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Good Bad Billionaire
Henry Ford: Putting the world on wheels
00:52:02
Henry Ford revolutionised American life by making mass-produced cars affordable to all
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- [00:00]
Narrator
This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Over the past 25 years, technology has transformed our world in amazing ways. We've gone from dial up modems to 5G connectivity and bulky PC towers to AI powered microchips. Every day, innovators are redefining what's possible. Through it all, Invesco QQQ ETF has connected investors to the forefront of innovation. Access the Future today with Invesco QQQ, let's rethink possibility. There are risks when investing in ETFs, including possible loss of money. ETFs risks are similar to those of stocks. Investments in the tech sector are subject to greater risk and more volatility than more diversified investments. Before investing, consider the fund's investment objectives, risks, charges and expenses. Visit Invesco.com for a prospectus containing this information. Read it carefully before investing. Invesco Distributors, Inc.
- [00:46]
Advertiser
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- [01:17]
Sing Seng
We're in Detroit, Michigan, a room in a Victorian style factory. The year is 1906 and a secret project is underway. Drawings cover the blackboard, model parts and lathes clutter the table as people cram into the room. In the corner, in an old rocking chair sits a man. He watches, directs, improves. They're designing a car, but it's not for the rich. This car is for everyone. And back then, this was nothing short of revolutionary. The man in the chair wants it to be so low in price that no man making a good salary will be unable to own one and enjoy with his family the blessing of hours of pleasure in God's great open spaces, in his words. But what the men in that room don't yet know is they're assembling more than just a vehicle. They're setting the wheels in motion for suburbs, freeways, shopping malls, a new American way of life, a new American dream, if you will. And the man behind it all is Henry Ford. And this. This is where the 20th century begins.
- [02:27]
Simon Jack
Welcome to Good Bad Billionaire from the BBC World Service. Each episode we pick a billionaire and find out how they made their money. I'm Simon Jack.
- [02:35]
Sing Seng
I'm the BBC's business editor and I'm Sing Seng. I'm a journalist, author and podcaster.
- [02:39]
Simon Jack
So just to be clear, Henry Ford didn't actually invent the car or even the assembly line, but he changed everything about how cars were made, who could buy them, and what they meant for America. They represented freedom and progress. At his peak, Ford's personal fortune topped $1.2 billion. Asked how it felt to be a billionaire, he reportedly swore.
- [03:03]
Sing Seng
In 1908, he launched the Model T, one of the first affordable mass produced cars. So over 15 million of them were sold by 1927. By 1921, nearly 60% of the world's cars were Model Ts.
- [03:16]
Simon Jack
Wow.
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Sing Seng
People called them Tin Lizzies and they really did put the world on wheels.
- [03:22]
Simon Jack
He didn't create the moving assembly line, but he perfected it, cutting production time from 13 hours to 93 minutes. And that made cars affordable for the average worker, not just the rich.
- [03:34]
Sing Seng
Talk about maximizing efficiency. And also, did you know, Simon, that it was Ford who introduced the five day, 40 hour work week?
- [03:42]
Simon Jack
Really?
- [03:43]
Sing Seng
Yeah. I mean, before it was a six day grind. It was a huge shift. The norm completely changed. You know, his influence helped push America from farm to factory. So it shaped the roads, it shaped the suburbs, plus, you know, motels, malls, gas stations. You know, all of this kind of sprung up in the wake of his cars.
- [04:03]
Simon Jack
Yeah, I bet there are some parts of the world which would wish that the 40 hour, five day work week would be applied to them. I'm thinking of some factories in Asia, for example, where, you know, seven day working weeks are fine, but it defined the working week and the weekend. He almost invented the weekend.
- [04:20]
Sing Seng
He almost invented leisure time. When you think about it, his legacy.
- [04:24]
Simon Jack
Though, is a complicated one. He did increase wages, but he crushed unions. His assembly lines became a symbol of modern monotony. In fact, they were mocked by Charlie Chaplin in that film Modern Times and turned into religion in Aldous Huxley's dystopian novel, Brave New World set. And he said, Huxley said, 6,000 years after Ford. So that tells you how important this was.
- [04:47]
Sing Seng
And Ford also used his popularity to spread anti Semitic conspiracies. In 1938, Germany's Nazi regime even gave him a medal for it.
- [04:56]
Simon Jack
Blimey. But it can't be argued that Ford's impact was anything less than colossal. We found Stephen Watts biography, the People's Tycoon Henry Ford in the American Century, a very useful source, among others, for this episode. And as Stephen puts it, perhaps more than any other person, Henry Ford created the American century.
- [05:16]
Sing Seng
Talk about a pioneer. So let's take Henry Ford from a zero to his first million.
- [05:24]
Simon Jack
Henry Ford was born in Michigan in 1863, right in the thick of the American Civil War. It was a pretty turbulent time to come into the world. But despite the chaos around the country, Henry's life started off fairly comfortably. His family were successful farmers and he was the eldest of six kids.
- [05:41]
Sing Seng
So you say comfortable, but it wasn't easy. So life on the farm meant long days and hard graft. And Henry, well, he wasn't exactly keen on the chores. One farmhand even called him the laziest little devil on earth. To paraphrase in a slightly more polite manner. Young Henry was already looking for shortcuts. He believed things could be done in a better way.
- [06:02]
Simon Jack
He also had a sharp sense of humour. The school clown in many ways. To be fair, the school was just a single room and that love of jokes stuck with him all his life. He was always pulling pranks, from exploding cigars to elaborate setups where his staff pretended that Ford himself had disappeared.
- [06:19]
Sing Seng
But everything changed the day a farmhand showed him this inside of a watch. So that tiny machine sparked something massive in Henry. He started taking watches apart, putting them back together, even making his own tools. And soon, neighbors were just dropping off their broken watches for him to fix, all on the farm. He also began inventing tools to make his life easier, like a clever contraption that shut the farm gates automatically.
- [06:43]
Simon Jack
But then, when Henry was just 12 years old, a bit of personal tragedy. His mother passed away and it left a deep scar. He later said it felt like a great wrong had been done to him. She'd been the heart of the family, always reminding him that the best fun follows a duty done.
- [06:57]
Sing Seng
Quite the catchphrase. I think I'm going to store that in the back of my head for when I have kids.
