The Five Dollar Day

The Five Dollar Day
Author: Stephen Meyer III
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 261
Release: 1981-06-30
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1438412932

In 1903, Henry Ford founded the Ford Motor Company in a small Detroit workshop. Five years later, he introduced the Model T and met with extraordinary commercial success. Between 1910 and 1914, he developed mass production and made the conveyor a symbol of the auto-industrial age. Then, in 1914, Ford acquired an overnight reputation as humanitarian, philanthropist and social reformer; and simultaneously infuriated the business community and stunned social reformers with his announcement of the outrageous Five Dollar Day. More than simply high-wage policy, the Five Dollar Day attempted to solve attitudinal and behavioral problems with an effort to change the worker’s domestic environment. Half of the five dollars represented “wages” and the other half was called “profits”—which the worker received only when he met specific standards of efficiency and home life that accorded with the ideal of an American way of life which the company felt was the basis for industrial efficiency. The unique and short-lived Ford program did not succeed, yet its significance as an early managerial strategy goes beyond the boundaries of success or failure. The Ford Motor Company was uniquely situated in the historical evolution of labor management and industrial technology, and this readable study of that evolution, which highlights the Ford workers, is a chapter in the larger history of labor and work in America. Stephen Meyer III, Professor of Urban Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, is one of the new historians who have begun to address the profound social impact of technology on the world of work.

The People's Tycoon

The People's Tycoon
Author: Steven Watts
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 656
Release: 2009-03-04
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0307558975

How a Michigan farm boy became the richest man in America is a classic, almost mythic tale, but never before has Henry Ford’s outsized genius been brought to life so vividly as it is in this engaging and superbly researched biography. The real Henry Ford was a tangle of contradictions. He set off the consumer revolution by producing a car affordable to the masses, all the while lamenting the moral toll exacted by consumerism. He believed in giving his workers a living wage, though he was entirely opposed to union labor. He had a warm and loving relationship with his wife, but sired a son with another woman. A rabid anti-Semite, he nonetheless embraced African American workers in the era of Jim Crow. Uncovering the man behind the myth, situating his achievements and their attendant controversies firmly within the context of early twentieth-century America, Watts has given us a comprehensive, illuminating, and fascinating biography of one of America’s first mass-culture celebrities.

The Public Image of Henry Ford

The Public Image of Henry Ford
Author: David Lanier Lewis
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
Total Pages: 612
Release: 1976
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780814318928

Skillful journalism and meticulous scholarship are combined in the full-bodied portrait of that enigmatic folk hero, Henry Ford, and of the company he built from scratch. Writing with verve and objectivity, David Lewis focuses on the fame, popularity, and influence of America's most unconventional businessman and traces the history of public relations and advertising within Ford Motor Company and the automobile industry.

Young Henry Ford

Young Henry Ford
Author: Sidney Olson
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
Total Pages: 226
Release: 1997
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780814312247

Young Henry Ford is a visual and textual presentation of the first forty years of Henry Ford—an American farm boy who became one of the greatest manufacturers of modern times and profoundly impacted the habits of American life. In Young Henry Ford, Sidney Olson dispels some of the myths attached to this automobile legend, going beyond the Henry Ford of mass production and the five-dollar day, and offers a more intimate understanding of Henry Ford and the time he lived in. Through hundreds of restored photographs, including some of Ford's own taken with his first camera, Young Henry Ford revisits an America now gone—of long days on the farm, travel by horse and buggy, and one-room schoolhouses. Some of the rare illustrations include the first picture of Henry Ford, photos from Edsel's childhood, snapshots of the interior and exterior of the Ford homestead, Clara and Henry's wedding invitation, and photos of the early stages of the first automobile.

Living on a Dollar a Day

Living on a Dollar a Day
Author: Thomas A. Nazario
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2014-04-08
Genre: Equality
ISBN: 9781593720568

Shares the lives of the poorest people in the world, highlighting their experiences and struggles and acting as a clarion call to those who aim to break the cycle of global poverty.

