Ford, Henry (1863-1947)

Mennonite Weekly Review obituary: 1947 Apr 17 p. 1

Birth date: 1863 Jul 30

text of obituary:

WORLD PAYS TRIBUTE TO GREAT INDUSTRIALIST

TO THE many people over the earth for whom the name of Henry Ford symbolized the American industrial genius flashed the word last week of the famous car-maker’s sudden death at the age of 83.

Ford plants over the entire U. S. were silent on Thursday as public funeral services were conducted at the St. Paul’s Episcopal cathedral in Detroit. On Wednesday, thousands of workers and fellow citizens had passed by the bier as the body lay in state at Ford’s Greenwich Village home in Dearborn.

Henry Ford’s career also stood as a symbol of the American success story. Leaving his father’s Michigan farm at the age of 16, he took a job in a machine shop at $2.50 a week. From that beginning he developed and “brought into being an industry that changed the course of the world.” At one time he was said to have refused $1,000,000,000 for the Ford “empire.”

However, his interests were not confined to business. He was an ardent pacifist, a prohibitionist, deeply interested in sociology and in the development of agriculture as an adjunct to industry.