- [07:01]
Simon Jack
I kind of know what she means. Once you've done something good, you kind of go, ah. Like, for example, I'll feel great after we've recorded this podcast because I think we've done a good job and now.
- [07:10]
Sing Seng
I can relax and now we can play pranks. Not long after her death, however, Henry had what he called an epiphany. So he was out with his dad and he saw something incredible. A steam engine rolling down the road under its own power. Not just sitting on a farm powering machinery, but actually moving. Henry said, I remember that engine as though I had only seen it yesterday. I was off our wagon and talking to the engineer before my Father knew what I was up up to. Years later, he'd say that was the moment that led him to automobiles.
- [07:41]
Simon Jack
Yeah, because obviously steam trains, the idea that you could have a self propelled vehicle was not new. But he clearly was beginning to get the inklings of how it could change the world, which it definitely did. But by the age of 16, Henry wanted to expand his mind in the city and learn all he could about Mechanics. So in 1879, he moved to Detroit, currently known as Motor City. It was an expanding industrial city known for stove manufacturing, metalworking and cigar. It attracted migrant workers from all over the place, but it was nothing like the vast car manufacturing hub it would eventually become. With Ford's influence, his dad had arranged for him to stay with his sister to get some work experience. Though Henry's version of him leaving the nest saw him running off against his father's will.
- [08:25]
Sing Seng
Now Ford hopped around a few different jobs, from shaping brass valves at a machine shop for $2.50 a week, then at a shipbuilding factory. He actually did take a pay cut there to $2 a week to broaden his machining experience.
- [08:37]
Simon Jack
Fascinating moment that, investing in br. Broadening your skill set by actually taking a pay cut. I've had countless people say what you want in your early years is to invest in yourself, even if that means taking a short term pay cut. And that can, you know, can pay dividends as it did in the future.
- [08:55]
Sing Seng
Good, bad billionaire business tips for you there.
- [08:57]
Simon Jack
Yeah, well, three years later, he went home to help with the harvest on the farm and a neighbour asked Ford for help with a farm's portable steam engine. Although the machine frightened him at first, he soon fixed it and then quit his shipbuilding job to work and fixed this particular machine at farms all over Michigan.
- [09:14]
Sing Seng
He enjoyed it so much he stuck around his hometown for the next nine years, first employed by the company who made the portable steam engine and then running a timber yard on some land his father gave him. When he couldn't work on the farm one winter due to snow, Ford enrolled in a business school to study mechanical drawing, bookkeeping and business studies.
- [09:32]
Simon Jack
And home. And the farm had other charms too. He met local girl Clara Bryant and the pair married in 1888 when Ford was 24. Clara was 22. Ford's nickname for Clara was the believer for her admiration for his inventions, not.
- [09:47]
Sing Seng
The first partner or spouse. We'll see who had to believe fervently in their respective partner's inventions and mad ideas.
- [09:54]
Simon Jack
Yeah, for sure.
- [09:55]
Sing Seng
By 1891, the timber was gone from his land so at 27, Henry Ford returned to Detroit. And that's where his obsession with engines took over.
- [10:03]
Simon Jack
Yeah, he'd once repaired something called an Otto engine, a gasoline powered, petrol powered machine he'd ever seen before. Then, just for fun, he built one of his own. But Ford knew if he wanted to go further, he needed to understand electricity, because combustion engines rely on a spark of electricity to spark it into life. So he landed a job as a mechanical engineer at the Edison Illuminating Company. Yes, that Edison light bulb man. Phonograph motion pictures. And yes, he will show up in person later in the story.
- [10:35]
Sing Seng
It's so funny because I think this story really touches on things that you just hear about in movies, in the history books. At First, Ford earned 40 bucks a month. Then 45 after he fixed a generator at a substation, the same one that had killed the man before him. But luckily, Ford survived, and a couple of years later, he was chief engineer, making $1,000 a month. But he was on call 24 hours a day. He even slept in his clothes, ready to leap out of bed when the next machine broke down.
- [11:03]
Simon Jack
One colleague said of him, he always figured out some little improvement that could make. He thought he could make them run better, make them use less steam, get more out of a ton of coal. But even then, Ford was building something bigger.
- [11:16]
Sing Seng
Yeah, it is something quite common to our billionaires. Right. Rather than sit around waiting for the next great invention to hit you falling from the sky, you're kind of constantly making tweaks.
- [11:25]
Simon Jack
Yeah. Because a lot of people would say, gosh, look at that amazing machine. I can't believe it works as well as it does. Some of our billionaires would say, I think it could work better. And, you know, maybe a James Dyson, for example, this vacuum cleaner, he said, my vacuum cleaner is blocked. Why is that? The vacuum cleaner isn't working. I'm going to redesign the vacuum cleaner. And billions ensue.
- [11:45]
Sing Seng
Yep. Now by day, Henry Ford worked his job. But on the side, he used the plant machines for his own ideas.
- [11:52]
Simon Jack
And then came that unforgettable Christmas Eve. Ford had rigged up his first homemade engine. Scrap metal, iron pipe, hardware store bits all laid out in the kitchen sink. And the ignition, a wire running from the ceiling light. It was perfect. And so, while other families might have been gathering around the Christmas tree, Clara stood ready, dripping gasoline into the valve. While Henry spun the flywheel, the engine shuddered to life. It worked. So generations of home machinists have copied this engine ever since.
- [12:25]
Sing Seng
I actually took a look at a YouTube video of someone who had basically replicated that machine. And I have to say, as a 21st century person looking at that machine, I have no idea how you would build it, let alone at the turn of the century, before they'd even invented anything like this before.
- [12:40]
Simon Jack
That's what always amazes me about engineering. It's like somebody's got to make the parts, right? And so how do you know that the right parts are going to be in the right place? And can you? I suppose you just have to sort of reverse engineer from the parts you have and get something that works. And then once you've got something that works, you go backwards and say, well, if the part looked a bit like this, I don't know, I mean, you know, it's beyond me.
- [13:01]
Sing Seng
I mean, it is interesting, isn't it, because we've done so many tech billionaires and I can just about imagine how to code something.
- [13:08]
Simon Jack
Yeah.
- [13:08]
Sing Seng
But when it comes to actually building something by hand, I just feel like there's something so astonishing about it, for sure.
- [13:15]
Simon Jack
Ford, though, zing, wasn't the only person tracing the dream.
