Talk:Henry Ford/Archive 1

message: I'm trying to translate the text to de: and i've got a question about a certain sentence:
:Denounced by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the articles nevertheless explicitly condemned pogroms and violence against Jews (Volume 4, Chapter 80), preferring rather to blame incidents of mass violence on the Jews themselves
What does that mean? Ford condemned violence against Jews but preferred to say, that it was their own fault? -- 212.95.107.248 13:54, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)
replies: text: That the articles (not penned by Ford himself, note) explicitly condemned violence against Jews BUT claimed that many such incidents were started by the Jews themselves. So you have it more or less correct.  --Morven 17:27, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)
replies: text: Ok, i got it. Thanks a lot! -- 212.95.105.101 20:22, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)
thread_title:  Translation to German 

message: http://www.anti-semitism.net/jew-references-gentile-ford-the_international_jew.html
I am surprised that there is not content in the article concerning his own miso-Judaic full-length book.
"Wherever you read of the Jewish Question being resolutely approached in the history of countries which have ever tackled it, wherever you go in the world today, in any country where the Jewish Question has come to the forefront as a vital issue, you will discover that the principal cause is the outworking of the Jewish genius to achieve the power of control. Here in the United States is the fact of this remarkable minority attaining in 50 years a degree of control that would be impossible to a ten times larger group of any other race. That creates the Jewish Question here."  Chapter 13 (do a text search if you're curious)--Mymunkee 08:23, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  The International Jew 

message: I found an unattributed story on Henry Ford at http://www.success.org/re/3.shtml. Can anyone confirm or refute this? 69.22.126.93 19:33, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Almost certainly apocryphal. Ford WAS sued by his shareholders in 1917, but he lost in court. His heirs wouldn't have any legal right to the company or his stock before he was dead. Anyway, you should stop reading that self-empowerment shit, it'll rot your mind. Graft 23:16, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Heirs attempt to wrest control? 

message: Much of the commentary on Ford's political and social views presented here seem to give him a credibility on such matters that is not warranted.
Ford was known in the 1920s and thereafter as an "eccentric", someone who was perhaps very talented in his own way but a little bit off mentally.  He had many strongly held personal beliefs about the morality of alcohol, smoking, modern finance, and music and dancing.  Because of his wealth and power he was tolerated but not necessarily admired.
All of his newspapers and the vast majority of content in his books were ghost-written by a few individuals.  Read closely, much of the content is ranting and would not be taken seriously by any publisher today.  A few of his books still in print, although focused on manufacturing, a subject he was conversant with, are primarily historical oddities and would not be followed as a blueprint for business today.
Although Henry Ford was still in control of the Ford Motor Company, it was largely run after 1928 by Edsel and a few trusted professional managers.  The decisions Henry Ford was involved in, such as the long dispute with the UAW, did not show him in a good light.
The point of my comments here is that his public writings should not be taken as those of an evil genius with a social agenda; they were the rantings of a somewhat mentally disturbed man who happened to be the founder of a large enterprise.Pmeisel 10:20, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Some Ford personality idiosyncracies 

message: The man was insane. Read "Ford, the Men and the Machine", while telling little about the machine. Like all English Authors, Lacey should stay away from American Autos. But the book tells alot about Fords' deranged mentality. He insisted his grandchildren drink unpasturized milk directly from the cows udder (teet, as Henry called it) He presented his homely, fat wife with an industrial air filter and demand she wear it as a hat. He conducted an affair which produced his bastard son, John Dhalinger. He was double jointed in the back, enabling him to entertain three woman at once. He hated everyone, except white, Anglo Saxon Protestants.
*"He hated everyone, except white, Anglo Saxon Protestants." That's funny considering he wasn't even an Anglo-Saxon himself, he was of Irish decent. He also had a personal friendship with Adolf Hitler, who was himself a Austrian (non-Anglo) Catholic. A lot of Americans love throw around the "WASP elitist" label all the time without even understanding what it means. Research history a little bit yourself before taking  every dubious claim, you read in one book, as fact.
Well, it turns out his Irish ancestry actually has a distinctly Anglo-Saxon flavour after all.Shiresman (talk) 10:04, 5 January 2022 (UTC)
thread_title: Lets face it

message: I think there is enough material on this subject to make a decent independent article, and shorten this section a bit.  I have more material to add than is proportionate to the rest of the Henry Ford article.  Are there strong objections to this?--Pmeisel 15:20, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: That seems reasonable, so long as a summary of the key points are kept here, and a link provided. Jayjg (talk) 15:47, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dearborn Independent 

