Henry Ford’s Secrets

a teenager abandons his life on his family's farm and heads to the city in search of work only to get fired within just 6 days he dropped out of school and was now alone with seemingly no prospects however fast forward a few decades and Henry Ford had built an Empire and completely revolutionized not just the car industry but business as we know it he pioneered assembly line production the 5-day work week and countless more Innovations but this is certainly not a straightforward success story Henry Ford's life is wrapped in controversy failures and obsessive genius we'll

not only look at Henry Ford's astonishing rise but also his lesser known projects like the time he tried to build his own weird American town called fordlandia in the heart of the Brazilian Rainforest we'll also look at the very dark truth about Henry Ford and why one of his biggest fans was Adolf Hitler this is a story of innovation and success a brutal struggle for wealth and power this is the shock Shocking True Story of Henry [Music] Forge born on July 30th 1863 Henry Ford was raised on a farm in Dearborn Michigan which he quickly

grew to dislike Henry often avoided his daily responsibilities as the eldest son spending most of the day at home while his five younger siblings worked out in the field one neighbor even Des described Henry as the laziest boy on the face of the Earth but there was a reason why Henry spent much of the day indoors he had a complete fascination with Machinery going as far as to sharpen a pair of his mother's knitting needles into screwdrivers Henry spent as much time as he could conducting experiments around the house like tinkering with the clocks and

farming equipment trying to understand how they worked but soon Henry started attending school and found it even more tedious than the farm he thought it was a waste of time and never made it past the e8th grade instead Henry preferred to learn on his own and as he got older he enlisted his siblings and friends to help build a variety of machines from water wheels to miniature steam engines even though his projects often ended in a small explosion or even the occasional injury it was clear Henry had a talent when it came to Machinery perhaps

the greatest leap in his development came when his father gifted him a pocket watch at age 13 Henry quickly taught himself how to take it apart and put it back together again he practiced doing this over and over getting faster each time and before long he was getting paid to repair watch is for people all around town but just a few months later Henry experienced a life-changing moment traveling to Detroit with his father Henry saw his first Horseless vehicle it was a tractor powered by a steam engine and Henry was so captivated by the machine

that he silently promised himself that he would make a vehicle like that of his own unfortunately that was also the year that tragedy struck when he was only 13 Henry's mother passed away due to childbirth complications Henry was closer with her than anyone else in the world and her death left him heartbroken he described life on the farm without her as a watch without a main spring Henry then began to hate his Rural Life more than ever he felt he was destined for greater things than milking cows and harvesting crops but as the eldest son

his father expected him to eventually take ownership of their farm this tension grew until Henry finally decided to leave home at the age of 16 abandoning the family business and head to Detroit this was a huge disappointment to his father and put a big strain on their relationship and things got even worse when just a week into his new job in Detroit Henry got fired Henry suddenly found himself alone in a new City without an income but surprisingly help would come from the last place he expected Henry was rescued by his father who landed him

a repairman job at a machine shop run by a longtime friend of his though his father was disappointed with Henry for turning his back on the family business he recognized Henry's remarkable mechanical ability and knew this work would be good for him so Henry found cheap housing with his aunt and took on additional nightwork as a jewelry repairman between the two jobs he made $550 a week and more importantly Henry's role as a repairman allowed him to experiment with a wide variety of machines this time was essential in his development as a mechanic essentially serving

as the education he never had but after 9 months on the job Henry decided he'd learn all he could and moved back home and it was there in 1882 that a neighbor came seeking Henry's help to operate a newly purchased steam engine Henry agreed immediately despite the fact he'd never operated a steam engine in his life he walked up to the shaking machine that was much larger than he was calmly referring to it as The Little Engine Henry fed the fire and adjusted the valves until suddenly the machine was up and running the neighbor was

so happy he offered Henry full-time work with a daily salary of $3 but word soon spread of this young man setting up and operating a steam engine despite no formal training and at the end of the summer a representative from Westinghouse a company that manufactured these steam engines came and offered Henry a job as a steam engine repairman Henry accepted and spent the next several Summers repairing engines across Michigan and Ohio but Henry didn't forget his dream during the winters he attempted to make his own steampowered vehicle just like the one he'd been so mesmerized

by when he was younger but despite countless hours of work this was one thing Henry just couldn't seem to do even though the first steam powered vehicle was made in 1769 that engine and later versions operated on a track and Henry was intent to make a vehicle which could drive on the road but he realized that steam engines weighed far too much to be effective for quick trackless Vehicles thus Henry was left with his dream but seemingly no way to make it a reality flicking through a magazine Henry Ford first came across an invention described