- [13:18]
Sing Seng
No, he wasn't. He'd seen early what you might call horseless carriages since he was a boy. And in 1893, the Duryea brothers made the first gasoline powered trip in America. And that same year at the Columbian Exposition, Ford saw a dime gas engine mounted on a fire hose cart. Too heavy for a bike, he thought. But what if?
- [13:37]
Simon Jack
What if indeed. Later that year, Henry and Clara, now expecting their first child, moved into a bigger place on Bagley Avenue out back in a garden shed. And this is exactly what I expected from an inventor. To have a garden shed like caractas pots in chichi chichi, bang bang. He set up a workshop. Few mechanic friends from Edison joined in. Together they worked on his horseless carriage. Their words piece by piece.
- [14:03]
Sing Seng
A few months later, in November, Clara gave birth to their only son, Edsel. I wonder which of these babies captured more of Henry Ford's attention.
- [14:11]
Simon Jack
But three years later, just shy of the age of 33, Henry Ford stood in a Detroit crowd watching Charles Brady King roll by in a gas powered vehicle. A big hulking 1,300pound machine crawling along at 5mph. And Ford probably at that time must have felt a NOS in his stomach. You know, someone, it looks like someone's beaten him to it because he'd been thinking of this for a long time.
- [14:34]
Sing Seng
Crucially though, he didn't give up on it. Him and his crew scrambled to finish their own horseless carriage. Clara started to panic about the cost of parts. But by the middle of the night on June 4, 1896, it was ready. Ford's first car, the Quadricycle, more than halved the weight of Brady King's at just £500 had. And two speeds, 10 and 20 miles an hour.
- [14:56]
Simon Jack
One problem though, it was too big to fit through the shed doors. So Ford simply grabbed an axe and hacked the door frame apart. No cheering crowds this time. But luckily his landlord was so impressed by his work, he let Ford rebuild the shed with bigger doors. And that is apparently the garage door was born. So Ford even rebuilt that very shed brick by brick for his museum years later. Because that outdoor space you have, the garage, the garage didn't make any sense until you had a car sized thing to put in it. You don't put horses in there, do you?
- [15:33]
Sing Seng
And if you look up the picture of the Quadricycle, we're just being shown.
- [15:37]
Simon Jack
A picture of it here. I mean, it looks like one of those very early kind of Daimler, Mercedes Benz type things. Even bigger than bicycle wheels with lots of spokes, so nothing like the tyres you would expect today. And a kind of chair sat up top that you would find in a sort of stagecoach or something like that.
- [15:54]
Sing Seng
Yeah, and it doesn't have any walls, so, you know, it's not like a carriage. No, you just sort of sat exposed to the wind.
- [16:00]
Simon Jack
Yeah, it's definitely convertible.
- [16:02]
Sing Seng
A very, very early version of a sports car. Now, following this Triumph, Ford managed to get an invite to a banquet with big names in the electrical world, including his hero, Thomas Edison. Someone mentioned to Edison, that young fellow has built a gas car. And Ford shuffled closer. Edison grilled him with questions, listened care and then slammed his fist on the table. Keep at it, he said. And that was all Ford needed to hear.
- [16:27]
Simon Jack
Yeah, so Edison must have been a total hero because he sort of invented the electric light bulb and loads more beside. Ford knew that his quadricycle was just though the beginning. But it wasn't built for mass production, so he sold it for $200 to fund his next creation, something called the Runabout. With this improved design, he began raising money for a bigger goal.
- [16:48]
Sing Seng
His own company, the Edison Company offered him a promotion, but only if he gave up working on gas engines. Ford didn't hesitate. I chose the automobile, he said. There was really nothing in the way of choice for I already knew the car was bound to be a success.
- [17:03]
Simon Jack
And that's interesting because our billionaires, there's loads of moments when basically they could have taken the cushy job, they could have taken the well paid job, the easy way out, the very clear career path. Working for probably America's most famous engineer at that time, by Miles Thomas Edison, scientist and engineer and, and saying, no, I think the future lies down a different path. And having the guts and whatever to go and do that is something that we've come across many times.
- [17:27]
Sing Seng
Yeah. The courage to back yourself, I think is something that has popped up again and again in these stories.
- [17:33]
Simon Jack
So in August 1899, at age 36 and with financial backing, he launched the Detroit Automobile Company with capital of $150,000. Ford didn't put in any money. His expertise was his investment.
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Sing Seng
He moved on to a third prototype. But progress was slow. They built, they tested, they discarded. Costs spiraled up to $86,000. A delivery truck was released in 1900, but it was heavy and it only sold 20 units. And by January 1901, the company had to fold.
- [18:07]
Simon Jack
Still, investor William Murphy gave Ford a second shot at this. He funded a new venture, the Henry Ford company.
- [18:14]
Sing Seng
But this time, Ford shifted gears. He focused on race cars instead of commercial vehicles. Earlier that year, he'd actually won a 10 mile race in Grosse Pointe. And he wanted more. But Murphy didn't. He brought in a consultant to rein Ford in. And that didn't exactly sit well.
- [18:31]
Simon Jack
Yeah. By March 1902, just three months in, Ford walked away from this new company with $900 and the plans for his race car. Murphy stayed behind. He renamed the company, you may have heard of this name, the Cadillac Automobile Company.
- [18:44]
Sing Seng
I had no idea that Cadillac was a kind of leftover, a reject, a.
- [18:49]
Simon Jack
Ford reject, or the rump of what was left when Ford left. But it's interesting about the race cars because quite a lot of modern technology and cars kind of gets tried on.
- [19:01]
Sing Seng
Race cars first, and they're the cutting edge of that kind of technology. Okay, but before you feel too sorry for Ford having to walk away from his babies, keep in mind f failure was the norm in the early auto industry. Between 1900 and 1908, over 500 car companies were launching and most did not last two years.
- [19:19]
Simon Jack
Reminds me of the dot com boom, then bust, that basically many tried, few succeeded, but some made it through. Ford himself wasn't discouraged. He said, I was never happier in my life. I was learning something new every day.
- [19:32]
Sing Seng
Yeah, I think that's a good approach to life, really. What did frustrate him, though, were the investors. He thought they were greedy and he vowed from here on in, my Shop is going to be my sh. Shop. I'm not going to have a bunch of rich people telling me what to do. I'm sure quite a few people have had to deal with boards telling them exactly the same thing.
