December 2, 1927: Ford Introduces the Model A

December 2, 1927: The Ford Motor Company introduces the Model A, the successor to its legendary Model T.

Ford had previously sold a car named the Model A in 1903 and 1904, but this was before the assembly line, so it couldn't be mass-produced, and it never caught on with the public.

Henry Ford had introduced the Model T in 1908, and it became the best-selling car of all time. But Henry was set in his ways. He said, "You can have any color car you want, as long as it's black." He saw no reason to mess with success.

Except the Model T wasn't as successful as it had been. It was basic, with few amenities. It was mocked as "The Tin Lizzie." It had been surpassed in popularity by several cars.

In contrast, his son, Edsel Ford, was very much into style: In 1927, practically behind his father's back, he led the design of the replacement for the Model T: The Model A. Henry approved it, and also approved a major advertising campaign for it, taking advance of the dawn of "talking pictures," complete with what later be called a commercial jingle: "Henry's made a lady out of Lizzie!"

The Model A was the first Ford to use the standard set of driver controls with conventional clutch and brake pedals, throttle, and gearshift. Previous Fords used controls that had become uncommon to drivers of other makes. It was the 1st car to have safety glass in the windshield. And, of course, it was available in multiple colors.

Price: $385. (About $6,475 in 2022 money.) It sold pretty well, but Ford replaced it with the Model B in 1932.

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December 2, 1927 was a Friday. Ralph Beard, a basketball star who won National Championships at the University of Kentucky and an Olympic Gold Medal, but was banned from pro ball in a point-shaving scandal, was born on this day.

Baseball was out of season. Football was in midweek. The NBA hadn't yet been founded. And while the NHL season was underway, no games were scheduled. So there were no scores on this historic day.

October 21, 1929: The Henry Ford Museum Opens

October 21, 1929: The Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation and Greenfield Village opens, outside Detroit in Dearborn, Michigan. The timing couldn't have been worse: The Great Depression was about to begin.

Ford, founder of the museum, as well as the founder and chairman of the Ford Motor Company, said:

I am collecting the history of our people as written into things their hands made and used... When we are through, we shall have reproduced American life as lived, and that, I think, is the best way of preserving at least a part of our history and tradition.

The centerpiece of the nation's foremost automotive-themed museum is a replica of Independence Hall in Philadelphia. It contains the fascinating, including early cars and bicycles, Ford's 1st car (his 1896 "Quadricycle"), Igor Sikorsky's prototype for the helicopter, the bus Rosa Parks was riding in when she refused to give up her seat to start the 1955-56 Montgomery Bus Boycott (Parks lived in Detroit from 1957 until her death in 2005), and a Buckminster Fuller "Dymaxion house."

It also contains the macabre, with the seat Abraham Lincoln was supposedly sitting in when he was assassinated at Ford's Theater in Washington (the theater owner was no relation to Henry); and the seat, and the rest of the car as well, that John F. Kennedy was definitely sitting in when he was assassinated, the 1961 Lincoln Continental convertible limousine he was riding in through downtown Dallas.

Next door to the museum is Greenfield Village, which Ford imagined as a kind of historical park, a more modern version of Colonial Williamsburg – that is, celebrating what was, in 1929 when it opened, considered modern American life, including a reconstruction of the Menlo Park, New Jersey laboratory of his good friend Thomas Edison. Ford and Edison were both friends of rubber magnate Henry Firestone (whose tires certainly made Ford's cars easier to make), and Firestone's family farm is reconstructed on the site.

The three men were such close friends that, in 1923, they invited the President at the time, Warren Harding, to go camping with them. A silent newsreel camera captured highlights.

Left to right: Ford, Edison, Harding, Firestone

Edison died in 1931. Firestone, definitely not to be confused with later playwright and actor Harvey Fierstein, died in 1938. Ford died in 1947.

I am not excusing Henry Ford's control-freak attitude toward his employees' private lives, nor his despicable anti-Semitism, nor his failed union-busting in the 1930s. To be fair, he did give his black auto workers the same pay and benefits as his white ones.

