On 5 January 1914 Henry Ford and James Couzens announced that the Ford Motor Company would pay five dollars a day, more than double the going rate for factory labour, and within days the news had brought thousands of men to Highland Park from across the Midwest. They gathered on Manchester Street outside the plant in the January cold. On 12 January, in temperatures reported at 9 degrees, a crowd put at about twelve thousand rioted at the gates, and fire hoses were turned on the men. The headline figure was not quite what it seemed. It was a profit-sharing plan: a man earning about $2.30 kept his base wage and received a $2.70 bonus, and only if he met the company's standards. Ford's Sociological Department sent inspectors to workers' homes to check that they did not drink to excess, did not abuse their families, did not take in boarders, kept a clean house and saved regularly. The department was largely dissolved by 1921. The reason for the raise was the assembly line itself. Annual turnover at Ford had reached 370 percent, because men would not stay on the work. After the riot the company announced it would hire only people who had lived in Detroit for at least six months.
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42.4076, -83.0966
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