Comment by mschuster91

The idea is to use that as a marketing ploy on all sides.

On one side, paying high wages is marketing on the employment market - enticing people to work at Ford's rather than somewhere else.

Then, you got the government side. A factory providing a town with a lot of high quality employment leads to a lot of purchasing power from the employees and thus to a growing city. Wolfsburg in Germany, the best example, literally was founded by/for Volkswagen. Being respected by local politics for that growth, in turn, leads politicians and city management to... be lenient in enforcing regulations impeding the business. The best example here is Tesla in Brandenburg near Berlin. With any other company in any other place in Germany, they would get hammered with fines. Tesla in turn set up shop in a destitute area, so politicians bent over backwards and looked aside despite numerous violations and transgressions.

And finally, you got the customer side. The story of a quality product, made by well-paid domestic workers, was as powerful a story as it still is today, at least in affluent circles.