NARRATOR: He gave
the car to America. ROBERT CASEY: I
think Henry Ford may have been the most influential
man of the 20th century. NARRATOR: He made
bitter enemies. CHARLOTTE FORD: He was
a nasty individual. NARRATOR: He believed
in hard work. If a young man makes
up his mind to work, there's no limit
to what he can do. NARRATOR: And he
demanded hard work. DAVID MOORE: To work
at Ford at that time, you had to give up your
dignity, your manhood. NARRATOR: He was praised by
everyone from President Herbert Hoover to public enemy
number one John Dillinger. Henry's the man who
changed the way we all live. NARRATOR: He was
an American legend who gave us mass production,
the Model T, the V8, and the traffic jam. It's all because of
my great grandfather. [music playing] NARRATOR: Henry Ford, this man
who gave America the automobile and mass production, was born
while the Civil War was still raging. July 30, 1863, William and
Mary Ford, owner of one of the more substantial
homesteads in Dearborn, Michigan, had their first
surviving child, a son, Henry. Henry Ford didn't like the hard
life of farming that he'd been born into, but at least the
local one-room schoolhouse offered some escape from the
long hours and endless chores. And he was naturally curious. Henry Ford was a
natural-born mechanic. He had innate ability. One of the first
places that he was able to begin to hone that
ability was when he received a watch for his 13th birthday. Like a lot of little boys who
wanted to know about machines, he took that watch apart. Unlike most little boys, he
was able to put the watch back together again. NARRATOR: But in 1876,
Henry Ford's orderly world fell apart. His beloved mother Mary
died during childbirth. Henry was 12. The loss left him reeling. Henry had a story about
the first time he ever saw a working machine. It happened just after
his mother had died, and psychologists
wondered whether this had some sort of effect. The two events' being linked. He was going along
with his father, and he saw one of
the farm machines that were used in those
days coming towards him down the track but with one
addition-- it was moving itself because the engineer had
fixed the chain from the axle of the machine to the wheels. It was a sort of crude
self-propelling motor car. And for Henry Ford, this was
like the road to Damascus. He'd never seen
anything like this. NARRATOR: Ford knew then that
he wanted to work with machines. So at the age of
16, he left the farm and walked the nine
miles into Detroit. There he eventually found
work at the Dry Dock Company, makers of iron boats. It gave him a chance
to work on motors. Ford's practical
education had begun. After apprenticing
for three years, Henry Ford determined that he'd
learned all he was going to at the Dry Dock and
returned to the family farm. But he didn't leave
his love of machines behind in the big city. He hired on with the
Westinghouse company to demonstrate and
repair machines throughout southern Michigan. During this period,
Henry met a young friend of his sister Mary. Her name was Clara Bryant,
and he knew she was right. Clara resisted at first
but finally relented. On a spring day in
1888, wearing a wedding dress she had made
herself, Clara Jane Bryant married Henry Ford. Ford built this home
for his young bride and tried to settle down
to life on the farm. But the farmer's life didn't
satisfy Henry Ford's ambition. The industrial age was
taking root in the cities, and Ford wanted to be a
part of the excitement. On a trip to Detroit,
Ford had become interested in the gasoline-powered
automobile, like this one built by the
Duryea brothers of Springfield, Massachusetts. There was a revolution going
on, and Ford wanted in. In 1891, Henry Ford moved
his young wife to Detroit and took a job at the
Edison Illuminating Company. Here he moved swiftly through
the ranks, more than doubling his starting salary when he
was promoted to chief engineer. And the extra income helped. On November 6, 1893, Clara Ford
gave birth to a hearty baby, boy Edsel Bryant Ford. Newly inspired, Ford
set out to build that gasoline-powered vehicle
that had been taking shape in his mind. ROBERT LACEY: Henry Ford
had an enormous capacity for concentration. He became something
of a mad professor when he was actually
working on a project. And so when he was building
his first internal combustion engine, his own
version of it, he got so wrapped up that
he brought it home on Christmas Eve when his poor
