5 January 1914: Henry Ford announces the $5 workday
Ford Motor Company said it would pay most factory workers $5 a day, roughly double the going rate, while cutting shifts to eight hours. Critics called it reckless. In practice it slashed punishing worker turnover on the assembly line, attracted the best labor in Detroit, and helped create customers who could afford the cars they built. Paying people well was not charity; it was one of the shrewdest business moves of the century.
The lesson: Spending more can be the cheapest option once you count what high turnover and unhappy workers really cost.
What it meant for investors
$1,000 in Ford at the start of 1990 → $1,500 today, vs $19,429 in the S&P 500.
We start the clock at the start of 1990, the first year in our price data after the event. That is 1.5 times the money, but $17,929 less than a plain index fund made over the same years.
What Ford teaches: Surviving without a bailout is admirable but not the same as compounding; a well-run turnaround can still leave a stock below where it started decades earlier.
| Bought in | Price then | Worth today | S&P 500 would be |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1990 | $8.00 | $1,500 | $19,429 |
| 1995 | $10.00 | $1,200 | $14,783 |
| 2000 | $26.00 | $462 | $4,626 |
green = beat the S&P 500 · red = lost money
What if you bought Ford? Every starting year and the full story →
More Ford history
- 17 April 1964: Ford unveils the Mustang
- 27 September 1908: The first Model T rolls out
- 1 October 1908: Ford rolls out the Model T
Could you have called it at the time? The wheel picks the year, you pick the position, ten seconds a pick.
Play Sixty-40