Henry Ford, 1863-1947: Life After the Model T

时间:2012-01-17 15:49来源:未知 作者:admin 点击:


Henry Ford with a Model T in Buffalo, New York, in 1921. About one million Model Ts were produced that year. The car was introduced on October 1, 1908.





To keep prices low, Henry Ford decided that he would build just one kind of car. He called it the Model T.

FRANK OLIVER: The Model T was ready for sale in October nineteen eight.

The Model T cost eight hundred fifty dollars. It was a simple machine that drivers could depend on. Doctors bought the Model T. So did farmers. Even criminals. They considered it the fastest and surest form of transportation.

Americans loved the Model T. They wrote stories and songs about it. Thousands of Model Ts were built in the first few years. The public wanted the car. And Henry Ford made more and more.





FRANK OLIVER: That made Henry Ford popular with working men. He became popular with car buyers in nineteen thirteen when he gave back fifty dollars to each person who had bought a Ford car. Henry Ford was demonstrating his idea that if workers received good wages, they became better buyers. And if manufacturers sold more products, they could lower prices and still earn money.

This system worked for Ford because people continued to demand his Model T. And they had the money to buy it. But what would happen when people no longer wanted the Model T, or did not have the money?





In nineteen twenty-three, fifty-seven percent of the cars produced in America were Model T Fords. About half the cars produced in the world were Fords. Taxicabs in Hong Kong. Most of the cars in South America. Never before -- or since -- has one car company so controlled world car production.

STEVE EMBER: The success of the Ford Motor Company permitted Henry Ford to work on other projects.



German diplomats award Henry Ford, center, Nazi Germany's highest award for foreigners, the Grand Cross of the German Eagle, in Detroit on July, 30, 1938



Ford's Model T was still a dependable car. But it had not changed in years. People said the Model T engine was too loud. They said it was too slow. The Chevrolet, however, had a different look every year. And you could pay for one over a long period of time.


STEVE EMBER: Everyone at Ford agreed that the Model T must go. Henry Ford disagreed. And it was his decision that mattered. Finally, in nineteen twenty-six, even Henry admitted that the age of the Model T was over. A new Ford was needed.

A year later, the Model T was gone.

Strangely enough, people mourned its end. They did not want to buy it anymore. But they recognized that the Model T was the last of the first cars in the brave new world of automobile development.

The success of Ford's new cars did not last long. After nineteen thirty, Ford would always be second to General Motors.




STEVE EMBER: More violence was to come. For several years, automobile workers had been attempting to form a labor union. Union leaders negotiated first with America's two other major automobile makers: the Chrysler company and General Motors. Those companies quickly agreed to permit a union in their factories. That left Ford alone to fight against the union. And fight he did.











FRANK OLIVER: You have been listening to the Special English program PEOPLE IN AMERICA. Your narrators were Steve Ember and Frank Oliver. Our program was written by Richard Thorman. I’m Ray Freeman.