My Life and Work

About the book

Written with Samuel Crowther, Henry Ford's account combines recollections of early mechanical experiments and business ventures with an extended statement of industrial principles. Automobile production supplies the central example, but the discussion ranges across wages, prices, machines, finance, agriculture, railroads, and charity. Ford presents efficiency and reduced waste as means of making goods more widely available, repeatedly connecting manufacturing decisions with claims about social improvement. The practical detail is inseparable from the authority of a businessman defending his own methods and judgments. Readers therefore encounter both an influential account of mass production and a selective interpretation of its human consequences. The book's interest lies in watching an industrial system become the basis for a much broader view of society.

• Mass production
• Work and wages
• Industrial ideology

Why read it

Read it for the argument linking factory organization, lower prices, and Ford's conception of social progress.

English text; Henry Ford in collaboration with Samuel Crowther