36,960
examples, too.
They visited bicycle factories,

339
00:26:37,360 --> 00:26:42,320
where interchangeable parts had
become a quiet specialty.

340
00:26:43,120 --> 00:26:46,360
They walked through sewing
machine plants, where

341
00:26:46,360 --> 00:26:49,600
progressive assembly had been
used for decades.

342
00:26:49,920 --> 00:26:54,360
And most famously, they looked
at the great slaughterhouses of

343
00:26:54,360 --> 00:26:57,960
Chicago.
In Chicago's packing plants,

344
00:26:58,440 --> 00:27:02,560
animals moved overhead on
chains, while workers stood in

345
00:27:02,560 --> 00:27:07,560
fixed positions and made the
same cuts thousands of times a

346
00:27:07,560 --> 00:27:12,080
day.
It was, in a sense, an assembly

347
00:27:12,080 --> 00:27:16,440
line in reverse.
A whole caucus entered at one

348
00:27:16,440 --> 00:27:22,720
end and parts left at the other.
The arrangement was efficient,

349
00:27:23,240 --> 00:27:29,200
brutal and unmistakable.
In its lessons inside Highland

350
00:27:29,200 --> 00:27:32,920
Park, the engineers began
experimenting.

351
00:27:33,720 --> 00:27:38,560
One of the first formal trials
came on a small sub assembly,

352
00:27:39,120 --> 00:27:44,560
the flywheel Magneto, a device
used to generate the electrical

353
00:27:44,560 --> 00:27:50,720
spark that fired the engine.
Until then, a single worker had

354
00:27:50,720 --> 00:27:57,120
built a Magneto by hand in about
20 minutes, fetching parts as

355
00:27:57,120 --> 00:28:00,200
needed.
The team broke the work into

356
00:28:00,200 --> 00:28:05,560
roughly 30 steps, set the parts
on a moving belt, and assigned a

357
00:28:05,560 --> 00:28:11,240
different worker to each step.
The result was startling.

358
00:28:11,960 --> 00:28:17,080
The same Magneto could now be
assembled in about 13 minutes,

359
00:28:17,400 --> 00:28:20,280
and then less as the rhythm
settled.

360
00:28:21,120 --> 00:28:26,560
It was a small machine, but the
principle behind it could be

361
00:28:26,560 --> 00:28:31,160
made very large.
From the Magneto the experiment

362
00:28:31,160 --> 00:28:38,040
spread engines, transmissions,
axles, each sub assembly was

363
00:28:38,040 --> 00:28:43,200
studied, broken down and lifted
onto its own moving line.

364
00:28:44,120 --> 00:28:49,960
Each time the time required fell
by remarkable margins, and the

365
00:28:49,960 --> 00:28:54,680
problem of fetching, walking and
waiting was steadily eliminated.

366
00:28:55,080 --> 00:28:58,840
The pieces were almost ready to
be brought together.

367
00:28:59,440 --> 00:29:04,720
Yet 1 great question remained.
Could the chassis itself, the

368
00:29:04,720 --> 00:29:09,760
frame of the entire car, be made
to move past the worker rather

369
00:29:09,760 --> 00:29:12,600
than wait patiently for the
worker's approach?

370
00:29:13,000 --> 00:29:17,720
The decisive experiment came in
the autumn of 1913.

371
00:29:18,640 --> 00:29:22,960
In a section of Highland Park's
vast main floor.

372
00:29:23,440 --> 00:29:27,120
The engineers prepared something
that had never quite been done

373
00:29:27,120 --> 00:29:30,920
before.
They built a long, low rail with

374
00:29:30,920 --> 00:29:35,520
a rope and winch arrangement,
and they set the bare chassis of

375
00:29:35,520 --> 00:29:39,920
a Model T upon it.
The day began like any other.

376
00:29:40,480 --> 00:29:45,160
Workers stood along the rail in
their assigned positions, each

377
00:29:45,160 --> 00:29:48,720
prepared to perform a small
fraction of the assembly.

378
00:29:49,400 --> 00:29:53,880
The rope tightened and the
chassis began to move, not

379
00:29:53,880 --> 00:29:59,440
quickly but steadily, drawn past
one station and then the next.

380
00:29:59,720 --> 00:30:04,160
It was a strange sight by the
standards of the time.

381
00:30:04,840 --> 00:30:10,000
A car under construction had
always been still, with workers

382
00:30:10,000 --> 00:30:12,280
walking toward it, around it,
over it.

383
00:30:13,000 --> 00:30:17,840
Now the car was the one in
motion, and the workers held

384
00:30:17,840 --> 00:30:21,840
their ground.
The first experiments were

385
00:30:21,840 --> 00:30:25,600
rough.
Distances had to be adjusted,

386
00:30:25,920 --> 00:30:29,240
paces matched, parts
repositioned.

387
00:30:30,000 --> 00:30:33,640
But the early measurements were
already astonishing.

388
00:30:34,680 --> 00:30:39,480
A chassis that had previously
taken something like 12 1/2

389
00:30:39,480 --> 00:30:44,160
hours of human labor to assemble
could now move from frame to

390
00:30:44,160 --> 00:30:49,160
running car in about 6.
In the months that followed, the

391
00:30:49,160 --> 00:30:55,320
line was refined, the rope and
winch gave way to a chain, and

392
00:30:55,320 --> 00:30:59,560
parts were brought to each
station from above and below on

393
00:30:59,560 --> 00:31:04,800
conveyors and ramps.
Heights were adjusted so that

394
00:31:04,800 --> 00:31:08,720
workers no longer bent
uncomfortably, and the pace of

395
00:31:08,720 --> 00:31:14,760
the chain was tested, retested
and gradually increased.

396
00:31:15,200 --> 00:31:19,240
By the spring of the next year,
the same chassis could be

397
00:31:19,240 --> 00:31:25,240
assembled in about 93 minutes.
The number became almost

398
00:31:25,240 --> 00:31:29,280
mythological.
A car had been built nearly

399
00:31:29,360 --> 00:31:34,480
eight times faster than before
in a single building, with the

400
00:31:34,480 --> 00:31:39,360
same kind of men who had once
walked patiently from Bin 2

401
00:31:39,360 --> 00:31:43,720
chassis.
The change spread like a quiet

402
00:31:43,720 --> 00:31:47,280
flood.
Other parts of the Highland Park

403
00:31:47,280 --> 00:31:52,880
plant adopted moving lines, then
other Ford factories, then other

404
00:31:52,880 --> 00:31:57,640
companies, then other industries
entirely.

405
00:31:58,480 --> 00:32:02,840
What had begun as an experiment
in a single Bay of a single

406
00:32:02,840 --> 00:32:08,400
building was becoming a method.
The numbers told the same story

407
00:32:08,400 --> 00:32:12,280
in another language.
Where Highland Park had produced

408
00:32:12,280 --> 00:32:19,400
about 78,000 Model T's in one of
its first full years, it would

409
00:32:19,400 --> 00:32:26,000
soon be producing more than
200,000, then 300,000, then half

410
00:32:26,000 --> 00:32:29,400
a million.
The factory had not become much

411
00:32:29,400 --> 00:32:32,680
larger.
The work inside it had simply

412
00:32:32,680 --> 00:32:36,400
been rearranged.
It is sometimes said that Ford

413
00:32:36,400 --> 00:32:40,880
alone invented this.
But the truth, like most truths

414
00:32:40,880 --> 00:32:44,160
in industrial history, is more
shared.

415
00:32:45,040 --> 00:32:50,720
Engineers like Charles Sorenson,
William Clan, Clarence Avery and

416
00:32:50,720 --> 00:32:57,200
Peter Martin contributed crucial
pieces, drawing on ideas from

417
00:32:57,200 --> 00:33:00,800
meat packing, bicycles and
management theory.

418
00:33:01,560 --> 00:33:06,520
Ford himself often gave them
credit, though his name remained

419
00:33:06,520 --> 00:33:11,840
attached to the achievement.
What no one disputes is the

420
00:33:11,840 --> 00:33:17,040
scale of the result, a method
that began with a rope pulled

421
00:33:17,040 --> 00:33:21,200
across a factory floor.
Wood within a generation,

422
00:33:21,680 --> 00:33:25,080
redefine the rhythm of human
work itself.

423
00:33:25,480 --> 00:33:30,600
For the men who stood along the
line, life had quietly changed.

424
00:33:31,120 --> 00:33:35,760
The chassis approached at its
steady pace, and a worker had a

425
00:33:35,760 --> 00:33:41,760
small window to perform his task
before the next one arrived.

426
00:33:42,040 --> 00:33:47,560
The job was no longer to build a
car, but to perform one fragment

427
00:33:47,560 --> 00:33:53,360
of the building again and again
for as long as the shift lasted.

