In September 1913 a Model T chassis took twelve and a half hours of labor; by the spring of 1914 it took ninety-three minutes. The same moving line drove annual turnover at Highland Park to roughly 370 percent, and the famous five-dollar day was the price Ford paid to keep people standing beside it.
This film separates what Ford invented from what he borrowed from armories, meatpackers and mills; follows the magneto and chassis experiments at Highland Park in 1913–1914; and reads the five-dollar day as it was written, as conditional profit-sharing checked by the Sociological Department. River Rouge appears only where the story reaches the late 1920s.
Chapters:
00:00 Ninety-three minutes
00:26 The version everyone knows
02:24 What actually moved
05:29 What the line did to the men
09:07 The price of staying
11:50 Who paid for the speed
Sources:
– Henry Ford with Samuel Crowther — https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/7213
– Library of Congress — https://guides.loc.gov/this-month-in-business-history/October/Ford
– Detroit Historical Society — https://www.detroithistorical.org/learn/online-research/encyclopedia-of-detroit/model-t
– Model T Ford Club of America encyclopedia — https://www.mtfca.com/model_t_encyclopedia/1913-2/
– Model T Ford Club of America encyclopedia — https://www.mtfca.com/model_t_encyclopedia/1925/
– Stephen Meyer — http://autolife.umd.umich.edu/Labor/L_Overview/L_Overview3.htm
– EBSCO Research Starters — https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/history/ford-announces-five-dollar-eight-hour-workday
– Ford Model T index — https://www.fordmodelt.net/p-r.php
Image credits (Wikimedia Commons). Images were cropped, colour-graded and animated for this video:
• Andrew Jameson ( talk ) at en.wikipedia — CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) — File:Highland_Park_Ford_plant.jpg
• Iwao from Tokyo, Japan — CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0) — File:1909_Ford_Model_T_Touring_(6829458593).jpg, File:1909_Ford_Model_T_Touring_(6829461967).jpg
• Jackdude101 — CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0) — File:Ford_Piquette_Avenue_Plant_-_Front_Exterior.jpg
• Daderot — CC0 (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en) — File:Springfield_Armory_National_Historic_Site_-_Springfield,_Massachusetts_-_DSC02502.JPG
• Unknown: Published by Koelling & Klappenbach, Chicago — Public domain — File:Transit_House,_Union_Stock_Yards,_Chicago.png
• United Post Card & Novelty Co., Chicago — Public domain — File:Union_Stock_Yards_Postcard_(Front).png
• Alexander Migl — CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0) — File:Ford_Model_T_Touring_(1909)_Classic-Gala_2021_1X7A0211.jpg
Film footage: Internet Archive (public domain; Ford Motor Company Collection at the U.S. National Archives where the ID starts with fc-fc). Clips were trimmed, cropped and colour-graded:
• https://archive.org/details/fc-fc-252
• https://archive.org/details/fc-fc-2575
• https://archive.org/details/fc-fc-4531
• https://archive.org/details/203684_National_Archives_Cars_Diego
• https://archive.org/details/fc-fc-424
• https://archive.org/details/fc-fc-1982
• https://archive.org/details/fc-fc-2573
• https://archive.org/details/fc-fc-2587
• https://archive.org/details/fc-fc-675
• https://archive.org/details/fc-fc-440a-g
• https://archive.org/details/45354-1920s-auto-industry-mos
Most of the moving pictures in this film are period footage shot by or for the Ford Motor Company, 1910s–1930s. Where a clip comes from a later year or another Ford plant than the one being described, the narration speaks in general terms over it. Eleven short shots are AI illustrations of objects (a rope windlass, a bolt, a tray of nuts, a time clock, a ledger, a wage envelope, an oily gear, an empty stool) and of people seen only from behind; none depicts a real, named person.
Music: The North — Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
#Ford #ModelT #AssemblyLine #AutomotiveHistory #IndustrialHistory #Documentary
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