138 ChaPter 3
racing cars, while at the same time Ford himself began to produce cheaper,
and slower, cars for the American people, each of which he named according
to letters of the alphabet—the Model A, Model B, and so on. In 1908, he hit
it big with the Model T, which cost $825, and as Ford said “any customer can
have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black.” A few years
later he built the first assembly line and created a manufacturing phenome-
non. Individuals working alongside a belt-driven conveyor would assemble the
cars piece-by-piece, and the time it took to produce an auto declined from
12.5 hours in 1912 to just 1.5 hours in 1914. By 1924, the Model T cost $290,
or about a quarter of the average worker’s annual wages. In 1909 Ford sold
18,000 cars, but by 1924 was selling over 1.25 million a year.
The “average” American family could now afford transportation. Ford also
revolutionized the industrial wage system. Instead of demanding hard work
at the lowest pay possible, Ford increased pay and decreased workload. In
1909, Ford workers made $2.40 for a 9-hour workday; by the 1920s he was
paying $5 for an 8-hour shift, about double the pay of any other factor work-
er in the U.S. [though he made the pay dependent on them not drinking,
being faithful to their wives, taking care of their families and other “moral”
conditions]. This, most importantly, enabled his own workers to buy the cars
they made, and by 1920 Ford could brag that more Americans owned cars
than had bathtubs. Ford soon had competitors. In 1923, Alfred Sloan became
the president of General Motors [GM] and, unlike Ford, wanted to market his
cars as symbols of wealth and status; owning a GM car meant that one had
“made it.” Sloan divided his company into different lines with different
designs—Chevrolet, Pontiac, Buick, Oldsmobile, and Cadillac. While Ford
produced the black Model T, Sloan came out with different cars at different
prices every year, and one would move up to the next model, ultimately to
the Cadillac, which let everyone else know that he had made more money
and gained more status. Sloan’s success was tied to consumer credit. Instead
of offering affordable cars like Ford, GM offered loans so Americans could
purchase cars that would otherwise be too expensive and pay for them on a
monthly basis, with interest of course. Ford had to respond and in 1927 he
did away with the Model T and began making more upscale cars to compete
with GM. With Ford and GM both producing cars for people at various lev-
els of society, the industry boomed. In 1920, Americans were driving about
7 million cars; by 1929, there were about 27 million autos on the road, or one