Term Paper: Henry Ford - Essay Example

In this vein, he was successful to provide his own Ford Quadricycle (Ford 34). Since that time, new ideas had fulfilled the Ford’s mind. Thus, he became brainstorming the need for gasoline engines as a drive toward more opportunities in the industrial era. However, one of the most interesting things about Ford is his global vision of the consumerism as a predominant feature for peaceful relationships worldwide. Due to his managerial practices he learned at different companies he worked with, Ford is best-known for the notion of “Fordism” – a term defining cheaper consumer goods along with high wages among employees or “a linkage between the division of labor and mass markets” (Rose 65).

It was a holistic exemplification of Ford’s ideals for better life in the USA based on the best principles and approaches in the heavy industries at the time. Looking at the premise of “Fordism,” it is likely that Ford, as a founder of Ford Motor Company, sought to reform the capitalistic model of relationships. It was reached through the higher tempos of production. Notably, one should keep it in mind that it is Henry Ford who invented and introduced the assembly line technique at his plant along with the idea of mass production, and, as Ford himself noted: “This rough experiment reduced the time to five hours fifty minutes per chassis” (Ford 94).

Of course, by means of the assembly line he revolutionized the production of cars for the consumers throughout the North America and on other continents at the time. Along with other automobile companies, he made the United States the leading automobile-producing country in the world in the 1920s (Rose 65). Hence, the huge creative potential of Ford made him one of the most outstanding people in America. Needless to say, capitalism is always consumerism. This postulate served one of the main drives for Henry Ford who shared not only his personal needs and wants but the issues arising among ordinary Americans.

Thus, his devotion to the national growth and development cannot be underestimated. Some of the assumptions and reasoning Ford outlines in his book read as follows: “Wages and salaries are a sort of profit-sharing fixed in advance, but it often happens that when the business of the year is closed, it is discovered that more can be paid” (138). It goes without saying that Ford was a great economist coming in his assumptions closer to the Keynesian General Economic Theory which saved the American economy with the advent of the World War II.

Besides, Ford tried to make the first automobiles affordable for every American. His “Model T” (1908) was applicable in this sense due to its practical surety and simplicity along with other models “R” and “S” (Ford 82). Admittedly, Ford tried his best to modernize his early models and upgrade them to the examples of the 1920s cars. Strange as it may seem, he accomplished this task through his innovative vision of what makes the buying power so firm within the country. He was well aware of the main principles in the business and in the relationships starting with manufacturers and ending with consumers: “If that consumer does not want to buy what the manufacturer has to sell him and has not the money to buy it, then the manufacturer blames the consumer and says that business is bad” (Ford 153).

It was always nonsense for him, as he was a