Henry Ford

     Henry Ford was born in Michigan in 1863, where in his early life he took up tinkering, but was forced to farm to make a living. He ended up working for Edison, and due to his technological genius, he quickly advanced to a high level. He proposed his idea of a "horseless carriage" to Edison, who told Ford to go back and improve his model, encouraging the young industrialist. In 1908 Ford released the Model T, causing the Ford Motor Company to be catapulted into the American driveway.
     Ford's philosophy was that his car would be the working man's car. To see this through, Ford developed a moving assembly-line style mode of production in 1914. Ford's production was revolutionary, developing a complete chassis in 90 minutes compared to the 720 that were previously required. To increase retention, Ford payed his workers $5 a day, which was nearly twice the industry standard. By 1918, roughly half the cars in America were Model T's. Ford also believed in education and moral superiority. To fund education and research, he founded the Ford Foundation to support education and development. To enforce moral superiority among his workers, Ford had a "Social Department" which kept tabs on all of his worker's drinking and gambling habits.
     The business of making money for his shareholders went against Ford's ideology, that the Model T should be sold as cheaply as possible. Ford lost a court case against the Dodge brothers in 1916 and was forced to pay huge dividends (approx. 20 million) to account for his alleged mismanagement (Ford used company profits to expand the company and therefore deliver a cheaper product). Ford followed up by buying back all the shares which cost him about 106 million, so that he could run the company as he chose. Ford was now the absolute monarch of one of the largest business enterprises of the time. To increase the self-sufficiency of the company, Ford began swallowing up railroads and coal mines, even a few freighters and a glassworks.
     In later years, the Ford Motor Company began to lose its dominance in the market. First, Ford refused to recognize that there was no longer a high demand for a purely Utilitarian car, and eventually submitted to popular demand by making the Model A, a luxury car. The model A was outsold by GM's Chevrolet and Chrysler's Plymouth. The $5 a day policy fell to $4 in 1932 after the Great Depression impacted car sales seriously, and Ford openly employed police and labor spies to
keep an eye out for morale problems.
     Despite his supposed moral superiority and philanthropic leanings, Ford was a ruthless anti-Semite. Ford bought a newspaper, The Dearborn Independent in 1918, allowing him to publish his views on the "International Jew". Ford's position was questioned when Adolf Hitler said to a Detroit reporter in 1933 "I regard Henry Ford as my inspiration", according to a Washington Post article. Ford and GM were competing for in Germany for the new market as Germany pulled out of their depression. Both automakers had subsidiaries in Nazi Germany that made cars, and later tanks and planes for the Nazi war effort. According to the same Washington Post article, Ford and GM both made huge dividends as a result of the forced labor of prisoners of war.

Sources:
brittanica.com
biography.com
Washingtonpost.com