Henry Ford

Biography

His/her parents were called Engin and Jade (Litogot) Ford. It was the elder one of 6 children (4 boys and 2 girls).

His/her father was native parish of Kilmalooda, Comté of Cork in Ireland. They arrived in America in 1847 and assembled a farm in the Comté of Wayne (Michigan) close to Detroit.

Child, Henry Ford was interested much in the Mécanique. At the 12 years age, it spent most clearly its time in a workshop which it had equipped itself. Thus, at 15 years, it built its Engine first steam.

Later he became mechanic's apprentice with Detroit in the stores of James F. Flower and Bros then in a factory of Strait, Dry Dock Co. after having finished its Training in 1882. In July 1891, it was employed as engineer by the Edison Illuminating Company of Strait. He became chief engineer on November 1st 1893.

The April 13rd 1888 it Maria with Clara J. Bryant de Greenfield, Michigan, the girl of Melvin Bryant, a farmer of the county of Wayne. Mrs Ford died the September 29th 1950 at the 84 years age. They had a son, Edsel Bryant Ford, born the November 6th 1893.

The career of Car manufacturer of Ford dates from the winter 1893 when its interest for the internal combustion engines pushed it to build a model with a cylinder gasoline. The first Ford engine occurred. A later version of this engine propelled a vélocyclette to 4 wheels. The Automobile first of Ford left the workshops in June 1896.

The August 19th 1899, it resigned of the Edison Illuminating Company and with other technicians of the firm, created the Automobile Detroit Company . It took 1/13e shares (either 100 actions) and became about it the director of the department of mechanics. This company went bankrupt one year and half later.

In parallel, Henry Ford conceived and built several Voiture S of Course. With one of these cars, famous the 999 racer , it establishes world records on a Mile, covering the distance into 39-2/5 of seconds the January 12th 1904, on the lake frozen of Holy-Claire.

The June 16th 1903, Ford helped to organize the Ford Motor Company , capitalized to 150.000 $, including 28.000 of its pocket. The first car built by the company was sold the July 15th 1903. Henry Ford had 25,5% of the shares of the new organization. He became president as a majority shareholder in 1906.

A little more than one year close the declaration of the First World War, in December 1915 Ford chartered a boat joining together the American Intelligentsia pacifist and undertook to convince the Europe to cease the hostilities. It succeeds in giving birth to an embryo from movement, but does not succeed in concretizing its ideals and attracted mockeries. The project cost him several million dollars.

According to its testimony, during the crossing, two members of the Jewish community having contacts with the mediums Sioniste S explained to him that the real issue of this war was the creation of the future state of Israel, and that the parts in conflict were instrumentalisées by the international mediums of businesses adhering to the ideology Zionist. This meeting leads it to adopt a position radically Antisioniste and Antijudaïque which was décriée as being Antisémitisme.

In 1919, Henry Ford, his Clara wife and her Edsel son repurchased the shares of all the other shareholders for 105.820.894 $ and became the only shareholders of the company. Edsel, which succeeded his/her father in 1919 as a president, occupied this position until its death in 1943; Henry Ford took again the station then. He was freemason.

In the years 1920, the fordism and its corollaries - mechanization, improvement of the work conditions and the development of the economy - make of Henry Ford a popular hero in the USSR, and the sales of Ford vehicles multiply by ten between 1922 and 1925. Many its vehicles équipérent the Red Army during the Second world war.

In the Years 1920, Henry Ford took a hostile position with regard to the Jews. He showed the Juif S to have more the American large companies. To support its theses, it bought in 1920 a local weekly magazine, The Dearborn Independent , in which it published, between 1920 and 1922,81 articles on “the Jewish Question in America”, according to him the “main issue with peace in the world”. The Dearborn Independent was distributed free to the United States through the networks of the stores Ford and it reached with its apogee 700.000 readers.

Henry Ford published then the articles in a work in four volumes entitled The International Jew: The World' S Foremost Problem quoted by Hitler in Mein Kampf . At the time of the Lawsuit of Nuremberg, Baldur von Schirach, the chief of the Jeunesses hitlériennes stated to be influenced by the reading of Ford.

On this question, the historian Pierre Abramovici writes in the article “How the US firms worked for Reich” ( Historia , n° 669, September 2002, p. 40-45):

Henry Ford also took part in the German effort of war. Always according to Pierre Abramovici: “In 1938, Ford Compagny will open, in the suburbs of Berlin, a factory of assembly of freight vehicles of troops. With Opel, company of German origin, but property of General Motors, the other large US car manufacturer, Ford will produce nearly 90% of the Half-tracks of 3 tons and 70% of the trucks heavy and average tonnage used by the Wehrmacht. ” After the war, firms ITT and General Motors are made compensate by the US government for the damage caused with their factories partly destroyed by the American bombers. “On its side, Ford tears off a little less than one million dollars for the damage caused with its production lines of military trucks installed with Cologne. Without counting the 38 franc million paid, during the war, by Vichy, after the Bombardment by allied planes of its factory of Poissy in which it produced twenty trucks per day intended for Wehrmacht. ”

In September 1945, when it gave up the position of president for the second time, Henry Ford recommended elder its grandsons, Henry Ford II, with the election of this station. The council of the directors followed this recommendation.

Henry Ford was a member of the Society off Automotive Engineers , the Automobile Club off America , and the Detroit Board off Trade .

In collaboration with Samuel Crowther, he wrote My Life, and Work (1922), Today and Tomorrow (1926) and Moving Forward (1930) which described the development of Ford Motor Company' and underlined its social and industrial theories. He published also " Edison, Ace I Know Him' (1930), with the same collaborator. The diploma for the occupation of Doctor in engineering was delivered to him by the university of Michigan and the college of the State of Michigan, it accepted also an honorary “LL.D.” of the Colgate university.

Henry Ford was Végétarien (can be under the influence of Edison) and believed in the Réincarnation.

Henry Ford died in his residence Fair Lane in Dearborn, with 23:40 Monday April 7th 1947, following a brain hemorrhage. He was 83 years old. Its burial attended Mrs Ford and the family members. Per hour of its death, a rising Red River, which runs through the ground of Fair Lane, caused an electric cut. Old oil lamps and candles were the only sources of light in the house, creating a similar scene in that with its birth in the same area many years before.

The funerary service was held with the cathedral of episcopal of Saint Paul with Detroit, and Henry Ford was buried in the cemetery of the Ford family to the church of episcopal of Holy Martha.

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