Podcast Episode Details

HENRY FORD’S TODAY & TOMORROW 1: The Ford Path to Prosperity & Success - Part 1 (1-12)

---

---

(00:00:00) 1. WE ARE BEING BORN INTO OPPORTUNITY
(00:21:07) 2. IS THERE A LIMIT TO BIG BUSINESS?
(00:40:37) 3. BIG BUSINESS AND THE MONEY POWER
(01:01:58) 4. ARE PROFITS WRONG?
(01:28:50) 5. IT CAN'T BE DONE
(01:49:24) 6. LEARNING BY NECESSITY
(02:19:38) 7. WHAT ARE STANDARDS?
(02:39:03) 8. LEARNING FROM WASTE
(02:57:49) 9. REACHING BACK TO THE SOURCES
(03:14:12) 10. THE MEANING OF TIME
(03:35:05) 11. SAVING THE TIMBER
(04:01:39) 12. TURNING BACK TO VILLAGE INDUSTRY

Today and Tomorrow: By Henry Ford (1926) - Part 1(1-12): The Ford Path to Prosperity & Success.

Henry Ford's Today and Tomorrow, published in 1926, stands as a bold blueprint for industrial utopia, extending the principles from his earlier My Life and Work. Co-authored with Samuel Crowther, it distills Ford's hard-won wisdom from revolutionizing the automobile industry into a philosophy of efficiency, service, and abundance. Far from a dry treatise, the book pulses with Ford's pragmatic optimism: machines liberate humanity from drudgery, high wages fuel prosperity, and waste—whether material or human—is the true enemy of progress. Ford envisions big business not as a monopoly but as a public servant, vertically integrating from mine to market to slash costs and democratize goods. Amid the Roaring Twenties' boom, he critiques financiers, reformers, and outdated traditions, urging a "wage motive" where profits reinvest in people and processes, not pockets. Part 1 lays the groundwork, chronicling Ford's operational innovations at River Rouge and beyond, from raw materials to village factories. These chapters thrum with the era's mechanical symphony—conveyors humming, furnaces roaring—while humanizing Ford as a tinkerer-philosopher who learned from necessity. Spanning opportunity's dawn to decentralized dreams, this section sets the stage for later explorations of education, health, and aviation. Ford's prose, direct and anecdote-rich, makes arcane engineering feel urgent, reminding us that true wealth multiplies through service, not scarcity. Below, each chapter gets a concise summary, laced with reflections on its success ethos.

1. WE ARE BEING BORN INTO OPPORTUNITY: Ford opens with exuberant defiance of scarcity myths, proclaiming the modern world a cradle of untapped ideas. The Model T exemplifies this: from a 1908 startup with 12 workers, Ford Motor Company ballooned to 600,000 jobs by 1926, sustaining three million lives in a "city larger than New York." Pioneers like Ford create paths; plodders follow, but all thrive under the wage motive—high pay ($5/day since 1914) expands markets, low prices ($260 Model T) democratize mobility. Automobiles add horsepower to society, freeing thought and trade. Ford traces River Rouge's evolution from marsh to integrated colossus: ore unloaders process 11,500 tons in hours, coking ovens turn $5 coal into $12 value via by-products. "We are prosperous because we have [automobiles]," he asserts. This chapter ignites Part 1's spark: success as exponential creation, not division, where efficiency births opportunity for all.

2. IS THERE A LIMIT TO BIG BUSINESS?: Challenging antitrust fears, Ford posits big business as prosperity's engine, limited only by service capacity, not size. It secures supplies vertically, axing middlemen to stabilize prices—Ford's expansions into glass and ore exemplify this, yielding lower costs despite scale. "The public and only the public can make a business," he writes; growth follows demand, fostering initiative in cooperative hives superior to solitary small shops. High wages and low prices self-regulate, turning workers into buyers. Reflections on transportation as the true bottleneck underscore Ford's prescience: efficient rails and ships enable global reach without exploitation. Success here is symbiotic—big firms multiply doors, proving monopoly a bogeyman slain by public ch

---

Published on 2 weeks ago