[Alberta's Child]

It's sad to see, but so much of Pennsylvania just seems like a relic of days gone by. Sort of like the old wooden grain elevators that are disappearing from the prairies.

One of the things that most people don't seem to understand is that it is damn near impossible to employ large numbers of people in manufacturing unless they are willing to settle for a standard of living that is substantially lower than that of most Americans. That's always the way it's been, and it will always be so . . . if you are going to make widgets in a factory, you have to be selling them to people who can afford to buy them. And you probably won't be able to afford them yourself.

[asmith92008]

How did Ford afford to pay his people enough to buy his cars?

[MARTIAL MONK]

I think you're on the right track. Ford didn't make workers more expensive to fit the price of cars. He made the cars cheaper to fit the wallets of workers. THAT is how workers could buy cars. Exactly the same thing that is going on now.

He didn't raise wages, he offered a bonus. For that bonus he owned your asp. He controlled who you associated with, what you drank, when you went to church, whether you gambled, what you said to your wife, what language you spoke at home. Even at that, the bonuses were eliminated with the depression.

Even with the bonus Americans wouldn't take the jobs. His workforce came from eastern Europe and the deep south. Hank needed workers and the blacks in the south needed work. You could have drawn a line at Mason-Dixon and said that anyone who crosses this line is ILLEGAL and still they would have come. On many lines English was a rarity. He did force his workers to take English classes.

You cannot repeal the laws of economics.