But I am recommending the museum. It's a tribute to the role of technology, including the automobile, in American life, not to the man himself. 

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October 21, 1929 was a Monday. Baseball season had ended a week earlier, with the Philadelphia Athletics beating the Chicago Cubs in the World Series. Football was in midweek: Television was still mainly a concept at this point, and the NFL was certainly not big enough to stage Monday Night Football, not even on radio. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. And the NHL season was nearly a month away from starting. So there were no scores on this historic day. 

October 1, 1908: Ford Introduces the Model T

October 1, 1908: The Ford Motor Company begins producing the Model T, a.k.a. "The Tin Lizzie." By 1913, Henry Ford would use the assembly line to crank out a near-continuous stream of them, saying, "You can have any color car you want, as long as it's black." 

He offered his workers $5.00 a day -- $159 in 2022 money. That works out to about $800 a week -- before taxes. He believed that a man should be able to buy the very thing his labor built. Ford was unusual in that he gave his black workers the same pay rate as his white workers.

But he wasn't as enlightened as this would suggest: He was a notorious anti-Semite. He was also a micromanager who tried to run his workers' lives. And when they tried to unionize, he hired a security firm to beat up striking workers. He eventually caved in.

In 1913, Ford started using an assembly line to build his cars. He was not the first executive to adopt the idea, nor even the first in the American automobile industry. But he was the popularizer of it, because it reduced the time to produce a single car from 12 hours and 30 minutes to 2 hours and 40 minutes.

He sold over 1 million Model Ts in 19 years, helping to make Detroit the automotive capital of the world. In 1927, he introduced a successor, a nicer car called the Model A. The song he commissioned to introduce it said, "Henry's made a lady out of Lizzie."

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October 1, 1908 was a Thursday. These baseball games were played that day:

* The New York Highlanders beat the Washington Senators, 2-1 at Hilltop Park in Manhattan. It was a bad season for the team that officially became the Yankees in 1913, but, on this occasion, a battle of Hall-of-Famers was won by Jack Chesbro over Walter Johnson.

* The New York Giants, in a furious 3-way race for the National League Pennant, split a doubleheader with the Philadelphia Phillies at Baker Bowl in Philadelphia. The Giants won the 1st game, 4-3, with Christy Mathewson going the distance. The Phillies won the 2nd game, 6-2.

* The Brooklyn Superbas beat the Boston Doves, 2-1 at Washington Park in Brooklyn. Superbas? They had been managed by Ned Hanlon, and there had been a famous circus troupe known as Hanlon's Superbas. They became the Dodgers in 1911. Doves? Their owner was John Dovey. They became the Braves in 1912.

* The Philadelphia Athletics beat the Boston Red Sox, 5-2 at Columbia Park in Philadelphia.

* The Chicago Cubs, in that 3-way fight with the Giants for the Pennant, beat the Cincinnati Reds, 6-0 at the Palace of the Fans in Cincinnati. Ed Reulbach pitched a 2-hit shutout.

* The Pittsburgh Pirates, the 3rd team in that Pennant fight, and the St. Louis Cardinals were not scheduled to play that day.

* The the Chicago White Sox, the Cleveland Naps (who became the Indians in 1915), the Detroit Tigers and the St. Louis Browns were also not scheduled. The White Sox, Naps and Tigers were in a tight 3-way race for the American League Pennant.

June 16, 1903: Ford Motor Company Is Founded

June 16, 1903: The Ford Motor Company is founded in Detroit, by Henry Ford. On June 23, Ford, one week short of his 40th birthday, sells his 1st car.

In 1908, he introduced the Model T, leading to his saying, "You can have any color car you want, as long as it's black." In 1913, he combined this cheap car with the assembly line, and the rest is history.

As historian James Fell put it:

Because of Ford, the motor vehicle went from being an expensive method of transportation for rich people to something the middle class could afford, which is why we have gridlock, pollution, and 3,700 global deaths a day from car accidents. Well, if Ford hadn’t done it, someone else would have.

