How Henry Ford’s “Village Industries” Helped Michigan Farming Communities is Lecture Topic
Contact: Patty Henner, 591-4100, Howard Segal, 581-1920
ORONO – How Henry Ford created a new model of small-scale industrial production, designed in part to help part time farmers in rural Michigan, is the subject of a lecture by UMaine history professor and author Howard Segal at 7 p.m., Oct. 27 at the Page Farm and Home Museum.
Segal will discuss his latest book, “Recasting the Machine Age: Henry Ford’s Village Industries.” Segal’s book recounts the history of Henry Ford’s efforts to shift the production of Ford cars and trucks from the large-scale factories he had pioneered in the Detroit area to 19 decentralized, small-scale plants within 60 miles of Ford headquarters in Dearborn.
The visionary who had become famous in the early 20th Century for his huge, technologically advanced and heavily centralized Highland Park and River Rouge complexes gradually changed his focus beginning in the late 1910s and continuing until his death in 1947.
Segal will discuss how and why Ford decided to create a series of “village industries,” each of which would manufacture one or two parts for the company’s vehicles.
Although he intended that the rural setting of these decentralized plants would also allow workers to become part-time farmers, Ford’s plan did not represent a reaction against modern technology. His idea was to continue to employ the latest technology, but on a much smaller scale.
For the most part, it worked. All 19 of the village industries helped save their communities from decline before and during the Great Depression. The majority of workers in the village industries, moreover, appear to have preferred their working and living conditions to those in Detroit and Dearborn.
Segal, a former UMaine Bird and Bird professor, has taught history at the university 1986. He received his Ph.D. from Princeton University and specializes in the history of technology. In addition to “Recasting the Machine Age,” his books include “Technology in America: A Brief History,” (with Alan Marcus), “Technological Utopianism in American Culture,” and “Future Imperfect: The Mixed Blessings of Technology in America.” He has also written many articles and essays for both scholarly and popular publications.
Copies of the book will be available for sale at the lecture. Segal will be available for a signing after the lecture.
More information about the free event can be obtained by calling museum director Patricia Henner at 581-4100. The museum is on the Orono campus, just south of the Maine Center for the Arts building.