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Saturday, December 29, 2018

World War I and the Automobile




World War I: War Without End
Photograph shows automobiles requisitioned to move troops to the front during World War I, Paris, France. (Source: Flickr Commons project, 2011) (LC)
There is plenty of stories about the requisitioning of civilian cars and taxis for support of French troops at the Battle of the Marne. The arrival of six thousand soldiers by taxi has traditionally been described as critical in stopping a possible German breakthrough against the 6th Army. However, in 2001, Hew Strachan described the course of the battle without mentioning taxis and in 2009, Herwig called the matter a legend: he wrote that many French soldiers travelled in lorries and all the artillery left Paris by train. The impact on morale was undeniable, the taxis de la Marne were perceived as a manifestation of the union sacré of the French civilian population and its soldiers at the front, reminiscent of the people in arms who had saved the French Republic Campaign of 1794: a symbol of unity and national solidarity beyond their strategical role in the battle. It was also the first large-scale use of motorized infantry in battle; a Marne taxicab is prominently displayed in the exhibit on the battle at the Musée de l'Armée at Les Invalides in Paris.





Photograph shows race car drivers Georges Louis Frederic Boillot (1884-1916) and Victor Rigal with a Peugot automobile during their service in the French Army during World War I. (Source: Flickr Commons project, 2011) (LC). While the participation of French race car drivers were a morale booster, WWI proved pivotal in shifting the center of engine performance design from France to the United States.






Photograph shows French people in street with an automobile with banner "Honour to the English Army" hung above them, during World War I, Boulogne-sur-Mer, France. (Source: Flickr Commons project, 2011). (LC).



Photograph shows automobile, probably requisitioned for the war effort in Russia during World War I. (Source: Flickr Commons project, 2011. 1914-5. (LC)



 Photograph shows automobiles and trucks, probably requisitioned for the war effort in Russia during World War I. (Source: Flickr Commons project, 2011) 1914-15. (LC). The war was critical to the development of the truck industry. Larger autos -- Pierce-Arrows, or Packards, for example, would be rebooted and turned into trucks for the war effort.

Photograph shows a German Army automobile during World War I. (Source: Flickr Commons project, 2011) (LC).

While strict American involvement in World War I was relatively brief (March 1917 to November of 1918), the event’s long term consequences to the development American automobile industry beyond 1918 was significant.77The War brought to completion the establishment of industry standards, a problem recognized as early as 1911. For example, by 1918 the 200 different tire sizes used by manufacturers were reduced to only 32. Hudson’s Howard Coffin and the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) led the push for standardization. Initially a fringe group, by the end of the war the SAE took a leadership role in the creation and dissemination of automotive technology, a place it still holds. Automotive technology would be critically linked to the development of aviation engine technology during the war; most significantly, Packard’s Jesse Vincent played the key role in the design of the Liberty V-8 and V-12 engines. 
A further development of note was that of the burgeoning growth of truck manufacturing. In 1917 Charles Nash, formerly of General Motors and the head his namesake firm, became the leading manufacturer in assembling trucks. Trucks were increasingly pivotal to the war effort, and particularly important to the French success in holding the Germans at bay during the battle of Verdun. It was said that without motor trucks, including those built by Pierce-Arrow, Verdun would have fallen to the Germans in this struggle of attrition. Several American luxury automobile makers, taking advantage of their long wheelbase vehicles, converted their products to trucks, and output doubled between 1917 and 1918.
In sum, despite a record year of production in 1917, American automobile manufacturers also found the capacity to make tractors, airplane engines, tanks, marine gas engines, armored cars, motorcycles, bicycles, ammunition, antiaircraft guns, helmets, caissons, submarine chasers, ambulances, and field kitchens. Although 1918 resulted in reduced car production, a real or imagined gasoline shortage, and a voluntary Sunday driving abstinence day, the automobile industry bounced back with a peacetime reconversion in 1919 during which 820,400 motor vehicles were made. The entire episode foreshadowed WWII productivity, when Detroit automobile manufacturers could rightly be labeled the “Arsenal of Democracy.”

Friday, December 28, 2018

Helen J. Owen, American WWI Ambulance Mechanic -- Women Drivers and Mechanics in WWI.


