This disgusting program allowed the Ford Motor Company a hand in everything from their employees' love lives to the cleanliness of their homes.
Henry Ford was a man whose personal life and general personality were fraught with more than a few flaws that would be considered borderline horrendous these days. If historical accounts of the man are to be believed, it would appear that he was a terrible racist, sexist, and had a particular distaste for immigrants. However, his father was an Irish immigrant. Of course, this is not to say that the Ford Motor Company wasn't a massive innovator within the automotive industry, but these extreme values even made their way into how Ford did business.
The Ford Sociological Program was a sector of the Ford Motor Company dedicated solely to ensuring their employees' moral and social righteousness. This came from Ford changing its pay rate from $2.34/day(about $65.08/day in 2021) to $5/day($138.97/day in 2021) to reduce their terrible turnover rate of around 370% in 1913. This was an effective policy as it led to the reduction of employees, leaving the company at just 16% in 1915. So what was so wrong with this new Company initiative if the numbers seemed to show positive results?
Apart from the fact that this raise was entirely unsustainable for Ford in the long term, which eventually led to the program's ending. It also came with many downsides in the form of constant monitoring of the employees' personal lives and personal value requirements. The staff within the sociological department consisted of 50 investigators, which would eventually grow to over 200, who would make regular visits to employee households to check up on their homes, children, and spouses. If you were below the age of 22, you needed to be married, and if you were a woman, you weren't eligible for the raise unless you were a single mother.
Patriotism is a beautiful thing, and you should always be proud of your country. However, Henry Ford took things a little too far as he set stringent guidelines around how his employees could act, talk, and believe. If you weren't what he described as a "good American," you would have been blocked from all of the promotion options that other workers could obtain provided they followed the strict values imposed upon by the company. This was after, of course, your pay was reduced to the previous $2.34/day. If your behavior didn't shape up within six months, you would be fired.
