Henry Ford and Samuel Crowther

When Henry Ford first offered his workers the astounding sum of five dollars a day to work on his Model T Ford assembly line he shocked the business world with his generosity. But Ford's highly paid assembly line workers were not allowed to drink alcoholic beverages, which were illegal at the time. Ford went so far as to hire detectives to spy on workers at home to make sure they were not drinking. As an influential leader and owner of several newspapers, Ford often sang the praises of Prohibition as he does in the following excerpt taken from his autobiography published immediately after the stock market crash of 1929.

Prohibition is a moral issue. For it is economically right. We now know that anything which is economically right is also morally right. There can be no conflict between good...