as a silent gas engine Henry actually dismissed The Invention at first considering it too weak to be a viable source of power but a couple of years later a company asked him to repair such an engine this experience completely changed Henry's perception of gasoline combustion As It produced far more energy than he'd anticipated and the engine was much more lightweight Henry knew he had finally found a machine to power his Horseless vehicle he suggested to his fiance claraa that they move back to Detroit so that he could learn more about the gasoline engine she agreed

which was lucky because Henry had actually accepted a job in the city a week earlier as a repairman with the Edison Illuminating Company Thomas Edison was one of Henry Ford's Heroes and he felt this was the ideal place to work and learn this role also gave him firsthand experience working with gasoline engines and Henry quickly impressed at the company and soon worked his way up to becoming chief engineer where his pay doubled to $80 a week but best of all since the position only required work on call Henry had more time and freedom to work

on his own creations and in particular his Horseless Carriage concept which he now knew was possible with a gasoline engine in fact at a company Retreat he finally got to meet Thomas Edison himself who encouraged Henry to keep pursuing the idea and that the two would later become close friends to add to Henry's good fortune in 1888 he married claraa and in 1893 they welcomed the birth of edol Henry Ford's only child and it was that same year that Henry burst into the room on Christmas Eve to tell his wife he'd finally made his first

gasoline engine admittedly at this point it was still very basic and only ran for a minute but all those years of tinkering had paid off and now that he knew how to create the engine he could focus on his dream of building his first horse to carriage for the next 3 years Henry worked tirelessly on the machine using parts that would have been thrown out by the factory like left over tubing and by 1896 it was finally ready made up of two bicycles welded to a square chassis it was dubbed the quadricycle the vehicle took

its first drive early in the morning of June 4th 1896 and amazingly the car drove quickly and reliably though other inventors had already created working gas powerered automobiles Henry's quad recycle was one of the fastest of its time with the top speed of 20 mph however Henry knew this was just the start and so he sold his quad recycle for $200 and used the money to begin working on the second model of his vehicle this would take him three more years to complete but when he was done he had a much improved version of his

car it was larger faster and ran more smoothly at this point though Henry was desperate to invent fulltime but just didn't have enough money to do so he realized that he would need investors to pursue his passion and so he set out to raise some money ready to take the biggest risk of his career and start his own [Music] company in 1899 Henry had the chance to drive a wealthy Lumber salesman on a 3 and 1/2 Mile Drive by the end of the ride the salesman was so enthralled by Henry's car that he immediately agreed

to invest in Henry's new company by showing off his car like this Henry managed to acquire a total of 12 investors and a capital of $155,000 and thus the Detroit automotive company was founded in August 1899 with Henry placed as the chief engineer by this point though there were many other brands of Hess carriages all of them were handmade and extremely expensive and because of this cars only served the function as luxury items for the rich whereas Henry's goal was to craft efficient well-made vehicles that were affordable for the masses unfortunately this was not what

his shareholders wanted the investors demanded a variety of different Vehicles built as quickly as possible to sell for a premium price to wealthy hobbyists regardless of build quality or reliability Henry was in constant conflict with shareholders as they grew furious with the constant production delays they pressed for higher profits whilst Henry pressed for Perfection although Henry had mastered how to build an automobile he had definitely not mastered the business side of things his experience was in crafting Vehicles one at a time putting a lot of care into each one but shareholders pushed him to churn

out cars at a quality he wasn't happy with and a prices he didn't feel were Justified and it turns out the public agreed with him the vehicles were simply too much for poor quality as a result the company wasn't profitable and continued to have issues and delays So within only 2 years of its grand opening the Detroit automobile company was dissolved in 1901 despite the failure of the Detroit automobile company Henry still had well-connected friends in the city some of which owned a warehouse where they allowed Henry to continue to work on his inventions although

his first business hadn't worked out Henry at least now had more freedom to focus on what he actually wanted and at this point he wanted to make his own race car as that would allow him to work on a singular car for a long period of time and it turns out Henry had an idea Henry felt the other races of the time were far too focused on power when actually he felt a car would be much more successful by making it lighter and thus Henry began work on a very lightweight 26 horsepower 2-cylinder racer this

philosophy won Henry his first race in a 10-lap competition at the Detroit driving Club following the fame Henry gained from winning several more races with his lightweight racer many of the same shareholders from the failed Detroit automobile company got back in touch with Henry they basically agreed that given Henry's recent success in the racing World maybe they should try again to set up a company producing cars together and thus the Henry Ford company was founded the goal of this company was to produce lightweight City cars however Henry's recent victory in racing had made him obsessed

