Henry Ford: The Model T - #3 - Extra History
Added 2023-09-29 17:30:01 +0000 UTCThe Ford Model A would go where horses wouldn't and saved Californians after an earthquake in San Francisco in 1906, but it wasn't Ford's best design. He was looking to make a car for rural America and that was the Model T. A mass-produced car that was affordable and made it so people could get better medical treatment in different locations, go on vacations, and be alone with loved ones However, as Fords company grew so did his "social engineering". Paving the way for his darker side.
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Part 1 - The Boy Who Hated Horses | Part 2 - Motor City I Part 3 - The Model T I Part 4 I Part 5 - Release Date: I Lies I Music
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Comments
A good start are the Granger laws and cases from the 1870s and 1880s where railroads argued a sort of last mile issue for why they charged different rates. Just remember a very pro business Supreme Court that had several railroad lawyers on it agreed with the Grangers. So if they didnt buy the last mile as an issue for railroads, it will be a hard road to hoe to convince anyone else. Volume 1 of March of Liberty has coverage of the legal aspect, The Republic for Which It Stands discusses the historical. Any biography of Henry Ford will talk about his motivations for making and decreasing the price of the Model T. Or a trip to The Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, MI or the Piquette Plant Museum in Detroit.
Benjamin Fouty
2023-09-30 18:03:17 +0000 UTCThe last mile thing will be hard to pin down, especially with my google-fu being so weak and having some ideological charge to it. I do know that it's commonly accepted that while FDR started the concept, Eisenhower birthed the modern highway as we know it today because of his experiences in Europe (where it ended up having railroad logistics being intermittent at best due to air attack).
Aaron Neumann
2023-09-30 17:20:13 +0000 UTC'gasoline' isn't just harmful to the planet's atmosphere, and in Ford's day I'm pretty sure they didn't even know about that aspect of it - at least, if we're talking about the big picture people like Ford who can't conceive of a bigger picture than the tiny little aspect of things that is finance and business. But they did know it was dangerous and harmful to living organisms in general. From that last bit, I'm sure actual big picture folk were at least aware it could be a problem for the atmosphere, but these are the kinds of people who understood that the world, while inconceivably huge, is still very finite and covered with people, so the stuff we do *can* impact the whole thing. As such, they were concerned with things like sustainability, even if they didn't call it that yet, and it totally wasn't cool yet. In some circles, it still isn't, because what can possibly be more important than microscopic subsections of highly toxic substrate that store a representation of ones perceived commercial relevance?
Some Ed
2023-09-30 17:05:46 +0000 UTCSources?
Benjamin Fouty
2023-09-30 15:34:49 +0000 UTCThe thing was that this problem is a constant one, just not as visible during the days of horse and buggy being the primary 'local' transportation method. In addition, the MODERN highway system was made in the 1950s by Eisenhower.
Aaron Neumann
2023-09-30 05:03:20 +0000 UTCHang on. How is Ford solving in 1908 the last mile problem that crops up in the 20s and 30s? And the model TT truck wasnt introduced until 1917, the model T was built as a passenger vehicle. Factories generally didnt recognize a last mile problem because there was no last mile. They congregated around rail hubs. The last mile problem wasnt even described in logistics until after it was described in telecommunications. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_mile_(transportation)#:~:text=In%20transportation%20networks%2C%20%22last%20mile,station%20to%20their%20final%20destination. The US Numbered Highway System started in the 1927 interstate system’s ideas came from the 1930s and was only implemented in the 1950s. See the book Big Roads. It’s a little difficult to disentangle railroads and ports being bad at the last mile from the idea that last mile delivery might be a bad idea for many things. Roads are bad at bulk transport, it is a trade off. Some things shouldnt have last mile service. A substantially subsidized last mile infrastructure allows the bulk of the cost to be shifted from private to public purse. I’m not particularly sympathetic to the argument that mail contracts being were an unfair subsidy to the ocean liners and passenger trains. What are the roads? Nor a last mile cost problem for the freight railroads. Granger Laws were in place since just after the Civil War and freight railroad milage only increased in that period. The railroads complained and fought short haul rate fixing, but they did just fine in the same period. Only when fully publicly subsidized roads came along did freight rail come into difficulty. Here’s just as valid a narrative- Ford pushing down the price of automobiles, along with Billy Durant’s innovation of wide scale automotive financing allowed the masses access to an aspirational and status product. Cars were (are) a status item, the fact that status items became prevalent changed our way of using them, their use in commerce followed. See the iPhone for comparison.
Benjamin Fouty
2023-09-30 04:10:00 +0000 UTCHere's the thing: technology determines EVERYTHING, and the technology for anything other than ICE in cars is basically impossible. Gasoline is used because it is considered a WASTE within the refinement companies at the time. Remember, fossil fuels have an energy-to-weight ratio so great that only FISSION and FUSION can compete. Let me repeat that: fossil fuel combustion has such great energy ratios that only SPLITTING/FUSING ATOMS can outcompete it.
Aaron Neumann
2023-09-30 00:02:03 +0000 UTC... no Ford recognized the infamous 'last mile' problem, a problem that was cropping up during the late 1920s and into the 1930s. Railroads (and large-scale transportation options like river and sea) are just BAD in the last few miles of a logistics system. They were extremely inefficient and basically money pits for large-scale transportation like railroads. Also, passenger services were literal money pits outside of a handful of exceptions that prove the rule. The only way that most passenger services were in 'the green' was because of the mail contracts, and once those moved to aircraft and cars in the 1950s, practically ALL the passenger services were literally a deep red. Please note that the highway system was built on the experience of WW2, where rail networks were easily negated to the point of causing major logistics problems in Europe. The US Army used trucks to make up for the shortfalls, which led to the US military switching from a rail-focused military to a truck-focused military.
Aaron Neumann
2023-09-29 23:54:28 +0000 UTCSaw this in my Nebula feed last Saturday. Looking forward to part 4 soon!
Trevin Beattie
2023-09-29 18:46:49 +0000 UTCLet's just say I don't think me and Ford would've gotten along very well. A conversation between Ford and me would probably have gone like: "What on Earth do you mean horses are dangerous?! Men have inflicted far greater evil on both each other and the world around them than horses ever will! Oh, and you know that 'gasoline' stuff you go on and on about is harmful to the planet's atmosphere, right?"
Martin Verran
2023-09-29 17:50:20 +0000 UTC
