Ford Motor Company introduced a five-dollar daily wage in 1914 for an eight-hour workday.
The policy was announced at Ford’s Highland Park plant in Michigan and represented a dramatic increase over the wages many industrial workers received. Ford also reduced the standard workday from nine hours to eight, while reorganizing production into three shifts.
The full $5 payment was not simply an unconditional wage. Ford created a profit-sharing system with eligibility rules, and the company’s Sociological Department investigated workers’ home lives and personal habits. That oversight became one of the most controversial parts of the program.
The higher pay helped Ford attract and retain workers for demanding factory jobs, including moving-assembly-line work. It also helped popularize the idea that industrial employees might earn enough to become consumers of mass-produced goods, although historians debate how much of the policy was motivated by productivity, turnover, or social control.