wife was cooking the turkey and getting the meal
ready and everything. And right in the
middle of all this, he stuck the machine
on the kitchen sink, screwed it to the sink, got
his wife, whose hands we're all covered with gravy and stuff,
to actually drip gasoline into the top of it. He connected the wires
and started the machine and was quite
oblivious to the fact that he was filling the kitchen
with clouds of exhaust smoke. NARRATOR: In a shed
behind his home, Ford's automobiles
slowly took shape. With the help of friends
from the Edison Company, he began building the vehicle
he called the Quadricycle. It was called this
for good reason. His plan called for two bicycles
to be placed side by side and powered by a
crude gasoline engine. On the night of June 4, 1896,
he was ready for a test run. Aside from one breakdown,
the trip was a success. Henry Ford had
made his first car. It was only three years later
that Ford took a local backer for a ride around Detroit. By the time that ride was
over, they were in business. The Detroit automobile
company opened with Ford as the mechanical
superintendent, but the venture
only lasted a year. Ford could make a car run,
but he wasn't capable yet of manufacturing enough of those
cars to make a company run. Ford wasn't discouraged, though. He hatched a new plan-- to build a racer. ROBERT CASEY: Ford
saw racing as a way to spread the word
about his cars and spread the name of his cars. That was one of the reasons
that he and his backers in his second company finally
parted ways because they got tired of him racing. They wanted him to devote his
energies to the production car. NARRATOR: But Ford continued
racing, and with the notoriety, got the backers he needed to
form the Ford Motor Company. He designed his
company's first car and set out to conquer
production problems that had plagued him in the past. He set up shop, hired men,
put out a car, and waited. In July 1903, 3 Ford sold
his first car, a Model A, to a Chicago dentist. Two-time failure Henry
Ford, at the age of 40, was about to experience
success beyond anything he dreamed possible. By 1904, over 500 Model
A's had been sold. Henry Ford, here pictured
with his son Edsel, celebrated this success by
buying his first dress suit. At the same time, Ford Motor
Company was upgrading the line with the Model B. It was bigger,
more powerful, and considerably more expensive than the
Model A. But Henry Ford just couldn't get comfortable with
the notion of a luxury car. ROBERT LACEY: From
the beginning, there seemed to have been two
strands in American car-making. That were the people who are
making horseless carriages for the rich, loading
them down, making them heavy and luxurious. And then there was
Henry Ford, who had this idea that a car
should be able to go along the rutted tracks. It should be able to drive
across a plowed field. A farmer should be able to
use it and take a wheel off it and fix a chain to it and
cut some trees down or husk some corn. That was all he was
interested in from the start. NARRATOR: Henry Ford brought
this vision into the shop and tinkered until he came up
with his ideal automobile-- the Model T. The Model T was simple,
reliable for its day. It was very, very rugged yet
had very high-- it was fairly high off the ground, a good
ground clearance, which sounds like an odd thing to
use in his advantage, but in the days when roads
were often wagon ruts, ground clearance
was very important. And it was also cheap. NARRATOR: The Model T was
an astounding success. It went on sale in October
1908, and within a few months, Ford was forced to announce
that the company couldn't accept new orders. The factory was already
swamped, months behind. Henry Ford had
succeeded in making an automobile for the
masses, but it left him with a problem-- how to build up production
to satisfy demand. At the time, craftsmen building
cars at stationary work benches could produce 25
model T's a day. But 25 weren't enough, so
Henry Ford and his engineers came up with a
revolutionary new idea-- the moving assembly line. August 1913, a chassis was put
in motion at Ford's Highland Park plant. It moved past a line of
carefully positioned men and components. At peak efficiency,
the old system had spit out a finished T
in 12 and 1/2 man hours. With the chassis in motion, that
time dropped to less than half that. Within a year, it took just
93 minutes to make a car. With production getting
more and more efficient, Ford was able to cut
