[rotorwrench]

Charles Sorenson's Book "My 40-years with Ford" has a lot of first hand information about practices at Ford. He wrote a whole chapter on the $5 day and he made mention of all the BS he had read about it from 2nd and 3rd hand sources over the years. He was 1st hand and in the room when Henry made that decision in January of 1914. When Charlie and John Lee, the employment manager at the time, argued over the cost of this change and how it might bankrupt the company, Ford stopped them and told them that he had made up his mind about it and that was that. At the time, they would give any employee that had more than 3-years with the company a 10% profit sharing amount and that would continue after the $5 a day change. This was over and above the pay rate. Charlie's book and the various oral transcriptions of employee historical accounts on the Henry Ford web-site are good reads and they are first hand knowledge.

Harry Bennett handled the security for the work force at the Rouge. There would never be enough time in the day to subject the multitude of employees to supervision as was previously mentioned. Henry Ford only cared about what was happening at his plants. If troublemakers made themselves known in any way then Harry would handle that unless it was in the managerial or executive level where it would be handled by Charlie or Ed Martin. Henry Ford never directly hired or fired anyone. He just got someone else to do it. Managers at the branch agencies were responsible to tow the same basic line. The Social Department of 1918 to 1920 was in force for near 2-years but it was dropped due to it having an an unfavorable effect on production. The fellow that ran it quit and wrote an unfavorable (to Ford) book about it.

The 8-hour day was forced by the unions but Henry had beat them to it. Henry told everyone that he would shut down the plant before he ever let a Union tell him how to run his plant. Henry had already had one stroke in 1938 and his wife Clara had had enough of his hard headed nature with the unions. She made him an ultimatum on the subject and the next day he agreed to all of the union wants with a few added in likely just to surprise them. I don't doubt that Henry would have shut the doors if Clara hadn't intervened. It certainly took the weight off of Henry's shoulders that next day but all the managers were dumbfounded by this action. They never thought he would change his mind.