I don’t know that Henry Ford drank. If I had to guess, I would say he was probably a teetotaler.
He was pretty straitlaced, favoring square dances for example. He was picky about who he hired, and I don’t really have a problem with that too much, I guess. $5 a day doesn’t sound like much today but it went a long ways then. So many people showed up to apply, they had to turn fire hoses on them to drive them off. In January. Rival automakers and businessmen called him a “Socialist” and were incensed. Ford thought that his workers should be paid well enough to be able to afford a car.
Working on an assembly line in those days was not easy. At the time the River Rouge plant was the most up to date operation utilizing the latest materials, machines and processes. Vanadium steel for axles for example, the list is extensive.
I doubt Ford was a drunk. He did drank warm water, thought it was good for him.
As for $5/day, it was not to help workers buy cars, it was to control his workforce: he had so much turnover in employees that he realize if he set incentives for higher pay he could create a more stable, predictable workforce.
He offered $5/day to workers who stayed on the job a year, so it wasn’t an automatic pay raise, but it did resolve his problem of employee attrition.
The decision to pay the famous $5 a day wage had nothing to do with enabling workers to afford his cars. The Ford assembly line was brutal and dehumanizing, and after investing in training workers they were losing them to other Detroit manufacturers after a short time. They did the math and realized that the higher wage would decrease the expensive turnover. Of course, Ford was happy to accept the praise for lifting workers to the middle class, which fed the messiah complex that only increased as the years went on. Interesting, complicated guy.