共用题干 Ford

1 Ford"s great strength was the manufacturing process一not invention.Long before he
started a car company,he was a worker,known for picking up pieces of metal and wire
and turning them into machines.He started putting cars together in 1891.Although it was
by no means the first popular automobile,the Model T showed the world just how creative
Ford was at combining technology and market.
2 The company"s assembly line alone threw America"s Industrial Revolution into overdrive
（高速运转）.Instead of having workers put together the entire car,Ford"s friends,who were
great toolmakers from Scotland,organized teams that added parts to each Model T as it
moved down a line. By the time Ford"s Highland Park plant was humming（嗡嗡作响）along
in 1914,the world"s first automatic conveyor belt could turn out a car every 93 minutes.
3 The same year Henry Ford shocked the world with the $5-a-day minimum wage
scheme,the greatest contribution he had ever made.The average wage in the auto
industry then was$2.34 for a 9-hour shift:Ford not only doubled that,he also took an
hour off the workday.In those years it was unthinkable that a man could be paid that much
for doing something that didn"t involve an awful lot of training or education.The Wall Street
Journal called the plan"an economic crime",and critics everywhere laughed at Ford.
4 But as the wage increased later to daily$10,it proved a critical component of Ford"s
dream to make the automobile accessible（可及的）to all. The critics were too stupid to
understand that because Ford had lowered his costs per car,the higher wages didn"t
matter一except for making it possible for more people to buy cars. Ford"s higher-wage and lower-cost strategy was strongly_________.