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Henry Ford, ignorant genius - introduction1863-1947 |
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| Henry Ford was an industrial genius,
but his lack of education left him without great depth of character or cultural
sophistication. Introduction, first document in a new major psychological study by abelard. |
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| ♦Henry Ford, ignorant genius - introduction ♦Henry Ford, ruthless business manipulator ♦ Henry Ford, mechanical man - Model T, modern times ♦ Quotes by and about Henry Ford |
♦ psycho-logic |
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| other psychological
profiles: ♦ Adolf/Adolph Hitler Schicklgruber - his psychology and development ♦ Did Hitler know about the holocaust? A psychological assessment ♦ The psychology of Rex Stout, Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin ♦ The psychology of Georges Simenon and Jules Maigret |
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| 'In cities and towns the noise and clatter of the streets will be reduced, a priceless boon to the tired nerves of this overwrought generation. Then there is the humanitarian aspect of the case. To spare the obedient beast, that since the dawn of history has been man's drudge—will be a downright mercy. On sanitary grounds too the banishing of horses from our city streets will be a blessing. Streets will be cleaner, jams and blockades less likely to occur; accidents less frequent, for the horse is not so manageable as a mechanical vehicle.' 1895 [1] |
Index |
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background and motivationsHenry Ford was educated before the rise of modern ideas such as relativity and Freudian psychology. Ford grew up in a world where there was tremendous excitement at the ever-widening vistas opened by the success of the Newtonian paradigm. Every problem could be fixed if you followed simple mechanical rules. Laplace had said that if one could only know the position of every part of the universe, then one could completely predict all future things and states. Everything became to Ford a mechanical problem to be ‘solved’, not just engines or transmissions but also human society, his factories and human problems. Now such an approach has some merit when dealing with standardised machine parts. However, it is not entirely sane when over-extended to treating individuals and international politics as if they are recalcitrant parts, which just need a bit of filing or hammering in order to persuade them into a desired square or round hole. Ford was a farm boy, bored by the farm, with great ambitions
to achieve: to stop the drudgery of farm life and to mechanise
it. He did a very great deal to fulfil his ambitions.
From early on, Ford wanted money and was mightily impressed
by his great hero, Thomas Edison. Coming from a stiff
and unbending background with rules and aphorisms for
everything, a hard world of duty and church, Henry Ford
was bored and sought adventure and a wider world. From
his narrow community, he received only the most basic
and narrow education. At the same time, he lived in an
environment where the growing individual had to learn
a great variety of tasks: ploughing, fixing gates, tending
animals, sharpening tools, driving horses, cutting back
the forest in preparation for planting and a thousand
other details. |
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Henry Ford was a business and engineering genius; that did not make him a nice or wise or educated man. He was a monomaniac who could play but one tune superbly, but who meddled and drifted from one enthusiasm to another like some bored child let loose in a sweet shop. He was a man carried away by a false sense of importance and a resentment at not being taken with more seriousness than he merited. He was as a child, attempting to show off to gain the approval of those better educated and more ‘sophisticated’ than him. Because of his immense wealth and reputation, he was treated with a deference which he could not merit and was patronised by his ‘educated’ inferiors, which also he did not deserve. Having only eight years schooling, he could not read well or hold his own socially. These experiences disoriented this rather simple and narrow man to such a degree that he did not conduct his life with reasonable wisdom. But he still changed the world radically, though perhaps not as he would have wished in his heart of hearts could he have read the future more clearly. He was a pacifist who produced a massive weight of killing machines and
also set alight one of the greatest evils of modern times. He was a farm boy
who loved the countryside, but put in motion modern urbanisation, pollution
and noise. He was an uptight, over-controlling prig who enabled one of the
greatest means to freedom in history. It is strange how men often achieve
just the reverse of their dreams. (See also the
psychology and development of Adolph Hitler Schicklgruber.) character“The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one
story, and writes another.” Henry was an ignorant bully and a poor father. It is interesting that his son, Edsel, became much of what Henry was not, but which Henry may well, in his soul, have hoped to be. Edsel was a devoted and loyal son, who likely read what was in his ignorant father’s heart, and Edsel became an impressive adult. Henry’s grandson, Henry Ford II, has been said to have spent his life atoning for his grandfather’s sins.