all he wanted to do was build race cars and to figure out how to make them go as fast as possible so just like with their first company Henry was constantly odds with shareholders because instead of focusing on producing passenger cars and focusing on profits Henry fixated on the mechanical ability of individual race cars once more chasing Perfection investors were again extremely frustrated and eventually replaced Henry Ford as chief engineer thus Henry Ford left the Henry Ford Company signing a contract that gave him the rights of his name back $900 and the designs for the

four-cylinder racer he'd been working on with Henry's sudden departure they obviously needed a new name so they reorganized the business as the Cadillac automobile company which went on to find great Commercial Success meanwhile Henry Ford was once again now out on his own and with two business failures is under his belt already but of course Henry wasn't going to give up that easily he returned to racing and in 1901 created the groundbreaking Ford 999 a car that swept the competition 2 years later the next iteration of this car broke All American Driving records with a

top speed of 56 m per hour all of this success in the racing World catapulted Henry Ford's reputation to new heights which once again attracted the attention of a lot of investors who wanted to work with him surely there was some way to turn Henry's inventions and Innovative mind into a very profitable company and this is what led to Henry starting his third and final business venture in 1903 the Ford Motor Company whilst cars still remained a luxury item for the rich Henry had always wanted to change that he declared I will build a motor

car for the great multitude his new company's first product was a two-cylinder 8 horsepower passenger car known as the model A their first car sold for $750 a week before Henry's 40th birthday whilst it was a reasonable start these first cars were made at a factory in Mac Avenue Detroit with several workers building two or three cars each day entirely by hand and so it was still a very slow process however everything changed when Henry Ford visited a slaughter house in Chicago it was here that Henry had an idea that would change everything Henry observed

as the cow carcasses moved along an automatic conveyor belt while each worker performed one specific task to prepare it for consumption like cogs in a machine the workers were unbelievably quick and efficient Henry decided to adopt the innovation of the assembly line for his own car factories splitting the production process into a series of small individual tasks he'd then assign workers to one task each which they could complete quickly over and over again with no skill or experience required immediately Factory efficiency increased by 500% and Henry was able to quickly expand and hire 300 new

employees since he could hire cheap low-skilled labor to do these repetitive tasks Henry then took his radical practices one step further knowing from personal experience how a single missing part could delay car production for weeks he began to implement the manufacturing of Individual Car Parts in his factories making everything from engines to Transmissions this sped up production time even more and whereas it had initially taken Henry 2 and 1 half days to build a single car it now only took 90 minutes this extreme progress set the stage for him to launch the Model T which

would go on to be one of the most successful cars in history thanks to all the improvements Henry had made to the production process he was finally able to produce a car for the average person there were three ideas he wanted for this car for it to be affordable durable and easy to operate that's exactly what he did every Model T rolled out of the factory with the same interchangeable parts and the same shade of black paint coming with a detailed instruction manual so the owners could understand and fix the vehicles themselves it was an

immediate bestseller bringing in huge profits for the company and allowing them to ramp up production even further by 1914 Henry was selling more more cars than all other car manufacturers in America combined before long every other car on the road was a Ford and surprisingly as model te flew out of the dealerships Henry steadily decreased the price of the car whilst this went against what most companies would do Henry knew if he lowered the price further he could get even more people to buy his car and ensure it remained the most popular choice and sure

enough before the end of its production over 15 million model T's would be sold however Henry Ford had a huge problem many of his workers had become extremely disappoint appointed in their new jobs having gone from assembling entire cars by hand to completing the same monotonous task day in and day out all the skill and craftsmanship seem to have been taken away with this assembly line style production many workers quit and the Ford Motor Company faced an extremely high turnover rate of 380 a problem which could easily lead to the end of the company before

we get to the next chapter it's time to answer one of the questions I get most how do we make these videos on magnates media and how can you create high quality videos yourself on a budget well for years now I've been using story blocks and it's genuinely one of the best purchases I've made so I reached out to story blocks to see if they'd sponsor this video so I can tell you all about them and luckily they agreed now the reason I like story blocks so much is that it gives you an insanely large

library of professional content and assets that you can easily integrate into your videos this includes videos images editing templates music and sound effects you just search what you're looking for and get countless options to download but whereas a lot of stock footage you have to pay deer clip with story blocks you get unlimited access to their entire library with millions of assets with just one lowcost subscription plus anything you download through story blocks is 100% royaltyfree so no copyright or monetization issues no matter whether you're just starting out making content or you're already an experienced

