Life and work
Henry Ford
1863–1947
Industry remade as a system.
Ford’s historical importance lies in the joining of product, factory and market. A motor car became the centre of a system in which standard parts, moving work and falling costs reinforced one another.
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German-language editions
These writings take the reader inside the reasoning of a manufacturer seeking to organise an entire productive world.
The current AETERNUS editions of this author are in German. Explore the German editions →
Life and work
A life in context
The memoir is an industrialist’s statement of purpose. It explains how Ford wished his enterprise to be understood; the workers’ experience and the company’s later history extend beyond that account.
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Origins and early years
Ford came from rural Michigan into the machine shops and motor industry of Detroit. The distance between farm and factory remained an important part of the story he told about useful work.
The course of a life
The Model T and the moving assembly line transformed the scale of manufacture. The system depended on the organisation of many people’s labour as well as on engineering. Its economy came with exacting control of pace and process.
The public record also includes the antisemitic campaign published through Ford’s Dearborn Independent. His repudiation in 1927 did not undo the circulation and influence of that material. The industrial achievement and this political conduct belong to the same biography.
The literary work
My Life and Work, written with Samuel Crowther, turns business experience into an argument about production, wages and service. Its assertions invite examination against the industrial arrangements they describe.
The legacy
Ford remains a powerful witness to the ambitions of mass production. His account is most revealing when its practical observations and its claims of social purpose are read together.
A life in dates
- Model T introduced
- Moving assembly line
- My Life and Work