Immigrant(ism)

     When I watched Faces of America it helped me learn just how little someone can know about their own families. People in this video didn't even know important parts about their pasts, and about what created them as people. If their parents, grandparents, and uncles and aunts never came to America, when they did, most of them would not have been where they are today. This was very thought provoking to me, because it made me wonder just how little I actually know about my heritage. That was when I realized that I really do not know that much at all! I know that my grandmothers mom changed her German last name to Cutter when she immigrated, but I have know idea where she ended up or why she made the journey in the first place. I realized that I don't know anything at all about her husband's family. I also do not know anything about my other grandma's family, but I do know that my mom's dad has a very large amount of Cherokee in him. But this is about all I know. According to my Aunt, there are immigrants from France and Sweden in there somewhere too, but I feel the need someday to figure it out on my own.

     I do love the fact that I live in America though. It is a wonderful melting pot of immigrants and that is what creates every aspect of our nation. It is fantastic to hear that people would make such treacherous trips, sometimes leaving their whole entire lives behind, to get to a foreign country, which they know little about, to work arduously for the rest of their lives just to make a better one for their families. That is truly amazing. They brought their cultures and customs, some of which we adopted, like architecture and foods, and some that we rejected, like languages and religions. It is also very cool to be a part of a country where all of us can be called Americans, but few of us have the exact same backgrounds and ethnicity.
    Sadly, I do not really feel the connection to my ancestors. Its probably because mostly I do not know them, but that doesn't mean that I don't feel connection to the immigrants. We hear all about them in the presidential debates, and we see them quite literally everywhere, because they are a part of everyone. YAY America!

Henry Ford

     As a young child, Henry Ford was given a pocket watch from his father as a present. Right when he got it, he took it apart and then he reassembled it. After hearing of this interesting ability, friends and neighbors called upon him to fix their timepieces.This officially sparked his lifetime love for machines.  He hated his measly farm life, and when he turned sixteen, he went to be an apprentice machinist with a man in Michigan where he learned to more skillfully operate steam machines and he also studied book keeping. Once he was grown and married, he switched back to the farm life in order to better support his family, until he got his first real job with the Edison Illuminating Company.
    He later gained the title of "Chief Engineer" at the company by sharing his ideas of a "horseless carriage" with Thomas Edison himself, who funded the research needed for Fords brilliant ideas. Once he broke away from Edison to further pursue his ideas he created the Ford Automobile Company where breakthroughs were made like the assembly line and the official automobile.
    His ideas as a manager of the company were to have a perfect working environment. He had a social department that checked into the lives of his employees to make sure they were making respectable choices and if they stayed at the company more six months, he even set up a profit sharing system for them. Because of his efficiency Ideas, his workers were the highest paid and time wise, the least working people around in the society.
     He also was a ardent pacifist who opposed WWI and he even went as far to fund a peace ship to Europe. However, his actions were also kind of contradictory because he was openly antisemitic, and he supported publicly The Dearborn Independent, an antisemitic weekly newspaper. He was a philanthropist though, and he created the Ford Foundation that funded ongoing grants for research, education, and development.
    I think that Henry Ford may have had his faults, (like his Nazi support...) he was an overall good person who forever changed our society. He made working conditions better, he worked hard to get to where he was, and he invested his noteworthy ideas that were powered by his love of steam machines and his dream in America.
     biography
     The Life of Henry Ford