Charles E Sorensen, My Forty Years With Ford (1956)

Charles Sorensen was a Danish immigrant who started at Ford in 1905 as a $3 patternmaker designing car parts in wood, and who rose to become a confidant of Ford and a director of the company.  His book, therefore, provides an insider's perspective on the evolution of one of America's most famous firms. 

You can read the book here - it is an interesting 'warts-and-all' account of his time at the company.

For all students, a key section is Chapter 10 (page 115-131), which describes the development of the moving assembly line, which revolutionized manufacturing, made cars affordable for the average American, and became the centre of Ford's production efficiency.  Sorensen describes how the idea of taking the car to the parts rather than the parts to the car first occurred to him in 1908, but then evolved gradually, as the company tried continually to produce more cars more cheaply – securing regular suppliers, getting orders faster than the factory could meet them, building the huge Highland Park factory in Detroit and then another at River Rouge in Michigan, implementing a moving assembly line, buying a steelworks to supply the steel and ending acquiring a railroad to supply the coal. 

You may be interested in pages 38-44, in which Sorensen explains: ‘What made the Ford organisation tick?’ … which seems to have been a mixture of putting the right man in the right job; training up men as fast as possible; and continual trial and error in search of “efficiency”.  It is interesting that Sorensen denies that the ‘father of scientific management’ (i.e. ‘time-and-motion’) Frederick W Taylor, had anything to do it; Ford distrusted ‘experts’ and hated paper-pushers. 

Sorensen addresses labour issues, including the $5 day (pp 136-142), relations with the Unions (pp. 259-263) and the 1941 strike at the River Rouge plant (267-73 – when Ford gave instructions to close down the factory rather than give way … and was prevented only by Mrs Ford!)

As you read, you may be shocked by the frequent references to blazing rows between the supervisers: e.g. “Couzens went at me hammer and tongs”, “I had no more than entered when he sailed into me … but that did not take me aback half so much as the vigor of his language”.  Apparently, Sorensen himself was also terrifying.

There is a pen-portrait of Henry Ford on pages 11-14, whom Sorensen found a contradictory character. 

Finally, if you are interested in mechanical engineering, Sorensen describes (pages 97-110) the development and launch of the Model T Ford, which took from the winter of 1906-7 until October 1908 and involved a whole string of innovations including the use of pressed vanadium steel, a new system of gears and pedals, a revolutionary four-cylinder engine, and a magneto to provide the spark.  

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Some Quotes:

“In October new Model T prices went into effect: fully equipped touring car, $950; roadster, $900.  Fourteen years later prices were $269 for roadster and $298 for touring car.  The pattern for pricing Ford cars was based on apparent comparative prices: the greater the volume the lower the price.  Hawkins and his [sales team] brought us our first challenging volume.  That challenge had to be met by faster production.  True, it was the car that made the salesmen, but it was the sales organization that sparked the growing production organization."

“Henry Ford had no ideas on mass production.  He wanted to build a lot of autos.  He was determined but, like everyone else at that time, he didn't know how.  In later years he was glorified as the originator of the mass production idea.  Far from it; he just grew into it, like the rest of us.  The essential tools and the final assembly line with its many integrated feeders resulted from an organization which was continually experimenting and improvising to get better production."

“A towrope was hitched to a chassis, this time pulled by a capstan.  Each part was attached to the moving chassis in order, from axles at the beginning to bodies at the end of the line.  Some parts took longer to attach than others; so, to keep an even pull on the towrope, there must be differently spaced intervals between delivery of the parts along the line.  This called for patient timing and rearrangement until the flow of parts and the speed and intervals along the assembly line meshed into a perfectly synchronized operation throughout all stages of production.  Before the end of the year a power-driven assembly line was in operation, and New Year's saw three more installed.  Ford mass production and a new era in industrial history had begun."

“Today historians describe the part the Ford car played in the development of that era and in transforming American life.  We see that now.  But we didn't see it then; we weren't as smart as we have been credited with being.  All that we were trying to do was to develop the Ford car.  The achievement came first.  Then came logical expression of its principles and philosophy.  Not until 1922 could Henry Ford explain it cogently: "Every piece of work in the shop moves; it may move on hooks on overhead chains going to assembly in the exact order in which the parts are required; it may travel on a moving platform, or it may go by gravity, but the point is that there is no lifting or trucking of anything other than materials." A million men working with their hands could never approximate the daily output of the Ford assembly line.  There are not enough men on earth with skill in their hands to produce all the goods that the world needs."

“The immediate effect of the $5 plan on the Ford worker was electric.  The plan not only put $5 a day in his pocket, but the contrast between the Ford wage and wages elsewhere had strong psychological effect upon his attitude toward his job.  The facts that appeared as we went along with the $5 day were startling.  There was little social significance in the fact that the buying power of the Ford wage earner was increased.  But raising the buying power of Ford workers increased in turn the buying power of othcr people and so on in a sort of chain reaction.  The real significance was that the Ford high-wage policy was the example throughout American industry.  As a result of it, workers' pay throughout the country increased.  Also increased was their purchasing power and this bore out Mr.  Ford's idea that every man working for him should be able to afford one of his motorcars.  It meant a new era for workers in this country.  It was a movement which energized every type of business and spurred awareness that everybody wants more of everything."

"During its twenty-nine years before advent of the New Deal, Ford Motor Company had never been closed down by a strike.  Henry Ford was looked up to as the best example of a generous employer.  Working hours and pay were beyond criticism.  Minimum rates had gradually increased from $5 to $7 for an eight-hour day."

Sorensen’s autobiographical account of the Ford Company is extensively referenced by biographers of Ford, notably in Allan Nevins 1954 classic, but also by recent writers such as JC and MC Cunningham (2003), Douglas Brinkley (2004) and Steven Watts (2005). 

In his book on The Automobile in American History and Culture (2001), Michae Berger comments that My Forty Years with Ford “provides significant observations on the inner workings of the [Ford] company” and is “both interesting and valuable, although the truthfulness of parts of it has been questioned, particularly in terms of the author’s role in certain events”.