428
00:33:53,760 --> 00:33:59,440
The chassis assembly itself had
been broken into 84 distinct

429
00:33:59,440 --> 00:34:03,120
operations, each performed by a
different man.

430
00:34:03,680 --> 00:34:08,560
One worker might tighten the
same bolt thousands of times in

431
00:34:08,560 --> 00:34:14,199
a single shift, while another
fit an axle, welded A bracket,

432
00:34:14,719 --> 00:34:18,760
or attached a wheel.
Some operations took only

433
00:34:18,760 --> 00:34:23,480
seconds, and few of them
required the patient skill that

434
00:34:23,480 --> 00:34:27,480
had once defined the work.
There were practical advantages,

435
00:34:27,480 --> 00:34:30,760
of course.
A new worker could be trained in

436
00:34:30,760 --> 00:34:34,960
a single afternoon, rather than
over months of apprenticeship.

437
00:34:36,040 --> 00:34:41,120
He did not need to read English,
or to understand mechanical

438
00:34:41,120 --> 00:34:46,719
theory, or to know what part of
the car he was working on the

439
00:34:46,719 --> 00:34:52,080
line carried him through.
That was part of its attraction

440
00:34:52,080 --> 00:34:56,239
to Ford's planners.
By breaking the work into the

441
00:34:56,239 --> 00:35:01,240
smallest possible motions, they
could draw labour from the great

442
00:35:01,240 --> 00:35:05,040
waves of immigrants arriving in
Detroit each year.

443
00:35:05,920 --> 00:35:11,080
Men from Italy, Poland, Greece,
Hungary, the American South and

444
00:35:11,080 --> 00:35:15,760
beyond could find work on the
line within hours of walking

445
00:35:15,760 --> 00:35:19,200
through the gate.
But there was another truth less

446
00:35:19,200 --> 00:35:22,640
proudly spoken.
The work was numbing.

447
00:35:23,120 --> 00:35:28,720
It was loud, dirty and
relentless, and the pace was not

448
00:35:28,720 --> 00:35:34,640
set by the body's natural rhythm
but by a chain that did not tire

449
00:35:34,960 --> 00:35:40,200
and did not pause.
The plant in full operation was

450
00:35:40,200 --> 00:35:44,920
a relentless soundscape.
Stamping presses thudded in

451
00:35:44,920 --> 00:35:48,360
nearby rooms.
Conveyor belts, wind and

452
00:35:48,360 --> 00:35:54,040
overhead cranes swung loads of
metal across the open floors.

453
00:35:55,120 --> 00:35:59,880
Many workers ended their shifts
with ears ringing and hands

454
00:35:59,880 --> 00:36:02,280
trembling from hours of
vibration.

455
00:36:02,680 --> 00:36:07,320
A man who reached his station
even a moment late could throw

456
00:36:07,320 --> 00:36:13,240
the whole sequence into stutter.
A man who fell behind might be

457
00:36:13,240 --> 00:36:18,800
replaced before the day was out.
The freedom of the older shop,

458
00:36:19,120 --> 00:36:24,360
with its conversations, its
shifting tasks, its momentary

459
00:36:24,360 --> 00:36:30,720
pauses to think, had been folded
into something faster and more

460
00:36:30,720 --> 00:36:34,200
uniform.
Some workers adapted, finding

461
00:36:34,200 --> 00:36:37,480
their own quiet rhythms inside
the noise.

462
00:36:38,200 --> 00:36:43,360
Others suffered, leaving
exhausted and unsuited for any

463
00:36:43,360 --> 00:36:47,720
other kind of work.
Many simply walked away after a

464
00:36:47,720 --> 00:36:53,240
few hours, days or weeks,
unwilling or unable to remain.

465
00:36:53,560 --> 00:36:56,760
It was not cruelty in the
obvious sense.

466
00:36:57,400 --> 00:37:02,880
No one was being beaten, and the
pay was decent for the era and

467
00:37:02,880 --> 00:37:07,400
steady.
Yet a different kind of cost was

468
00:37:07,400 --> 00:37:11,960
beginning to gather, one that
could be measured not in dollars

469
00:37:12,520 --> 00:37:17,240
but in the strange new fatigue
of becoming, for 8:00 or 10 or

470
00:37:17,240 --> 00:37:22,560
12 hours a day, an extension of
a long machine.

471
00:37:23,000 --> 00:37:28,440
Henry Ford would later say with
characteristic confidence that

472
00:37:28,440 --> 00:37:32,320
the average man wanted the job
in which he did not have to

473
00:37:32,320 --> 00:37:35,000
think.
Many disagreed.

474
00:37:35,720 --> 00:37:40,640
The truth was more complicated,
and the factory was about to

475
00:37:40,640 --> 00:37:45,440
face the consequences of asking.
By the end of the line's first

476
00:37:45,440 --> 00:37:50,200
full year, the factory was
producing more cars than ever,

477
00:37:50,680 --> 00:37:55,080
but it was also losing people at
a speed no industry had ever

478
00:37:55,080 --> 00:37:59,080
quite seen.
Men were quitting within hours

479
00:37:59,080 --> 00:38:03,480
of their first shift.
Some quit before they reached

480
00:38:03,480 --> 00:38:08,480
the line at all, taking one look
at the noise and pace and

481
00:38:08,480 --> 00:38:13,320
turning back through the gates.
The numbers when Ford's

482
00:38:13,320 --> 00:38:16,480
accountants assembled them were
staggering.

483
00:38:17,640 --> 00:38:23,040
To keep roughly 13,000 jobs
filled, the company had been

484
00:38:23,040 --> 00:38:28,840
forced to hire well over 50,000
men in a single year.

485
00:38:29,880 --> 00:38:35,720
The annual turnover rate climbed
to something like 370%.

486
00:38:36,120 --> 00:38:38,880
This was not simply an
inconvenience.

487
00:38:39,240 --> 00:38:43,320
Every new worker had to be
brought through the gates,

488
00:38:43,600 --> 00:38:48,600
registered, instructed and
placed at his station.

489
00:38:49,280 --> 00:38:53,640
Even though the line had
simplified each task, every

490
00:38:53,640 --> 00:38:59,040
replacement still cost time,
supervision and small

491
00:38:59,040 --> 00:39:04,960
disruptions in the flow.
Absenteeism rose alongside it.

492
00:39:05,640 --> 00:39:10,360
On any given morning, roughly
one in 10 workers might fail to

493
00:39:10,360 --> 00:39:15,240
appear, leaving foremen
scrambling to redistribute men

494
00:39:15,240 --> 00:39:20,920
or pause sections of the line.
The factory's elegant geometry

495
00:39:20,920 --> 00:39:25,800
depended on bodies, and bodies
were leaving faster than the

496
00:39:25,800 --> 00:39:30,320
system could absorb.
Behind the numbers were ordinary

497
00:39:30,320 --> 00:39:34,160
stories.
A young Polish immigrant might

498
00:39:34,160 --> 00:39:39,200
last three days before deciding
the noise was unbearable, while

499
00:39:39,200 --> 00:39:43,520
a father of four might leave
because the pace gave him

500
00:39:43,520 --> 00:39:50,280
headaches he could not shake.
A young farmer's son, raised to

501
00:39:50,280 --> 00:39:55,440
work in unhurried rhythm, might
quit by mid morning of his first

502
00:39:55,440 --> 00:39:59,160
shift.
For Ford and his managers, the

503
00:39:59,160 --> 00:40:02,960
situation was both economic and
moral.

504
00:40:03,520 --> 00:40:08,240
The high turnover was a tax on
the line itself, eating into the

505
00:40:08,240 --> 00:40:12,040
very efficiency the system had
been designed to produce.

506
00:40:13,000 --> 00:40:17,800
Yet beyond the spreadsheet, it
raised a quieter question.

507
00:40:18,560 --> 00:40:23,840
If work could be made so easy to
learn that anyone could do it,

508
00:40:24,400 --> 00:40:29,280
but so unpleasant that few
wanted to stay, was that really

509
00:40:29,280 --> 00:40:32,800
progress?
The line had revealed something

510
00:40:32,800 --> 00:40:35,720
its inventors had not fully
anticipated.

511
00:40:36,240 --> 00:40:41,840
Speed and simplicity, separated
from any sense of pride or

512
00:40:41,840 --> 00:40:46,360
stake, did not quite hold a
working life together.

513
00:40:47,240 --> 00:40:51,240
Something else was needed,
something the old craft

514
00:40:51,240 --> 00:40:55,400
tradition had once provided
without anyone naming it.