- [19:49]
Simon Jack
Precisely. The investors can wield a lot of influence. In October 1902, he broke the American land speed record with his racing car. One week later he co founded the Ford Motor Company with a coal dealer called Alexander Malcomson and a group of his contacts, friends, family, anyone who chip in, basically. And by June 1903 they'd scraped together $28,000 in cash and $21,000 in promises to put in cash later.
- [20:16]
Sing Seng
Now this time Ford had a solid design called the Model A and a smarter plan. Outsource the parts, assemble them in house. It cost $600 to make and sold for 750 to 850 depending on the extras. And that left him a profit of $150 per car.
- [20:32]
Simon Jack
That is an remarkably thin profit margin for a manufactured good. If you're going to sell a kettle for £20, you need to be building it for two quid, basically. So they are clearly focused on price. And this is exactly what Ford's vision was, to try and bring the price into the orbit of the normal person.
- [20:53]
Sing Seng
A car for every American.
- [20:54]
Simon Jack
Yeah, exactly. In the first two months they sold 195 cars. By March 1904 they'd sold 658 and made $246,000 in profit. So investors got their money back in under a year.
- [21:07]
Sing Seng
Not a bad deal. And by 1905, Ford Motor Company had 300 workers and 450 sales agents. When one agent asked about buying one car, James Cousins, who was Ford's right hand man in finance, guy replied how big's your town? You should order 100. And he did.
- [21:23]
Simon Jack
Well, there you go. Ford respected this guy, Cousins. He was different from the well heeled people at Ford felt didn't get down and dirty enough to understand his business. So the two hatched a plan. In November 1905 they created a secret company, Ford Manufacturing, to make parts and sell them back to Ford Motor Company. So this is vertical integration, if you like, at play again. But profits on the sale of these parts would flow to them and not to Malcolmson, the main funder of the Ford Motor Company. And they didn't tell Malcolmson about this sort of side hustle.
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Sing Seng
I mean, it's pretty shady business practice, I think.
- [22:01]
Simon Jack
Yeah, for sure.
- [22:02]
Sing Seng
So when Malcolmson found out, he fired off an angry letter and he started his own rival company. But this actually backfired. He'd broken his agreement with Ford and the board pushed him out. In May 1906, Malcolmson sold his shares, all 225 of them, for $175,000. Ford borrowed from cousin's uncle to buy them and together they picked up more shares from Malcolmson's allies.
- [22:24]
Simon Jack
And the result of all this chicanery was this. Ford now held 585 shares. Cousins had 110. Everyone else combined had 305. So at last, Henry Ford had the deciding share for his own company.
- [22:40]
Sing Seng
And so we are back in that cramped Detroit workshop, the secret lab where Ford's team worked on his dream. A universal car for the masses, individuals and families alike. Cheap to make, easy to fix, rugged enough for dirt roads.
- [22:54]
Simon Jack
And as luck would have it, just as they got going, a breakthrough. An English metallurgist introduced vanadium steel to Detroit. Now this is strong, it's light, perfect for cars. Ford rewrote his design. The Model T, a five seater, now weighed the same as earlier two seater designs. It had a 20 horsepower engine, hit 45 miles an hour and could handle bumpy rural roads with its clever suspension.
- [23:18]
Sing Seng
And in October 1908, the Model T nicknamed Tin Lizzy, hit the market for $850. Now within days, Ford had over 15,000 orders he to freeze sales just to catch up apparently. And this will tell you something about Henry Ford's character. When the Model T came out, he got his assistant to drive him past Malcolmson's factory as a kind of hello lad, how are you doing?
- [23:42]
Simon Jack
Then perhaps the world's first arrogant drive by.
- [23:46]
Sing Seng
Very true. Well, he can take credit for that invention as well.
- [23:49]
Simon Jack
Exactly. And the impact was unprecedented. Historian Charles Hyde said the Model T did more to shape the 20th century than almost any other invention. It paved the way for things like suburbs, high highways, shopping centers, drive through whatever.
- [24:05]
Sing Seng
I mean, you drive through some American cities like LA for instance. It's a car city.
- [24:10]
Simon Jack
No one's walking anywhere.
- [24:12]
Sing Seng
I tried to walk in LA once. It did not.
- [24:13]
Simon Jack
Probably got picked up by the cops for being a weirdo.
- [24:15]
Sing Seng
I mean it was, it was me and the weirdos on the sidewalk. I have to say at the time There were over 250 carmakers in the U.S. but Ford built the most, over 10,000 in 1908 alone. They also made other models besides the Tin Lizzy, but they were mainly aimed at the wealthy. But in 1907 he launched the Model N500, saying there are a lot more poor people than rich people.
- [24:39]
Simon Jack
That's interesting, isn't it? Just realizing that the real fortunes to be made are the democratization of products or services. Like for example, the Internet, social media, what have you. It's when you've got a mass market means mass profit. Yeah, and it was a really smart move because profits jumped from just over a million in 1908 to over $4 million by 1910. So although he often plowed profits back into his company and kept his personal wealth quiet, I would say it's pretty safe to assume that by 1910, Henry Ford was a millionaire in an era when being a millionaire was a very, very big deal. But it would be his next design that would have the biggest impact on modern America.
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- [28:51]
Simon Jack
So let's go from a million to a billion.
- [28:54]
Sing Seng
In 1910, Ford opened a massive new factory to keep up with Model T demand. But it's what he did with that factory that changed manufacturing forever. He refined the moving assembly line.
- [29:05]
Simon Jack
Now, Ford didn't invent this idea. Ransom, Eli Old's old motor vehicle company, who made the Oldsmobile, which you may have heard of in popular culture. They invented the assembly line to increase production in 1901. But Ford perfected it. So in 1913, with more space to play with, with this new factory, they set up a conveyor belt for a single engine part. It wasn't perfect. They had to raise it to ease back strain. They added safety rails after an accident. But the results were instant. Assembly time, get this, dropped from 20 minutes to 5.
- [29:37]
Sing Seng
Then came even bigger moves. With help from Clarence Avery, his son's university engineering professor, Ford applied time and motion studies across the whole fact. By August, even the card chassis was on an assembly line and assembly time dropped from 12 hours to get this, just 93 minutes.
