The Five Dollar Day- A Review
The Five Dollar Day- A Review
The Five Dollar Day – A Review
By David Buie
In The Five Dollar Day, Stephen Meyer III describes how transformations in industrial technology shaped workers within the social and cultural framework of Ford’s Highland Park factory from 1908 through 1921. Meyer does so by examining the paternalistic, progressive program of the five-dollar day. There is no shortage of works on Ford Motor Company and Henry Ford because of the success of the man and his company. The most notable work is Nevin and Hill’s Ford, which was based largely on Ford corporate archives; however, their study, though comprehensive, spent little time discussing how Ford’s industrial system affected workers. Another work of note is psychologist Keith Sward’s The Legend of Henry Ford, which predates Nevin and Hill’s work. Sward dismantled the Ford myth, but unlike Nevin and Hill, he did not have access to Ford’s archives and had to rely on primary and secondary sources. Because Meyer’s main thrust is how the implementation of Ford’s program affected workers, his book sits firmly in the camp of the “new” history of technology and the “new” labor history simultaneously.
Meyer begins The Five Dollar Day in 1908 with the introduction of the Model T. By 1910, the Highland Park factory began operations. In September 1913, Ford began using a primitive assembly line, using a rope and a windlass (winch) to pull a chassis along a line where workers added components. In January 1914, Ford engineers developed the “endless chain-driven” conveyor, and by June they had perfected the line to the managers’ and engineers’ satisfaction.
The perfection of Ford’s production system reduced chassis assembly time from twelve and a half hours to one hour and thirty-three minutes. It also signaled a shift from highly skilled craftsmen as the predominant shop employees to unskilled specialists moving to prominence. The Ford system made work more specialized and repetitive, but also more monotonous. A Ford employee captured the effect when he said, “If I keep putting on Nut No. 86 for about 86 more days, I will be Nut No. 86 in the Pontiac bughouse.” More than the simplification and repetitiveness of the work processes added to the pressure workers were under. The number of foremen, sub-foremen, clerks, and inspectors increased, and they oversaw both the quality and quantity of the unskilled workers’ labor.
In the years leading up to instituting the “five-dollar day,” Ford suffered many different types of labor problems. Ford managers and engineers sought to solve this “human” problem like any other technical problem. They had to re-examine it, reorganize it, and rationalize it. Prior to this re-examination, Ford’s management had been very traditional. It relied on two very unsophisticated characteristics: crudity and a reliance on drive methods. In early 1914, Ford instituted the “five-dollar day,” a unique and surely paternalistic profit-sharing plan that sought to control workers from the shop to their homes and communities. Ford’s Sociological Department oversaw these social controls.
The program was a profit-sharing plan, not just a straight pay raise. A typical unskilled worker made about $2.34 per day in wages. In addition, if the employee lived the way the company wanted him to (within progressive norms), he would then receive the “gift” of an additional $2.66 per day in profit-sharing funds from the Ford Motor Company. Even the managers charged with implementing the program did not always fully grasp this concept. Shortly after the plan began, a branch manager received a reprimand for using the term “wages” too loosely when referring to the program. To qualify for the “gift” of shared profits, employees had to be “carefully looked up,” and the company had to be satisfied that the worker would not spend the profits on vices. Ford issued a series of pamphlets for its employees that made it clear the Sociological Department existed to help workers get in on the profit-sharing by instructing workers on thrift, sobriety, cleanliness, good manhood, good citizenship, and better living generally.
Within a year of the plan’s implementation, efficiency increased by fifteen to twenty percent. Still, the five-dollar day had run its course by 1921. Meyer cites many reasons, such as the end of progressive thinking, the rise of the United Auto Workers Union, and severe war-induced inflation, all of which strained Ford’s resources. Ultimately, Ford adopted more political means to control its workers.
In The Five Dollar Day, Meyer has produced an enlightening work that demonstrates history does not happen in a vacuum. The five-dollar day was very much a product of its time, and Meyer deftly shows how progressive thinking and action infiltrated even the workplace of the early 1900s.
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