There are several sites to buy these photographs on the Internet, but I got them from the Library of Congress. My question is this -- who was Helen J. Owen? Where did she come from, and what was her life like after World War I? Where did she learn how to turn a wrench? Perhaps one can find out about her in files at the National Archives. Why her?




Photograph shows Helen J. Owen, an automobile expert for the Y.W.C.A. who drove ambulances in France during World War I, working on a car with a New York license plate dated 1917. (Source: Flickr Commons project, 2016)



Photograph shows women driver volunteers standing in front of automobiles during World War I, in England. (LC)
Photograph shows women seated at a long bench inspecting or assembling automotive engine components at a Lincoln Motor Co. plant in Detroit, Michigan, during World War I. (LC). Note the scowl on the male supervisor's face!

 Photograph shows Helen J. Owen, an automobile expert for the Y.W.C.A. who drove ambulances in France during World War I, with an automobile with a New York license plate dated 1918. (Source: Flickr Commons project, 2016)

World War I provided many opportunities for women, not only to drive ambulances and taxis, but also to demonstrate their abilities to organize, manage, and assist combat troops in France and at home. By then the suffrage movement was well underway, and to prove themselves, women participated in numerous acts of civil service for their country. During the war, women drove alongside men, and, for the time being, equality was the norm rather than the exception. Women had to “replace” men in almost all aspects of life, including servicing vehicles and taking on the role of a skilled mechanic. 







By necessity, they were forced to learn to repair vehicles, including military trucks. In a 1918 article titled, “Women Motor Mechanics for War-time Work,” a photograph of a woman working on a truck engine bore the caption, “Not Exactly a Woman’s Job, Perhaps, But These Patriotic Sisters Stop at Nothing When They Have Once Entered the Work.”34To guide them in their repair activities, in 1918 a popular handbook was made available for women, The Care and Management of the Modern Motor-Car. Virginia Scharf concluded that “Although its tone was jocular and patronizing, it praised 400 female graduates of a YMCA school for mechanics who were as apt as men in ‘mastering the mechanical and technical details of a car’ and warned professional chauffeurs (all men) to expect an invasion of women drivers.”35















Henry Ford's Corporate Paternalism, 1915-20

In several important respects, the Henry Ford story was far from over in 1915, although by then he was 52 years old.76With the coming of World War I, Henry became involved in an abortive Peace Ship effort in 1916. Despite the railing of all of his critics, his pacifism was reflective of a life-long idealism and distrust of the elitist ruling classes. And while the Peace Ship chapter in Ford’s life proved to be a failure, it shows us how complex and yet naïve the man was.
Cartoon shows boat representing the "Peace Ship" peace mission to Europe in which Henry Ford gestures to a dove flying above a stormy sea. (LC)

Ford Peace Party - NOORDAM of the Holland America Line, which carries the delegation of women to attend the Peace Conference at the Hague (LC)




 Editorial cartoon shows the steamship OSCAR II (carrying Henry Ford's Peace Party) with huge snowball labeled "Peace" on its deck; the ship is approaching a fiery inferno labeled "Europe." (LC)



 He also brought his idealism to the Ford Motor Company, at least initially, with his sponsorship of a Sociological Department in 1915 and the opening of the Henry Ford Trade School. His paternalism was perhaps born more out of a desire to control than a sense of compassion. Nevertheless, it was corporate paternalism practiced on a scale that differed little from that of John Patterson at the National Cash Register Corporation. 

Learning English -- Ford Sociological Department



A young trainee at the Henry Ford Trade School in Dearborn ( Detroit News)



Henry Ford Trade School




"A Riddle Wrapped in Mystery Inside an Enigma.” Patents and the American Automobile Industry to 1940

More on Henry Ford, the Selden Patent, the ALAM, and What Followed:

            Patents are important historical materials, but interpreting them is fraught with difficulties. As one observer has asserted, “in a particular industry the place of patents is seldom what it seems and the effects of patents are often similar to the famous ‘riddle wrapped in mystery inside an enigma.’”[i]The significant role of patent attorney George B. Selden in the early history of the automobile in America can hardly be overestimated.
            In 1879 Selden applied for a patent on a motor vehicle employing an hydrocarbon-fueled internal combustion engine. His patent turned out to be one of the most famous in American history. It has been claimed that Selden “kidnapped an infant art and held it in bondage to maturity.”[ii]Selden did what was legal under the 1861 patent law, and before it was actually granted, cleverly applied, withdrew, and modified the patent application between 1879 and 1895.  Patent 549,160 (November 5, 1895) purportedly covered every gasoline-fueled internal combustion engine equipped vehicle. In 1899 the patent was exclusively assigned to the Electric Vehicle Company and its first test in court was in a suit against the Winton Motor Carriage Company in 1900.