- [29:55]
Simon Jack
That is huge. And of course, what that did was slash costs. And instead of pocketing the extra profit, Ford passed it on to consumers. The Model t, which cost $850 in 1908, fell to $490 by 1914, almost halving in six years. And by 1924 it was just $260 and the Ripp that was massive. Cheap cars boosted steel, rubber, glass, oil, and helped fuel America's middle class. So Ford really didn't just build cars, he built an entire new economy. And it's often the mantra of economists. Back in the 50s and 60s, what was good for car companies was good for America.
- [30:37]
Sing Seng
And it's probably why the car auto industry has such a huge amount of.
- [30:41]
Simon Jack
Power today and still has an incredible political capital. And what you get when you have a product like that, an aspirational product which is suddenly becoming affordable, is that it has what economists would call a multiplier effect. So they need more rubber, they need more steel, they need more this, they need more that. And so that demand for the product is filtering into the, the pay packets of everyone who's in the supply chain. And you get this multiplying economic effect. And therefore that's the kind of thing which generates an economic boom and raises living standards for everyone who's in the supply chain, not just the person who's buying it at the end of the, at the end of the day, right?
- [31:22]
Sing Seng
So people can suddenly go on holidays, they can buy nice food, they can get a better class of refrigerator and.
- [31:28]
Simon Jack
Remember they've got a weekend because he's instituted a five day, 40 hour week. So people have got leisure time too.
- [31:34]
Sing Seng
You know, those kind of old school America, the best place to raise a family, kind of, you know, like early 20th century style home videos and things like that. It kind of reminds me of this period of American history, you know, where it felt like things were on the up. Yeah, but it wasn't all rosy. I mean, not for the workers actually on the assembly line. So imagine you're standing in place all day tightening the same bolt over and over and over again. I mean, most people couldn't hack it. In 1913, Ford hired over 52,000 workers just to keep 14,000 jobs filled.
- [32:09]
Simon Jack
So he made a really interesting, really bold move. He'd pay $5 a day. That was double the average wage. Headlines called it profit sharing with his workers. Ford said one's own employees ought to be one's best customers. But this wasn't pure generosity. It was pretty clever business. It is expensive to keep hiring and training new staff. Ford later admitted the $5 day was one of the finest cost cutting moves we've ever made. Fascinating.
- [32:35]
Sing Seng
That's so interesting because you would think that actually cutting wages would mean that you, you save more money, therefore you make more money. But Basically this guy was saying, actually no higher paid workers means a better product.
- [32:48]
Simon Jack
But it was a very interesting that this whole thing about the monotony of the production line is something that came up in loads of psychological studies which were done. People now think that to give more job satisfaction, they want people to have more input in the whole process. So you won't just be sort of whacking one bit of thing, tightening one screw, whatever. You have a much more holistic relationship with, with the manufacturer of it, just to get away from something. So raising wages is one thing to do, but also the idea, the psychological effect of having a more holistic relationship with the thing you're producing, rather than focusing on one washer, one screw, one panel, whatever.
- [33:27]
Sing Seng
So by 1916, with 58.5% ownership of the company, Ford personally took home $35 million in profit. That is staggering.
- [33:37]
Simon Jack
Huge amount of money. Money. But there's a catch to all this. And this is where sort of money and morals and whatever overlap. To get the full $5, workers had to live up to Ford's moral standards. Inspectors from the sociological department. That sounds really scary. Check their homes, spoke with neighbors. They look for signs of good character. No drinking, no borders, clean houses, putting money in savings accounts. Terrifying, really.
- [34:03]
Sing Seng
I mean that is sort of like running luxury like the Gestapo.
- [34:07]
Simon Jack
Sounds like thought police.
- [34:08]
Sing Seng
Yeah. I mean, most of the workforce at its Highland park factory were foreign born. So by 1914, 71% of them came from overseas and they spoke around 50 languages. So a very multicultural place. Ford launched a language school and workers learn English and what was called the American way of life. And graduation was actually a very strange performance, a real kind of play at assimilation. Workers entered a giant melting pot in their native dress and then they re emerged in suits waving American flags. It's actually quite a bizarre spectacle.
- [34:42]
Simon Jack
I mean, that is sort of the American dream cashed out. And part of the American dream is exchanging your original identity for a new economic identity, a new citizen identity. And that in a way is like going through the sheep dip of the American dream. Do you know what I mean?
- [35:00]
Sing Seng
Yeah, that is so true. And I also think, you know, this is a time when everything was being worked out about America, right? Who got to be American, what made them American. And for Henry Ford, it's being clean living, working in the factory, on the assembly line, getting paid a fair wage for that time, and also being willing to clearly subject yourself to this quite weird charade of Americanism. It's quite interesting.
- [35:24]
Simon Jack
Yeah. But let's get back to the business. Because when people see profits like that being made, other people want in. There's a fight for the pie of these profits. And in 1916, the Dodge brothers, original investors with Ford Motor Company, wrote to Henry Ford complaining about the size of stockholder dividends, the amount of money they were seeing paid back to them. For their original investment. They put in $10,000 back in 1903. Over 13 years, they'd seen $5.5 million in dividends. But the Ford Motor Company had over $50 million in surplus sort of sitting around. And they felt 75% of that should go back to the shelf holders.
- [36:03]
Sing Seng
Ford didn't agree. He wanted to reinvest in lower car prices and growing production. And after they traded letters, the Dodgers filed a lawsuit for Ford. It stung. They actually filed it the day after his son Edzo's wedding, which the brothers had attended as guests. So talk about separating business and pleasure.
- [36:21]
Simon Jack
Yeah, exactly. How are you doing? Oh, well, congratulations on the day. And then next day, boom. Read this. Three years later, the Michigan Supreme Court sided with with the Dodges. So Ford had to pay out $20 million in dividends. And Dodge versus Ford became a landmark case. It's still taught in law schools today as a defining moment in corporate law. And if I might plug another series of my own, there's something called the profits of profit.
- [36:45]
Sing Seng
Yeah, very good.
- [36:46]
Simon Jack
And the Ford vs Dodge thing about what shareholders should be allowed to take out was absolutely key to this idea that Milton Friedman came up with, which was that company's only duty is to maximize the value for its shareholders. Has no other purp in life. And that argument still rails to this day. And this was a very key moment in that whole debate.
- [37:07]
Sing Seng
Ford was not a fan of these profits of profit. Though he called shareholders parasites and idle drones, the public loved it. One paper called him a great national asset and the master economist of the manufacturing world.
