[drewcoo]

That's an example of trying to clean up Ford's image.

Ford didn't want to share with the employees. He was very strongly anti-union (granted, not a factor until post-WWII). He was a Nazi supporter and not just because he was a notorious antisemite, Nazis opposed organized labor, too. He is sometimes mistakenly acclaimed for being for civil rights because he hired so many black men (who were not unionized, in an attempt to defeat the unions).

The lawsuit wasn't about shareholders vs broader social goals. It was about shareholders vs the CEO. The article is not about shareholder vs CEO pay. This lawsuit is unrelated.

And before someone claims Ford paid his workers enough to be customers (the reason he still wanted to pay them more in 1918), consider that in the early days after he'd implemented an assembly line the work became incredibly monotonous and workers were leaving for other automakers, so Ford was forced to pay them better to stay with him.