Tools on the shop floor inspired Ford's $5 a day minimum

A hundred two years ago today Henry Ford raised his employees minimum wage to $5 a day for 8 hours work. The day before those employees got $2.34 for nine hours. Local manufacturers went berserk, crying Ford would drive them all to bankruptcy including Ford. The opposite happened and the rest should have been history...except today's vulture capitalists are resisting efforts to treat minimum wage workers with the dignity Ford treated his in 1914.

Ford explained his move in simple words that bear repeating:

“We increased the buying power of our own people, and they increased the buying power of other people, and so on and on. It is this thought of enlarging buying power by paying high wages and selling at low prices that is behind the prosperity of this country. If the floor sweeper’s heart is in his job he can save us five dollars a day by picking up small tools instead of sweeping them out.”