515
00:40:55,760 --> 00:41:00,480
That autumn, Ford's managers
began drafting plans that would

516
00:41:00,480 --> 00:41:04,080
be unprecedented in American
industry.

517
00:41:04,920 --> 00:41:08,960
James Cousins, the company's
hard headed business manager,

518
00:41:09,480 --> 00:41:14,040
worked alongside Ford and the
production chiefs through long

519
00:41:14,040 --> 00:41:19,320
winter nights of calculation,
debate and revision.

520
00:41:20,360 --> 00:41:24,040
They had decided to do something
extraordinary.

521
00:41:24,480 --> 00:41:29,240
They would double wages, They
would shorten the work day, They

522
00:41:29,240 --> 00:41:33,920
would invite the world to look
at Highland Park not only as a

523
00:41:33,920 --> 00:41:38,480
place where cars were built
faster, but as a place where

524
00:41:38,480 --> 00:41:43,840
workers might, for the first
time in industrial memory, be

525
00:41:43,840 --> 00:41:47,720
paid enough to afford the very
cars they were assembling.

526
00:41:48,120 --> 00:41:52,840
The announcement, when it came,
would astonish the country.

527
00:41:53,280 --> 00:41:59,520
The announcement came on a
January morning in 1914.

528
00:42:00,480 --> 00:42:04,600
Ford Motor Company called
reporters to a small office in

529
00:42:04,600 --> 00:42:09,840
Highland Park and shared a
number that did not at first

530
00:42:10,040 --> 00:42:14,760
seem possible.
Workers at Ford would now be

531
00:42:14,760 --> 00:42:19,240
paid $5 a day for 8 hours of
Labor.

532
00:42:19,640 --> 00:42:25,200
The previous wage had been about
$2.00 and 1/4 for a nine hour

533
00:42:25,200 --> 00:42:30,160
shift, roughly the going rate in
Detroit factories.

534
00:42:31,120 --> 00:42:35,320
The new figure more than doubled
what most workers had been

535
00:42:35,320 --> 00:42:39,480
earning the day before.
The shift had also been

536
00:42:39,480 --> 00:42:45,200
shortened, allowing the plant to
run 3 full 8 hour rotations

537
00:42:45,200 --> 00:42:50,280
across each day and night.
The reaction was immediate and

538
00:42:50,280 --> 00:42:54,320
almost theatrical.
Reporters telegraphed the news

539
00:42:54,320 --> 00:42:59,000
to other cities, and editorial
writers on Wall Street called

540
00:42:59,000 --> 00:43:04,760
the decision insane, predicting
that Ford had condemned his

541
00:43:04,760 --> 00:43:09,440
company to ruin.
Yet labor organizers and

542
00:43:09,440 --> 00:43:13,200
ordinary workers across America
felt something close to

543
00:43:13,200 --> 00:43:16,200
disbelief in the other
direction.

544
00:43:16,560 --> 00:43:20,960
Within hours, men began
traveling toward Highland Park.

545
00:43:21,600 --> 00:43:26,800
Within days, crowds had gathered
at the gates in numbers no one

546
00:43:26,800 --> 00:43:31,160
had anticipated.
By the second week of January,

547
00:43:31,720 --> 00:43:36,800
thousands stood outside in
freezing weather, some sleeping

548
00:43:36,800 --> 00:43:42,400
on sidewalks, others arriving by
overnight train from Pittsburgh,

549
00:43:42,400 --> 00:43:47,200
Cleveland and Chicago, hoping
for the chance to apply.

550
00:43:47,640 --> 00:43:51,600
The crowds eventually grew so
dense that fire hoses were

551
00:43:51,600 --> 00:43:55,680
turned upon them in the bitter
cold to disperse them.

552
00:43:56,720 --> 00:44:01,480
Photographs of those scenes
still survive, showing men

553
00:44:01,480 --> 00:44:06,960
huddled wet in the hard light of
January, waiting for a number

554
00:44:06,960 --> 00:44:09,800
that had seemed impossible the
week before.

555
00:44:10,080 --> 00:44:15,080
Ford's reasoning was,
characteristically, a mixture of

556
00:44:15,080 --> 00:44:19,880
moral conviction and shrewd
business calculation.

557
00:44:21,000 --> 00:44:25,920
He spoke publicly about wanting
his workers to be able to afford

558
00:44:25,920 --> 00:44:28,000
the very cars they were
building.

559
00:44:29,000 --> 00:44:32,840
He spoke of the dignity of
Labor, of the importance of

560
00:44:32,840 --> 00:44:36,560
family life, of a country in
which workers should share in

561
00:44:36,560 --> 00:44:39,040
the prosperity they help to
create.

562
00:44:39,440 --> 00:44:44,160
Privately, his manager spoke
also of the turnover crisis.

563
00:44:44,760 --> 00:44:48,760
Doubling wages, they had
concluded, would be cheaper than

564
00:44:48,760 --> 00:44:52,920
the constant hiring of
replacements and would yield a

565
00:44:52,920 --> 00:44:57,400
more skilled, more loyal, more
rested workforce.

566
00:44:58,240 --> 00:45:04,200
Both stories were true.
The $5 day was real generosity,

567
00:45:04,680 --> 00:45:09,240
and it was real strategy, and
the two were not separable.

568
00:45:09,600 --> 00:45:12,680
The world watched, and the world
listened.

569
00:45:13,000 --> 00:45:17,280
For the first time in IT
industrial history, a major

570
00:45:17,280 --> 00:45:22,240
company had declared that an
ordinary factory worker deserved

571
00:45:22,240 --> 00:45:27,720
a living wage, not merely A
subsistence. 1 Whatever else

572
00:45:27,720 --> 00:45:34,120
followed that idea had been said
out loud in a way that could not

573
00:45:34,120 --> 00:45:39,120
be entirely unsaid.
Highland Park, already famous

574
00:45:39,120 --> 00:45:43,720
for its glass walls and its
moving chain, had become famous

575
00:45:43,720 --> 00:45:49,040
for something else as well.
The age of the assembly line had

576
00:45:49,040 --> 00:45:54,240
also become briefly the age of
the well paid assembler.

577
00:45:54,640 --> 00:45:57,400
The new wage came with a
condition.

578
00:45:57,960 --> 00:46:03,640
Not every Ford worker would
receive the full $5, only those

579
00:46:03,640 --> 00:46:08,640
who, in the company's view, had
earned the right to share in its

580
00:46:08,640 --> 00:46:13,480
profits.
To determine who qualified, Ford

581
00:46:13,480 --> 00:46:17,720
established a body that would
soon become famous and

582
00:46:17,720 --> 00:46:22,080
controversial in equal measure,
the Sociological Department.

583
00:46:22,520 --> 00:46:26,080
The department was created in
the same year the wage was

584
00:46:26,080 --> 00:46:29,200
announced.
It was eventually led by the

585
00:46:29,200 --> 00:46:34,240
Reverend Samuel Marquis, a
thoughtful Episcopal clergyman

586
00:46:34,640 --> 00:46:38,320
who had been a friend and
chaplain to the Ford family.

587
00:46:39,080 --> 00:46:45,280
Its mandate was unprecedented.
To investigate the home lives of

588
00:46:45,280 --> 00:46:51,240
Ford's workers and to decide
whose habits made them worthy of

589
00:46:51,240 --> 00:46:56,120
the company's generosity,
investigators were sent across

590
00:46:56,120 --> 00:47:00,400
Detroit in numbers that grew
rapidly into the hundreds.

591
00:47:01,120 --> 00:47:06,040
They knocked on doors, examined
kitchens and bedrooms, asked

592
00:47:06,040 --> 00:47:10,520
questions about savings in
drinking and church attendance.

593
00:47:11,400 --> 00:47:16,280
They sat down at family tables,
observed the cleanliness of the

594
00:47:16,280 --> 00:47:22,120
home, and inquired into how a
man spent his evenings and his

595
00:47:22,120 --> 00:47:25,960
Sunday afternoons.
Several conditions had to be

596
00:47:25,960 --> 00:47:29,200
met.
A worker had to be of

597
00:47:29,200 --> 00:47:35,080
demonstrated sobriety, free from
gambling debts, and of good

598
00:47:35,080 --> 00:47:39,040
moral character.
As the department understood it,

599
00:47:39,920 --> 00:47:44,320
he should be supporting his
family in a stable home, not

600
00:47:44,320 --> 00:47:49,640
living in a boarding house.
If he was an immigrant, he

601
00:47:49,640 --> 00:47:54,040
should be enrolled in the Ford
English school, learning the

602
00:47:54,040 --> 00:47:58,640
language of his new country.
The department maintained large

603
00:47:58,640 --> 00:48:02,480
files on 10s of thousands of
workers.

