Henry Fords Pay Scale

Interesting Joe K. that is one expensive dinner!


I have also read that the other car co's were pissed when Henry did this, because the employees for Packard, etc were quitting to go work for Ford.
 
Hank the deuce took over Ford in '45..look a little deeper than Sorenson's biography,you will fine Bennett was deeply entwined with Willow Run and other endeavors outside of his security duties.
 
It all comes down to "what's it worth to you?" I spent 20 years in "this man's Navy (USN)" and it was paternalistic. Base pay, housing allowance, food allowance, flight pay, free medical and dental for me. free medical for my dependents. AND THEY TOLD ME WHERE TO BE, AND WHAT TO DO 24/7/365/20. The was a commissioned sales rep for 19 years. If I sold, I made money. Owner (really) didn't care about my life or family although they acted like they did.


"You pays your money and takes your choices" or whatever. I'll bet a lot of men would jump at $5.00 a day and some BS instead of whatever they were making and "nice people" to work for.


Henry did it because it worked for him. Workers did it because it worked for them. Typical Henry Ford, own it all, keep people working.


Unions changed things and that's why we drive foreign cars (my Chrysler T&C made in Canada) and foreign cars are made in the southern USA. And UAW talking about striking?
 
Railcarmover said:
Hank the deuce took over Ford in '45..look a little deeper than Sorenson's biography,you will fine Bennett was deeply entwined with Willow Run and other endeavors outside of his security duties.
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Look up Willow Run at the Henry Ford site. This is no BS. Sorenson ran it as plant manager until he retired after 40 years in early 1944 & Mead Bricker was the manager after that until the war was over.

Henry II was called back out of the Navy to take his fathers position at Ford in 1943 after Edsel died. Henry number 1 was the only one in charge but he had already had two strokes and was not in good mental condition. The War Department knew it and talked about taking over. The Ford family which included Edsel's widow and Clara Ford made sure that Henry II took over the every day running of the plant as vice president in early 1944. He eventually became president in 1945 but he had already been running things for a year before that. Henry Ford was not in good mental health and Harry Bennett tried to take advantage of that situation. Bennett had to go so Henry II asked John Bugas to fire him which he did without getting shot.

If you look up Harry Bennett, all he managed was what was referred to as the Service Department which was actually just a security team to watch the gates and the employees plus handle union labor talks. He did all this at Henry Fords request. Henry had him harass his own son which was a terrible thing to do to Edsel and I'm sure hastened his death from stomach cancer.

I've read many first hand accounts of folks that worked at Ford so I'm not pulling anyones leg here. This information is not made up. I've never seen the information about Bennett presented in any other way.
 
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Sorenson and Bricker turned the other way to Bennetts shenanigans,Bennett had the ear of Henry himself,frail as he was,he still ran Ford motor.Part of the reason the deuce was let out of his naval obligations was that Bennett was making a serious play to succeed Ford,and the word was out about the graft and overage at Willow Run. I don't want to argue,you spell out the sanitized version.Spend some time with the oral histories,you'll get a full feel for Fords darkside and his hooligan Bennett..

http://cdm15889.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/landingpage/collection/p15889coll2
 
The Wikipedia entry I referenced earlier passes quickly over Harry Bennetts rise to "replace Henry Ford" - which almost happened - and his fall.

Upon the 1943 death of company president Edsel Ford, the founder's overshadowed son, Bennett was Henry Ford's choice to succeed Edsel. However, Edsel Ford's widow blamed Bennett for her husband's early death and effectively vetoed the appointment. Instead, Henry Ford appointed Bennett to the Ford Motor Company board of directors. After some attempted shenanigans with Henry Ford's will which would have given Bennett control over the company, the Ford women stepped in and demanded Bennett's ouster. In September 1945, Henry Ford II was summoned to Ford's estate and informed that he would be the new president of Ford Motor Company. As his first act, Henry Ford II, then 28, had John Bugas hand Bennett his walking papers (after which Bennett and Bugas drew pistols on each other). Bennett told the younger Ford, "You're taking over a billion-dollar company that you haven't contributed a thing to." That afternoon, on September 21, 1945, Bennett departed, ending his 30-year career with the Ford Motor Company.[4]
The ruthless Bennett era was finally over. Afterward, Henry Ford II went to Ford to tell him of his first executive decision: "I went to him (Henry Ford) with my guard up. I was sure he was going to blow my head off." Ford quite nonchalantly said, "Well, now Harry is back on the streets where he started." (bolding mine)
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Joe K
 
http://cdm15889.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/compoundobject/collection/p15889coll2/id/15808/rec/184

Take a minute,download and read Al Smiths history..besides a fantastic look at engine development and production issues he gets into the Meade Bricker/Charles Sorenson /Harry Bennett dynamic,and Bennetts cohorts like Rauch..Ford wasnt run like GM with a smart corporate culture..there were cliques and power struggles at Ford,waste,fraud and abuse,it got worse the older Henry got. The Deuce fixed alot of it with the whiz kids and some GM people,but Ford Motor during the war and before was a very interesting company.