            Three years of legal wrangling followed before Winton acknowledged Selden’s claim and acquired a license to manufacture automobiles. In that same year, 1903, the Electric Vehicle Company and 18 other manufacturers formed the Association of Licensed Automobile Manufacturers (ALAM) with the express purpose of enforcing the Selden patent against non-members, dealers and customers of non-member cars. To agree to a license meant paying the Association a royalty of 1.5% of the catalog or retail price of each vehicle sold.
            Independents formed their own trade association, the American Motor Car Manufacturers Association, and what followed was continuous litigation until 1909, when in a sweeping decision, the Selden patent was upheld. Only Henry Ford and Thomas B. Jeffery held out. And well they did, for on January 9, 1911, the Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the 1909 decision, maintaining that while the Selden patent was valid, it was restricted to a particular kind of engine. In sum, Ford had not infringed on the patent. Thus, Selden’s patent did not blanket the automobile industry. Judge Noyes concluded “The public gained absolutely nothing from his [Selden’s] invention, whatever it was.”[iii]
            Over the course of the Selden patents sway somewhere between $5,800,000 and $10,000,000 in license fees were collected. Between 1910 and 1911 all manufacturers with the exception of Ford paid royalties to The ALAM. Had the patent remained in force, one wonders about the historical trajectory of the American automobile industry.  Perhaps it would have remained focused on luxury vehicles instead of inexpensive utilitarian vehicles. How would have suppliers and the glass, rubber, steel and petroleum industries matured? 
The ALAM stranglehold was smashed, but patent pooling would remain characteristic of the future industry, just through a different trade organization – the Automobile Manufacturers Association (precursor organizations were the Automobile Board of Trade and the Automobile Chamber of Commerce). In essence, this organization was a patent cartel, and by 1939 with the exception of Ford and Lincoln and The Bantam Car company belonged to the AMA. Patent litigation in the automobile industry thus was minimized, the pooling of patents was the general rule, and patent law was nearly completely abrogated. Patent protection was not afforded to suppliers; however, and perhaps this explains to a degree the technological stagnation that subsequently characterized the industry by the 1930s.
            



[i]C.A. Welsh, “Patents and Competition in the Automobile Industry,”  Law and Contemporary Problems, 13 (Spring, 1948), 260.
[ii]Ibid., 264.

[iii]Ibid., 266.

Thursday, December 27, 2018

1962 -- When the Passenger Car -- and Station Wagons! -- Ruled the American Automotive Market

From Ed --


See attached photo -- in 1962 Ford had four different cars with a total of 16 different body styles -- a robust and broad product line mix (and this doesn't include trucks).  By next year Ford will. have abandoned cars except for the Mustang and some little hybrid Focus of sorts.  All of the money is in trucks!



The Ford Model T

The Model T: What a Car!

Northeast corner office on third floor where Ford worked with others on automobile design that resulted in model T Fords. - Ford Piquette Plant, Corner of Piquette Avenue & Beaubien, Detroit, MI. (LC)



Ford Model T on Display (LC)

Ford Model T Showroom (LC)

            Whether the Model T or A, or subsequent models, Henry Ford’s cars did much to shape life in the twentieth century. For the farmer, county agents now made visits to even isolated farms and rendered scientific advice in an effort to improve crops and agrarian prosperity. The automobile was now used to distribute the mail to rural areas, thus vastly improving communications. Farm folk had access to hospitals and other medical facilities. Families no longer had to rely on crossroad stores, but could shop in towns, and even do comparison-shopping. For city folk, the changes were no less dramatic. The city became reconfigured, with the rise of new suburbs, and in more recent times, exurbs. Retail trade moved from center city to suburbs, which witnessed the rise of shopping centers and supermarkets. A number of key industries burgeoned due to the demand for materials used in automobile production: steel, glass, textiles, electronics, and rubber. Relationships within tradition of family structures changed, as youth sought freedom behind the wheel.69And with the Ford automobile, America became a nation on wheels. Family vacations, and trips to parks, now became far more commonplace. 