604
00:48:03,360 --> 00:48:09,160
A man whose habits did not meet
expectations could be reduced to

605
00:48:09,160 --> 00:48:14,280
the basic wage, told what he
needed to change and given a

606
00:48:14,280 --> 00:48:19,280
chance to improve.
A man who refused to Co operate

607
00:48:19,720 --> 00:48:25,240
could be dismissed altogether.
Some workers welcomed the help.

608
00:48:25,920 --> 00:48:31,000
The department offered loans,
advice on home buying and

609
00:48:31,000 --> 00:48:34,240
assistance with naturalization
papers.

610
00:48:35,200 --> 00:48:39,960
Many immigrant families later
credited Ford's investigators

611
00:48:39,960 --> 00:48:45,200
with helping them settle into
American life in ways no one

612
00:48:45,200 --> 00:48:50,040
else had bothered to provide.
But others found the arrangement

613
00:48:50,280 --> 00:48:55,480
deeply intrusive.
The right to be paid a fair wage

614
00:48:55,480 --> 00:49:00,120
had become entangled with the
obligation to live a particular

615
00:49:00,120 --> 00:49:05,200
kind of private life.
Welfare and surveillance had

616
00:49:05,200 --> 00:49:10,600
been braided together in a way
that made each indistinguishable

617
00:49:10,600 --> 00:49:14,120
from the other.
In time, the department

618
00:49:14,120 --> 00:49:17,040
softened.
Reverend Marcus grew

619
00:49:17,040 --> 00:49:22,760
uncomfortable with what he came
to see as moral overreach and

620
00:49:22,760 --> 00:49:26,920
eventually resigned.
The department's broader

621
00:49:26,920 --> 00:49:32,400
investigative role faded, and
within several years it had been

622
00:49:32,400 --> 00:49:37,440
quietly dismantled.
Yet its legacy lingered.

623
00:49:38,320 --> 00:49:43,320
Ford had shown the country what
a company could do when its

624
00:49:43,320 --> 00:49:48,040
ambition extended past the gates
and into the kitchens of its

625
00:49:48,040 --> 00:49:52,760
workers.
Whether that was a kindness or a

626
00:49:52,760 --> 00:49:58,000
quiet form of control depended
very much on which side of the

627
00:49:58,000 --> 00:50:01,800
doorway 1 stood.
What had been born in Highland

628
00:50:01,800 --> 00:50:07,600
Park did not stay there long.
Within a few years, other

629
00:50:07,600 --> 00:50:11,400
automobile companies were
redesigning their factories

630
00:50:11,400 --> 00:50:13,640
around moving lines of their
own.

631
00:50:14,600 --> 00:50:17,640
Some hired Ford engineers to
advise them.

632
00:50:18,480 --> 00:50:24,000
Others studied the published
descriptions, sent observers to

633
00:50:24,000 --> 00:50:29,000
Detroit, or simply reverse
engineered what they saw at car

634
00:50:29,000 --> 00:50:34,520
shows and dealer demonstrations.
The principal was generous in

635
00:50:34,520 --> 00:50:38,520
its portability.
A line could be set to almost

636
00:50:38,520 --> 00:50:43,960
any speed, divided into almost
any number of stations, and

637
00:50:43,960 --> 00:50:48,240
adapted to almost any product
made of standardized parts.

638
00:50:49,240 --> 00:50:53,760
As the technology of conveyors,
motors, and overhead rails

639
00:50:53,760 --> 00:50:58,720
matured, the technique spread
far beyond the building of cars.

640
00:50:59,120 --> 00:51:03,640
Refrigerators began rolling out
of Frigidaire and Kelvinator

641
00:51:03,640 --> 00:51:07,720
plants on lines of their own
washing machines.

642
00:51:07,880 --> 00:51:12,680
Vacuum cleaners and electric
stoves followed quickly.

643
00:51:13,640 --> 00:51:17,560
A nation that had once relied on
Craftsman for its household

644
00:51:17,560 --> 00:51:23,200
goods was learning instead to
buy them off the line in

645
00:51:23,200 --> 00:51:27,880
identical multitudes, at prices
that kept falling year by year.

646
00:51:28,200 --> 00:51:31,600
Aviation took up the method
during wartime.

647
00:51:32,400 --> 00:51:36,880
The vast Willow Run plant, built
West of Detroit during the

648
00:51:36,880 --> 00:51:41,680
Second World War, was designed
to assemble heavy bombers on a

649
00:51:41,680 --> 00:51:45,640
moving line at the rate of 1 per
hour.

650
00:51:46,440 --> 00:51:49,960
The technique that had once
raised eyebrows. 19 of their

651
00:51:49,960 --> 00:51:54,880
outlanders had become a
foundation of National Defence.

652
00:51:55,160 --> 00:51:59,560
Other countries adopted it with
their own particular emphasis.

653
00:52:00,320 --> 00:52:04,000
The Soviet Union studied
Highland Park carefully and

654
00:52:04,000 --> 00:52:08,880
built its own great factories on
the same logic, hiring Albert

655
00:52:08,880 --> 00:52:11,160
Kahn's firm to design many of
them.

656
00:52:12,120 --> 00:52:17,040
Japan would decades later
refined the approach with such

657
00:52:17,040 --> 00:52:22,040
care that it eventually changed
the world's understanding of

658
00:52:22,040 --> 00:52:27,480
efficiency itself.
The technique even acquired a

659
00:52:27,480 --> 00:52:32,560
name around the world.
Observers began Speaking of

660
00:52:32,680 --> 00:52:37,640
Fordism, A shorthand for the
entire philosophy of mass

661
00:52:37,640 --> 00:52:43,320
production, by moving line with
high wages, standardized

662
00:52:43,320 --> 00:52:47,880
products, and large consumer
markets to absorb the output.

663
00:52:48,320 --> 00:52:51,520
Ford himself helped to spread
the gospel.

664
00:52:51,880 --> 00:52:56,040
In his autobiography, written
with the journalist Samuel

665
00:52:56,040 --> 00:53:00,400
Crowther, he laid out the
principles of the system with

666
00:53:00,400 --> 00:53:05,640
confident clarity, and the book
was translated into many

667
00:53:05,640 --> 00:53:10,520
languages.
Industrialists, engineers and

668
00:53:10,600 --> 00:53:15,800
even philosophers studied it
with serious attention.

669
00:53:16,120 --> 00:53:21,440
Not everyone celebrated.
Critics pointed out that Fordism

670
00:53:21,440 --> 00:53:26,600
produced extraordinary goods at
the cost of extraordinary

671
00:53:26,600 --> 00:53:31,720
monotony, and that something
essential about human work was

672
00:53:31,720 --> 00:53:35,240
being quietly traded for cheaper
appliances.

673
00:53:36,000 --> 00:53:40,120
The argument would continue for
the rest of the century, and

674
00:53:40,200 --> 00:53:45,200
indeed continue still.
But whatever one thought of the

675
00:53:45,200 --> 00:53:50,200
trade, it had been made.
The factory floor that emerged

676
00:53:50,200 --> 00:53:55,000
from the chain at Highland Park
became the factory floor of the

677
00:53:55,000 --> 00:53:59,200
modern world.
By the middle of the century, a

678
00:53:59,200 --> 00:54:04,360
child raised in any industrial
nation would never have known

679
00:54:04,480 --> 00:54:09,520
any other kind of making.
For the buyer of a Model T, the

680
00:54:09,520 --> 00:54:14,400
most visible consequence of the
moving line was the price.

681
00:54:15,240 --> 00:54:19,880
When the car had first been
introduced, it had cost about

682
00:54:19,880 --> 00:54:26,240
$850, a sum that already placed
it within reach of the middle

683
00:54:26,240 --> 00:54:31,440
class household.
As the line grew faster and the

684
00:54:31,440 --> 00:54:35,280
company larger, that price began
to fall.

685
00:54:35,600 --> 00:54:40,360
By the early 1920s, a basic
Model T could be purchased for

686
00:54:40,360 --> 00:54:45,560
just over $300.
By the middle of that decade, it

687
00:54:45,560 --> 00:54:51,120
had fallen to around 260.
A car that had once been a

688
00:54:51,120 --> 00:54:56,400
serious investment for a small
farmer or shopkeeper was

689
00:54:56,400 --> 00:55:00,840
becoming instead something like
an appliance.

690
00:55:01,200 --> 00:55:03,600
The savings came from many
sources.

691
00:55:04,040 --> 00:55:07,960
Vertical integration brought
iron, glass, rubber and timber

692
00:55:08,400 --> 00:55:14,160
under Ford's own ownership, and
standardized design eliminated

693
00:55:14,400 --> 00:55:19,320
nearly all variation.
Most Model T's came in only one

694
00:55:19,320 --> 00:55:25,640
body style and famously in only
one color, a deep black chosen

695
00:55:26,040 --> 00:55:30,960
because that particular paint
dried fastest on the line.

