Michael Moore Quotes
My dad was an assembly line worker at AC Spark Plug, which was a division of General Motors, and his job was to build and then inspect the little spark plugs as they came off the line.
Moore, Michael. Here Comes Trouble: Stories from My Life. Grand Central Publishing, 2011.
Sorensen and one of the foremen worked out the idea for the assembly line on one of their “days off.” The Model T car was the first item that was made using an assembly line where the work moved to the workers rather than the workers to the work.
The automobile assembly lines of Detroit, had been planned to be converted to factories to produce a huge supply of planes, tanks, trucks and guns which were instrumental in winning the Second World War.
Ford’s associate Henry Sorenson also was deeply involved with developing the concept of an assembly line. History has tended to give the credit to Ford as he was the boss. However, it is doubtful that either man thought of the concept independently by mutually and collegially developed and implemented the idea.
Observing the difference between politics and working in the private sector:
La Guardia was the first member of Congress with flying experience and was alarmed that although Americans had invented the airplane, most airplanes were developed and manufactured in Europe and not America:
He had already decided to save General Motors which was much larger and more critical to the national economy. The normal capitalistic broken down and there were no private firms that were willing to invest, control and continue the companies at any price. There were 1 million immediate jobs at stake with GM plus the collapse of the American Auto Industry including dealers and suppliers. With Chrysler, there were only 300,000 immediate jobs at stake. Ironically, one of the major reasons for trying to save both companies was the fact that Summers team had discovered that the companies were very badly managed. If the bailout could be leveraged to force radical management change and reform, the chances of success would have been much greater than if the companies had been well managed but were still losing money rapidly. The policy decision was brilliantly successful. The reformed auto companies quickly became profitable, and the taxpayer loans were paid back early with interest to and profits to the taxpayers. All those jobs and an iconic American industry not only were preserved but became very profitable and strong and in the final analysis, it did not cost the taxpayers even one dollar. Ford was in less trouble, but if the other two companies failed, the Ford suppliers would mostly fail, and Ford also would have gone down.
Michael Francis Moore is an American documentary filmmaker, author, and activist. His works frequently address the topics of globalization and capitalism.