hundreds of dollars off the price of his car. Cutting prices enabled Ford
to achieve what he claimed were his two aims in life-- to bring the pleasures
of the automobile to as many people as possible
and to provide a large number of high-paying jobs
for his workers. But there was a
factor in the equation that he hadn't yet considered-- mass production was
burning up labor. The worker had only to do a
single task as the job passed his station, time after time,
hour after hour, day after day. The endless repetition
took its toll. DAVID MOORE: To work
at Ford at that time, you had to give up your dignity,
your manhood, and your self sense. You had no control over
those things at all. You were just at the mercy
of Ford Motor Company. ARTHUR VALENTI: If you worked
on that line, you sweated. You really worked hard. It was kind of a
slave to that night. And you went to bed that night,
and you dreamed about working. You worked all night
long in your dreams. NARRATOR: The turnover
rate became such a problem that the company had to
hire close to a thousand men for every hundred
jobs it hoped to fill. And hiring and training
men cost money. Something had to be done. Again, Ford came
up with an answer-- the $5 Day. Henry Ford would pay his workers
more than twice the going rate. It was front page news
across the country. Workers flocked to the
gates of Ford Motor Company. The $5 Day made
good business sense, but Ford was also
genuinely trying to improve the lives of his workers. Henry Ford had experienced
a healthy dose of success with the Model T and
again with the $5 Day. On the strength of
this public approval, Ford began to feel that
he should speak out on other issues. [blasts] With Europe exploding
into war, he tried international politics. A young reporter sent out
to interview Ford came back with a story quoting the
carmaker as saying that he would give everything he
possessed to stop the war. As the story spread,
a noted peace activist approached Henry Ford. She found him a
willing listener. Ford agreed to attend a meeting
that very weekend in New York. There, his name was added to a
delegation that would petition the warring governments. ROBERT LACEY: They
weren't the sort of people that he would normally
have got involved in, but they did flatter him. It was a simple sort
of solution-- charter a ship, go to
Europe, stop the war. Henry Ford can
produce a Model T. Why can't he stop a World War? It was an illustration
both of his idealism and, now, of his arrogance. NARRATOR: The peace
delegation was far from united around the cause. As members fell to
arguing and backbiting, the shipboard press delighted in
sending scathing stories home. By the time the ship
docked in Norway, Ford was deeply discouraged. He left for the States just
a few days after landing. Back home, though, Ford
found himself again a hero to the common man, a
modern-day Don Quixote. Maybe it had been foolish
to think that he could end ? war, but even his critics
admitted that at least he had tried. When America did enter
the war, Henry Ford stood by his country. With American boys leaving
home, Ford opened his company's facilities to the government. The government, and the
country for that matter, considered Henry Ford capable
of producing miracles. Model T's served as
ambulances and staff cars. And with allied shipping in
the North Atlantic plagued by German submarines,
the Navy turned to Ford to build the Eagle
Boat, a sub chaser. But by Armistice Day, only a
handful had been delivered. With the war over, Ford
could turn his attention to other matters. And there was one matter he
found especially irritating. It was the issue of who really
controlled Ford Motor Company. ROBERT CASEY: I
think things really began to change for
Henry Ford in 1919 when he bought out
all his stockholders. And he increasingly felt
that they were interfering with the way he wanted to run
the company, and with his wife and with Edsel became sole
owners of Ford Motor Company. From that point
on, he personally had the majority stock. From that point on, he was in
effect dictator of Ford Motor Company. He didn't have to
answer to anybody else. Personally, now, I think
this is a classic case of absolute power corrupting. NARRATOR: And what Henry Ford
planned to do with that power was far grander than
anything he had done before. The tough shrewd businessman
that ran Ford Motor Company was a much different man
at home with the family. CHARLOTTE FORD: As I remember