696
00:55:31,400 --> 00:55:35,360
By the middle of the decade,
more than half of the cars on

697
00:55:35,360 --> 00:55:41,560
American roads were Model T's.
Around 15 million of them were

698
00:55:41,560 --> 00:55:47,080
eventually built, a figure no
other car had approached and few

699
00:55:47,320 --> 00:55:51,440
would ever match.
The little black machine,

700
00:55:51,680 --> 00:55:57,160
sometimes affectionately called
the Tin Lizzy, had become the

701
00:55:57,160 --> 00:56:01,440
most recognizable object in
American transportation.

702
00:56:01,840 --> 00:56:05,240
The country itself began to
change shape.

703
00:56:05,240 --> 00:56:10,280
Around it, roads that had once
been dirt tracks were paved,

704
00:56:10,280 --> 00:56:14,480
lengthened and connected, and
service stations appeared on the

705
00:56:14,480 --> 00:56:19,760
outskirts of small towns.
New kinds of businesses, the

706
00:56:19,760 --> 00:56:24,440
drive in the roadside diner, the
motor court that would soon

707
00:56:24,440 --> 00:56:29,080
shorten its name to motel,
sprouted along the routes the

708
00:56:29,080 --> 00:56:32,480
Model T was opening.
Family life shifted with the

709
00:56:32,480 --> 00:56:36,800
geography.
Sunday drives became a national

710
00:56:36,800 --> 00:56:40,040
pastime.
Distant relatives could be

711
00:56:40,040 --> 00:56:45,440
visited without weeks of
planning, and young people could

712
00:56:45,440 --> 00:56:49,720
court at greater distances than
their grandparents would have

713
00:56:49,720 --> 00:56:55,120
imagined possible.
The horizon of ordinary American

714
00:56:55,120 --> 00:56:59,040
life had grown wider almost
overnight.

715
00:56:59,440 --> 00:57:05,120
Cities reshaped themselves, too.
Suburbs, once limited to the

716
00:57:05,120 --> 00:57:09,320
reach of Street car lines, could
now extend further into the

717
00:57:09,320 --> 00:57:13,760
countryside, drawn outward by
the patient pull of an

718
00:57:13,760 --> 00:57:19,120
automobile in every driveway.
Downtowns began the slow

719
00:57:19,120 --> 00:57:24,800
accommodation, sometimes
painful, sometimes proud of

720
00:57:24,800 --> 00:57:29,200
becoming places to drive to
rather than to walk through.

721
00:57:29,560 --> 00:57:34,080
There were costs, naturally.
Horses were displaced.

722
00:57:34,360 --> 00:57:39,600
Small carriage makers vanished
and entire crafts and skills

723
00:57:39,680 --> 00:57:44,760
faded into nostalgia.
The air over busy streets grew

724
00:57:44,760 --> 00:57:50,240
thicker and the rhythm of small
towns, once tuned to the speeds

725
00:57:50,240 --> 00:57:55,240
of feet and hoofs, began to
syncopate with the engine.

726
00:57:55,600 --> 00:58:01,120
Yet for an enormous portion of
the country, the Model T felt

727
00:58:01,120 --> 00:58:07,000
less like a luxury and more like
a household necessity that had

728
00:58:07,000 --> 00:58:10,880
finally arrived.
The car had stopped being a

729
00:58:10,880 --> 00:58:15,960
curiosity and become a fixture
in less than a generation.

730
00:58:16,360 --> 00:58:21,240
While the Model T was reshaping
the country, its maker was

731
00:58:21,240 --> 00:58:23,760
acquiring a different kind of
voice.

732
00:58:24,680 --> 00:58:29,800
In the years just after the
First World War, Henry Ford

733
00:58:29,800 --> 00:58:34,920
purchased a small newspaper in
his hometown of Dearborn, MI,

734
00:58:35,520 --> 00:58:41,720
called the Dearborn Independent.
It had been a quiet, parochial

735
00:58:41,720 --> 00:58:47,000
weekly with limited circulation
and limited ambition.

736
00:58:47,320 --> 00:58:51,480
Under Ford's ownership, it
became something else entirely.

737
00:58:52,280 --> 00:58:56,440
He poured resources into it,
hired editors and writers,

738
00:58:56,920 --> 00:59:02,720
expanded its reach, and turned
what had been a local paper into

739
00:59:02,720 --> 00:59:07,880
a national publication, carrying
his name and his views into

740
00:59:07,880 --> 00:59:13,400
homes across the country.
By the middle of its expansion,

741
00:59:13,680 --> 00:59:18,440
it was reaching readers from
rural Vermont to small towns in

742
00:59:18,440 --> 00:59:24,440
California and into the farm
houses of the American Midwest.

743
00:59:24,840 --> 00:59:29,480
The most striking feature of his
ownership was his distribution

744
00:59:29,480 --> 00:59:32,440
method.
Every Ford dealership in the

745
00:59:32,440 --> 00:59:37,960
United States was expected to
encourage subscriptions, and

746
00:59:37,960 --> 00:59:44,720
sales of Model T's and copies of
the Dearborn Independent would

747
00:59:44,720 --> 00:59:50,840
be linked, sometimes politely,
sometimes with explicit pressure

748
00:59:50,840 --> 00:59:55,360
from above.
Within a few years, the paper's

749
00:59:55,360 --> 00:59:59,040
circulation rose into the
hundreds of thousands.

750
00:59:59,320 --> 01:00:03,080
Ford himself rarely wrote for
the paper directly.

751
01:00:03,640 --> 01:00:08,440
The visible editor was a
journalist named William J

752
01:00:08,440 --> 01:00:13,000
Cameron, and much of the
editorial direction was guided

753
01:00:13,000 --> 01:00:18,600
by Ernest Lee Bold, Ford's long
time executive secretary.

754
01:00:19,320 --> 01:00:21,600
But its readers understood
correctly.

755
01:00:22,160 --> 01:00:26,960
That the views inside reflected
those of the man whose name was

756
01:00:26,960 --> 01:00:31,880
on the title page.
For a while, the content was a

757
01:00:32,280 --> 01:00:36,760
familiar mix for an opinion
paper of its time.

758
01:00:37,480 --> 01:00:41,520
There were articles about
farming, about industry, about

759
01:00:41,520 --> 01:00:45,360
politics, about the Ford Motor
Company itself.

760
01:00:46,080 --> 01:00:49,920
There were editorials on
temperance, on labor, on the

761
01:00:49,920 --> 01:00:54,920
dangers of cities and the
virtues of plain American life.

762
01:00:55,280 --> 01:00:59,520
But there was also,
increasingly, something else.

763
01:01:00,240 --> 01:01:05,800
Beginning in the spring of 1920,
the paper launched a series of

764
01:01:05,800 --> 01:01:11,520
articles that would, in time,
come to define its legacy more

765
01:01:11,520 --> 01:01:16,520
than anything else it published.
The series was titled With

766
01:01:16,520 --> 01:01:22,280
Deceptive Sobriety and its
subject was, in plain terms, the

767
01:01:22,280 --> 01:01:26,360
Jewish people.
The articles drew heavily on a

768
01:01:26,360 --> 01:01:30,440
notorious forgery already
circulating in Europe, the

769
01:01:30,440 --> 01:01:34,360
so-called Protocols of the
Elders of Zion.

770
01:01:35,160 --> 01:01:39,720
They blamed Jewish people,
vaguely and broadly, for many of

771
01:01:39,720 --> 01:01:41,720
the troubles of the modern
world.

772
01:01:42,400 --> 01:01:45,880
They were not subtle and they
were not honest.

773
01:01:46,280 --> 01:01:50,480
The Dearborn Independent had
become something it had never

774
01:01:50,480 --> 01:01:55,560
been before, a vehicle for
sustained anti-Semitic

775
01:01:55,560 --> 01:01:59,960
publishing, financed and
authorized by one of the most

776
01:01:59,960 --> 01:02:03,880
famous and admired
industrialists in the world.

777
01:02:04,640 --> 01:02:10,600
Its reach gave its content a
credibility it would not

778
01:02:10,600 --> 01:02:15,360
otherwise have possessed.
Ford was no longer only the man

779
01:02:15,360 --> 01:02:18,880
who built cars.
He had become, by his own

780
01:02:18,880 --> 01:02:24,360
choice, a publisher whose pages
carried prejudice into kitchens

781
01:02:24,360 --> 01:02:27,800
and farm houses well beyond
Dearborn.