- [37:21]
Simon Jack
And in fact, his popularity and this sort of political profile caught the attention of President Woodrow Wilson, who urged him to run for the Senate in 1918. Ford agreed, albeit reluctantly. He refused to spend a cent on campaigning, but still only lost by 4,500 votes. He in fact tried for president in 1924, but when that didn't work out, he gave up on politics for good.
- [37:44]
Sing Seng
But Ford's beef with the Dodge brothers was about to take a devious turn.
- [37:48]
Simon Jack
He's not done with them yet.
- [37:49]
Sing Seng
Nope. In 1918, at 55, Henry Ford announced he was stepping back and handing the company to his 25 year old son, Ed. So the Same guy who got married at the wedding that the Dodge brothers attended. So the Dodge brothers saw this as their moment. Maybe they would finally get more say in the company.
- [38:06]
Simon Jack
But then Henry Ford pulled a move no one saw coming. He said he was starting a brand new company to make even cheaper cars. And shareholders panicked. They thought their shares would sink as profits would fall. And they started selling shares fast. But Ford's new company was a bluff. It was a trick. He quietly scooped up 8,300 shares at bargain basement prices, using brokers to hide what he was doing. And by July 1919, the deal was done. Ford had spent $106 million fortune, most of it borrowed, though, and bought back the whole company. Between Henry, his wife Clara, and Edsel, they now owned it all. And just like that, Henry Ford was fully in charge. The Dodgers were out. No more investors to answer to.
- [38:52]
Sing Seng
This does not sound exactly legal to me.
- [38:54]
Simon Jack
I don't think it would be these days. I mean, that would definitely count. In my humble opinion and my limited leg, I suppose watching markets for a long time, that would count as market manipulation. 100%.
- [39:07]
Sing Seng
Wouldn't get away with it right now.
- [39:08]
Simon Jack
Wouldn't get away with it now. No.
- [39:10]
Sing Seng
So while he was still running his Highland park factory, Henry Ford was already planning bigger things. He bought 2,000 acres near the River Rouge, aiming for more control over raw materials. Vertical integration strikes again.
- [39:22]
Simon Jack
Yeah. By 1917, the site was producing boats for World War I. By the early 1920s, Ford had added a steel foundry, a power plant, even bought land for coal, timber and ore to supply. Supply the factory.
- [39:33]
Sing Seng
And he didn't stop there. He owned a railroad and lake steamers to move his materials. There was a factory for every single component on site. Tires, glasses, tools, paper. There was even a soybean conversion plant to turn soybeans into plastic auto parts.
- [39:48]
Simon Jack
I could just imagine a montage of this place, which looks sort of like something. A visual depiction of the American dream and industrialization. It's like everyone walking around looking happy, taking the soybeans, taking the rubber to do the. They're sort of watching an economy grow in real time.
- [40:04]
Sing Seng
Yeah. With that hokey American narrator voice going over it.
- [40:07]
Simon Jack
Yeah. Tom Hanks, maybe.
- [40:08]
Sing Seng
Yeah, exactly.
- [40:09]
Simon Jack
Sorry, Tom. This meant that by 1921, Ford was cranking out a million cars a year. By 1925, that number doubled, and the price of a car with no add ons dropped to just $260.
- [40:21]
Sing Seng
When it was fully finished in 1928, the Rouge plant was the world's largest factory. One and a half miles wide, 93 buildings with 120 miles on conveyors and over 90 miles of railroad track. That is enormous.
- [40:36]
Simon Jack
It's huge. It's like a city, isn't it? And this is where that iconic blue Ford logo that we're all so familiar with now was born. It adorned the Model A which despite the depression, they'd sold over 5 million by 1931.
- [40:50]
Sing Seng
Ford was now making so much profit from parts sales that some of his cars were nearly sold at cost. And by the 1920s, people were not only maintaining their Ford cars cars, but also buying kits to turn them into tractors, snowmobiles, mobile sawmills. They were even swapping the tires for rail car wheels to use them on railroads. So really just a very customizable, almost.
- [41:11]
Simon Jack
Like one stop shop for engineering stuff. His Model T is credited with sparking, in fact, the automotive aftermarket industry that provides parts, services, repairs for vehicles after initially sold by the manufacturer. Today this is worth nearly $500 billion. And actually there are some industry which are entirely dependent on this. For example, airplane engines. You basically sell them at cost, knowing that you'll have to maintain those engines for 20 to 30 years and they have to come back to you for every other spare part. So actually you kind of get the engine for free. But the after service, the aftermarket, that's where companies make their money. He kind of invented that idea.
- [41:48]
Sing Seng
Wow. Now, it's hard to say exactly when Henry Ford was a billionaire, but in 1927, Ford was one of the only 10 corporations in the US valued at a billion dollars or more. And he was one of three shareholders, don't forget. The rest of them was family. And by 1930, Time magazine estimated the U.S. ford company could be worth up to $2.6 billion. So by the late 1920s, we can safely say Henry Ford is officially a billionaire.
- [42:14]
Simon Jack
So the Roaring Twenties have been good to Henry Ford.
- [42:17]
Sing Seng
They've got the flapper dresses on, they've got Harlem Renaissance is happening ex.
- [42:34]
Simon Jack
But then of course, what followed the 1920s is something we all know, a seismic event in American history, the Great Depression. It began in 1929, triggered in many ways by the Wall street crash. But in response to that, Henry Ford raised his five dollar a day wage to seven dollars a day to help his workers fend off the effects of that. The Rouge plant was in full swing in the early 30s with 100,000 workers and a car rolling off the line every 49 seconds. So pretty resilient in the early days.
- [43:04]
Sing Seng
I can't think of a company that raises its wages to help people weather economic crashes.
- [43:10]
Simon Jack
Economic disaster, raise the workers wages is not what you hear from corporate America these days.
- [43:15]
Sing Seng
No, it definitely isn't. But even the mighty Ford Motor Company couldn't escape this crash. So between 1929 and 1932 he had to lay off nearly half his workforce anyway.
- [43:26]
Simon Jack
Yeah, and the competition was catching up. By 1929 General Motors GM had overtaken Ford as the leading car manufacturer in the US and GM's success came from stylish, more diverse models. They had yearly updates, flexible financing, massively important. The General Motors exception, corporate. A lot of people think that GM is basically a bank which also makes cars.
