Ford Announces Day: The Eight-Hour Workday Changes Everything

Henry Ford doubled his workers' wages overnight. Not half a percent. Not a raise. Double. On January 5, 1914, Ford Motor Company announced a minimum wage of five dollars a day and cut the workday to eight hours. The average factory wage in America was $2.34. Ford's competitors thought he'd gone insane. Ten thousand men showed up at the Highland Park plant the next morning hoping to be hired. Police used fire hoses on the crowd. Ford's reasoning wasn't charitable — he wanted workers who could afford to buy the cars they were making. He got that. He also got productivity gains that more than covered the wage increase. The forty-hour week became the standard within a generation. It started with one announcement in January.