Photograph shows two couples sitting in front and backset of display model of Ford automobile with windshield and top at the Automotive Industry Golden Jubilee in 1946. (LC)

            The highway was now a place for adventure, for both men and women, as exemplified in the journals of Rose Wilder Lane and Helen Dore Boylston. The pair traveled from Paris to Albania in a Model T Ford during the mid-1920s and left a remarkable written account. As they would assert, the hero of the trip was neither one of the women, but the car itself, named Zenobia. The maroon Ford was described as “a wonder. She went up all those frightful curving mountain roads like a bird.”70It was an eloquent appraisal of a mass produced car whose very name implied that it was a living thing. 
            Despite all of the critiques leveled at Ford, his company, and mass production, his machine was simply remarkable. Its dashboard had a gasoline gauge, speedometer, oil gauge (there was no dipstick) temperature indicator, and odometer. To start the car one put on the hand brake, got out of the car, reached below the radiator and turned the crank, and hopefully the engine would come to life after a cough and sputter. The car had two gears, high and low, and instead of a gear shift, one had a foot pedal which the driver pushed down for low and released for high. To go to neutral, one pushed the pedal halfway. To stop the car, one pushed the gear pedal halfway while at the same time pushing down on the brake. There was no accelerator pedal; rather, there was a lever on the steering column that when pushed, gave more gas. There was also a spark lever that often did little unless in the wrong position, which then caused a loud and embarrassing backfire. To engage reverse there was a third foot pedal. Depressed with either foot, you backed up. Steering was stiff, and the wheel itself abruptly snapped back to its original position when one released tension on it. One final note on the Model T: the four-door version actually had only three doors, with the driver’s side door not a door at all – it did not open. The contours of the door were merely stamped on the body at the factory. Entering the car from the left side required climbing over the fake door. Appreciating the utility of the Model T, rural Americans no longer saw the car as a devil wagon, but rather as transportation technology that could meet and be modified for their varied needs.71

1915 roadster. Everything is correct except for the wrong throttle rod, dash shield, floor boards, ignition switch, steering column and a few minor details

            The Model T was also a machine that was unique to the individual who owned it, and thus a personal relationship invariably followed. John Steinbeck wrote this about a car that he did not name, but called “IT”:
            I think I loved that car more than any I have ever had. It understood me. It had an intelligence not exactly malicious, but it did love a practical joke. . . . When I consider how much time it took to keep IT running, I wonder if there was time for anything else, and maybe there wasn’t. The Model T was not a car as we know them now – it was a person – crotchety and mean, frolicsome and full of jokes – just when you were ready to kill yourself, it would run five miles with no gasoline whatever. I understood IT, but as I have said before, IT understood me, too. It magnified some of my faults, corrected others. It worked on the sin of impatience; it destroyed the sin of vanity. And it helped to establish an almost Oriental philosophy of acceptance.72
Photograph shows men gathered around a model T Ford automobile stuck in a ditch.(LC)

"Hoisting an undamaged 'Ford'" -- 1914

            Simple and sturdy, with a high ground clearance, the T was easily repaired by any mechanic-farmer possessing only a few hand tools. If the radiator sprung a leak, you added an egg to stop fluid loss. The Model T was a car one generation removed from America’s consumer society and, at least in 1913, was sold before there were many dealers with service repair facilities. Responsibility for maintenance and repairs fell to the owner, and in reviewing an early Model T owner’s manual, it is astonishing to note what one was expected to perform on these vehicles.73For example, every 100 miles, the spindle bolt and steering ball should be oiled; at 200 miles, oil had to be applied to the front and rear spring hangers, the hub brake cam, and the commutator; other service had to be performed at 500 and 600 miles. The sophistication and difficulty of repairs might confound the modern automobile owner. Work described in the section “How to Run the Model T Ford,” included valve grinding, carburetor overhaul, clutch adjustment, the removal of cylinder head and transmission bands, the removal of front and rear axles, and the adjustment of connecting rod bearings. 
Model T Valve Maintenance

