Henry Ford's Vision & Inventiveness
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Though Henry Ford was responsible for revolutionary advances in manufacturing it is not as often noted that the Ford Motor Company was an unusual leader in the establishment of American big business because of the firm's tightly-controlled and (by general big-business standards) under-capitalized nature. Ford's decision to adapt the assembly line notion to his own product met with enormous success and he was able to outstrip all his competitors very rapidly. The center of Ford's vision, however, was not the use of the assembly line but the idea that cars could belong to anyone and that he could produce and sell a practical, affordable vehicle in mass quantities. The combination of Ford's inventiveness and practicality with his own stubbornness and the skill of his colleagues made the company into a big business that did not, at first, fit the mold. The Ford company is a case study in the practicalities of manufacturing that, when combined with the opportunity to create a major new industry, made it possible to proceed in a different manner than many of the big businesses that emerged in the early part of the century. Henry Ford (1863-1947) was a trained machinist who was fascinated by the new horseless carriages. He began to experiment with car building in the early 1890s and by 1896 he had built his first car. It was only the sixth gasoline-powered automobile to be built in America. Over the next six years Ford tried repeatedly to get his car into production. In t
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in which he would be able to put his own ideas to work. The Ford Motor Company was incorporated in 1903 "with an authorized capitalization of $150,000, all common stock, of which $100,000 was issued." Malcolmson guaranteed production financing up to $3,000, which was an important incentive to other investors. There were ten other subscribers, most associated with Malcolmson. The Dodge brothers, John and Horace, paid their $5,000 subscriptions with promissory notes that were later paid off by the profits from Ford business obtained by their machine shop. James Couzens paid $1,000 in cash and signed a promissory note for $1,500. In all, the new company received only $28,000 in cash and, "according to a Ford publication issued in September, 1920, this was all the cash ever paid in on its capital stock."
At the beginning the new company proceeded as all car makers did. Foundries produced the castings which were then tooled into individual parts. The parts were then assembled into components (such as magnetos) and finally there was "the assembly of thousands of parts and components into the motor vehicle." The production of parts and components was a capital-intensive undertaking and demand for luxury cars tended to suff
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1861
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)
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