​At the Ford Motor Company, the company and its workers were both winners when it came to money, but maybe not on all fronts.

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Consumption and production are inherently tied to monetary values. In order to make the automobile accessible to people of lesser wealth, Ford had to first establish a "price such people would be willing to pay, so long as the object was worth paying for" (Mahoney). Reducing the cost to that extent meant producing the cars in large volumes. While economy embodies the financial and profitable aspects of a business, it is also a term synonymous with efficiency, the utmost priority of the Ford Motor Company. The problem and solution are identified in the 1912 tourist booklet:

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"Here then was the problem which confronted the founders of the Ford Motor Company - to build a motor car of the highest quality in design, workmanship, material, and efficiency, and to sell it at a price within the reach of all. There was only one possible solution of this problem - the manufacture of one standard model in immense quantities" (1912 Ford Factory Facts, 9)

 

​The gross sales in 1906 were $1,491,626.16 and skyrocketed to $89,108,884.56 over the course of seven years, the time at which the assembly line was nearing full operation. The rate of production and profits increased while the price continued to drop, reaching its lowest price of $290 in 1924, the year the ten-millionth Model T was built (Mahoney). The success of Ford lay in enabling a wide range of incomes to purchase the product, especially having Ford's own employees become critical customers.

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The wages paid to the workers at the Ford Motor Company were higher than most and this brought the company more profit and success. In the beginning, workers were paid a typical wage for the work they did. In his biography, Ford tries to convince the reader that he pays higher wages because the workers deserve them and are the reason why their high wages are possible. For example he says, "In a partnership of skilled management and honest labour, it is the workman who makes high wages possible. He invests his energy and skill, and if he makes an honest, wholehearted investment, high wages ought to be his reward"(Ford, 119). He also opposed paying workers just enough to live off of although that is basically what he did before announcing the $5 a day minimum and shift from nine to eight hour workdays in 1914. He argued, "If we attempt to regulate wages on living costs, we get nowhere. The cost of living is a result and we can not expect to keep a result constant if we keep altering the factors which produce the result" (Ford, 121). Still, Ford understood that workers must support their families with their income and one of the reasons he introduced the $5 day was because he believed he was relieving workers of outside worries. Yet perhaps the greatest advantage was that workers could contribute to company profits by becoming consumers. He wrote:

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"If you expect a man to give his time and energy, fix his wages so that he will have no financial worries. It pays. Our profits, after paying good wages and a bonus...show that paying good wages is the most profitable way of doing business" (Ford, 130).

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Employees gaining the privilege to own a car is even evident in the transition from Highland Park to River Rouge. When Ford first started out, most people still didn't own a car. Therefore, the Highland Park plant was located near a lively commercial area and dense urban residential neighborhoods so people took the trolley or walked to work and the plant provided easy pedestrian access. In contrast, River Rouge was located in an industrial suburb and was essentially the size of a small city on its own; at this point it was not uncommon to own a car, so the complex did not accommodate the pedestrian anymore and workers commuted by car or public transportation (Biggs, 147).

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The $5 day also established an equal standard of pay for all workers. And in addition to that, Ford did not discriminate when hiring workers; as Arnold and Faurote's book mentions, "The Ford Motor Company has no use for experience, in the working ranks, anyway. It desires and prefers machine-tool operators who have nothing to unlearn...and will simply do what they are told to do, over and over again, from bell-time to bell-time. The Ford help need not even be able-bodied"; the only thing preventing someone from getting hired would be having a contagious illness (Arnold and Faurote, 41-42). Additionally, Ford hired people of all nationalities, a high percentage of them immigrants, both men and women. HOwever, one essentially still had to prove themselves worthy of this wage. Henry Ford installed a Sociological Department through which potential employees underwent examination, and for those who were not U.S. citizens, attendence to the Ford English School and subsequent application for citizenship were mandatory (Ford Motor History). Henry Ford's workers could earn $5 a day, but only if they could be moulded to live in a manner he deemed appropriate as 'better men'.

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Ford's declaration of the $5 day was unheard of, but in this scenario, both the company and the worker 'won' in terms of making a profit and a living. Ford believed that his workers should also be consumers as ultimately, this is what keeps the cycle of production flowing. However there was sacrifice on behalf of the worker despite the company's assertion that workers were always content such as this:

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"Everyone is busy, interested in the work, satisfied with his surroundings, ambitious to do his share in the great organization...Many of the workmen are buying modern little homes in the attractive suburbs surrounding the Ford plant." (1912 Ford Factory Facts, 62-63)

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One of the consequences of the assembly line was that it ultimately took the skill out of work; it was a dehumanized and mechanized process propelled by pure efficiency. As Smith notes,

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"It is almost as it the buiding, and the machinery within it, do the work, with human workers reduced to the role of robotic infill. At the same time, the building is, as it were, an assemblage of its purposes, the movement of its machines, the spaces in which materials are stored, and in which jobs are done, but nothing more. Nothing is "left over," nothing is inexplicable in functional terms." (Smith, 37)

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Initially people thought working the assembly line was monotonous and strenuous, and the noise of the machinery was unbearably loud, so they often quit within a few days. While the Ford Company claimed to provide only the very best conditions for its workers, this was only true to a certain extent. Normally one only considers the factory workers, when in fact employees were responsible for various jobs that encompassed a range of unequal experiences of not only the assembly line, but also cleaning the building so that everything was immaculately clean, being an engineer tinkering with toys and ideas, or sitting at an office desk. For example, conditions for the foundry worker in no way paralleled those of the designer in an office. The air quality was so poor it was described that "the air during work hours cannot be endured by any workmen save those possessing respiratory organs of the most robust description, and many visitors are unable to walk through the Ford gray-iron foundry in working hours because they cannot breathe the air" (Arnold and Faurote, 330). This would be an entirely different situation compared to other spaces where Kahn incorporated hollow column air distribution that would supplement the natural ventilation of the countless operable windows (Arnold and Faurote, 389). Nearly doubling wages from $2.34 to $5 for the same work was a direct response to workers objections to the relentless, repetitive, strenuous tasks they were expected to do. Workers felt the same about the work because it still demanded the same things, but the wages were so attractive that they were now willing to put up with the conditions. This stabilized the workforce by eliminating turnover and required the workers be entirely proficient in their given tasks. Now tens of thousands of men were begging to work at the Ford Motor Company.

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