It is no surprise then, that the Model T was  responsible for a generation of do-it-yourself automobile mechanics. Also, it is quite a contrast to compare the 1913 manual to that of the Model A’s 1931 Instruction Book that opens with the statement “Let experienced mechanics make repairs or adjustments. Your car is too valuable a piece of machinery to place in unskilled hands.”74
            The topic of many jokes, there was also a true admiration for this remarkable machine, early models of which had to be driven backwards over steep hills because of the gravity-fed fuel system. In 1915 the first of two volumes about the Model T, entitled Funny Stories About the Ford, was published.75The following are a few excerpts:
The Formula in Poetry
A little spark, a little coil,
A little gas, a little oil,
A piece of tin, a two inch board – 
Put them together and you have a Ford.

1917-18 Model T timer Maintenance


The Twenty-third Psalm
The Ford is my auto; I shall not want another.
It maketh me to lie down beneath it; it soureth my soul.
It leadeth me into the paths of ridicule for its namesake.
Yea though I rife through the valleys I am towed up the hill,
For I fear much evil. Thy rods and thy engines discomfort me;
I anoint my tires with patches; my radiator boileth over;
I repair blowouts in the presence of mine enemies.
Surely, if this thing followeth me all the days of my life,
I shall dwell in the bug-house forever.

Fixing a Vacuum Actuator on the Passenger Side Door of 1982 Mercedes 380 SL

Sometimes it takes me years to finally come to grips and deal with a small auto problem. Such was the case of the passenger side door vacuum actuator on my 1982 Mercedes 380 SL. When I first got the car 5 years ago I replaced the actuator controller on the driver's side door and that helped with the door locking system.  But the passenger side door did strange things, including not locking when the drivers's door was locked.  I would have to walk around the car and lock it manually.  I tried fiddling with it five years ago and failed, thinking that something had to be wrong with the mechanical end of things. Well after doing considerable reading and Youtube watching I figured out that it was the absence of two small springs that used the inoperative condition. They are $1.75 each and available  At Pelican Parts.  See photos below.

Sorry for poor photo. In this image the two little springs on the slider are broken. Hence, the slider does not work properly when the rod is moved up. This will "freeze" the interior lock lever.


Here are the two springs in place. The slider now works and "locks" in position.

Tuesday, December 25, 2018

A 1959 Plymouth Sport Fury and the Date that Ended Badly

A contribution from Ed -- Very Funny Story!

The Date That Ended Badly

The back-story first.  My '59 Plymouth Fury 2 door coupe had the optional swing-out front bucket seats (photo attached of what they looked like).
The one on the passenger side didn't operate properly as the under-seat spring mechanism had broken at some point.  But my step-father -- always inventive -- said that he would fix it for me.  Unfortunately, he put a really taunt heavy-duty spring in the mechanism.  I trusted his judgment and never thought to test the seat to see how quickly the seats would "spring out" to the side after the repair.

But now the rest of the story: Clearly, not a young girl's dream in college, I had all of two dates with young women.  The second one ended in a bad way courtesy of the swing-out front seats in that then six year old Plymouth Fury.  My senior year in spring 1965, I took a young lady to a movie in town and afterwards drove her back to her dormitory.  Thinking that it might be the gentlemanly-like thing to do, I stopped the car in the dorm's parking lot, got out of the driver's seat, and went around to open her passenger door for her.  Good move, right?  Remember, there were no seat belts in those cars back then.  And let me add:  She was a petite young lady, likely no more than 95 pounds.

But then wanting to be a show-off for some reason (young men are like that), I said to "Mary" (long since forgotten her real name)........

"Hey, press that lever on the side of your seat."  

She did and immediately the "heavy duty" replacement spring that my step-father had installed abruptly swung the seat to the side, literally ejecting my date onto the pavement in the parking lot.  She was fine, of course, after I helped her up, but it was clear that a "good night kiss on the cheek" was not to be in the equation that evening. 