But there are admirable things about the way he did it. He was committed to lowering manufacturing costs and the price of his cars, coupled with aggressive marketing, to grow the company into a behemoth. Ford became one of the richest men in America.

And he shared the wealth. Ford abhorred employee turnover, hiring and endeavoring to retain quality workers by paying them a generous wage that many considered exorbitant and coupling it with a shortened (five-day) workweek. The best mechanics flocked to his company. He also hired Black workers, women, and people with disabilities at a time when few others did.

He also launched the Ford Foundation, dedicated to improving human welfare. The foundation is one of the wealthiest charitable organizations in the world, donating to the arts, the fight for civil rights, microloans, and fighting the AIDS epidemic.

But yeah, that antisemitism though...

Ford died in 1947. In the years to come, his company would produce the Thunderbird (popular), the Edsel (not), the Mustang (very). the Pinto (not only unpopular, but dangerous), the Escort (popular), the Taurus (popular), and the F-150 pickup truck (very popular).

The slogans would run from "Ford has a better idea" to "Quality is Job 1." At times, the company has acted like they believe these slogans.

But not always. Some people, especially fans of the brand which became Ford's main rival, Chevrolet, have said that "FORD" stands for "Fix Or Repair Daily," or "Found On Road, Dead."

And, yeah, that anti-Semitism, though... At least his heirs have not continued it. Not publicly, anyway.

A 2023 episode of the YouTube series Epic Rap Battles of History featured "Nice" Peter Shukoff playing Henry Ford, and "Epic" Lloyd Ahlquist playing Karl Marx.

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June 16, 1903 was a Tuesday. These baseball games were played that day:

* The New York Highlanders beat the Chicago White Sox, 1-0 at Hilltop Park in Upper Manhattan. Clark Griffith, also the proto-Yankees' manager, pitched a 6-hit shutout.

* The New York Giants lost to the Philadelphia Phillies, 2-1 in 12 innings at National League Park (later renamed Baker Bowl) in Philadelphia.

* The Cleveland Naps beat the Boston Americans, 7-0 at the Huntington Avenue Grounds in Boston. Gus Dorner pitched a 7-hit shutout. The Cleveland team was named for its manager and 2nd baseman, Napoleon "Nap" Lajoie. They became the Cleveland Indians in 1915, and the Cleveland Guardians in 2022. The Boston team became the Red Sox in 1908.

* The Philadelphia Athletics beat the St. Louis Browns, 9-3 at Columbia Park in Philadelphia.

* The Washington Senators beat the Detroit Tigers, 5-1 at Boundary Park in Washington.

* The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Chicago Cubs, 6-3 at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh. Honus Wagner went 1-for-4.

* The Brooklyn Superbas and the Boston Beaneaters were rained out at the South End Grounds in Boston. It was made up as part of a doubleheader on July 25. The Beaneaters swept, 4-3 and 13-10. The Superbas became the Dodgers in 1911. The Beaneaters became the Braves the next year.

* And the Cincinnati Reds and the St. Louis Cardinals were not scheduled.

May 26, 1943: Edsel Ford Dies

May 26, 1943: Edsel Ford dies of stomach cancer in the Detroit suburb of Grosse Pointe Shores, Michigan, changing the history of the automobile industry in ways at which we can only guess. He was just 49.

Edsel Bryant Ford was born on November 6, 1893 in Detroit, the only child of a not-yet-famous, and certainly not-yet-rich, Henry Ford and his wife Clara. Henry named his son after one of his closest childhood friends, Edsel Ruddiman, who became a chemist and a writer.

Henry made Edsel the President of the Ford Motor Company in 1919, at just 25. When it came to cars, Henry only cared about building and selling as many as possible, not at all about style: He was credited as saying, "The people can have any color car they want, as long as it's black."

