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He didn't "experiment". The decision was part of Ford's moral philosophy. http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/ford-factory-workers-get-40-hour-week http
by srtjstjsj 9y ago
He didn't "experiment". The decision was part of Ford's moral philosophy.
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/ford-factory-workers-get-40-hour-week http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/ford-factory-work...
If you think Ford ran the best scientific business, you'd have to include this as well:
http://jalopnik.com/when-henry-fords-benevolent-secret-police-ruled-his-wo-1549625731 http://jalopnik.com/when-henry-fords-benevolent-secret-polic...
"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.
What started out as a team of 50 “Investigators” eventually morphed into a team of 200 people who probed every aspect of their employees lives. And I mean every aspect.
Investigators would show up unannounced at your home, just to make sure it was being kept clean. They’d ask questions that were less appropriate of a car company, than they were for the modern-day CIA. They’d query you about your spending habits, your alcohol consumption, even your marital relationships. They’d ask what you were buying, and they’d check on your children to make sure they were in school.
Women weren’t eligible, unless they were single and had to support children. Men weren’t eligible unless the only work their wives did was in the home.
....
spiritual smelting process where the impurities of foreignness were burnt off as slag to be tossed away leaving a new 100% American.
you needed the company’s permission if you wanted to buy a car, which included a requirement to be married and have children. "
and Ford himself retracted the whole philosophy:
"It was also highly controversial, and because of the competing economic, and ironically, societal factors, it was slowly wound down. Even Henry Ford himself found that he was against many of the program’s aspects, writing in his 1922 autobiography:
“paternalism has no place in industry. Welfare work that consists in prying into employees’ private concerns is out of date. Men need counsel and men need help, often special help; and all this ought to be rendered for decency’s sake. But the broad workable plan of investment and participation will do more to solidify industry and strengthen organization than will any social work on the outside. Without changing the principle we have changed the method of payment.”