782
01:02:28,280 --> 01:02:32,640
The series was called The
International Jew and over the

783
01:02:32,640 --> 01:02:36,400
next year and a half the
Dearborn Independent published

784
01:02:36,400 --> 01:02:41,920
it in installments.
Roughly 91 weekly articles

785
01:02:41,920 --> 01:02:46,800
appeared drawing on anti-Semitic
traditions long present in

786
01:02:46,800 --> 01:02:51,040
Europe and applying them to
American life.

787
01:02:51,480 --> 01:02:55,320
The articles accused Jewish
people of secretly controlling

788
01:02:55,320 --> 01:03:00,240
banks, governments, theatre,
music, sports, agriculture and

789
01:03:00,240 --> 01:03:04,240
the news.
They cited the discredited

790
01:03:04,240 --> 01:03:09,000
Protocols of the Elders of Zion
as if it were a genuine

791
01:03:09,000 --> 01:03:12,440
document.
They presented invented

792
01:03:12,440 --> 01:03:17,640
coordination as fact and
presented Jewish religious life

793
01:03:17,640 --> 01:03:22,760
and tradition as a kind of
conspiracy hidden from view.

794
01:03:23,240 --> 01:03:27,360
The articles were eventually
collected into 4 volumes and

795
01:03:27,360 --> 01:03:31,560
published as a book.
That book was sold cheaply,

796
01:03:32,080 --> 01:03:37,280
sometimes given away through
Ford dealerships, and translated

797
01:03:37,280 --> 01:03:42,800
into German, Russian, Spanish,
Polish and many other languages.

798
01:03:43,720 --> 01:03:48,480
Copies travelled across
continents and oceans into

799
01:03:48,480 --> 01:03:54,440
nations whose own histories of
anti-Semitism were already deep

800
01:03:54,840 --> 01:03:59,120
and dangerous.
In Germany, the book found a

801
01:03:59,120 --> 01:04:04,360
particularly receptive audience.
A young politician in Munich

802
01:04:04,360 --> 01:04:09,160
named Adolf Hitler praised Henry
Ford by name in his own book,

803
01:04:09,600 --> 01:04:15,400
Mein Kampf, and kept a portrait
of Ford on his office wall.

804
01:04:16,400 --> 01:04:20,840
To Nazi propagandists, Henry
Ford's status as a Great

805
01:04:20,840 --> 01:04:26,120
American industrialist made his
words enormously useful.

806
01:04:26,440 --> 01:04:30,920
In the United States, the
response was slower, but

807
01:04:30,920 --> 01:04:35,600
eventually serious.
Jewish communities and civic

808
01:04:35,600 --> 01:04:42,000
groups protested, boycotts of
Ford cars were organized, and

809
01:04:42,000 --> 01:04:47,760
rabbis, public figures and
ordinary readers wrote letters

810
01:04:47,760 --> 01:04:51,720
of outrage that stacked higher
in Ford's offices.

811
01:04:52,080 --> 01:04:57,280
Eventually, a single lawsuit
changed the picture.

812
01:04:58,080 --> 01:05:02,960
A Chicago lawyer and farmer
organizer named Aaron Sapiro

813
01:05:03,480 --> 01:05:08,720
sued Ford for libel after the
Dearborn Independent attacked

814
01:05:08,720 --> 01:05:12,360
him by name in a series of
articles about Jewish

815
01:05:12,360 --> 01:05:17,280
involvement in agriculture.
The case dragged through courts

816
01:05:17,280 --> 01:05:23,240
and headlines, forcing Ford to a
public reckoning he had avoided

817
01:05:23,480 --> 01:05:27,720
for years.
In the late 1920s, Ford issued a

818
01:05:27,720 --> 01:05:32,720
written apology and retraction.
The statement disavowed the

819
01:05:32,720 --> 01:05:37,360
articles and pledged to
discontinue the anti-Semitic

820
01:05:37,360 --> 01:05:41,600
content.
The signature was Ford's, but

821
01:05:41,600 --> 01:05:47,360
the words by most accounts had
been drafted by others, and the

822
01:05:47,360 --> 01:05:52,160
apology was widely doubted in
its sincerity even at the time.

823
01:05:52,560 --> 01:05:58,800
The Dearborn Independent itself
was eventually closed, yet the

824
01:05:58,800 --> 01:06:03,440
damage that its articles had
done could not be retracted.

825
01:06:04,560 --> 01:06:09,200
Translated copies of The
International Jew continued to

826
01:06:09,200 --> 01:06:13,720
circulate in Europe long after
the original paper had folded,

827
01:06:14,240 --> 01:06:18,760
contributing to a poisonous
current of opinion that would,

828
01:06:18,920 --> 01:06:22,960
within little more than a
decade, find its terrible

829
01:06:22,960 --> 01:06:27,880
expression.
In 1938, Ford accepted the Grand

830
01:06:27,880 --> 01:06:32,560
Cross of the German Eagle from
the Nazi government, the highest

831
01:06:32,640 --> 01:06:36,000
honor the regime offered to
foreigners.

832
01:06:36,680 --> 01:06:42,080
He was photographed receiving it
smiling in his old age.

833
01:06:42,800 --> 01:06:46,880
He was no longer the same young
inventor in the alley behind

834
01:06:46,880 --> 01:06:51,560
Bagley Ave. and the photograph
remained as evidence.

835
01:06:51,960 --> 01:06:56,760
The $5 day had once made Henry
Ford famous as a friend of the

836
01:06:56,760 --> 01:07:00,120
working man.
By the time the assembly line

837
01:07:00,120 --> 01:07:05,160
was a generation old, that
reputation had grown harder to

838
01:07:05,160 --> 01:07:09,160
defend.
The same factory that had once

839
01:07:09,160 --> 01:07:14,760
doubled wages overnight now
resisted with unusual ferocity

840
01:07:15,320 --> 01:07:19,200
the workers attempts to organize
themselves into a union.

841
01:07:19,520 --> 01:07:24,560
In the 1930's, the Congress of
Industrial Organizations was

842
01:07:24,560 --> 01:07:26,680
sweeping through American
industry.

843
01:07:27,200 --> 01:07:32,200
Steel workers, auto workers and
others were forming powerful new

844
01:07:32,200 --> 01:07:37,280
unions, demanding the right to
bargain collectively over wages,

845
01:07:37,560 --> 01:07:42,520
hours and conditions.
General Motors and Chrysler had

846
01:07:42,520 --> 01:07:46,760
eventually accepted the United
Automobile Workers.

847
01:07:47,240 --> 01:07:50,080
Ford had not.
At the heart of Ford's

848
01:07:50,080 --> 01:07:52,760
resistance was a man named Harry
Bennett.

849
01:07:53,440 --> 01:07:58,920
He had begun his career as a
sailor and an amateur boxer, and

850
01:07:58,920 --> 01:08:04,160
he had risen through the company
by becoming Henry Ford's most

851
01:08:04,160 --> 01:08:08,720
trusted enforcer.
He led a unit known as the

852
01:08:08,720 --> 01:08:14,280
Service Department, a private
security force that grew in time

853
01:08:14,760 --> 01:08:18,760
into one of the largest such
operations in the country.

854
01:08:19,120 --> 01:08:23,399
The Service Department was not a
polite organization.

855
01:08:24,200 --> 01:08:29,080
It maintained a network of
informants inside the plants and

856
01:08:29,080 --> 01:08:34,960
investigated, workers say,
Suspected of union sympathies.

857
01:08:35,840 --> 01:08:41,200
It intervened, sometimes with
quiet pressure, sometimes with

858
01:08:41,200 --> 01:08:44,840
bare violence, to discourage
organizing.

859
01:08:45,240 --> 01:08:51,399
In May of 1937, that pattern
reached one of its most public

860
01:08:51,399 --> 01:08:56,240
moments.
UAW organizers, including a

861
01:08:56,240 --> 01:09:01,319
young Walter Reuther, gathered
on a pedestrian overpass leading

862
01:09:01,319 --> 01:09:06,720
into the Rouge plant in Dearborn
to distribute leaflets.

863
01:09:07,760 --> 01:09:11,279
Photographers from Detroit
newspapers were present.

864
01:09:11,640 --> 01:09:15,200
Bennett's men met them on the
overpass.

865
01:09:15,680 --> 01:09:19,160
Ruther and the other organizers
were beaten in front of the

866
01:09:19,160 --> 01:09:24,040
cameras, and the photographs
that ran the next day showing

867
01:09:24,040 --> 01:09:29,000
well dressed organizers being
attacked by burly security men

868
01:09:29,760 --> 01:09:34,880
became some of the most iconic
labor images of the century.