[2] It seems little noted that Henry Ford personally held world speed records for a short time with cars that he built, in days when such activities were extremely dangerous. Henry’s main concern in being tempted towards racing, and away from manufacture, was a grasping for money. Henry had great vision and publicity skills, and was widely vaunted as an altruist, an image he sought to project with considerable energy. However, Henry was also a ruthless, violent capitalist. It is an error to imagine that one cannot both benefit the public and a workforce, while simultaneously doing rather well for oneself. Henry hated war profiteering, but was one of the greatest of war profiteers. It is often difficult for writers to understand that such a personality is not particularly complex, nor in much self-conflict. As a highly competitive personality, it is not entirely surprising that Henry denigrated his rivals. Nor, as an uptight moralist, is it surprising that he thought himself to be above the corruption he imagined around him in supposed lesser beings. Competitiveness erodes the standards of many a social riser. Henry was a pathological liar and bullshit artist. He was a crude ‘moralist’ who probably took a mistress at one point, often treated staff disgracefully, who became the richest person in the world, while all the time ranting almost endlessly about the inferior morals, exploitation and fecklessness of others. My best bet is that Henry was entirely unconscious and immune to his objective hypocrisy. He simply had very little close social awareness, while demonstrating an incredible talent for showmanship and self promotion, allied with a total blindness to other individuals. Henry Ford is the child that burns down the barn in all innocence, wondering what all the fuss is about when taken to task. He had an ability to convince himself that whatever Henry wants, Henry should have and those who criticise are entirely idiotic or even criminally dangerous. I am quite convinced that Henry’s attacks on the Jews were self-justified by his wish to promote his ‘newspaper’ with sensationalism, meanwhile persuading himself that he was educating and instructing the Jews ‘for their own good’. His resentments may also have been aggravated by the refusal of some others to treat him with the deference he felt to be his due, and to feelings of inferiority in the presence of those much better educated and more sophisticated than himself. I have read Ford’s shallow and scurrilous attacks on the Jews, and they tell far more about Henry than they do about Jews. Just about every supposed ‘criticism’ could be read as a means of distancing himself from his own actions, his guilt feelings, by projecting his own weaknesses on others. Virtually all the accusations Ford makes of ‘the Jews’ directly fit parts of his own behaviour. Parts of these writings by Ford are directly plagiarised by Hitler in Mein Kampf, written later. It is virtual certainty that Henry funded Hitler, while Hitler in turn
fed Henry’s ego. Hitler had a portrait of Henry on his wall and
copied much of his Jew baiting straight from Ford’s own writings.
Each man, a narrow uneducated ‘success’, admired the other
in mutual support. Ford had automated factory production and Adolph set
in motion the automating of society, these two are soul mates under the
skin. It is sobering to realise that Ford was within a very short distance
of becoming a senator, and that he was suggested by silly people as a
possible president; fortunately he lost interest in political office as
he moved onto his next enthusiasm. |
Ford: businessmanFord was an inveterate self-publicist, always willing to skim or distort the truth in order to promote his image, his fortune and his power. It is therefore wise to take any of his pronouncements with some caution; only by putting many incidents together can a reasonable comprehension be gained of what went on in his mind. It is reasonable to suggest that Ford was obsessed with money and business and manufacture.
Ford had been looking for ways to make money through mass-production from early on; he had looked into the possibility of making watches [4]. That incident is dated to 1880-1882, when Ford was in his late teens. It was a little before this time that Ford claims to have become aware of Edison [5], whom he came to hero worship and eventually befriend. Edison was a pioneer of mass production and it seems likely that this encouraged the teenager’s interests, ambitions and direction. ab-notes: |
timeline with incidents |
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| 1863 | Born | |
| 1899 | First attempt – failed. | |
| 1901 | Second attempt : developed into the Cadillac car company, now swallowed up in General Motors Corporation. | |
| 1903 | Ford Motor Company formed. |
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| 1906 | Malcomson and others forced out, giving Ford control. |
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| 1908 – 1927 | Model-T. |  |
| 1916 – 7 | Dodge brothers (of DodgeMotors, now swallowed up in the DaimlerChrysler Corporation) finessed out. | |
| 1918 | Purchases Dearborn Independent newspaper and develops anti-Semitic campaign (1920). | |
| 1921 | Externalises debt, forcing concessionaires to borrow in place of the company. |
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| 1947 | Died | |
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the ‘writings’ of Ford - bibliographyAs stated, Ford’s ability to read was somewhat limited; therefore most of his writings were ghosted by others who were more adept. The following are Ford’s more respectable literary efforts. While they contain sections of ranting and self-promotion, he is absolutely fascinating on business and the building of a massive business empire. He has much still to teach many a businessman to this day. |
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| 1922 |
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My Life and Work
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| 1926 |
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| 1930 |
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My Friend Mr. Edison, also published as Edison as I Knew Him |
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| 1931 |
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Moving Forward |
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Ford’s jew-baiting
articles appeared in the Dearborn Independent between 1920-1922.
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other major sources |
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end notes
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Related further reading |
♦Henry Ford, ignorant genius - introduction ♦Henry Ford, ruthless business manipulator ♦Henry Ford, mechanical man - Model T, modern times ♦Quotes by and about Henry Ford |
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