Creator story blocks can help you find the perfect clips and audio for your content to get started with unlimited stock media downloads at one set price head to story blocks.com magnates or click the link in the description Henry Ford did something extreme he doubled the pay of his workers from $250 to $5 a day which back then was considered a very good wage much higher than what other companies paid not just that since a large number of the workers were immigrants Henry provided free English lessons so they could communicate better on the factory floor he

also reduced their working hours from 9 to 8 hours and introduced the 5-day Work Week giving his employees the weekend off whereas up until this point most workers only got Sundays off these changes went completely against the Norms of the time and Henry faced a familiar problem his shareholders were outraged they felt as if money was being stolen out of their pockets and given to workers for no reason Henry tried to explain his theory that allowing workers to have more rest would Inspire them to work harder when they were on the job he also explained

the higher wage would attract more workers and sure enough workers across the country soon flocked to the Ford factories of Detroit causing an economic boom for the City and forcing competitors to enact similar policies because they were losing their employees to forge plus Henry's decision to decrease work time by 1 hour allowed Henry to add a third 8 hour shift to the schedule with three 8 hour shifts the factory could run 24 hours a day staying open at all times and thus whilst Henry's changes seemed surprising at the time they all made a lot of

sense and it's partially thanks to Henry Ford that most modern businesses today used the model of the 8-hour workday and 5-day work week however at the time the shareholders didn't see the changes as progress they ordered Henry to stop increasing wages and when he refused they took him to court and claimed he was intentionally costing the money and breaching his duties to shareholders Henry felt like his business was being taken away from him he'd worked so hard to build it up from nothing and whilst he was finally seeing success once again his clashes with shareholders

were putting it all at risk he couldn't start over again Henry knew he needed to seize control of the company as quickly as possible so in 1906 using his own personal savings Henry bought enough of the company's stock to bring his ownership interest up to 51% making him the majority owner and controlling shareholder he'd put basically all of his money into the company but he was betting on himself in 1919 Henry handed over leadership to his son edol naming him president of the Ford Motor Company however Henry still ruled behind the scenes with an Iron

Fist and was the one still making the big decisions for example edel urged his father to modernize the company and he would come into the office each day with new plans and proposals but Henry was extremely harsh on his son and often responded with a barrage of shouts and insults refusing to produce any new cars edil suggested because Henry claimed that the modal te was all that customers wanted not only did Henry refuse his son's ideas he ordered members of upper management to send Edsel on weeklong meetings across the country to keep him out the

office but it turns out edel may have been on to something because year after year sales of the Model T decreased a half decade of prosperity in America and cheap credit resulted in public demand for stylized more luxurious cars which competitors like General Motors and krysler were happy to provide and so finally in 1927 Henry could no longer disagree with the diminishing number of sales and consented to building a new vehicle Ford created a new version of the model a catered to the modern demands of the industry it boasted the first commercial V8 engine and

was offered in four different colors however by the time the Ford motor company could start selling their New Model A they'd already fallen to third place amongst the car manufacturers in the United States behind krysler and General Motors and soon after the Great Depression hit forcing Ford to lay off many workers and lower the high wages that the company had been known for whil he still claimed to be a man of the people Henry ended up hiring a secret police force to spy on his employees when he heard some of them were attempting to unionize

Henry even employed people in his Factory to root out Union organizers and have them beaten when workers protested Henry ordered police to quell them and attack the protesting workers with tear gas and even gunfire tragically this resulted in the death of four workers in what was known as the Ford Massacre and things would soon get even more [Music] controversial in the late 1920s Henry brought up millions of acres of land in Brazil and one of the wildest places on Earth you see the synthetic rubber Market didn't really exist back then but rubber was needed in

large quantities for the vast amount of cars Ford was now mass-- producing and so in an attempt to build a reliable source of rubber Henry set up a rubber Plantation in the Brazilian jungle so they could Farm rubber trees the plan was to harvest the Rubber and ship it back to Detroit where it would be turned into tires and other parts for Ford cars but rubber wasn't the only goal Henry Ford also wanted to create a Utopia modeled after the Rural America he grew up in essentially he wanted to build a self-sufficient town in the

heart of the jungle where all the workers on his rubber Plantation would live he called it fordlandia and it had homes shops a school a hospital a golf course and of course a processing plant for all that rubber in total it housed over 7,000 individuals Ford's rubber development on the tapos river is an Enterprise of historic proportion here 2 million Acres of jungle are being converted into a highly modernized Plantation capable of producing rubber on a large scale deep in the wilderness this this model Community is self-sufficient in every detail however Henry wanted the town

