Is it a good thing when your employer takes an interest in your personal life? If you were an employee of the Ford Motor Company in the mid-1910s, you could expect a home visit from the Social Department, which employed investigators who checked for heavy drinking, gambling, and other immoral behaviors. Such was the progressive viewpoint of the company’s namesake.
More than anyone else, Henry Ford brought this country into the modern era. By building an affordable motor car, he provided mobility, which led to the complete supporting infrastructure: paved highways, gas stations, motels, tourist traps, not to mention the ability to move families to a different part of the country. The consumer society arguably started with Ford.
Such was the vision he stubbornly adhered to. His first two companies — the Detroit Automobile Company and the Henry Ford Company — both failed, largely due to his collaborators refusing to follow his wishes. The finally successful Ford Motor Company was probably his last chance. His inflexibility was also a hinderance; his Model T, for all its groundbreaking qualities, should’ve been replace earlier, and an inability to recognize the limitations of his failing health led to his forced removal from the company’s active management in his twilight years.
As the case with all human beings, Ford was a maze of contradictions. He increased the pay of his workers and took an interest in their personal lives, but was vehemently anti-union. He was hard-core antisemitic, yet was the largest employer of Black workers in the Detroit area. He was a peace activist, but fully supported the WWII war effort after Pearl Harbor. He was a major force for lifestyle modernization, but always was nostalgic for the past, characterized by his establishment of projects like Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan.
Ford’s life story is ably told in The People’s Tycoon: Henry Ford and the American Century by Steven Watts. His writing style employs a cliffhanger vibe to introduce many of the sections. It could’ve included more photos and some recapitulation of how the Ford Motor Company expanded, both in this country and overseas. But it provided a complete portrait of the man who help usher us into the modern world. (https://www.amazon.com/Peoples-Tycoon-Henry-American-Century-ebook/dp/B001ULOPO0/ref=sr_1_1?)