The Centennial of Henry Ford’s Five-dollar Day

One hundred years ago on Sunday, back on January 5th of 1914, Henry Ford strung the industrial world up by its ankles and shook it, winning the instant animosity of his peers and securing the fortunes of the Ford Motor Company. More than doubling the hourly rate of his line-workers, he established a $5 day that was unprecedented in the industry and amounted (in today’s equivalent) to about $120. Ford was not a generous man, not given to altruism. He was trying to solve the problem of workforce turnover and he did, garnering astonishing praise in newspapers across the country in the bargain. An editorial in The Cleveland Plain Dealer said Ford’s announcement "shot like a blinding rocket through the dark clouds of the present industrial depression."

Ford’s is a Centennial we ought not to let slip by. It’s pertinent to the current hand-wringing in government and on the street over America’s shrinking middle class and growing unemployed and under-employed population. Interestingly,

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