to operate under a very strict and controversial set of rules which were enforced by the American managers Alcohol Tobacco and playing sports were all banned within the community even in the Resident own homes and there was a police force to ensure all the rules were enforced plus fordlandia soon began to face a lot of challenges adverse weather disease outbreaks anger amongst the workers and environmental calamities all of this signaled that the venture was heading towards failure and yet despite this Henry continued to invest Millions into the project until finally a disease crippled the town's Workforce

and its rubber production discontent amongst workers eventually led to an open revolt and Henry had to accept fordlandia was a very expensive mistake Henry had to sell the plantation to the Brazilian government for only $250,000 a fraction of his total investment and the deserted ruins of fordlandia still remain as a symbol of Henry Ford's wild jungle Utopia idea as Henry Ford Grew Older he became more and more obsessed with Jewish people blaming them for almost everything he didn't like a close friend quoted Henry saying the Jew caused the War the Jew caused the outbreak of

thievery and robbery in the country the Jew even caused insufficiencies in the Navy Henry would go on to fund a newspaper that published anti-semitic articles to spread his hatred to the masses he even published a weekly segment entitled The International Jew the world's problem due to aggressive sales strategies the paper got 700,000 weekly readers at its peak and Henry would publish over 60 articles attacking Jews later compiling them into four books one of which the Nazis would cite as an inspiration to the Nazi party even Adolf Hitler himself said that Henry Ford was a great

personal inspiration to him and he claimed to have a life-size portrait of Henry Ford in his office Hitler also distributed Henry Ford's books and articles throughout Germany and mentioned Henry Ford by name in mine Camp then in 1938 the Nazi party awarded Henry Ford the Grand Cross of the German eagle the highest medal that could be given to foreigners and Henry Ford gladly accepted he was given the medal for his ideals and Devotion to the same cause as the Nazi party and Henry Ford's relationship with Nazism went even deeper a US Army report in 1945

stated that the German branch of the Ford Motor Company still under Henry Ford's control served as an Arsenal for Nazism during the war War While most American companies pulled their stores from Germany at the start of World War II Ford continued using German plans reports from American GIS commented how strange it was to see the Germans America's enemies driving Ford automobiles into battle it's even reported that Ford utilized slave labor from concentration camps to produce cars and trucks for the Nazis what's clear is that Henry Ford was not just anti-semitic he was incredibly influential in

spreading anti-Semitism all around the world in 1943 Henry's son edal died from stomach cancer having never truly seen his vision realized within the Ford Motor Company given Henry was the one still calling all the shots in fact Henry Ford's grandson has claimed that Henry Ford berated edol to death as he felt Henry had caused him so much unnecessary stress and hardship but it had made him ill within a few years of his son dying Henry Ford himself died di in 1947 at 83 years of age the Ford Motor Company was left reeling from the loss

of their leader without a clear path forward ultimately it was Henry Ford's grandson who took control of the company until 1979 but whereas Henry Ford single-handedly led the company for 39 years the Ford Motor Company would change CEO 13 times over the course of the next 41 years regardless of the changing leadership though the automotive giant continued to find Commercial Success building on the foundations Henry had laid producing bestselling cars like the Thunder bird Mustang and countless more Classics however it would never dominate the industry as it once had under its original leader of course

Henry Ford would remain a divisive part of Ford's history on the one hand he was a genius an innovator he pioneered assembly line production and in many ways improved conditions for workers but on the other hand he was brutal towards unions was racist anti-semitic and actively spread his hatred and caused a lot of damage in response to this in 2001 the Ford Motor Company agreed to a $5 billion settlement providing reparations for using Jewish slave labor and concentration camps to build Factory materials in more recent times the Ford motor company has turned its focus to

fuele efficient vehicles and electric hybrids in July 2023 the US Department of energy announced that it would be giving Ford a $9.2 billion loan to build completely electric vehicles the largest Loan in the history of the Auto industry valued over 50 billion today and ranking as one of the 10 largest car companies in the world it's easy to forget that the Ford Motor Company started with a single farm boy and his desire to create a new kind of machine whilst Henry Ford remains a controversial and complex figure there's no doubt that he changed the world

in the way we do business which is pretty similar to Andrew Cari whose story is even crazier and you can click the thumbnail on screen now to find out why I'll see you there [Music] cheers