my great grandfather, he was very tall and thin, and
he had the most incredibly hard handshake. And I remember that because
each time I went there, he always shook my hand first
and then gave me a kiss hello. And I always used to think, oh,
my god, he's broken my bones. He was very soft as far as being
around children was concerned. I mean, he wasn't "don't
do this," "don't do that," that kind of thing. I think he enjoyed it when
we did come around to play. NARRATOR: Henry
Ford was a dreamer. Once the old stockholders
have been bought out, he was free to leave Ford
Motor Company anywhere his imagination took him. And that was often a long
way from auto-making. He also produced
the Fordson tractor, tried to bring aviation
to everyone's driveway with a single-passenger
Flivver plane. Henry Ford operated an early
airmail route and the first regularly scheduled
passenger flights, here promoted by the Our Gang kids. He set up and funded several
experimental schools. And at the Edison Institute
at Greenfield Village, Ford's Museum, and
restored American town, he created a tribute to
the spirit of innovation, honoring such greats as
his friend Thomas Edison. But the grandest of
Henry Ford's dreams was the Rouge, a plant that
was itself a giant machine. He built that plant along
the banks of the Rouge River in Dearborn, Michigan. And in its time, it was the
greatest industrial complex on earth. [music playing] It is still today an industrial
wonder, a lasting tribute to the power of
Henry Ford's dreams and his incredible
determination. About the time that the first
blast furnaces at the Rouge were being fired, Henry
Ford again offered the world his thinking. But this time, his thinking
was tainted by anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism was very
common in the farm communities of the Midwest at the
end of the last century. It went with
mistrust of the East, of the banking system, all
sorts of things like this. And Henry Ford's prejudices were
those of an ordinary Midwest farmer. The tragedy of it was that he
had the money and the conceit to put his ideas on paper
and actually publish his own magazine, which
spread it all around America and, of course, made
him a laughing stock. NARRATOR: Through "The Dearborn
Independent," Ford blamed the Jewish people for
everything from World War to short skirts, cheap
movies, and jazz music. It wasn't until he faced a
libel suit, public disapproval, and the continued
pleas of friends that Henry Ford
tendered an apology. But there were those who doubted
the sincerity of that apology. In July 1938, Ford accepted
Germany's Grand Cross, the highest honor the
Third Reich could bestow on a foreigner. As the '20s wore on, Rouge
workers continued to pump out hundreds of thousands
of Model T's. But Henry Ford began
to find himself falling behind the times. He liked an older America. He was never comfortable
in the modern world that he had helped to shape. His son Edsel, by this time
second in command at Ford, was from another
generation entirely. He liked jazz, contemporary
art, and an occasional cocktail. Henry Ford was a teetotaller. He preferred birdwatching
and old time country dancing. In this rare footage, Ford
demonstrates just how far he'd go to popularize those
old steps, even choosing an occasional Ford
executive as a partner. While Henry Ford was
dancing, the marketplace was changing in ways that
he could never understand. For the first time in
almost two decades, Ford's tin Lizzie had
a serious competitor. ROBERT CASEY: The car that
really did in the Model T was the Chevrolet. General Motors
recognized fairly early what Edsel Ford had recognized,
that once the market was-- the actual need for
automobiles were satisfied, you needed a way to continue to
convince people to buy new cars even if they didn't
really need one, even if their old
one wasn't worn out. One of the ways you do that
is to change the way cars look every year, and you make
the car look more pleasing. NARRATOR: In May 1927, the
Model T era came to a close. The success of the Chevrolet
demonstrated that the public wanted style and
not just utility. The tin Lizzie was
hopelessly outdated-- relegated to a
recycling campaign. For years, Ford Motor
Company had been dedicated to a single purpose-- producing Model T's. But the market demanded change. Edsel was the one that really
convinced his father Henry Ford that, you know, we ought
to bring out the Model A, Dad, because the T's
a perfectly good car, but we've built it
