Research Report on Henry Ford and His Social Impact

Introduction

Our presentation topic was Henry Ford who is an American industrialist who revolutionized the automobile industry with his assembly-line and production methods while greatly impacting the society. My two group members were Ata and Timothee. I made general research about Henry Ford to able to help my group members divide up the work. After research, we divide up our project into four main parts: Historical Context, Focus on Henry Ford, Henry Ford’s Impact in the 20th century and his impact for today’s World. My part was explaining Model-T. In addition, I and Ata, we divided his impact into two general points: Industrial Impact and Social Impact. I was responsible for the Social Impact of Henry Ford.

Research

After making our topic distribution, I narrowed my research and made more detailed research. First of all, I founded a website of the Henry Ford Heritage Association. That website provided with great pieces of information for my research. On the other hand, as that was a Henry Ford Association’s website, I thought the information written on that website might be subjective. As a result, I looked at two more websites to make sure that information that I found in the first website matched with other websites. After finishing at looking at websites, I started to organize my research in order to finish my side of the presentation. The first part was Model T. In 1908, manufacturing of Model T was astonishing news for both the automobile industry and to American society. Model T helped achieve his dream which was “manufacturing a car for the great multitude”. He sold a huge quantity of his Model T and 50% of the global automobile output consisted of Model-T in those years. To understand better, this is almost equal to half of the cars being parked on IE park spots were all Model-T. Also, Model-T was symbolizing the transition from agricultural America to industrial America.

My second part was the Social Impacts of Henry Ford. I divided his social impacts into four different segments which were: Urbanization, New Job Opportunities, New Social Class and Modern Tourism. For Urbanization, after Model T people started to move to cities. It became easier for people to move along farm and cities and find jobs as cars took the place of horses. The disappearance of horses as a transportation method contributed to an agricultural revolution. Farmers became more integrated with urban which changed deeply agriculture. To statistically support, before Henry Ford only 25% of Americans lived in cities but after Henry Ford, that percentage went up to 62.5%. Henry Ford was not the only factor for this increase but he had a significant impact on this change of population.

Secondly, new job opportunities were created in these three areas: Factories, Gas Stations and Road Construction. As the number of cars on the roads increased, there was a need for more workers for gas stations and road constructions. Plus, as Henry Ford increased his production, his company needed more workers

Thirdly, Henry Ford raised his employee's salary from 2.34 per day 5. This rise led to the creation of a new social class which is “middle class”. People of the middle class could do more than just surviving, they could buy Model-T and do more with their lives.

Finally, the rise of cars on roads gave birth to a new tourism method. As people started to travel more with automobiles, people started to create motels and restaurants on roads for travelers with cars. With having my research finished, I prepared my part on the presentation on Google Slides. Before the presentation, all of the members of the group meet to make sure that everything is well organized and our presentation has a logical flow.

Conclusion

To conclude, I strongly believe that we made a well-done presentation by focusing on key points about Henry Ford with the contributions of each member of the group. Before this presentation, I did not have great knowledge about Henry Ford but thanks to this presentation, I learned greatly about Henry Ford.