Edsel was very much into style: He bought the Lincoln Motor Company in 1922, and converted it into a luxury brand. In 1927, he led the design of the replacement for his father's beloved Model T: The Model A. In 1932, he created the Ford Model 18, which became known as the Deuce Coupe -- because "1932" ends with the Number 2, or "Deuce." In 1938, he founded the Mercury division. In 1940, he designed the original Lincoln Continental. He also introduced hydraulic brakes to American cars.

Henry Ford was anti-Semitic, anti-Communist, and corporatist. He unwittingly served as an inspiration for Chancellor Adolf Hitler of Nazi Germany, then came to admire him. It's not clear whether Edsel shared this admiration. But, with World War II coming, he had enough patriotism to convince his father to halt the production of automobiles and start building airplanes.

The Ford plant at Willow Run in Ypsilanti, Michigan cranked out B-24 bombers at a rate of one per day. But Edsel developed cancer, and it's been suggested that the stress of wartime production led him to disregard his health until it was too late. Surgery was unsuccessful, and he did not live to see his various vehicles help the Allies win the war.

Edsel was outlived by both of his parents: Old Henry died in 1947, Clara in 1950. The Michigan section of Interstate 94 is named the Edsel Ford Freeway in his memory.

Old Henry named Henry Ford II the company's President in 1945, and, while he did preside over the development of the Thunderbird and the Mustang, he also created the ill-fated division he named Edsel after his father, and later the (literally) explosive Pinto. It was during that period that people began joking that "FORD" stood for "Fix Or Repair Daily" or "Found On Road, Dead." Knowing this, Henry II developed better slogans: "Ford Has a Better Idea" in 1968 and "Quality is Job 1" in 1978.

Henry Ford II

Henry II also made amends between "FoMoCo" and the Jewish community. When the 1st Prime Minister of Israel, David Ben Gurion, toured the U.S. in 1951, Henry II invited him to tour the Company's facilities. In 1973, he gave Israel vehicles for use in the Yom Kippur War. He died in 1987.

Another of Edsel's sons, William Clay Ford, bought the NFL's Detroit Lions in 1961, and turned them from a proud old team that was usually at least competitive into a joke. And his son, Bill Ford (William Clay Ford Jr.), took over both the Company and the Lions, and proved to be bad for both cars and football. Old Henry wouldn't have approved financially, and Edsel wouldn't have approved artistically.

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May 26, 1943 was a Wednesday. These baseball games were played:

* The New York Giants beat the Chicago Cubs, 4-2 at Wrigley Field in Chicago. Mel Ott, by this point also the Giants' manager, went 2-for-4 with an RBI.

* The Brooklyn Dodgers lost to the Pittsburgh Pirates, 17-4 at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh. The Bucs scored 5 runs in the 2nd inning and 9 in the 3rd to put the game away early. Ex-Pirate Arky Vaughan went 3-for-5 for the Dodgers, but Vince DiMaggio (Joe's older brother) hit 2 home runs.

* The Washington Senators beat the St. Louis Browns, 1-0 at Griffith Stadium in Washington. Dutch Leonard pitched a 4-hit shutout.

* The Cincinnati Reds beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 1-0 at Crosley Field in Cincinnati. Bucky Walters pitched a 4-hit shutout, but needed his own single, a balk, and Eddie Miller singling him home in the bottom of the 9th to win the game.

* The Boston Braves beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 4-3 at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis. Chuck Workman singled Eddie Joost home with the winning run in the top of the 11th inning. Stan Musial went 1-for-4.

* The Boston Red Sox and the Cleveland Indians were rained out at Fenway Park in Boston. It was made up as part of a doubleheader the next day. The Red Sox swept, 2-0 and 4-3. Tex Hughson pitched a 5-hit shutout in the 1st game.

* The Chicago White Sox and the Philadelphia Athletics were rained out at Shibe Park in Philadelphia. The game was made up as part of a doubleheader on July 31. The White Sox swept, 7-1 and 4-3.

