Fording the Gorge Between Fiction and Fact

Here's a letter to the Los Angeles Times:

Arguing that greater government "redistribution" of income will spark economic growth, Gloria Richards repeats the fable that Henry Ford more than doubled his workers' pay to $5 per hour so that "they themselves could afford to drive his automobiles" (Letters, Aug. 29).

Ford raised workers' wages for two reasons, neither of which had anything to do with raising consumer demand for his automobiles.  The first reason was to reduce worker turnover.  In...