Henry Ford's Legacy: The Idea of Mass Production
             Many know of Henry Ford's achievements as the originator of the assembly line and the man who pushed America into the modern age, however few know of how Ford had come to achieve such great success. Ford walked into the real world with little over a dollar to his name and a dream that automobiles would no longer be for the wealthy but for the common working man. Ford would devote his life to achieving this goal through the means of mass production and efficiency. Ford had wished to use mass production to lower the price of his automobiles which in turn increased the market size at which is automobiles would be sold. Ford chose this method of selling a large quantity of cars over increasing the maximum profit made per car (Halberstam 98). When he was finished, the modern assembly line had emerged and had become common practice by virtually every business ranging from the larger corporations to the smaller businesses. Ford had opened the doorway to several unsought after opportunities made realistic because they were now cost effective due to the idea of mass production. Henry Ford was solely responsible for creation of the modern urbanized world where people are constantly on the move from one side of a continent to the other. Henry Ford's assembly line revolutionized the efficiency of factory production and increased the overall living standards of the American people by providing them with a cheap and reliable form of transportation.
             Henry Ford's fascination with machines had started when he was a child on a small farm on the outskirts of Detroit. Around late June of 1863 Henry Ford was born in a small farming village outside of Detroit, Michigan known as Dearborn (Ford 1). Ford's father, William Ford, had immigrated to America from Ireland in 1846 during a famine that had struck many of the Irish people hard. As a skilled carpenter, William moved...