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The Ford Paternalism
May. 10th, 2013 01:28 pmThe culture does change. Who would tolerate this kind of thing now? (Well, I know a few people who would cheerfully invite it from the state...)
Henry Ford's Experiment to Build a Better Worker
By Richard Snow
Early in 1914 Henry Ford, spurred by a combination of wanting to cut down the high turnover in his workforce and what seems to have been genuine altruism, announced that henceforth the base wage in his factory would be five dollars a day. This at a stroke doubled the prevailing salary for industrial work, and it caused a sensation.
But Ford company workers discovered that achieving their five-dollar day came with some rigid stipulations. To qualify for his doubled salary, the worker had to be thrifty and continent. He had to keep his home neat and his children healthy, and, if he were below the age of twenty-two, to be married.
[...]
Today the Sociological Department might seem the essence of suffocating paternalism, and many felt it so even at the time. Certainly no other big industrial operation had anything like it. But with its medical and legal services, and the English language school it ran for the company's thousands of immigrant workers, the department appears to have done more good than harm. In 1914 the average Ford worker had $207.10 in savings. For those who stuck with the company during the next five years, the average had risen to $2,171.14.
The reformer Ida Tarbell went to Highland Park planning to expose the oppressive Ford system. Instead she wrote, "I don't care what you call it—philanthropy, paternalism, autocracy — the results which are being obtained are worth all you can set against them, and the errors in the plan will provoke their own remedies."
Copyright © 2013 by Richard Snow. From the forthcoming book "I Invented the Modern Age: The Rise of Henry Ford" by Richard Snow to be published by Scribner, a division of Simon & Schuster Inc. Printed by permission.
Full excerpt at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324059704578471112978065632.html
Henry Ford's Experiment to Build a Better Worker
By Richard Snow
Early in 1914 Henry Ford, spurred by a combination of wanting to cut down the high turnover in his workforce and what seems to have been genuine altruism, announced that henceforth the base wage in his factory would be five dollars a day. This at a stroke doubled the prevailing salary for industrial work, and it caused a sensation.
But Ford company workers discovered that achieving their five-dollar day came with some rigid stipulations. To qualify for his doubled salary, the worker had to be thrifty and continent. He had to keep his home neat and his children healthy, and, if he were below the age of twenty-two, to be married.
[...]
Today the Sociological Department might seem the essence of suffocating paternalism, and many felt it so even at the time. Certainly no other big industrial operation had anything like it. But with its medical and legal services, and the English language school it ran for the company's thousands of immigrant workers, the department appears to have done more good than harm. In 1914 the average Ford worker had $207.10 in savings. For those who stuck with the company during the next five years, the average had risen to $2,171.14.
The reformer Ida Tarbell went to Highland Park planning to expose the oppressive Ford system. Instead she wrote, "I don't care what you call it—philanthropy, paternalism, autocracy — the results which are being obtained are worth all you can set against them, and the errors in the plan will provoke their own remedies."
Copyright © 2013 by Richard Snow. From the forthcoming book "I Invented the Modern Age: The Rise of Henry Ford" by Richard Snow to be published by Scribner, a division of Simon & Schuster Inc. Printed by permission.
Full excerpt at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324059704578471112978065632.html
