Who is henry ford

Spring - Fall Highland Park is shut down for six months to prepare for production of the new vehicle, the Model A. Sixty thousand workers are laid off. September 30, Henry Ford purchases land in Brazil to establish rubber plantations in what would become known as "Fordlandia.

Late Eight years after construction began, Ford's enormous River Rouge factory complex begins full-scale automobile production. The vertically-integrated factory is Henry Ford's vision realized: entire finished vehicles could be built from scratch using raw materials owned and supplied by the Ford Motor Company without dependence on outside suppliers. Ford had once told a colleague that he "wanted the raw materials coming in on one end of the Rouge plant and the finished cars going out the other end.

As part of the ceremony, Ford unveils the Thomas Edison Institute now the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village, which would grow to showcase hundreds of historic buildings and artifacts that Ford had meticulously purchased, dismantled, and reassembled as a recreated rural town -- Ford's deeply nostalgic commemoration of America's past.

October 29, The stock market crashes and the Great Depression hits the U. The altercation, which was captured by photographers, became known as "The Battle of the Overpass. July 29, The day before Ford's 75th birthday on July 30, Henry, Clara and a crowd of 40, spectators attend a pageant at Ford Field in Dearborn, in which performers re-enact scenes from Ford's life. April Outside the Rouge, 50, Ford employees refuse to work until Ford agrees to meet union demands calling for higher wages, overtime pay, and job security.

Ford declares he would rather shut down his factories than give in to the union. June Under pressure from Edsel, the unions, and the government, whose war contracts were at stake, Ford finally signs an agreement with union officials. He gives the UAW everything it wants and more -- a union shop, wages equal to the highest in the industry, and union dues deducted from workers' paychecks. Early Ford suffers a debilitating stroke while on a trip to Richmond Hill, his estate in Georgia.

After returning to Fair Lane, Ford remains mentally and physically languid, often failing to recognize old friends and associates, and is carefully kept out of the public eye. November 5, Henry Ford II, Edsel's oldest son and president of Ford Motor Company for just six weeks, sells Fordlandia back to the Brazilian government for a fraction of its value. Discover the fascinating story of Elizebeth Smith Friedman, the groundbreaking cryptanalyst who helped bring down gangsters and break up a Nazi spy ring in South America.

Her work helped lay the foundation for modern codebreaking today. I n the summer of , hundreds of wildfires raged across the Northern Rockies. By the time it was all over, more than three million acres had burned and at least 78 firefighters were dead. It was the largest fire in American history. Henry Ford owned the Ford Motor Company until his death.

Yet Ford seemed almost indifferent to money and all it could buy. His wife, he explained, had a previously scheduled meeting of her garden club. In average years, Ford gave away about 33 percent of his income. By way of comparison, most people in his tax bracket gave away 5 percent.

What Ford himself considered to be the most genuine philanthropy were small gifts to individuals, of which he gave many. And Ford did launch a few projects of his own. In , he and his wife created Valley Farm, an acre home for orphan boys. He built a trade school in Detroit and a school for African Americans in Georgia. During the Great Depression, he paid for two work camps for boys.

Two of his philanthropic projects, however, were particularly conspicuous, because of both their size and their strategy. The first was the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit. In , the residents of Detroit started a subscription campaign to build a modern medical facility. Construction began, but was halted when the half-completed facility foundered in debt.

Ford wanted the Henry Ford Hospital to reflect his philosophy of work and self-reliance. He thus subsidized some of the cost of the medical care, but took pains to ensure that patients would still have to bear some of the costs they incurred. There are no hospitals for those who can afford to pay only a moderate amount and yet desire to pay without a feeling that they are recipients of charity. After a court battle with his stockholders, led by brothers Horace and John Dodge, Henry Ford bought out all minority stockholders by In , Ford moved production to a massive industrial complex he had built along the banks of the River Rouge in Dearborn, Michigan.

The plant included a glass factory, steel mill, assembly line and all other necessary components of automotive production. That same year, Ford ceased production of the Model T, and introduced the new Model A, which featured better horsepower and brakes, among other improvements. By that time, the company had produced some 15 million Model Ts, and Ford Motor Company was the largest automotive manufacturer in the world. Ford opened plants and operations throughout the world.

The Model A proved to be a relative disappointment, and was outsold by both Chevrolet made by General Motors and Plymouth made by Chrysler ; it was discontinued in In , Ford introduced the first V-8 engine, but by the company had dropped to number three in sales in the automotive industry. Despite his progressive policies regarding the minimum wage, Ford waged a long battle against unionization of labor, refusing to come to terms with the United Automobile Workers UAW even after his competitors did so.

Ford Motor Company signed its first contract with UAW in , but not before Henry Ford considered shutting down the company to avoid it. He made a failed bid for a U. Senate seat in , narrowly losing in a campaign marked by personal attacks from his opponent. In the Dearborn Independent, a local newspaper he bought in , Ford published a number of anti-Semitic writings that were collected and published as a four volume set called The International Jew.

He died two years later at his Dearborn home, at the age of But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present. But his broader social legacy is complicated. In addition to those accomplishments, Ford used his He famously married a series of six wives in his search for political alliance, marital bliss and a healthy male heir.

His desire to Henry Hudson made his first voyage west from England in , when he was hired to find a shorter route to Asia from Europe through the Arctic Ocean.