* And the New York Yankees and the Detroit Tigers were rained out at Yankee Stadium. The game was made up as part of a doubleheader on August 3. The Tigers won the opener, 4-0. Virgil Trucks (5 2/3rds innings) and Roy Henshaw (3 1/3rd) combined on a 3-hit shutout. The Yankees won the nightcap, 12-4.

March 7, 1932: The River Rouge Massacre

March 7, 1932: On a bitterly cold day, 5,000 unemployed auto workers started a march in Detroit, and headed for the Ford Motor Company's main assembly plant in nearby Dearborn.

They had a list of 14 demands that they wanted to present to Henry Ford himself. Among them were the rehiring of laid-off workers, providing money for health care, ending racial discrimination in hiring and promotions, providing Winter fuel for the unemployed, abolish the use of company spies and private police against workers, and giving workers the right to organize labor unions.

But when they got to the Dearborn City Limits, the Dearborn police firing tear gas into the crowd, and started hitting marchers with billy clubs. One officer fired a gun. The marchers scattered, grabbed whatever objects they could find, and started throwing them. Fire engines sprayed cold water from an overpass. Ford security guards joined the Dearborn police in shooting.

There were 25 people shot, and 4 of them died: Joe York, Coleman Leny, Joe DeBlasio, and 16-year-old Joe Bussell. Three months later, a 5th man, Curtis Williams, died from his injuries. Being black, he couldn't be buried next to the previous 4 victims.

What had been named the Ford Hunger March became known as the Ford Massacre, the River Rouge Massacre, and the Battle of the Overpass. Despite the fact that one more person died, and in a much bigger city, than in the Kent State Massacre of 1970, this killing isn't as well known, because there was no television to report it. Of course, Henry Ford had his thumb on the local media, so those who did report it didn't call it a "massacre": They blamed the marchers, and called it a "riot," as in the Detroit Free Press front page printed above.

It also was forgotten because, 5 years later, there was another clash between Ford workers and police -- official and private. This one would also be called the Battle of the Overpass.

It would take until 1941 before Henry Ford, by then age 78, accepted the United Auto Workers.

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March 7, 1932 was a Monday. Baseball was in Spring Training. Football was out of season. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. And there were no NHL games scheduled. So there were no scores on this historic day.

January 5, 1914: Ford Announces the 8-Hour, $5 Workday

A $5 bill was called a "fiver," and the Model T a "flivver."

January 5, 1914: The Ford Motor Company announces that all of its employees will be given an eight-hour workday, and a daily wage of five dollars. That's about $140 in 2022 money.

This followed, about a month earlier, on December 1, 1913, Ford's introduction of the assembly line for his cars. Henry Ford didn't invent the automobile or the assembly line, but putting them together was a stroke of genius.

I could have added a separate entry for that event, but chose not to, especially since that one didn't have any scores, either.

Henry believed that a man should be paid enough to afford to buy the products he built. In 1914, his Model T Runabout cost $440. At $5 day, one of his employees could afford to buy it in 88 days -- provided he spent money on nothing else. But at $5 a day, $25 a week, $1,300 a year, a Ford employee could afford to buy a new car every year.

Did it work? Absolutely: In just 2 years, Ford's profits doubled, from $30 million to $60 million. By the end of the 1910s, pretty much anybody who wanted to buy a car could afford to do so. In 1927, just as Ford was phasing the Model T out in favor of the Model A, the company sold the one millionth Model T.

Other companies began to see that, if Ford could limit its employees to 8 hours, and pay good wages, and see their productivity and profits increase, maybe they could, too.

Back to 1914: When that $5 a day was announced, it was announced for all employees, regardless of race. As black people were already escaping the poor, segregated South to look for industrial jobs in the North, Ford was paying his black employees the same rate as his white employees. This was huge.

As would later be found out, Ford wasn't so liberal when it came to religion. Or to labor unions.

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January 5, 1914 was a Monday. George Reeves, star of the 1952-58 TV series The Adventures of Superman, was born on this day.

Baseball and football were out of season. Professional basketball barely existed. The National Hockey Association was in business, but it had no games scheduled. Therefore, there were no scores on this historic day.