FORCE BILLS 



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FORD 



of one pound in order to produce upon it the 

 same velocity. It is also evident that a 

 greater force will be necessary in order to 

 produce a still greater velocity or a greater 

 change in motion. We express this by saying 

 that the force required to accelerate any mass 

 is proportional to the mass and to the accel- 

 eration produced, and that it is equal to the 

 product of the mass by the acceleration pro- 

 duced. There are two systems for measuring 

 force, the English system, which uses the 

 poundal as the standard unit, and the metric 

 system, which uses the dyne (which see). The 

 laws of motion that govern bodies that fall to 

 the earth are given in a separate article in 

 these volumes (see FALLING BODIES). See also 

 CENTRIFUGAL FORCE; CENTRIPETAL FORCE. 



The field of a force is the area within which 

 a force acts. Thus the field of force of the 

 earth's gravity extends far beyond the dis- 

 tance to the moon, while the field of a body 

 charged with electricity or of a magnet is lim- 

 ited to a small area around it. O.B. 



FORCE BILLS, a name first applied to sev- 

 eral bills passed by the United States Congress 

 in 1833, but more recently given to the Lodge 

 Bill to amend the election laws of the United 

 States, and to provide for a more rigid en- 

 forcement of such laws. This bill passed the 

 House of Representatives in July, 1890, but 

 was defeated in the Senate. Force bills were 

 so called because the power of the Federal 

 government was forced upon a state in mat- 

 ters which affected the whole nation equally 

 with the state. 



During the process of reuniting the North 

 and the South, known as the period of recon- 

 struction, Congress passed a so-called force bill 

 in May, 1870, which made punishable by fine 

 or imprisonment any attempt to bribe or 

 hinder qualified voters from casting their votes 

 at the polls. In 1871 another bill known by 

 this name was aimed against the Ku-Klux 

 Klan, a Southern secret society of nearly half 

 a million members. 



The force bill from which the original term 

 was derived related to the question whether a 

 state's rights were subordinate to national 

 rights, and was brought to a head by the 

 action of South Carolina. A new protective 

 tariff law was passed by Congress in 1832 

 which did not please the South Carolinians, 

 and they declared in convention that the tariff 

 law was of HO effect in that state, and threat- 

 ened to leave the Union if force were used to 

 collect duties on foreign goods coming into 



HENRY FORD 



the state. The bill passed by Congress aimed 

 to enforce this law, as South Carolina had 

 previously passed a resolution of nullification 

 (which see). 



FORD, HENRY (1863- ), an American in- 

 ventor and manufacturer, without doubt the 

 best-known automobile manufacturer in the 

 world. He was born in Greenfield, Mich., at- 

 tended the district school, and later became a 

 machinist in De- 

 troit. About 1890 

 he began to 

 experiment with 

 steam carriages, 

 and in 1895, after 

 two years of 

 work, he com- 

 pleted his first 

 gasoline automo- 

 bile. The Ford 

 Motor Company, 

 which he organ- 

 ized in 1903, be- 

 came under his presidency the largest maker 

 of automobiles in the world. By standardizing 

 the output to a very simple design it was 

 possible to reduce the price of Ford automo- 

 biles to such a point that their sales in 1917 

 were over 2,000 a day. In -the month of March, 

 1917, his factory made over 59,000 machines. 



Early in 1914 Ford drew national attention 

 to the prosperity of his company by announc- 

 ing that henceforth it would share its profits 

 with its employees, and that their share for 

 the first year would be $10,000,000. At the 

 same time the working day was reduced from 

 nine to eight hours, and $5 a day was fixed as 

 the minimum wage for every employee over 

 twenty-one years old, regardless of his position. 

 The total assets of the company increased 

 from an original investment of $28,000 in 1903 

 to $20,000,000 in 1912 and nearly $100,000,000 

 in 1916. 



In December, 1915, Ford won much notoriety 

 by paying the expenses of a "peace trip" to 

 Europe for about 150 men and women, in- 

 cluding reporters, students and a few well- 

 known peace advocates. The "Ford peace- 

 party," as it was called, visited the Scandi- 

 navian countries in an effort to arouse neutral 

 opinion to end the War of the Nations. A 

 few of the delegates traveled as far as The 

 Hague, but Ford himself was compelled by 

 illness to return to the United States almost 

 immediately after reaching Norway. The 

 earnestness of Ford and many of the dele- 