message: Shouldn't there be something in this article about Henry Ford's status in Brave New World? That article even goes so far as to state that the Utopian society was founded on principles of Fordism. Brutannica 20:18, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Pop culture

message: I've been digging up information that suggests that Henry Ford's first car was built from plant fibers and plant derived plastics and was intended to run on biofuels, although I'm having problems finding information that doesn't come from a pro-Marijuana/pro-hemp site.  Can anyone verify any of this? --Toquinha 22:49, 31 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Not his first car, he used traditional materials and fuels.  Plastic experimentation came later.  The various biographies and histories cover this area. --Paulmeisel 13:09, 30 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Use of hemp and biofuels? 

message: I am removing the recently added category "High school dropout".  It is quite irrelevant in an age when public school education in rural areas was not standardized, and few attended school for 12 or 13 years. --Paulmeisel 13:11, 30 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  High school dropout 

message: By looking at the talk page, I know this was a controversy on this article a while back and there was a lot of dicussion, but I don't think the problems have yet been resolved.  In particular, this section hsa some problems.
The second paragraph in this section is non-sequiturish at best.  I can imagine that somehow this paragraph got stuck in as part of this Ford anti-semitic debate and was meant to be a bit of an apology for Ford's positions.  This is maybe fine, if the facts stated in the article are true.  And I'm not asserting that they are not, but they seem a little suspicious to my eyes.  One example is the statement "Ford is beloved in the Black community".  I'm not even sure what the original author meant when he wrote that, but I know of no evidence for (or against, FWIW) that statement and it seems vague enough that I don't know what evidence one would use to assert it.  Then there is a statement about supporting communists, which again is not sourced, but even worse I don't see where or how this connects to the flow of the article.  All in all, this stuff needs to be sourced, at best, and even if true it's not clear to me that it should be there at all or that it adds to the article.
Anyway, I went ahead deleted the particularly problematic sentence about his considering himself English: "Most of all he considered himself English (although his father came from Ireland), so the idea that he supported the Germans is exagerated."  This statement is nonsense on its face, and is particularly badly placed coming right before a long, detailed, sourced section which shows that he did, in fact, support the Germans quite enthusiastically. 
In short, I think the second paragraph in this section should be completely removed, but I didn't want to be that drastic since it had been discussed so much already.  But even so I think it needs a ton of work if it is to stay.
--Deville 13:46, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Another misconception is that Ford was a generally racist person, but he is in fact beloved in the Black community. Ford promoted Black workers to supervisory positions over whites at a time when President Wilson (a Democrat and Princeton leader) praised the KKK. At the time when Ford began his expansion the population of Detroit was roughly 1% Black. So many Blacks came to work at his factories it became a center of the civil rights movement not long after he died. Ford was not only influential on Hitler, who planned for the Volkswagen Beetle to replace the Model T, but also on Communist leaders in the Soviet Union. Ford built a factory in Russia in the early 1920s and gave some early support to communists. Ford was also idolized in Latin America, particularly Mexico. He made his widely published statement regarding history being bunk after being called a traitor for criticizing Americans supporting war with Mexico. Ford dominated auto production in Japan prior to WW2 and was an inspiration to post war Japanese automotive leaders such as Honda. Of course, Ford also played a key role in arming US forces during the war.
BCorr|Брайен 19:36, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Common misconceptions 

message: I'm not going to dispute the anti-semitic lean of this article - I don't know if it's true or not - but if you're going to have a pitched battle over this, make sure you keep the meat in there. The External Links were removed at some point in time, and are quite relevant to the article. They have returned under references. If you believe they belong under a separate title, that makes sense to me - I don't want to get involved in a war. But those links should be in the article somewhere. --TaranRampersad 06:10, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  References Now Include External Links that were removed 

message: I was just checking the changes over the last few weeks, and have noticed that a lot of non-controversial info has been edited out over this period. Please see the difference between mid-February and mid-March. Thanks, BCorr|Брайен 00:43, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I just compared to mid February.  The current version has more information and I don't see any items of even middling importance that were lost along the way. Rjensen 01:01, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for your response. However, I do think you have been working very hard to change the point of view in this article to be more sympathetic to Ford. I do hope to hear from some other editors as well. Cheers, BCorr|Брайен 13:25, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Questions about gradual removal of information from the article 

