The 1920s and 1930s: historical overview and cultural significance

¶ … Birth of Ford's Influences in the 1920s

United States is currently known as the land that makes dreams come true for the Americans as well as for the immigrants of the land. The ability of this country to develop continuously is not young in age. Even in the early 1900s, U.S. owns brilliant individuals who contributed a lot of knowledge and talent to the growth and progress of the country and of its people. One of which is Henry Ford, an intelligent inventor whose intellect had influenced the lives of the next generations including the generations of today.

In the 1920s, the devotion of Henry Ford to machineries bore fruit - the Ford automobiles. Ford was the genius American who invented the Ford automobiles, from which the many variety of cars were patterned. To Ford, "Machinery is the new Messiah" (Towards a Modern Day America, Chapter 24).

It was not only the invention of Ford automobiles that had revolutionized the American industry. To allow a fast and continuous production of the Ford automobile, which had became popular to many Americans, the vision and ingenuity of Henry Ford brought him to the idea of introducing the moving assembly line to his automobile factory (Towards a Modern Day America, Chapter 24). This moving assembly line, a continuous, systematic, and repetitive process of automobile production, facilitated the manufacture of Ford automobiles. Some say that it was from this another invention of Ford that the term "mass production" was born. The book Towards a Modern Day America indicated the following.

Mass production was becoming a reality, in fact, the term originated in Henry

Ford's 1926 description of the system of flow production techniques popularly called "Fordism."

Fordism, in the 1920s, was a term that came to be commonly used by people when they want to refer to something that was in advanced form or fashion in machineries. Because it was Ford who introduced the automobiles, which was an amazing invention and became a phenomena to many, referring to something brilliant and advance was termed after Ford.

It was not only in America that Henry Ford became famous. Especially during the time when Ford's invention, the Ford automobiles, were marketed in Europe, the Europeans similarly got the habit of using Henry's surname as a root word for terms whose meanings are advanced in technology. As indicated by the book Towards a Modern Day America,

In the 1920s, Europeans used the word Fordize as a synonym for Americanize.

Ford's inventions did not only improve the economy of the United States because of the contributions that the Ford automobiles provided. Moreover, his inventions had presented new job opportunities to people, specifically in being involved in automobile industry. Ford's inventions also gave hope and new dreams to others who wish to become like Henry Ford someday.

Along with the machineries and technologies where Ford demonstrated his intellect, he also showed his skills in management. It was Ford who changed the traditional 48 hours of work a week into just 40 hours. Also, he was the one who started the "five-dollar" day where the wage of the laborers was twice the regular wage at that time. Despite of the success that the Ford automobile had achieved, the monotonous process of the assembly line came to alienate workers (Towards a Modern Day America) that even Ford agreed that no worker would feel happy with such a monotonous job. To solve this problem, Ford came up with different programs for his workers especially the immigrant ones. According to the book Towards a Modern Day America,

Ford first tried to adapt his mostly immigrant workers to these conditions through an Americanization program. His "Education Department" taught classes in English, sobriety, obedience, and industrial efficiency to the unskilled laborers entering the factory.

With the innovations, changes, and development that Ford's inventions had contributed to the American society are conflicts that he declined. People considered cars and cigarettes, which were the most popular goods in the 1920s, as the initiator of freedom and rebellion (Towards a Modern Day America, Chapter 4). The fashion of wearing short skirts for women also started in the 1920s.