for 20 years and we haven't made any changes. NARRATOR: And change was
just what Ford needed, but it came at a cost. Thousands of Ford
workers were laid off. They sat home six months while
Henry Ford tried to figure out some way to get back
into the marketplace. At the age of 64, he
was starting over. But the old man was
up to the challenge. With the release of
a brand new Model A, Ford Motor Company came
roaring back to life. Model A was an
excellent automobile. It wasn't revolutionary like the
Model T. It wasn't a car that pushed the boundaries
of automobile design, but it was a thoroughly
up-to-date, thoroughly modern car. NARRATOR: The Model A was a
rare triumph for the partnership of Henry and Edsel Ford. Over the years, their
relationship had fallen apart. Henry wanted his son to be
tougher, more assertive. He thought that by publicly
reversing his son's decisions and disagreeing with
him at every turn, he would force
Edsel to fight back. I think he was
just a weaker person. He didn't have the strength. I mean, Henry Ford, I
think, was much tougher. Edsel was just a
really nice guy. Well, nice guys don't
necessarily go places in life. NARRATOR: With the success
of the Model A, though, Henry and Edsel Ford were
going in the same direction. ROBERT CASEY: It was
perhaps the only automobile on which the two really
collaborated very much. Henry had a lot to do with the
mechanical details of the car. Edsel had a lot to do with
the way the car looked. Had they been able to
collaborate like that both earlier and had they
been able to continue that collaboration,
Ford might not have lost its lead to General Motors. NARRATOR: October 1929,
shocking news from Wall Street. The stock market had crashed. Millions were out of work. Of course, Ford's
great personal fortune kept him far removed from
the nation's suffering. Normally, public
speaking paralyzed Ford, but here he joined good friends
Thomas Edison and Harvey Firestone in an historic radio
broadcast offering their wisdom on the Depression. If a young man makes
up his mind to work, there's no limit
to what he can do. But if he makes
up his mind to go at it without the idea of work,
why, he hasn't much changed. He must study and work and
he must go back in any art as he can to dig up the very
beginning, and he must-- the more he goes
back, the further he will be able to see ahead. NARRATOR: As removed from the
suffering of the common man as Henry Ford had
become, even he was about to find the Depression
striking close to home-- right at the gates of his
great Rouge River plant. The Depression devastated
working America. For many, there were no
jobs, no money, no hope. Ford Motor Company was
better off than most. The company rode out
the first year or two on the strong showing of
the Model A. Henry Ford even fought a one-man war
against the Depression by raising his workers'
wages and dropping the price of his automobile. But he could only
hold out for so long. In 1931, the Depression
caught up to Ford. After three years on the
market, Model A's sales fell dramatically. The Chevrolet with its
six-cylinder engine and the new Plymouth cut
into Ford's market share, once again, Ford was forced to
shut down production and send workers home. Those who stayed
found their wages cut. Frustration boiled over. On a bitterly cold
day, a crowd gathered to march on the Rouge plant
and confront Henry Ford with a demand for more jobs. At the Dearborn City limits,
local police had massed, but the marchers ignored
their orders to disperse. Police attacked and a
full-scale riot broke out. [crowd rioting] Machine gun fire finally
disperse the crowd. [gunfires] In the aftermath
of the fighting, four young marchers lay dead. A fifth died several days later. There were no new jobs. What finally brought the
workers back to the Rouge was yet another of Henry
Ford's inspirations-- the Ford V8. The V8 was Ford's
last great triumph. Chevrolet had brought out a
six-cylinder engine which was more powerful than Ford's four. Henry didn't like
six-cylinder engines, so he went on to go to a V8. [engine roaring] A V8 Ford-- something
with a roadster could probably do
70, 80 miles an hour. You strip it, it
might go even faster. NARRATOR: Tributes from all
over celebrated Ford's return to genius. His fanmail included
some surprises. John Dillinger, public
enemy number one, wrote Henry Ford saying,
"Hello, old pal, you have a wonderful car. It's a treat to drive one. Your slogan should be 'Drive a