The tales our cars could tell, if they could only talk !!  Somewhere there's a "Mary" that likely, now in her older years, recalls a date gone wrong with a nerdy guy.  





Monday, December 24, 2018

Henry Ford, His Assembly Line, and the Degradation of Work?


From the Weekly Bolschevik

One of those Fridays after I have bee wrung out by the system!

The assembly line initiated what scholar Harry Braverman has called the “degradation of work.”26Braverman’s thesis was subsequently modified and pursued by sociologist David Gartman in Auto Slavery: The Labor Process in the American Automobile Industry, 1897-1950.27Gartman asserted that the assembly line was born of class antagonisms rather than a technological rationality. Motivated by the “narcotic” of profit, capitalists wrestled production away from the craftsman. The craftsmen, having lost the ability to control pace and accuracy, became vulnerable to exploitation. Labor was reduced to repetitive, mindless motions. To vindicate his thesis, Gartman distinguished between “repressive” capitalist and “non-repressive” natural controls of labor. Finally, bureaucracy and occupations were created to buttress the capitalist order, and gave birth to the modern corporation. 
            Marxist sociologists have enhanced the view of the assembly line, but historians have revealed that what happened at Ford’s plants was a complex social process. The reactions of workers to monotonous labor defy simple Marxist explanations. Historian Joyce Shaw Peterson wrote:
Scholars analyzing the labor process in capitalist industry have sometimes seen the progressive deskilling of jobs as synonymous with the degradation of labor. There is no question that deskilling characterized the development of the automobile industry during its successful emergence as a “giant enterprise.” The question concerns how that deskilling was experienced by the workers themselves, whether as progress, or loss, or something else entirely. No single answer to this question is possible. Those workers for whom deskilling was experienced as degradation . . . were those who personally lost the need for their particular skills and saw their pride in workmanship diminished as machines took over their jobs and their own autonomy was diminished by a division of skills and increased management planning. For these auto workers degradation was very real, diminishing their pride and status and undoubtedly contributed to making them the most militant and union conscious of their fellows. Such workers comprised a minority of the workforce. Much more common was the experience of the auto worker for whom machine tending replaced simple heavy labor or the semi variegation of farm work. Not only could such workers make more money as automobile workers, but they also experienced their work itself as more modern and sometimes identified with the skill of their machines and indeed with their own skill in running them.28
            Personal responses to working on the assembly line are difficult to assess historically, but whatever took place on the microscopic scale, Fordism transformed the social relations of the macroscopic work place. The individual became anonymous, and the division of labor reduced tasks to mindless repetitive actions. Peterson noted that visitors lamented at the monotonous labor, but the worker’s response was “complicated, as it could not be a simple choice between monotonous, repetitive tasks, and challenging interesting work . . . no such choice was offered.”29
            While the assembly line contributed to the “degradation of work,” the opportunity to labor brought workers from Southern and Eastern Europe, the American South, and Mexico to the Midwestern United States. This opportunity was particularly powerful for Mexicans and African Americans.30In 1900, the population of Detroit was half native-born Whites, and half immigrants from northern and western Europe.31By 1913, the workforce included Russians, Poles, Croats, Hungarians, and Italians.32The workforce also came to include social outcasts. In 1919, “the Ford Motor Company employed hundreds of ex-convicts and 9,563 ‘substandard men’ – a group that included amputees, the blind, deaf-mutes, epileptics, and about 1,000 tubercular employees.”33In contrast to Gartman, Meyer argued that “between 19081913 Ford officials gradually discovered that workers required just as much attention as machines and the flow of materials.”34The droves of workers were not “completely plastic and malleable,” and “as Ford mass production became a reality, Ford officials and managers gradually uncovered a massive labor problem.”35
