Years ago my job as a claim agent for The Detroit Terminal Railroad took me into the old Ford Highland Park Plant. At one time, Henry Ford had the dream of rolling one Model T automobile off that assembly line at the rate of one new car a minute. Creating new machines they were making changes to that assembly line on a daily basis and driving those workers harder and harder and it wasn’t long until they reached the amazing record of rolling out a new car every ten seconds. There wasn’t much to a Model T Ford and so that record was never again achieved by any auto manufacturer since then. Under certain circumstances some of the workers who could stand the pace were reaping a record setting $5 and then a few years later $6 a day in wages. Far as I could tell, my first visit there must have been around 1953 and wages had certainly increased by then.The more I read about those “good old days” make me understand that they were not all that good at all.
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