Ford and watch the other cars fall behind you.' I can make any other
car take a Ford's dust." Clyde Barrow of "Bonnie
and Clyde" fame also felt moved to compliment Ford. "Even if my business hasn't
been strictly legal," he wrote, "it don't hurt anything to tell
you what a fine car you've got in the V8." With the success of
the V8, Ford found time to turn his attention to Herbert
Hoover's 1932 re-election campaign. Ford was still painfully
shy about public speaking, but he offered these words. I support the best
man for the job. Herbert Hoover should be allowed
to carry out his program, and I think he will. He has faced the enemy
for three years now. He knows all these tactics
of the forces of destruction by bringing a new recruit and
retired a seasoned leader. I think of him as a
human-hearted, honest-minded, hardworking Hoover. NARRATOR: Americans
in record numbers disagreed with Henry
Ford's politics in 1932. But given the sales of his
V8, Henry Ford and his son Edsel had reason
to feel optimistic as they looked ahead. EDSEL FORD: They have
been asking us what we think of the coming year. All I can say is that we feel
pretty good about the outlook. The United States, even
when it is running in low, is a pretty big
business proposition. But I believe the country is
getting ready to make a very decided step forward next
year, and we are doing all we can to help it along. What do you think
of that, Father? Well, I think everybody
has decided that they've got to go to work. I think, from now
on, there's no one who can stop this great
country from going ahead. NARRATOR: And those that
went to work at Ford found labor relations
falling apart. Henry Ford said that the average
man wouldn't do a day's work unless he was caught and
couldn't get out of it. Inside his plants, he saw to it
that nobody shortchanged him. Ford supervisors and
foremen, many of them ex-cons and boxers,
ruled the plant through fear and coercion. When more production was needed,
the line was simply sped up. Heaven help the man
who couldn't keep pace. ARTHUR VALENTI:
The work was hard. I used to come home so tired. My wife used to have
to rub my hands, because I used the hands
a lot, and fall asleep-- I used to fall asleep
reading the newspaper. I'm just a young man. I was-- my working life at
Ford, I've never been to hell, but I've heard a lot
about it doing so. It was like working in hell. The harassment, the threats,
the working conditions, and they continued watching over
you by what they had called at that time a starved man. ROBERT LACEY: It was like
Big Brother was watching you. Henry Ford was
behind everything. In the 1930s, he cloaked what
he was doing behind something called the service
department and the goons that he employed to
terrorize workers. There was no doubt it's what
Henry Ford wanted as well. He'd become old. His arteries had hardened
in terms of his spirit. He was a different man
from the young idealist who got things started. NARRATOR: Ford and his workers
had come a long way together. Over those years, first
through generosity, later through
intimidation, he had been able to hold the
line against the unions even after Chrysler and General
Motors had been organized. But finally in May of '37,
hostilities reached ahead. Union organizers led
by Walter Reuther and Richard Frankensteen
had received a permit to hand out leaflets at Ford. They made it to the top of the
overpass leading to the plant then they were met by members
of the Ford Service Department. The fight at the gates of Ford
left the union leaders battered but no further ahead
in their struggle. It took another four years
of pushing and pulling before something finally broke. On April 1, 1941,
Andy Dewar, one of the workers in
the rolling mill, changed labor history at Ford. DAVID MOORE: One day Andy
just got fed up, you know. He and the foreman
had an argument. Then all of a sudden,
with an Irish brogue, a Scottish brogue,
"God damn it, I'm tired of taking this
B.S. Get away from me. Strike. I'm going to 3
strike, you know." We've got to look
up on the line. "Strike. Strike." Then the guy would holler and
they just be, "Strike, strike," you know. "Strike, strike," and just
ripped from one department to the other in
the rolling mail. That's where all it
finished, on the steel mill. Without steel, you
can't make a damn car. NARRATOR: Ford was
preparing for a long fight when his wife surprised
him by joining the battle. Clara Ford demanded that
