10. Revolutionizing perceptions and the production of automobiles, Henry Ford became one of the wealthiest men in American history with a projected value of $200 billion.
Henry Ford (b. 1863) was an American businessman and founder of the Ford Motor Company. Investing in the concept of the assembly line, Ford sought to transform automobiles from an exclusive item to a commonplace object of middle-class American life. His business philosophy – Fordism – became the gold standard for economic modeling for decades, melding the mass production of inexpensive goods with high wages for workers to maximize productivity. Creating his eponymous company in 1903, following a two-year unsuccessful stint with the Henry Ford Company, Ford sought to ensure his new venture remained under close family control.
Fanatically lowering costs to increase profits, the launch of the Model T in 1908 signaled a new era of affordable automobiles. Increasing the output of the Ford Motor Company from 18,000 cars in 1909 to more than one million by 1920, Ford elevated both himself and his company into a global brand and revolutionized an industry. However, less admirably Ford was an unrepentant anti-Semite, funding printing of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and authoring The International Jew, the latter of which profoundly influenced the political philosophy of Adolf Hitler. Dying in 1947, Ford’s net worth is projected to have been worth the equivalent of two hundred billion dollars today.