Essay Sample: Henry Ford Changing How People Traveled

📌Category: Historical Figures, History, Traveling
📌Words: 1340
📌Pages: 5
📌Published: 18 June 2022

Henry Ford is one of the most influential people in history. He not only is smart, but he has a work ethic that overall makes him achieve what he did. In his time he was friends with many familiar names like, for example, Thomas Edison. In his early childhood, he grew up on a farm in Township, Michigan, and worked in his garage with engines and mechanics which was foreshadowing his future. Little will he know that he paved the way for how people would live and commute and started the era of automobiles. Henry Ford arguably changed the way people lived by bringing automobiles into the world through mass production and impacting how people went to work and traveled, which changed people’s lives forever through affordability and quantity.

Henry Ford from an early age was involved in mechanics and engineering by refining an engine every free minute he had in his shed. While getting older he became more familiar with engines and automobiles. On June 4, 1896, he creates his first “Quadricycle”. From many of the investors' interest, Ford forms the Detriot Automobile Company and continues to develop and improve many of his models. That brings us to one of his first major successes. The Model T. The Model T was both affordable and dependable. It was an everyday car for the average person. The article, Model T: The Car for the Masses, states, “Roads, gas stations, and other amenities became part of an ever-expanding culture built around the automobile. Average people were able to buy the Model T, and as a result, the car became an everyday necessity”(Schlager 1). Henry wanted to make a car that was affordable and would be a common necessity. Yes, there were automobiles before this. For example, the first steam-powered transportation was first seen in 1769. It was a carriage that would carry up to four passengers and would travel roughly two miles per hour. Henry Ford wanted something that would be practical and something for the masses. The steam-powered transportation was a massive thing at the time but was not something for the everyday people due to the expense.

The difference between Henry Ford to others was that he wanted everyday people to benefit from his automobiles. He wanted to change how people traveled by making transportation quicker and more efficient. He did this by mass production, which was making many cars at once without them looking any different. It was more affordable and saved lots of time. Using mass production, he made all his cars black. A famous saying from Ford was,  “Buyers could have any color they choose, as long as it’s black” (Schlager). Ford held strong beliefs about his low-priced automobiles. He knew that the only way the car industry could change and be impactful was to make it affordable for everyone to buy. Ford set the price to $825, but at the time he knew that the cost was too expensive for most people, so his goal was to make it cheaper and cheaper as time went on.

From 1908 to 1909, the company sold 11,000 Model T automobiles, which in total raised $9 million. This shows how much people bought the Model T and incorporated it into their everyday lives. A statement from, Model T: The Car for the Masses, states,” The heavy demand for cars forced Ford to pioneer new methods of production. He built the largest and most modern factory in America on the 60-acre tract in Highland Park in Detriot, Michigan” (Schlager 2). From demand, Ford was able to construct and build new models, for example, the Model A, and bring more and new options out for the people of the generation. As Ford predicted he eventually lowered the price to $300, and by the end of WWI, Ford Model T’s represented nearly half the cars on Earth. Model T’s left a huge footprint on the world. It states,” The impact of the Model T was enormous, influencing both the local and national economy and ushering in a dramatically different lifestyle for many American citizens” (Schlager 2). The Model T’s impact on the world was just the beginning and a glimpse into the future of what was yet to come for Ford and his company.

Henry Ford always hated the industrial combinations and the Eastern financial power. To him, all invention was a matter of evolution. He wanted change. He drastically changed that by making the Model T and reducing the cost exceptionally. After that success, he wanted to make another model, this model was called the Model A. This model was introduced in December of 1927. This Model had solid but nowhere near the spectacular success of the Model T. Since the failure of the Model A, the Ford Company was third in sales in the industry ultimately discontinuing the line in 1931. This lit a fire under Henry Ford. He knew he needed something to keep going and to keep people having hope for the automobile future.

Despite the Model A failure, Ford kept going. There were many shortages in the U.S. around this time, and to be able to continue production he needed materials. Since Ford couldn’t get supplies in fast enough, he decided to make his supply line. The article states, “...he purchased a railroad, acquired control of 16 coal mines and about 700,000 acres of timberland, built a sawmill, acquired a fleet of Great Lakes freighters to bring ore from his Lake Superior mines, and even bought a glassworks” (Maxim). Ford was very passionate about what he had to do to make automobiles fast and efficient as possible. He not only did it for that reason, but he also did this to make supplies cheaper. By making supplies cheaper you can sell for cheaper. Which was one of Ford’s main goals. He knew that if he could draft supplies in by having his own, he would make an automobile that the entire population could own.

Henry Ford didn’t stop there. He wanted to get to a point where he could lead the automobile industry. He already had a big group of workers due to the way he paid them $5 a day and how much they worked by being the first to introduce time clocks into working. This alone was a huge success. An article states, “The program made Ford a national hero and his legend approached cult status” (Schlager). Henry Ford wanted to grow his business further because he knew that he would get more people’s attention if his company was closer to him. He put at least one Ford dealership in every town with a population exceeding 2,000 people. This dramatically changed people’s lives by not only having a car but being able to easily access one too. This boosted his company to great heights and fastly made automobiles an everyday norm.

Ford changed how people lived with automobiles, but he also made a ripple effect to create and change the world more. Automobiles alone helped boost other things such as motels from long road trips, as well as cuisine. Ford developed the world through the automobile. For example, parking lots, shopping malls, roads, highways, car part stops, automobile dealerships, car washes, and repair shops. This all exists solely due to the ubiquity of automobiles. The automobile not only changed people’s lives but the world. Ford changed the way people, worked, and commuted, and showed the people a glimpse into the future. The article states, “The engine itself revolutionized all forms of transportation each of which in turn had far-reaching impacts on society” (Schlager). Ford later died in 1947 at the age of 84, but his legacy and his vision have lived to this day and will continue for generations to come.

In conclusion, Henry Ford dramatically changed the way people lived, not only through automobiles but how people adapted and changed by them. There is a love for cars that exists today due to the Model T. Ford encourages people to travel and explore new things. It became an everyday necessity and made isolated people explore the world in ways they could have never imagined. Our world would have been completely different if automobiles were never invented. People today, rely so heavily on them, that it’s impossible to imagine what could have been the other alternative. Henry Ford made all of this possible. He made the impossible possible at the time and he was a heroic figure to people to this day, it states, “In short, he was a man who baffled even those who had the opportunity to observe him close at hand” (Bailey). Ford’s business manager once said, “You cannot analyze genius and Ford is a genius.”

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