869
01:09:35,800 --> 01:09:40,200
The event was remembered ever
after as the Battle of the

870
01:09:40,200 --> 01:09:44,720
Overpass.
Ford resisted unionization for

871
01:09:44,720 --> 01:09:48,560
several more years.
While other automakers had

872
01:09:48,560 --> 01:09:53,840
reached agreements with the UAW.
Ford continued to hold out,

873
01:09:54,320 --> 01:09:59,360
sometimes with rhetoric of
paternal care, sometimes through

874
01:09:59,360 --> 01:10:04,200
Bennett's harder methods.
Henry Ford himself spoke

875
01:10:04,200 --> 01:10:10,640
publicly of unions as outside
agitators, claiming his workers

876
01:10:10,640 --> 01:10:15,080
needed no representation other
than his own goodwill.

877
01:10:15,440 --> 01:10:19,240
In time, even that resistance
gave way.

878
01:10:20,160 --> 01:10:24,280
By the early years of the Second
World War, the Ford Motor

879
01:10:24,280 --> 01:10:27,680
Company signed an agreement with
the UAW.

880
01:10:28,400 --> 01:10:33,440
The terms, when they came, were
among the most favourable any

881
01:10:33,440 --> 01:10:39,440
automaker had granted, including
a closed shop and competitive

882
01:10:39,440 --> 01:10:43,800
wages.
The strange arc had run its

883
01:10:43,800 --> 01:10:46,560
course.
The man who had once been

884
01:10:46,560 --> 01:10:51,520
celebrated as Labour's greatest
friend ended his industrial

885
01:10:51,520 --> 01:10:55,880
career in open conflict with
Labour itself.

886
01:10:56,880 --> 01:10:59,920
The two stories were not
contradictions.

887
01:11:00,520 --> 01:11:04,360
They were threads of the same
complicated cloth.

888
01:11:04,800 --> 01:11:09,880
For two decades, the Model T had
been Ford's monument.

889
01:11:10,920 --> 01:11:15,200
By the middle of the 1920s,
however, the world was beginning

890
01:11:15,200 --> 01:11:19,560
to drift away from it.
Other automobile companies were

891
01:11:19,560 --> 01:11:24,960
offering newer designs, more
comfort, more colors, more

892
01:11:24,960 --> 01:11:29,800
change from year to year, and
ordinary buyers were beginning

893
01:11:29,800 --> 01:11:32,640
to want what was on off
elsewhere.

894
01:11:33,000 --> 01:11:39,320
Ford resisted.
He was, by this point, unwilling

895
01:11:39,320 --> 01:11:43,840
to accept that the car he had
built for the multitude was no

896
01:11:43,840 --> 01:11:46,480
longer what the Multitude
wanted.

897
01:11:47,360 --> 01:11:51,920
For years he insisted the Model
T would suffice, that

898
01:11:51,920 --> 01:11:57,120
improvements were unnecessary,
that the simple black machine

899
01:11:57,360 --> 01:12:02,680
remained the right answer.
In May of 1927, after about

900
01:12:02,680 --> 01:12:07,360
15,000,000 had been built,
production of the Model T

901
01:12:07,560 --> 01:12:11,920
finally ended.
The line that had defined an

902
01:12:11,920 --> 01:12:17,640
industrial era stopped, and a
new model called the Model A was

903
01:12:17,640 --> 01:12:21,560
put into development for the
late autumn of that year.

904
01:12:22,520 --> 01:12:25,760
There was a strange pause across
the factories during the

905
01:12:25,760 --> 01:12:30,640
transition, as Highland Park and
other plants retooled themselves

906
01:12:30,880 --> 01:12:34,480
for the next car.
By that time, however, the

907
01:12:34,480 --> 01:12:38,440
center of gravity of Ford's
empire had already begun to

908
01:12:38,440 --> 01:12:41,880
shift.
A few miles South of Highland

909
01:12:41,880 --> 01:12:48,120
Park in Dearborn, a vast new
complex had been rising along

910
01:12:48,120 --> 01:12:52,440
the river since the years just
after the First World War.

911
01:12:53,320 --> 01:12:58,160
It was called the River Rouge,
plant name for the small river

912
01:12:58,160 --> 01:13:01,320
that ran through it.
The Rouge was something even

913
01:13:01,320 --> 01:13:04,200
more ambitious than Highland
Park had been.

914
01:13:05,000 --> 01:13:10,560
It was designed not merely as a
factory, but as an entire

915
01:13:10,560 --> 01:13:15,920
industrial ecosystem.
Coal arrived on Ford's own

916
01:13:15,920 --> 01:13:20,880
ships, and iron ore came from
Ford's own mines in the upper

917
01:13:20,880 --> 01:13:26,440
Midwest, hauled across the Great
Lakes on Ford's own freighters.

918
01:13:27,440 --> 01:13:31,920
Inside the complex were
foundries, glass works,

919
01:13:32,200 --> 01:13:38,040
sawmills, and a power plant.
What Ford had imagined was a

920
01:13:38,040 --> 01:13:42,040
place where raw earth could
enter at one end and finished

921
01:13:42,080 --> 01:13:45,480
automobiles could leave at the
other.

922
01:13:46,360 --> 01:13:51,880
Vertical integration, taken to
its furthest extreme, had become

923
01:13:52,080 --> 01:13:57,920
a single, sprawling sight.
Albert Kahn designed many of its

924
01:13:57,920 --> 01:14:02,440
principal buildings, his
concrete and glass vocabulary

925
01:14:02,880 --> 01:14:06,280
now applied at an even greater
scale.

926
01:14:06,720 --> 01:14:11,400
By the time it reached its full
extent, the Rouge employed about

927
01:14:11,440 --> 01:14:16,400
100,000 workers, more than any
other manufacturing site in the

928
01:14:16,400 --> 01:14:20,240
world.
It made not only cars, but

929
01:14:20,240 --> 01:14:24,680
railroad ties, paper and even
cement.

930
01:14:25,720 --> 01:14:32,000
A single industrial address had
become its own small city with

931
01:14:32,000 --> 01:14:36,400
its own logic and its own
weather of activity.

932
01:14:36,720 --> 01:14:42,200
Highland Park, where the moving
line had been born, gradually

933
01:14:42,200 --> 01:14:48,360
faded in importance.
The Rouge took its place as

934
01:14:48,360 --> 01:14:50,960
Ford's headquarters of
imagination.

935
01:14:51,840 --> 01:14:56,720
The original Crystal Palace
remained in use for decades, but

936
01:14:56,720 --> 01:15:01,880
the Great Work moved S If
Highland Park had been an

937
01:15:01,920 --> 01:15:07,160
argument about industry, the
Rouge was an argument about

938
01:15:07,160 --> 01:15:11,080
scale.
It said that nothing was too

939
01:15:11,080 --> 01:15:17,160
large to be made, owned, and
brought together under one roof.

940
01:15:17,880 --> 01:15:23,280
It would in turn cast a long
shadow across the rest of the

941
01:15:23,280 --> 01:15:26,840
20th century.
The years after the Rouge

942
01:15:26,840 --> 01:15:33,080
brought a long and increasingly
sad chapter for Henry Ford

943
01:15:33,080 --> 01:15:39,440
himself.
By the 1930s and 1940s, he was

944
01:15:39,440 --> 01:15:45,400
an old man, and the strange
tendencies that had always lived

945
01:15:45,400 --> 01:15:52,080
inside him deepened with age.
His son Edsel, who had been

946
01:15:52,080 --> 01:15:57,120
named president of the company
many years earlier, suffered for

947
01:15:57,120 --> 01:16:01,600
much of his adult life under his
father's contradictions.

948
01:16:02,680 --> 01:16:08,760
Edsel was thoughtful, modern and
willing to listen to his

949
01:16:08,760 --> 01:16:13,560
managers.
He pushed for new car designs,

950
01:16:14,120 --> 01:16:19,920
gentler labor practices and a
more diversified product line,

951
01:16:20,720 --> 01:16:25,360
and his father more than once
undermined him.

952
01:16:25,760 --> 01:16:32,200
When Edsel proposed innovations,
Henry would frequently overrule

953
01:16:32,200 --> 01:16:36,040
him.
When Edsel sided with engineers,

954
01:16:36,320 --> 01:16:42,120
Henry would side with Bennett.
The arrangement was painful for

955
01:16:42,120 --> 01:16:48,640
everyone close to the family,
and most painful for Edsel, who

956
01:16:48,640 --> 01:16:54,040
watched his health and authority
erode over years of quiet

957
01:16:54,040 --> 01:16:59,520
conflict.
In May of 1943, Edsel died of

958
01:16:59,520 --> 01:17:06,560
stomach cancer at 49 years old.
The cause of death was medical,

959
01:17:07,080 --> 01:17:11,440
but those who knew the family
well believed that the long

960
01:17:11,440 --> 01:17:17,320
battle with his father had
drained him in ways no doctor

961
01:17:17,320 --> 01:17:22,520
could quite name.
Henry Ford grieved in his way,

962
01:17:23,040 --> 01:17:28,000
but did not change.
There was, in those late years,

963
01:17:28,480 --> 01:17:32,440
a strange new direction in his
attention.