- [43:47]
Sing Seng
Right. So they kind of loan you a bit of money so you can buy their cars.
- [43:50]
Simon Jack
Exactly so. And they became one of the biggest, biggest in a way, banks in America. But these are all the things that Ford's Model T wasn't and Ford wasn't doing. And Ford's stubbornness to not adapt to changing consumer desires and his tight control of the company didn't help either. Perhaps if there had been some outside shareholders to keep him in check and see the bigger picture, Ford wouldn't have seen such a decline as he saw in the mid early 1930s. There is a view that actually being totally in charge of your own company, sometimes not always good. You need some people like a board of directors, shareholders just say, you sure you got this right?
- [44:28]
Sing Seng
To make sure you've not got the blinkers on. And you know there was even worse things. So Ford's resistance to labor unions actually led to violent clashes. So there was the battle of the overpass which happened in 1937. His security teams actually violently attacked union organizers and it tarnished his once golden reputation. Remember there was once a time he was running for office.
- [44:49]
Simon Jack
Yeah. And here's a bizarre chapter in the story. Perhaps something that's emblematic of Ford's short sighted vision at the time. Ford decided to build an industrial utopia in the Amazon called Fordlandia. He bought land to produce rubber for trees, he offered workers cars and he threw in an 18 hole golf course.
- [45:09]
Sing Seng
In the jungle as you do.
- [45:11]
Simon Jack
But none of that actually appealed to the local Brazilian workers. And this so called paradise eventually was absorbed, absorbed back into the jungle before being sold back to Brazil.
- [45:20]
Sing Seng
That is like something of the stuff of a Wes Anderson film I think.
- [45:22]
Simon Jack
Yes, definitely.
- [45:23]
Sing Seng
You can really imagine that kind of particular episode in Ford's life being brought to screen for sure. Now Henry ford died on April 8th, 1947 at the grand old age of 83.
- [45:35]
Simon Jack
His son Edsel had been president of Ford Motor Company during the 30s and 40s. But after Edsel's death from stomach cancer in 1943, Henry had to take the reins back again once more. As Henry's health declined, his grandson, Henry Ford II took it over in 1945.
- [45:51]
Sing Seng
And by 2015, the Ford family was worth an estimated $2 billion. But they're very private, so not very much is known about their wealth today.
- [46:00]
Simon Jack
A fascinating story of, you know, and unlike some of the things we've discussed in our billionaires that are alive, you catch the economy, society at a moment of change. The invention of the automobile, whoever, whoever was going to dominate that, not even have to dominate it, but be a big player in it, was going to be stupendously rich because it was one of the biggest revolutions evolutions along with railroad and the Internet, for example. Lots of our billionaires came. This was one of those moments.
- [46:29]
Sing Seng
And you're probably thinking, I mean, at least I certainly think that maybe that's the reason why so many people are circling AI now. They all want a piece of a pie.
- [46:37]
Simon Jack
Yeah. And actually, if you think about the supply chains for the automobile industry, that is the subject of very vigorous political debate and conflict right now. Automobiles are still emblematic of a nation's industrial competence. And Donald Trump has chosen the automobile industry to be a vehicle for demonstrating his make America great again, America first. It still stirs very strong political, economic emotions.
- [47:08]
Sing Seng
Yeah. And understandably so because it was there at the very start of the American century.
- [47:13]
Simon Jack
Yeah.
- [47:19]
Sing Seng
So we've now come to the part of the show where we rate our billionaires out of categories of wealth. Controversy giving back, you know, really to kind of give an overview of who they are. Then this season we put the power in your hands, dear listeners, to decide if they're good, bad, or just another billionaire.
- [47:36]
Simon Jack
So on wealth from 1 to 10, a lot of Ford's wealth is estimated because he and his wife wholly owned Ford until his death. It's thought his Fortune was around $250 million when he d. He left that to a private trust. But he was one of the richest people in the world. I mean, billionaires in this era are few and far between. There's almost no non American ones. If Rockefeller was 10, I'm gonna give Ford a nine.
- [48:02]
Sing Seng
Yeah, I think nine out of 10. I mean, you have to be pretty rich to decide you want to build a city named after yourself in the Amazon.
- [48:08]
Simon Jack
Yeah, that's Fordlandia. Just, I mean, that sounds like a Terrible idea. So again, two solid nines on wealth controversy. Plenty of it.
- [48:18]
Sing Seng
Yeah. So, you know we mentioned Henry Ford's anti Semitism at the start of the show. Well, it continued through the 1910s and 1920s. He was notable for endorsing and then even publishing conspiracy theories about Jewish people. Most notably through a series of pamphlets called the International Jew, which helped spread incredibly harmful stereotypes and false claims.
- [48:40]
Simon Jack
Yeah, and he used his wealth to purchase the Dearborn independent newspaper in 1918 and began using it to publish anti Semitic views. With Ford's funding, its initial circulation of 70,000 rose to a peak of 900,000, making it one of the largest newspapers in the U.S. amazing.
- [48:56]
Sing Seng
And you remember that meadow that we Talked about? In 1938, the Nazi regime awarded Henry Ford the Grand Cross of the German Ego. The highest award granted to foreigners by the German government.
- [49:07]
Simon Jack
I mean, that's amazing, isn't it? What do you think? Badge of Honour? Yeah, this is the diametric opposite.
- [49:13]
Sing Seng
Exactly.
- [49:13]
Simon Jack
But he had loads of legal battles, he had libel cases, public boycotts. Eventually, they forced Henry Ford to end his anti Semitic campaign in 1927 with a public apology saying he would retract his lies and that his newspaper would no longer publish articles reflecting upon the Jews.
- [49:30]
Sing Seng
So, clearly a man with a staggering anti Semitic prejudice. Meanwhile, he didn't just have that. Obviously there were the devious business practices that we talked about, you know, fooling his investors. Like the Dodge brothers, you know, that fake new company. He crushed, the unions.
- [49:48]
Simon Jack
Yeah, that fake new company thing was, of course, quite a stunt to pull and would, I think, pretty sure be illegal today. But it is interesting that both the people he kind of left in the dust both did all right themselves. Dodge became quite a successful guy. Cadillac, well, yeah.
- [50:04]
Sing Seng
But, you know, it's not where they ended up, it's how they got there. And, you know, Henry Ford tried his best to stop them from getting there.