The Little Book of the Shrinking Dollar

The Little Book of the Shrinking Dollar
Author: Addison Wiggin
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2012-04-11
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1118283171

With the weakening dollar a hot topic for retirees, savers, and investors, this Little Book delves into the economic turmoil in the U.S. and shows how to survive it The United States dollar is losing value at an alarming rate. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) index, the U.S. currency is 37 percent below fair value against the Australian dollar and 20 percent versus the Canadian dollar. The decline of the U.S. dollar is one of the biggest threats facing American investors today, but with the Little Book of the Shrinking Dollar: What You Can do to Protect Your Money Now in hand, you have the knowledge and the expertise you need to fight back. Written by New York Times bestselling author Addison Wiggin, a leading economic forecaster, the book explores the reasons for the dollar's decline, and its precarious relationship to other currencies around the world. Filled with invaluable strategies for retirees, savers, and investors who want to keep their money safe no matter what lies ahead, the book is your one-stop guide to weathering the storm. Covers strategies for safeguarding your wealth, including safer havens for money, alternative investments, and other opportunities Written by Addison Wiggin, a three-time New York Times bestselling author and leading economic forecaster Wiggin's predictions about the decline of the dollar have proven true time and again, making him the right man for the job when it comes to predicting what lies ahead The U.S. dollar is no longer the secure and stable currency that most Americans grew up believing in. Even after recent gains, the dollar remains weak. But with the Little Book of the Shrinking Dollar you have a concise guide to what's driving its demise and everything you need to protect your money today and in the years to come.

My Forty Years with Ford

My Forty Years with Ford
Author: Charles E. Sorensen
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
Total Pages: 382
Release: 2006-01-09
Genre: Transportation
ISBN: 0814335691

An unflinching eyewitness account of the Ford story as told by one of Henry Ford’s closest associates. In My Forty Years with Ford, Charles Sorensen-sometimes known as "Henry Ford's man," sometimes as "Cast-iron Charlie"-tells his own story, and it is as challenging as it is historic. He emerges as a man who was not only one of the great production geniuses of the world but also a man who called the plays as he saw them. He was the only man who was able to stay with Ford for almost the full history of his empire, yet he never hesitated to go against Ford when he felt the interests of the company demanded it. When labor difficulties mounted and Edsel's fatal illness was upon him, Sorensen sided with Edsel against Henry Ford and Harry Bennett, and he insisted that Henry Ford II be brought in to direct the company despite the aging founder's determination that no one but he hold the presidential reins. First published in 1956, My Forty Years with Ford has now been reissued in paperback for the first time. The Ford story has often been discussed in print but has rarely been articulated by someone who was there. Here Sorensen provides an eyewitness account of the birth of the Model T, the early conflicts with the Dodge brothers, the revolutionary announcement of the five-dollar day, and Sorensen's development of the moving assembly line-a concept that changed our world. Although Sorensen conceived, designed, and built the giant Willow Run plant in nineteen months and then proceeded to turn out eight thousand giant bombers, his life's major work was to make possible the vision of Henry Ford and to postpone the personal misfortune with which it ended. My Forty Years with Ford is both a personal history of a business empire and a revelation that moves with excitement and the power of tragedy.

Nickel and Dimed

Nickel and Dimed
Author: Barbara Ehrenreich
Publisher: Metropolitan Books
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2010-04-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1429926643

The New York Times bestselling work of undercover reportage from our sharpest and most original social critic, with a new foreword by Matthew Desmond, author of Evicted Millions of Americans work full time, year round, for poverty-level wages. In 1998, Barbara Ehrenreich decided to join them. She was inspired in part by the rhetoric surrounding welfare reform, which promised that a job—any job—can be the ticket to a better life. But how does anyone survive, let alone prosper, on $6 an hour? To find out, Ehrenreich left her home, took the cheapest lodgings she could find, and accepted whatever jobs she was offered. Moving from Florida to Maine to Minnesota, she worked as a waitress, a hotel maid, a cleaning woman, a nursing-home aide, and a Wal-Mart sales clerk. She lived in trailer parks and crumbling residential motels. Very quickly, she discovered that no job is truly "unskilled," that even the lowliest occupations require exhausting mental and muscular effort. She also learned that one job is not enough; you need at least two if you int to live indoors. Nickel and Dimed reveals low-rent America in all its tenacity, anxiety, and surprising generosity—a land of Big Boxes, fast food, and a thousand desperate stratagems for survival. Read it for the smoldering clarity of Ehrenreich's perspective and for a rare view of how "prosperity" looks from the bottom. And now, in a new foreword, Matthew Desmond, author of Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, explains why, twenty years on in America, Nickel and Dimed is more relevant than ever.