964
01:17:33,520 --> 01:17:39,440
Even as the world he had remade
kept accelerating, Ford grew

965
01:17:39,440 --> 01:17:43,240
nostalgic for the world he had
displaced.

966
01:17:44,240 --> 01:17:50,000
He bought up old buildings and
farm houses and transported them

967
01:17:50,000 --> 01:17:54,560
to a tract of land near Dearborn
that he called Greenfield

968
01:17:54,560 --> 01:17:59,440
Village, preserving the
blacksmith shops and one room

969
01:17:59,440 --> 01:18:04,800
school houses his automobiles
had been quietly making

970
01:18:04,880 --> 01:18:08,680
obsolete.
The elder Ford suffered strokes

971
01:18:08,680 --> 01:18:12,840
during these years, his memory
and judgment dimming.

972
01:18:14,000 --> 01:18:17,960
Yet he resumed nominal
leadership of the company during

973
01:18:17,960 --> 01:18:23,360
the Second World War, an
interval in which Ford's plants

974
01:18:23,360 --> 01:18:26,480
turned entirely to the war
effort.

975
01:18:27,720 --> 01:18:33,520
Bombers, jeeps and engines
flowed from those plants in

976
01:18:33,520 --> 01:18:38,400
numbers that helped determine
the outcome of the conflict.

977
01:18:38,800 --> 01:18:44,920
After the war, his grandson,
Henry Ford the Second, took over

978
01:18:44,920 --> 01:18:50,880
the company at the age of 28.
The young man inherited a

979
01:18:50,880 --> 01:18:55,920
business that had become
disorganized and fragile under

980
01:18:55,920 --> 01:19:03,560
decades of one man's grip.
His first major act was to fire

981
01:19:03,560 --> 01:19:09,080
Harry Bennett, ending the era of
the service department and

982
01:19:09,080 --> 01:19:14,680
beginning a long modernization
that would see the company

983
01:19:14,840 --> 01:19:18,880
recover.
Henry Ford himself died in April

984
01:19:18,880 --> 01:19:25,520
of 1947 at the age of 83 in his
home in Dearborn.

985
01:19:26,640 --> 01:19:31,200
The night he died, a flood
disrupted the local power grid,

986
01:19:31,680 --> 01:19:36,120
and the great industrialist,
whose name was synonymous with

987
01:19:36,120 --> 01:19:41,120
electrified mass production,
passed away by candlelight.

988
01:19:42,040 --> 01:19:48,040
The detail seemed almost too
neat to be true, but it was

989
01:19:48,040 --> 01:19:51,680
true.
He was buried not far from where

990
01:19:51,680 --> 01:19:55,800
he had been born.
The country he had helped to

991
01:19:55,800 --> 01:20:00,880
remake mourned him with the
complicated feelings he had

992
01:20:00,880 --> 01:20:06,240
always inspired.
He was praised as a genius and

993
01:20:06,240 --> 01:20:13,040
criticized as a tyrant,
remembered as a benefactor and

994
01:20:13,040 --> 01:20:19,600
as a publisher of Harm.
In death, as in life, he refused

995
01:20:19,600 --> 01:20:24,640
to be one thing.
So now the journey can grow

996
01:20:24,640 --> 01:20:28,600
quiet.
We began with a single building

997
01:20:28,600 --> 01:20:35,280
in Highland Park in the autumn
of 1913, and with the man whose

998
01:20:35,280 --> 01:20:38,280
name was painted across its
gates.

999
01:20:39,600 --> 01:20:44,760
We followed the slow craft of an
older Detroit, the careful

1000
01:20:44,760 --> 01:20:50,240
experiments of a small workshop,
and the moment when a chain was

1001
01:20:50,240 --> 01:20:53,080
first laid through a factory
floor.

1002
01:20:54,160 --> 01:20:58,960
We watched a chassis that had
once required 12 1/2 hours of

1003
01:20:58,960 --> 01:21:04,640
human labor become something a
line could complete in 93

1004
01:21:04,640 --> 01:21:08,680
minutes.
We watched the wage doubled, the

1005
01:21:08,680 --> 01:21:14,680
work day shortened, the world
Astonished, we saw the streets

1006
01:21:14,680 --> 01:21:18,840
of small towns reshape
themselves around the patient

1007
01:21:18,840 --> 01:21:25,920
pull of a Model T We saw the
Crystal Palace become a model

1008
01:21:25,920 --> 01:21:30,400
that other industries, other
countries, and other centuries

1009
01:21:30,680 --> 01:21:34,680
would follow.
And we walked more carefully

1010
01:21:35,240 --> 01:21:40,480
through the darker chapters the
newspaper bought and turned to

1011
01:21:40,480 --> 01:21:44,720
other purposes, and the articles
that wandered the world for

1012
01:21:44,720 --> 01:21:53,360
decades, contributing in subtle
and severe ways to a great human

1013
01:21:53,360 --> 01:22:00,000
harm, the Labor Relations that
hardened into violence, and the

1014
01:22:00,000 --> 01:22:06,160
grandson who finally inherited
what an old man had left behind.

1015
01:22:06,600 --> 01:22:13,480
Henry Ford was not a hero in the
simple sense, nor was he simply

1016
01:22:13,480 --> 01:22:17,360
a villain.
He was a person who built

1017
01:22:17,360 --> 01:22:21,920
something that altered the
world's labor, and who used the

1018
01:22:21,920 --> 01:22:27,440
platform that altered the world
to publish things that wounded

1019
01:22:27,640 --> 01:22:33,480
other people.
Both threads belong to him, and

1020
01:22:33,480 --> 01:22:39,520
neither cancels the other out.
His factory, in some quiet

1021
01:22:39,520 --> 01:22:43,520
sense, also belongs to all of us
now.

1022
01:22:44,360 --> 01:22:50,240
Every car that rolls off a line,
every appliance built by motion

1023
01:22:50,240 --> 01:22:55,360
past stationary workers, every
chain or conveyor in a

1024
01:22:55,360 --> 01:23:01,240
manufacturing plant, anywhere
traces some part of its lineage

1025
01:23:01,600 --> 01:23:04,800
back to a brick floor in
Highland Park.

1026
01:23:05,680 --> 01:23:10,680
The shape of modern work was
rearranged in that building, and

1027
01:23:10,680 --> 01:23:14,120
the rearrangement has not gone
away.

1028
01:23:14,600 --> 01:23:18,600
Tonight, perhaps that is the
feeling to keep.

1029
01:23:19,360 --> 01:23:25,200
Not the dates, not the lawsuits,
not the precise number of hours

1030
01:23:25,200 --> 01:23:31,120
the chassis used to take, but
the sense that one ordinary

1031
01:23:31,120 --> 01:23:37,720
place and one complicated person
were enough to change the rhythm

1032
01:23:37,720 --> 01:23:41,680
of how millions of human beings
would spend their days.

1033
01:23:42,080 --> 01:23:48,320
Outside the window, somewhere in
the dark, an automobile is

1034
01:23:48,320 --> 01:23:54,120
passing on a quiet Rd.
Somewhere else, a factory is

1035
01:23:54,120 --> 01:23:58,840
humming through its night shift,
with conveyors moving softly in

1036
01:23:58,840 --> 01:24:03,480
the dark.
Somewhere, a child has fallen

1037
01:24:03,480 --> 01:24:09,400
asleep in the back seat of a
moving car, their head against

1038
01:24:09,400 --> 01:24:14,640
the cool glass, their dreams
smoothed by the motion of the

1039
01:24:14,640 --> 01:24:18,520
road.
The factory whose chain first

1040
01:24:18,520 --> 01:24:23,600
moved 100 years ago is still
moving in 1000.

1041
01:24:23,600 --> 01:24:28,440
Places at once on every
continent the line eventually

1042
01:24:28,440 --> 01:24:33,600
reached, and to night, beneath
all of it.

1043
01:24:34,240 --> 01:24:37,600
You do not need to solve this
century.

1044
01:24:37,960 --> 01:24:43,600
You only need to rest within it.
Here, where the lamps are low

1045
01:24:43,600 --> 01:24:49,200
and the room is still, the world
slows, and so do we.

1046
01:24:49,560 --> 01:24:50,280
Good night.