How Did Business Grow In The Early 1900's

It takes a great deal of bravery to influence an entire era, and one man succeeded to do so. Some of the greatest businessmen of all time, Andrew Carnegie, Cornelius Vanderbilt, John D. Rockefeller, and Henry Ford, fiercely competed for the top spot in the business word. They were ruthless businessmen and did everything they could to help their businesses succeed. All this fierce competition allowed for the great economic growth known as the Second Industrial Revolution. The Second Industrial Revolution was a great period of growth between the 19th and 20th century. During this time, many advances in technology helped businesses succeed and allowed life to be lived in an easier fashion then before. Many inventors were making new things that
Henry Ford saw that his workers were struggling financially and saw how it affected their work. Ford wanted to make sure he could produce as many Model T’s as he could in a day and decided to raise his workers wage to $5.00 dollars a day, more than twice what it was before (Nilsson). Ford was hoping that this pay increase could keep the workers minds focused on the task at hand instead of focusing on whether they will have enough money to eat that day, or if they will have enough money to send their kid to school. To qualify for the pay increase, workers had to stop drinking, take care of their families, and support their family. Ford had inspectors come to there homes not only to check on these conditions but offered financial advice, advice on certain situations, and gave them the resources they needed (Anderson). The five-dollar day was eventually followed by the five-day work week, which meant Ford workers had both the money to buy his cars and the leisure time to use them(New York Daily News Staff). In addition, he also reduced the work day from 9 hours to 8 hours, a significant drop from the 60-hour work week that was the standard in American manufacturing (Nilsson).Now workers were only working a 40 hour work week. Since workers were not worried about financial problems, they were more productive. Higher productivity means more
Although automobiles had already existed for decades, they were still mostly scarce, expensive, and unreliable at the Model T's introduction in 1908 (Curcio). To get over the huge barrier of overpriced, unreliable cars, Ford priced the Model T at $850, a far cry from the $2,000 cost of most early cars. He also made sure that everything was perfectly safe for families and that it wouldn’t break down when you were driving (Davis). Since the Model T was positioned as reliable, easily maintained, and a mass-market transportation, the Model T was a runaway success (Curcio). It was so successful that 16.5 million Model T’s were sold. All these sales led to Ford’s company being the largest automobile manufacturer in the world(Davis) and led the Model T to become eighth on the top ten list of most sold cars of all time (Siu). When Ford first introduced the Model T, it was very cheap, but Ford knew he could do better. By the early 1920s, the Model T’s price price came down to just under $300 (Davis). Ford's Model T was successful not only because it provided inexpensive transportation on a massive scale, but also because the car signified innovation for the rising middle class and became a powerful symbol of America's age of modernization