            To stabilize his workforce, Ford announced the $5 dollar day. “This was not a simple wage increase,” wrote Stephen Meyer “but a sophisticated profit-sharing scheme to transform the social and cultural lives of immigrant workers and to inculcate the life-style, personal habits, and social discipline for modern factory life.”36Ford used methods inspired by the Progressivism of the early twentieth century to stipulate how families should take care of their homes and how single men should take care of themselves.37From 1914 to 1921 Ford embarked on a social experiment steeped in a paternalism that aimed to “Americanize” the immigrant workforce. While immigrants were willing to work in coal mines, iron and steel mills, meatpacking plants, and tanneries, in addition to automobile factories, they lacked industrial experience. When WWI ended the flow of European immigrants into Ford factories, recruitment of Black and White rural Americans became the norm. 
            Ford aimed to eliminate the lackluster “dude employee,” who talked and walked more than he worked. The application of scientific management to achieve mass production required a regulated “human element.” From 1920-1923 the assembly line underwent a “speed-up.” The pace of the assembly line was grueling, and in addition, smiling, laughing, and sitting were prohibited. But factories were safe, ventilated, and well lit. Nevins and Hill observed that, “as in all mass production industries of the time, they were the rules of an army, not of a cooperative community.”38Joyce Shaw Peterson argued that while Ford was union free from 1903 to 1933, workers used turnover rates, absenteeism, restriction of output, and walkouts to convey disapproval.39For the most part, however, autoworkers accepted the high wages, adopted the new habits, and endured the degraded labor. 
            Historians have given a fair amount of attention to Black labor in the automobile industry.40The demographic shift inspired by Ford’s factories provided reason for Blacks to migrate to Northern industrial centers. In 1917 Packard employed 1,100 Blacks, but Ford quickly overtook Packard and employed 5,000 Blacks in 1923 and 10,000 by 1926.41Despite Henry Ford’s personal racial outlook that Blacks were racially inferior and should remain segregated, his factories were interpreted as places of inspired racial uplift. Ford felt that the superior race was obligated to facilitate the uplift of subordinate races with philanthropic services, and this earned him a reputation as a friend of the Black race. Yet, life for Black workers in Detroit remained mixed.
            Joyce Shaw Peterson historicized the new Black industrial community forged in Detroit. Despite high wages, most African Americans were segregated at the plant and in life outside of it.42When Peterson inquired, “Apart from their existence inside the factory walls, what kind of life did black auto workers find in Detroit?” she answered by citing frustrating segregation, higher rates of disease, and overcrowded housing. In an industrial city the comforts of the home were paramount to the ability to endure monotonous and dirty work. Peterson noted that “migrants confronted the ironic situation of earning much better wages than they ever had before and still being unable to rent decent lodgings.”43For Blacks, “segregated housing patterns . . . not only were blows to comfort, pride, self-esteem and family life; they could also kill.”44Peterson concluded that racial tension increased in Detroit due to residential patterns and more competition for housing than jobs. Beyond the factory and housing, entertainment facilities and recreational activities provided by the companies, such as sports leagues, were segregated. Peterson noted that, “by far the most important social institutions were black churches,” which “became the most vital institution trying to both integrate rural blacks into the urban atmosphere and cement and develop a sense of racial community.”45