- [50:11]
Simon Jack
Controversy. High, high. You go first.
- [50:15]
Sing Seng
I would give him a nine out of ten.
- [50:17]
Simon Jack
Fine. I'm with you. Nine out of ten.
- [50:18]
Sing Seng
I mean, you know, obviously he's not an arms dealer like some of our other billionair, but, you know, publishing a newspaper just to circulate your views and then being pretty bad to your business partners, that scores quite highly.
- [50:31]
Simon Jack
On the other hand, looked after his workers and the onset of the Depression raised their wages from $5, $7. I think there's, you know, there's, you know, there's. He's a complicated character.
- [50:41]
Sing Seng
Yeah, there's shades of grey.
- [50:43]
Simon Jack
So you're a nine. I'LL go nine as well.
- [50:45]
Sing Seng
Okay, well, what about giving back, the category where he could redeem himself?
- [50:50]
Simon Jack
Interesting. Slightly mixed messages on this one. Didn' seem to think much of the concept of charity, but his actions belied that view.
- [50:59]
Sing Seng
Yeah. So he said, I believe there's very little occasion for charity in this world. Wow. Most certainly, business and charity cannot be combined. The purpose of a factory is to produce. He also said, the moment human helpfulness is systematized as organized, commercialized and professionalized, the heat of it is extinguished and it becomes a cold, clammy thing.
- [51:19]
Simon Jack
But Ford's archives suggest that between 1917 and his death in 1940, he'd given nearly $37 million to charitable organizations. But little. Little caveat, $16 million of that amount considered to be deductible for tax purposes under the federal income tax code, but still not a.
- [51:37]
Sing Seng
Not a small amount to give away.
- [51:39]
Simon Jack
Especially, you know what between 1917 and 1947. $37 million is a lot of money.
- [51:46]
Sing Seng
Yeah. That's more than a million every year.
- [51:48]
Simon Jack
Yeah. I think I've even been to the Ford foundation, which does some pretty broad reaching work. I think it was. It was mainly the idea of Edsel, his son, who died early and Henry had to take back over again. I'm gonna play this right down the middle because there's quite a lot of money that's come out of the Ford family to charity. So I'm gonna give it a five.
- [52:05]
Sing Seng
Okay. A five out of ten from you. And I think. I think a five out of ten for me.
- [52:10]
Simon Jack
Power and legacy. This is the interesting one, I think, for me, of this particular case. It's, I would say, hard to overstate, really, the idea of trying to democratize a product so a car was just for rich people. And then he says, no, I wanted to make it for everyone. And obviously he wanted to make money by selling it to everyone. But also he created the idea of aspirational American middle class who could basically have things like cars, washing machines. He's so part and parcel of the sort of American dream. Also in the manufacturing jobs he created and the fact he paid his workers pretty well. I mean, I think he stands way up there with, like, a nine.
- [52:55]
Sing Seng
Yeah. I mean, I can't help but keep going back to the architecture of America itself. You know, obviously there's cities like New York, very walkable places. But when you go out to places like la, Chicago, you know, the middle of America, these are car cities. You cannot get anywhere where without a car, entire suburbs and malls and drive throughs are built on the basis that you are on four wheels and not your own two legs. And that is remarkable.
- [53:20]
Simon Jack
And it's still the case. You know, 100 years later, that is still very much the case. Interesting that Tesla called their premium model the Model S. Called it Model S. I mean, it's a direct reference.
- [53:33]
Sing Seng
Very clever. I would say. I would actually go even higher and say Maybe it's a 10 out of 10.
- [53:38]
Simon Jack
Maybe you're right. Okay, I'm going to go with you. For example, Ford was cited as businessman of the century by Fortune magazine in 1999. So on the basis of that, it's a 10.
- [53:50]
Sing Seng
Yep. 99 years later, he's still considered up there as the very best.
- [53:55]
Simon Jack
So those are our scores. And with that, it's over to you. You've heard us rate motorman Henry Ford in our various categories, but the final judgment is your call. We want to know whether Henry Ford is good, bad, or just another billionaire.
- [54:09]
Sing Seng
So please share your thoughts and judgments with us by emailing goodbadbillionairebc.com or drop us text or WhatsApp or voice note on 001917, 6861176 that's good bad billionaire.
- [54:24]
Simon Jack
Bc.Com or 001917-6861176 Listen, we love getting your emails. Here's a good one that came in.
- [54:35]
Sing Seng
From Sheridan Scott who says, I've been listening to your podcast for a while now. Absolutely love it. Simon and Zinger. Great. Both bounce off each other and don't mind questioning each other's attention opinions. With the utmost respect. They are very informative and don't take themselves too seriously. I do like how they both educate each other on certain subjects. Keep up the great work.
- [54:51]
Simon Jack
Yeah, I learn a lot on these podcasts.
- [54:53]
Sing Seng
I mean same, but neither, none of it has made me very rich, I'm afraid.
- [54:56]
Simon Jack
We love getting these messages, so please send some more to good bad billionairebc.com let us know what you think about Henry Ford and the rest of the billionaires in this special mini season. Good Bad Dead Billionaire so who is our next good Bad dead billionaire?
- [55:15]
Sing Seng
Maybe the first weird billionaire we've ever had on the program. A man who was so eccentric and left such a trail of romantic devastation in his wake that he created an archetype.
- [55:27]
Simon Jack
He did. It is Howard Hughes. You will probably know him from the famous film by Martin Scorsese, the Aviator, where he indulged his passion for aviation, which basically soaked up quite a lot of his extreme wealth and he also spent tons of money on a retinue of Hollywood A list actresses.
- [55:44]
Sing Seng
Yeah, well, that is Howard Hughes, who has led quite the life.
- [55:49]
Simon Jack
Famous germaphobe, recluse all round. Oddball, but a rich one.
- [55:53]
Sing Seng
That's Howard Hughes. So listen out for his story on Good Bad Billionaire.
- [55:58]
Simon Jack
Good Bad Billionaire is a BBC World Service podcast. It's produced by Louise Morris with additional production by Tamsin Curry, Paul Smith as the editor, and it's a BBC Studios.
- [56:08]
Sing Seng
Audio production for the BBC World Service. The senior podcast producer is Kat Collins and the commissioning editor is John Manell. And if you enjoyed it, do tell a friend.