message: I have removed the category to freemasonry as I have never come across any reference that Ford was a freemason.  I think a lot of credible evidence needs to be presented to persuade a reader that a man who saw conspiracies in everything (Jews, labor unions, the US government, his underlings, bankers, even his own son) was a member of a society that has often been accused of perpetrating conspiracies. --RedJ 17 14:50, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I found 77,000 references to Ford as a Mason through Google.  He's commonly listed as one of its more famous members.  Rklawton 01:03, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  freemasonry 

message: I removed these dead notes from the "notes" section.  I could not figure out to what they referred:--RedJ 17 16:14, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dead notes 

message: Some say that this article dwells too much on Ford's anti-semitism. You have to understand the reason people feel the need to discuss it in detail. Most people never hear about Ford's anti-semitism or his ties to the Nazis (or the fascist nature of his paternalistic attitude towards his workers). People need to hear the truth. This is an encyclodpedia, one not bound to space limitations or other limitations of prtined versions, where more than passing remarks that some claim he was friendly to Nazis can and should be given. If having an agender to get out the truth that is hidden is POV, then I don't know what to say. This is precicely the place for the full discription of Ford to be told.
Mqduck 14:38, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ford's Racism and POV 

message: May be horrible grammer, but it is a quote from Time Magazine 1/8/1933.
(Mpmartin 10:05, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Horrible grammar 

message: This sentence makes no sense to me: During this period, he personally drove one of his cars to victory in a race against Alexander Winton, a well-known driver and the fat favorite on October 10, 1901.  Could whoever put it in re-draft it.  --Adam Brink 17:26, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  What is a 'fat favourite'? 

message: Let's spin off the family tree to Ford Family Tree. Rjensen 11:36, 17 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I just changed it to a graphical tree and I think its pretty good where it is.  Adds to the article (though it was a bit useless before), and is not really enough for an article of its own. I am a bit concerned that it is too wide and will look bad on people browsing at low resolution.  I usually maximize my browser (which uncovers some interesting formatting problems in some articles, though in this case it looks better full screen.  If it is too wide I can make it more narrow by stacking some of the generations. Dalf | Talk 02:57, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  why family tree? 

message: It's absurd to use the values and mores of the present to judge Henry Ford. Dislike and distrust of Jewish finance-capital was the rule, not the exception in those days. Calling him an anti-Semite adds nothing to the article beyond demonizing him. By today's standards, he was almost certainly a racist, sexist, homophobe and anything else you can think of, but those WERE the standards of society in the past. It is feel-good, revisionist, PC history to claim otherwise and isolate Ford as a target for criticism.
::No it is not absurd to say exactly what he did and believed. Warmongers for example will hate him for being a pacifist, and environmentalists will be angry at all the pollution created by Ford cars. But Wiki tells it like it is. Rjensen 11:19, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Article tainted by Political Correctness 

message: Anyone have a list of his patents? U.S. Patent 610040 is his, but if anyone could point out a list (on or off line) I'd appreciate it. 134.193.168.253 18:53, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Patents?

message: Does anyone know if Ford ever returned this medal?  Charles Lindbergh didn't, and that caused him a bit of a scandal.  Rklawton 01:11, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Service Cross of the German Eagle

message: The section "Allegations of Anti-Semitism" says:
:In 1998, following extensive research by Ford Historians, the company reported the allegations to be false. Further, no Ford executive or family member visited Germany or attended any executive meetings with Ford of Germany during the time.
I presume this refers to the allegations that Ford was an "anti-Semite", whatever that means.  But this is not cleaer, because it is out of context.  Also, the second sentence also does not follow from the first.  And what time is "the time"?  Given that the topic is so heated, please someone knowlegeable clarify. -Pgan002 08:42, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  What allegations were reported false? 

message: From the subsection "Allegations of anti-Semitism":
:Denounced by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the articles nevertheless explicitly condemned pogroms and violence against Jews (Volume 4, Chapter 80), preferring to blame incidents of mass violence on the Jews themselves.
Could someone please explain the meaning of this sentence?  The first clause means that the articles were denounced by the ADL.  The second clause means that the articles condemned pogroms and violence against Jews.  But it is opposed to the first clause by "nevertheless", which does not make sense.  The third clause has the form of a clarification of the second clause, but its meaning is actually almost the opposite.  -Pgan002 08:54, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Unclear sentence about condemning pogroms