>> In Britain, the Vulcan Motor Company was proud
to film the way their workers assembled cars,
slowly and carefully, by hand.
Craftsmen worked in their own way, at their own pace.
The whole process took several weeks from start to finish.
These hand made cars were so expensive,
that a wide gulf separated those who built them,
from those who bought them.
But the days when cars were just luxuries for the rich,
were drawing to a close.
In 1908, one mans vision would change manufacturing
and create a new market.
Henry Ford, set out to make the simplest car ever [car horn] a car
for rural America, a twentieth century equivalent
of the horse and buggy.
To produce the Model T cheaply, Ford knew he had
to change the way cars were built.
That meant changing the way his workers worked.
As he reorganized his factory to turn out Model T's,
he was influenced by the efficiency expert, Fredrick Taylor.
Taylor complained that hardly a workman can be found
who doesn't devote his time
to studying just how slowly he can work
and then he devoted his life to speeding them up.
When Taylor was brought in, he first timed the workers
with stop watches and noted their every movement.
In a famous experiment at an iron works,
he reorganized a worker named Schmidt.
Previously, Schmidt had hand carried 12 tons
of pig iron a day up from a wagon.
After Taylor rearranged things,
the tolerant Mr. Schmidt found himself carrying 47 tons
and production had been raised 300%.
Called into an office,
Taylor helped the world's fastest typist, type even faster.
The new world record of 150 words a minute was achieved
by Margaret Owen and Taylor claimed much of the credit.
At Fords factory, Taylorism meant dividing automobile production
into simple repetitive steps.
There would be no need for skilled craftsmen
with years of apprenticeship.
Men could learn to do any job quickly.
A trained wheelwright, no longer made each wheel in its entirety.
Wheel making was broken down into almost 100 steps,
done by different men at different machines.
It was much faster, but workers could still complete only 200 cars a day
So, in 1913, Ford introduced his most revolutionary change yet.
>> In those days, each car was built from the frame
up on stationary wooden horses.
>> The Ford Motor Company filmed a reenactment
of how Henry Ford first tried out his new idea.
>> Henry Ford watched it for a while and he had an inspiration.
Instead of moving the men past the cars,
why not move the cars past the men?
So, on one hot August morning, they tried it that way.
A husky young fellow put a rope over his shoulder
and Henry Ford called let's go.
And at that very moment, as the workmen began to fasten the parts
onto the slowly moving car, the assembly line was born.
>> Soon assembly lines were up and running in Fords factory.
The lines became the key to mass production,
a system that would remain virtually unchanged
for most of the century.
A network of timing conveyers was used to deliver parts
to an exact point on the line.
The workers became an integral part of the great machine
and management set the pace without discussion or negotiation,
for unions were forbidden.
The men faced new pressure as the final assembly line beat
out the rhythm for the whole factory.
There was no way they could stop or slow it down.
Few stood the pace and [inaudible] for long.
Men tried it for a few weeks, then quit, but Ford had an answer.
The company was making record profits.
The time taken to build each car had dropped to 1 1/2 hours,
so he could afford to raise pay.
When he announced he was doubling wages to the unheard of level
of $5 a day, the factory was besieged with applicants.
Other car makers adapted the Ford method.
Ford's recipe, mass production, low costs, high wages,
was creating not only cheap cars, but well paid workers.
Above all, it was the constant supply of new men arriving
into to Detroit that made it possible.
The company set the terms, if they worked fast
and obeyed orders, they got the wages.
It was a game for which Ford made the rules simple,
but strict, high pay for hard work.
>> What Mr. Ford wanted from his workers was a good days work
on the shift, go home eat and go to bed and you'd save your strength
and get up and give him a good day the next day.
That was-- that just pops in my mind and it is the truth.
>> Ford's private security force,
the Plant Protection Service, kept discipline.
Anyone who recruited for the union was fired.
Company spies kept a lookout
for those considered to be trouble makers.
Workers on the Rouge lines had never had job security.
Now those lucky enough still
to have jobs became increasingly powerless.
>> You couldn't even talk to guys on the job,
not let the foreman see you, there was whispers going on and what not.
A friend of mine was fired 3 times, a guy by the name of John Gallow, for smiling
If you went to the bathroom you had
to get permission from your supervisor.
And if you were in there for 3 or 4 minutes, you would take one
of the service guys, if you had to use the bathroom
to relieve your bowels, he would come up
and put his foot before you flush and he'd say stand up.
And when you stand up and if there wasn't something
in the toilet, out you go.