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Henry Ford Upped Wages So Workers Became Consumers. The Rest Is History.The solution to Henry Ford’s problems was unconventional, even radical. “New Industrial Era Is Marked by Ford’s Shares to Laborers,” the Detroit Free-Press wrote Jan. 6, 1914, after the Ford Motor doubled its minimum wage to $5 a day (about $165 today), from $2.34. The “Five-Dollar Day”—part publicity stunt, part ruthless business tactic—jump-started a consumer revolution that drove the U.S. economy to 20th-century global dominance and still powers it today.
