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First Henry had wide-ranging interests
By David Kiley, USA TODAY
DEARBORN, Mich. — Henry Ford, who founded Ford Motor 100 years ago, is one of the most debated and controversial business figures of the last century. He is also, says Ford Motor historian Douglas Brinkley, "unquestionably the most important figure in business in the 20th century."
During a recent interview, William Clay Ford Sr. recalled a grandfather who was brilliant and nutty.
On Sunday mornings, Henry Ford allowed his 10-year-old grandson to drive him in a Model A from Dearborn as far as Ann Arbor, 40 miles away, to visit Ford plants and workshops. "That was church to him," said Ford Sr.
He wore soybean suits to show what could be done with vegetables and took an ax to new models that designers worked up without his approval. He threatened to fire employees caught smoking or cheating on their wives. He was a vegetarian and believed in reincarnation.
The efficiency of his assembly-line process and the Model T created personal freedom for the working class on a level that was hard to imagine before it arrived.
Henry Ford invented the middle class with his $5-a-day wage. He elevated the status of African-Americans and Middle Eastern immigrants who came to Dearborn to work for his company, and found jobs for the handicapped. He was for women's suffrage.
But he also had an obsessive dislike for labor unions and Jews, and used his Dearborn Independent newspaper to publish anti-Semitic essays, which later came out in book form.
Neil Baldwin, author of Henry Ford and The Jews, said: "Anti-Semitism at Ford died with Henry Ford." But his grandson acknowledged: "You can't throw a blanket over it."
Said William Clay Ford Jr., CEO of the automaker: "My great-grandfather was a man of great vision, drive and native intelligence, with some human flaws amplified by limited education, limited social range and questionable influence from some of his advisers."
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