            In Black Detroit August Meier and Elliot Rudwick noted, “the income of Ford’s Black workers was the cornerstone for the prosperity of the black community’s business and professional people.”46Blacks “were employed in the laboratories and drafting rooms; as bricklayers, crane operators, and mechanics; and . . . as electricians and tool-and-die makers.”47James C. Price became an expert in purchasing abrasives and diamonds.48Eugene J. Collins became head of the die casting department in 1924, and was later named the first Negro foreman.49Meier and Rudwick point out that, “Ford established his own contacts among key black leaders, especially among the clergy.”50Ford’s paternalism to local African American communities won him praise from African Americans, so much so that “black workers at Ford felt themselves superior, and wore their company badges to church on Sunday.”51


            African Americans comprised a significant portion of Ford’s workforce. James Flink pointed out that, “Ford’s black workers were concentrated at the Rouge, where by 1926 they numbered 10,000 and constituted about 10 percent of the work force.” At the Rouge, African-Americans were concentrated in “the most dangerous, dirty, and disagreeable jobs – chiefly in paint spraying and foundry work.”52Blacks were employed in positions that required the greatest physical exertion, the highest accident rates, and most exposure to health hazards. Despite the racial victories of foremen like Eugene J. Collins, most Blacks were forced into hazardous jobs in separate parts of the factory. 
            Ford countered the critics of mass production in his own time in his 1926 article on the topic in Encyclopedia Britannica. He argued:
            The need for skilled artisans and creative genius is greater under mass production than without it. In entering the shops of the Ford Motor Co., for example, one passes through great departments of skilled mechanics who are not engaged in production, but in the construction and maintenance of the machinery of production. Details of from 5,000 to 10,000 highly skilled artisans at strategic points throughout the shops were not commonly witnessed in the days preceding mass production. It has been debated whether there is less or more skill as a consequence of mass production. The present writer’s opinion [Ford’s] is that there is more. The common work of the world has always been done by unskilled labor, but the common work of the world in modern times is not as common as it was formerly.53
            Fordism completed a revolution in the making of things that originated with the notion of interchangeable parts first proposed by Eli Whitney in 1798. Combining the practice of interchangeable parts as employed in nineteenth century armories with that of the moving disassembly line in the meat packing industry and techniques involving metal stamping from the bicycle industry, the assembly line led to what is called deskilling and monotony. But Fordismhad its advantages. Fifteen million Model Ts were produced by 1927, and profits exceeded $7 billion.54The following chart shows the actual production volume at Ford from 1903 through 1927.55
Year
Number of Cars
Year
Number of Cars
1903
1,708
1916
734,811
1904
1,695
1917
622,351
1905
1,599
1918
435,898
1906
8,729
1919
820,445
1907
14,887
1920
419,517
1908
120,202
1921
903,814
1909
17,771
1922
1,173,745
1910
32,053
1923
1,817,891
1911
69,762
1924
1,749,827
1912
170,211
1925
1,643,295
1913
202,667
1926
1,368,383
1914
308,162
1927
352,288
1915
501,462



            Ford and the Ford Motor Company’s accomplishments were more than simply making complex mechanical things in quantity, however. As Anthony Patrick O’Brien has demonstrated, beginning around 1910 or 1911 Ford also pioneered controls on mass distribution in the automobile industry.56“Telegraphic ten day reports” were sent by branch managers to Detroit summarizing current dealer stocks, production levels, and dates of customer purchases. Later data that also included the number of salesmen employed and live prospects on file came from dealers. This accounting system was in part responsible for Ford weathering recessions in 1910-11 and 1920-21 far better than its competitors. And contrary to the interpretation that it was General Motors that developed a tight connection between production and distribution by the mid-to-late 1920s, it appears that Ford did it first. Ultimately then, GM’s eclipse of Ford by the late 1920s was not due to a process control and distribution network advantage, but rather to the fact that GM offered more products in more price ranges. After all, while GM during the 1920s was trying to anticipate what customers wanted in a car, Henry Ford staunchly remained convinced that only he had the right idea about what a car should be.
            By the early 1920s, there would be not just one Ford Model T assembly line, but many, in factories all over America. Surprisingly, perhaps, the factory with the largest output during the 1920s was not the Highland Park facility, but one located in Kearny, Nebraska. Large facilities were also located in Atlanta, Buffalo, Cambridge, Chicago, Cincinnati, Columbus, Dallas, Des Moines, Houston, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Louisville, Memphis, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Oklahoma City, Omaha, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, San Francisco, Seattle, and St. Louis.57

Ford assembly line, Louisville, Ky

            Henry Ford also demonstrated his genius by implementing the $5 day in 1914. While economists and industry experts asserted that Ford’s $5 day would lead to his bankruptcy, Ford’s motives were based on common sense mixed with a vision of the firm in which returns on investment were not maximized, but rather acceptable. It was both good business and an expression of concern for the common man. The assembly line in its early days had already led to an unacceptable labor turnover rate; in response, Ford raised hourly wages so that workers would stay despite the repetitive and exhausting nature of the job. And if a worker didn’t like conditions, there were many – Poles, African Americans, and other minorities – outside the gates waiting to replace anyone dissatisfied. The $5 day was just another reason why many viewed Ford as a hero. As Ford correctly recognized, the $5 day resulted in more business, not only as his own workers bought Model Ts, but also for service industries that provided for line workers and their families. Ford had envisioned and then implemented a giant technological and economic feedback loop that accelerated his own profits while stabilizing his labor force.