My Life and Work: An Autobiography of Henry Ford

This book is less an autobiography than an education in business and economics with a unique philosophy. It is a great mirror to hold up to our current business practices and economic life. Reading between the lines, it is a warning to the leveraged buyout crowd and an incentive to our economic policy makers to think again.Henry Ford has been much ridiculed and vilified. True, he was critical of much and expressed himself very strongly. He was anti-Semitic. This was not unusual in his day. This book has none of that, but you can see one source of his enmity – the banks. Then, as now, the Jewish participation in commercial and investment banks was very pronounced. Ford felt that allowing bankers in led to a loss of control and running a business in a way far different from his philosophy. He was not very positive about lawyers either.Henry Ford is also admired for the “assembly line” system of manufacturing, which he admits he got from observing a slaughterhouse operation. Ford is also known for going a long time without changing models and lowering his prices (along what we now call the learning curve). He looked for constant manufacturing and engineering improvement (what the Japanese call “kaizen”). Also, like the Japanese in later generations, he pioneered “just in time” inventories.His goal was to supply simple high quality products at prices anyone could afford. Meanwhile, he raised the average worker’s wages to unprecedented heights and instituted companywide “social services” and a unique brand of vocational education for the young. In many ways he was neither a capitalist nor conservative. Rather he was a progressive thinker for his time and a “distributivist” rather than a socialist. One might wonder whether his philosophy, if generally implemented, would have prevented the slew of economic and industrial problems experienced since the 1930s, but it certainly justifies listening to his views and considering them seriously.Autobiography is not missing here. I enjoyed Ford’s description of his friendships with Thomas Edison, Harvey Firestone, and the naturalist John Burroughs. I recall being taught in school or elsewhere that Ford was a poor farm boy who became a mechanic and invented a car in his garage. This is misleading. His father was an affluent farmer who gave his son a nice farm eventually. Ford did not like farm work and always was looking for ways to do things efficiently. This led him to mechanics and he was not like your corner garage mechanic. He became interested in gasoline engines and perfecting them. He was more what we would call a machinist. Moreover, through self-study and practice he became what we would call an engineer. He held responsible management jobs with a steam tractor company and Detroit Edison. While doing these things he tinkered on his own time with his original automobiles. His forward thinking is illustrated by his thoughts on why corn should be used to make “tractor fuel.” Sounds pretty modern to the ethanol crowd.My only problem with this book is that the paragraphs are too darn long, but that's the way folks used to write.I came away from this book with a renewed interest in Ford, a fascinating personality. His thoughts and “credo” about business and society and the proper place of the industrialist are well worth knowing and considering. They are as relevant today as 100 years ago. If you are in business management there is even more to think about and compare with what is taught in today’s business schools. If you worry about a world awash in debt and influenced by “bankers” and leveraged buy-out artists this book will give you more food for thought.

It's not that anything included in this book is obviously untrue, but that it's so much less than the real story behind the Ford empire's founding. So this is not the book for someone looking for the unvarnished facts. Quite a lot of it reads like propaganda. Or Ford's attempts to answer his critics at the time, who felt that his methods were dehumanizing society (as well as polluting the earth).Still, I don't say this as a criticism, but to let you know what you're getting with this book. This is Ford's story of how he started out in the world and became a successful businessman. He is presenting himself in his best light, which is excusable, seeing that this is an autobiography. But it's also a kind of guidebook offered to the business world at large, because it contains Ford's economic, political, and social manifestoes. He is trying to advise the world how to improve itself -- reduce waste, increase wealth (for all), eliminate unemployment, and promote social health and harmony, for example.There's plenty of idealism, which I found surprising. Ford defends his less attractive methods (like the working conditions inside his factories) as being the lower rungs on a ladder which will one day reach to the heavens. The core of his philosophy revolves around doing things smarter, eliminating waste, and preventing graft. Working on these issues will benefit the company in question, which will in turn benefit the workers, which will in turn enrich society as a whole and destroy all the great social ills of his time and ours. It's a reasonable argument.But as many reviews of this book have failed to indicate objective material, here is what I found: a pattern of racist ideology throughout the work, starting with Ford's fervent belief that "not all men are created equal." He believes some people can do no better than sweep streets or clean toilets, and so should not be promoted past their station. This idea is then extended to whole races -- some are better suited to management positions, for example, than others, though he does advocate the promoting of exceptional individuals. Also, he seems to indicate as an indisputable fact of history pernicious Jewish influence on society -- both in America and abroad. He thinks that it is a matter of their inferior culture tainting superior ones. Which is kind of what Hitler thought, too. He also does not favor women in the workplace.But if you can get past that, or least consider Ford's failings as distinct from his successes, you will probably find this a fascinating book. I know I did. Intelligent, thoughtful, concise, and well-written. Clear-headed. Wise. And many of Ford's ideas as relevant today as when he first began to form them. .

Buen producto, de buena calidad, llegó en tiempo y forma

Gostei muito deste livro. A filosofia de Henry Ford era bem sofisticada para a época e até mesmo para os dias de hoje. Sua exaltação do serviço ao cliente e uma política agressiva de preço baixo dos produtos para que todos tenham acesso a eles é louvável!Sua visão humanista do trabalhador ter acesso aos bens produzidos, o crescimento profissional por mérito e o trabalho de deficientes físicos na linha de produção é brilhante!Gostei bastante, sendo muito esclarecedor para mim.

The book contents has obviously stood the test of time, and it is not a review of the book itself (which is great). If only whoever published this took Henry Ford's words to heart.For 30$ you get poor paper quality, inconsistent spacing between words and ink quality so poor I would think the printing machine was having a bad day. I expected high quality for 30$ on a book that is 100 years old, what I got was anything but.

Arrived on time and exactly as described

この本は、新しく組み直しているので、オリジナルにあった写真も全部抜け落ちているし、表組みや箇条書きの書式も違和感があります。この本よりも、1922年に出版されたオリジナルを写真製版したものが、ミシガン大学図書館のコレクションのリプリントとして出ているので、そちらをお勧めします。