he settle with the union. It was totally out of
character for her to interfere, but Clara was afraid the
situation would explode into real violence. And so she threatened to leave
her husband if he didn't put an end to the hostilities. Ford called his representative
and told him to sign. And that was that. Ford Motor Company
was a union shocker. While peace was
restored for the moment, Henry Ford was about to face
personal tragedy on its most profound level. Edsel Ford had been president
of Ford Motor Company since he was 25 years old,
but there was never any doubt about who really ran the show. Henry Ford was an
engineer and a tinkerer. And Edsel was a
completely different man. Edsel was a very gentle man. Edsel was a man who endowed
the arts in Detroit. Edsel was a designer. Edsel was a modern thinker,
and he was the kind of man, it seems to me, that
his father, Henry Ford, had a difficult time dealing
with because they were really opposite personalities. I think, Henry Ford,
the history books will always look upon at first
Henry Ford as the originator of the company and
so forth and so on. And yeah, I do. I absolutely believe Edsel
Ford was underlooked. NARRATOR: What Edsel Ford
lacked was the ability to stand up to his father. For years, Henry Ford
undermined his son at every opportunity in a
campaign to make him stronger. Edsel Ford internalized the
conflict and carried on at Ford his steady presence of balance
to Henry's unpredictable ways. [blasts] When World War II
broke out, the allies suffered defeat after defeat. The nation naturally looked
to industry for help. Everyone was
expected to pitch in. Ford was asked to produce jeeps,
troop carriers, trucks, tanks, and more. But the company's
most important project was the B-24 Liberator bomber. With Ford approaching
his 80th birthday and not yet recovered
from a 1941 stroke, supervision fell
largely to Edsel, and he had medical
problems of his own. Still, company spokesmen
were optimistic enough to predict that one
B-24 would roll out of their plant every hour. But by the end of '42, only
56 planes had been built-- far short of the prediction. In May 1943, Edsel Ford died. A number of illnesses
contributed to his death; stomach cancer, liver cancer,
and in the last irony, undulant fever, the
result of drinking unpasteurized milk from
his father's dairy. It is said that Henry Ford was
never the same after his son's death. But at the age of 80, in spite
of his clearly diminished capacity, the old man once again
took up the reins of Ford Motor Company. The news concerned Washington. As the nation's third
largest defense contractor, Ford was a major part
of the war effort. With production in
serious trouble, there was talk of bringing
in outside managers or even nationalizing the plant. In August 1943, the navy sent
26-year-old Henry Ford II home to Dearborn and the
Ford Motor Company. Maybe Henry Ford's grandson
could bring some order to the chaos that
Ford had become. One of the executives of
Ford after the second World War, Jack Davis, said
the company wasn't dying. It was dead and rigor
mortis had already set in. NARRATOR: For months, Clara Ford
had been pushing her husband to step down and let
their grandson take over, but Ford held out. Finally, Edsel's widow, Eleanor,
confronted her father-in-law. She threatened to sell her
considerable holdings in Ford if her son wasn't
immediately named president. The old man finally relented. In September 1945, the crown
was passed to Henry Ford II. With his active role in
the company behind him, Henry Ford began to
disconnect from the world. He passed some time
at Greenfield Village and was trotted out on
occasion at a company function. But the stores of energy
that had sustained him well into his 70s had been spent. On an April evening
in 1947, Henry Ford laid his head on his wife's
shoulder and drifted away. The cause of death was
a cerebral hemorrhage. He was 83. Tens of thousands
of people lined up to view Henry Ford's
body as it lay in state. Some factories closed,
others shut down for a moment of silence. In all, it's estimated that
close to seven million workers were involved in some
demonstration of sympathy for the man who had irrevocably
changed their lives. And in Detroit,
motorists were asked to come to a complete stop
at the time the automaker's body was being lowered
into the ground. For that second, when the
automobiles came to a stop, Detroit was returned to the
way Henry Ford had found it. [music playing]