There are other real good histories in the collection, Harold Hicks,Eugene Farkas and Lawrence Sheldrick to name a few..the trials and tribulations of the model a development..
 
Ford Motor Company sanitized it for a reason. It was a family reputation to worry about. Henry was getting more paranoid as time went by and it just got worse when the old timers started retiring. He knew less and less people around the plants and he didn't trust anyone he didn't know. Harry Bennett would hang out with him and was really his henchman. Harry had so many of his cronies working under him that were less than reputable that he likely didn't know what all was going on behind his own back. Henry had a dark side that was made worse by failing mental health. Harry did what ever Henry told him to do. The family got together on this and decided enough was enough. Getting rid of Harry would show Henry that they had had enough and it worked. Harry Bennett was not a Ford so he had no chance of ever taking over. Much of the information about this stuff was kept from the public until the old timers started writing their memoirs and telling their first hand experiences for transcript into the Ford Archives. The public at large didn't know about any of it at the time as it would have been a scandal.

I've read most of the transcribed histories and they all seem to back each other up.
 
Ted Duke said:
....................and UAW talking about striking?
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The news said that the leadership is under Federal investigation for fraud and all sorts of financial misappropriations.

At a local Labor Day parade Monday there were UAW members marching with signs denouncing the national leaders:eek: Looks like somebody got caught with their hand in the cookie jar.
 
Ain't it just Grand! GM is losing in there inflow versus outflow and the union wants to authorize strikes. They may end up kicking a dead horse on that one. I guess GM, Ford, & Fiat are all coming up for contracts.
 
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This is an interesting discussion! But I've noticed a number of "armchair experts" that seem to know more about the inner workings of Henry Ford's mind than Henry himself knew! Or were some blank spaces filled in with conjecture and supposition??
 
If you read the oral histories you'll find those who succeeded at Ford Motor were smart enough not to question him.Those who did,did so at their own peril..there is more than one recounting of how subtle Mr Ford was,often a man never knew what caused him to lose favor with him,at his own peril..read Harold Hick's interview for a good example.
 
My dad and his brother worked in the Kansas City Ford plant in 1928. Dad was 18 years old and came of the farm so he was no stranger to hard work. He told me their were many days after work that he was so tired he would have to rest before he could catch the street car to go home. Many nights too tired to eat supper. He told me it was the hardest job he ever had.

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If you want to find out even a little bit about what a person like Henry Ford was like, all you can do is read the first hand accounts about him. There is no other way to know now and each person had different experiences. Some were good and some were bad so you have to read between the lines and get to know something about each one of the story tellers. What opinion you have or conclusion you come to is always an assumption. It's just human nature.

If you don't read the accounts for yourself then you will always be hearing someone elses opinion or conclusion which sort of muddys the waters.
 
michael a said:
To what book are you referring?

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You could start with Henry Ford's Autobiography.

My Life and Work by Henry Ford.

But - keep in mind two things. This is Henry Ford talking about himself. Nobody ever talks one's self down.

Also he speaks from an early 20th Century frame of reference. All the ills of the world we decry today were NORMAL then - and normal for Henry Ford.

We today have our own set of ills. And given Boston's "Straight" Rally of yesterday (9-9-19) intolerance might be one of them.

A reviewer of the book (5 stars) says it pretty well.

You're reading this book and you just think the whole time "man this guy is so awesome and so smart he rules." And you mention it to someone that you're reading it and they say "he was an anti-semite." And you think "oh he couldn't have been. He goes on and on about the worth of all people and he genuinely seems to care about everyone.' And then there's this one random passage in the last chapter where he basically says something like "I know we get a lot of guff for the jew thing but honestly it's not that big of a deal when one group of people are so different than everyone else you have to blah blah blah" and you go "wait what?" And that one random passage totally bums you out about Henry Ford because you had convinced yourself he wasn't that bad. And who knows. Maybe he was a product of his time. Read the rest of the book, though, it's spectacular.

Also there's all this stuff where he's like "and what's the deal with hospitals they are run so dumb. It's not that hard, I started a hospital and it works great" and you think "uh huh sure" so you google it and yes, in fact, his hospital is still going, and was and STILL IS a great hospital, pioneering in medical care. Weird. This was true with schools too. And railroads. What a ridiculously smart human being.
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Joe K
 
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