Henry Ford - part 2

What could be going on inside the head of Henry Ford? While composing anti-Semitic screeds for the Dearborn Independent, Ford hired African Americans, women and the disabled to work in his factories. He promotes a neo-ninetieth century lifestyle, offering dance lessons and dances. No jazz or modern music allowed, only waltzes and reels, as Ford had begun to take his personal collection of artifacts and build a museum. There is this strange dynamism, trying to build a museum dedicated to American freedom, by a man who sought total control over all those around him. Ford’s Social Department had a team of 50 investigators on staff, to maintain the proper employee standards.

Ford Workshop at Greenfield Village

Ford’s Greenfield village was begun in 1908 and was dedicated in the rain, as the stock market had already begun to slide in 1929. Ford had collected the Wright Brother’s home and bicycle shop, Noah Webster’s home and the Logan County Courthouse where a young Abe Lincoln had first practiced law. Ford reassembled the buildings on his property in Dearborn, Michigan. Also included at the museum, were Henry Ford’s own birthplace and a replica of his Quadricycle and workshop. Clearly, this was a sign of the megalomania at work, Ford had begun to include himself, as one of America greatest leaders, but the world was about to change again, and again, Ford would be both ahead and behind his times.

The Model T’s falling sales, finally forced Henry Ford to design a new model car. After fighting the project for years, Henry Ford did a complete about face and embraced the project. By this time though, you really have to wonder, if Henry Ford’s participation was a beneficial or not? Either way, the new Model A Ford was a masterpiece of mechanical engineering. It was the first automobile ever designed for manufacturability; it was a car designed from the outset, to be easily assembled. The car was also radical departure from the Model T and from Ford’s- plain is better philosophy. The new Model A was available in over a dozen body styles and offering the feature’s consumers now demanded in a new car.

1928 Model A Sedan

From1927 to 1932, when production ended, and in the teeth of the Great Depression, Ford sold close to five million Model A’s. The engine offered 40 hp, ten extra horsepower over the T, with an electric starter, a standard 3 speed transmission and four wheel drum brakes, making the Model A Ford, a truly modern car. The mass production techniques used on the Model A, made Model T production look primitive, also making the Model A the birth of modern manufacturing, and just as they were getting it right, it all went wrong. That day in the rain, at the dedication of Greenfield Village Museum, the stock ticker was falling and just kept falling.

1929 Model A 5-window Coupe

Slowly, a new word had entered the dictionary; “Fordism” where the construction of standardized, mass-produced goods, were made by specialized machines, where workers did standardized, repetitive tasks. It took skill out of the equation, but mass production was so cost effective, it could pay higher wages to industrial workers. This also meant the workers could own the products they manufactured and other manufactured products. Ford became the subject of literature and films. In Fritz Lang’s film, “Metropolis” the character Jon Federson is the leader of the society, living in the new industrial tower of Babel and held a striking resemblance to Henry Ford. In Aldous Huxley’s novel, “Brave New World,” a dystopic society worships production and consumption and Henry Ford is crowned as their new messiah.

Jon Frederson (left) leader of a utopian world

All of his life, Ford had disliked banking and finance. All the way back to that young farm boy, bankers were considered a necessary evil. Ford’s wild bull ways were apparent, as Ford was slow to getting into the auto finance business. Ford was also the last manufacturer to sign a labor agreement with the United Auto Workers. These strong personal sentiments show through, as Ford considered it wrong to finance cars, and wrong to encourage consumer debt. He’d given his son Edsel, a million dollars in gold for his 21st birthday, 400 years wages for a factory worker, but considered labor unions detrimental to the workers cause. Without looking honestly at Ford, it would be easy to say, he was just a greedy sob. But this was Ford’s unwillingness to violate his own personal beliefs.

River Rouge tool & die room

The harsh days of the Great Depression, were especially harsh in an industrial town like Detroit. In the previous decade, the population had swelled with immigrants and country people, seeking their place in the new industrial economy. In the good times, Ford had been quick with advice and now, when the times turned dark Ford said, “The average man won't really do a day's work unless he is caught and cannot get out of it. There is plenty of work to do if people would do it.” City officials at the time were reporting two deaths per hour from hunger, among the unemployed in Detroit, as Ford went on imply the Depression was really a good thing, because workers would appreciate their jobs and lead thriftier lives. It was a grandiose detachment from reality; no one could actually believe Americans dying in the streets from hunger was a good thing.

Ford had again placed himself in the spotlight, but this time not as an icon. This time, he was the symbol of the system which had failed the people. On March 7th 1932, the Detroit Unemployment Council organized a march from downtown Detroit to the shuttered gates of Ford’s River Rouge factory. The marchers were hungry and desperate but their demands were all over the map. They demanded the rehiring of the unemployed, health care, and an end to racial discrimination, winter fuel for the unemployed, abolishment of company spies and private police and the right to organize unions. Ford had no answers to these problems, but he was now the symbol, Ford had taken the fame in the good times and now would take the blame.

The marchers five to ten thousand strong left Detroit with the encouragement of the mayor, Frank Murphy. When they’d reached the Dearborn city limit, the mood had changed. The richest man in the world lived in Dearborn, and if he didn’t like the idea of workers marching to his factory, they don’t. The marchers were met by a phalanx of police cars, motorcycles and horse mounted officers, along with Ford security. As the marchers neared the barricades, the horse mounted officers pushed into the crowd, leaving marchers nowhere to go. The police fired tear gas into the crowd, as officers with nightsticks beat the marchers. Then shots were fired, either by police or by Ford Security, the crowd answered, by throwing ice and stones at police.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9inuaYlge0

Four marchers were killed and 22 wounded by the police gunfire, but the policemen only pulled the trigger. This exhibition of police power had been done at the express orders of Henry Ford. His need for control, his piqué for having his own way and his short temper, had finally caught up to him. These were, after all, hungry desperate Americans, asking for a peaceful redress of their grievances. The event galvanized the labor movement and illustrated to government, just how dire the situation was rapidly becoming. Henry Ford responded by placing machine gun positions around his home and then, Ford began to shy away from publicity and public statements.

Henry Ford is an interesting historical character, he is the perfect example of what it would be like, if all our dreams and fantasies for wealth and success, came true. To become successful, far beyond your wildest dreams, and then, ten times more. He was a farm boy born into an agrarian society in the middle of the 19th century. As a child, he’d hated the farm and farm work, as an adult, he built a museum venerating that lifestyle. A lifestyle that Ford himself, had been a primary architect of its demise. In Ford's own personal sense of plainness and functionality, was the genius of the Model T, it was an expression of the man himself. But it was quickly outstripped by the public’s desire for more powerful and more luxurious cars.

“I will build a car for the great multitude. It will be large enough for the family, but small enough for the individual to run and care for. It will be constructed of the best materials, by the best men to be hired, after the simplest designs that modern engineering can devise. But it will be so low in price that no man making a good salary will be unable to own one — and enjoy with his family the blessing of hours of pleasure in God's great open spaces.” ~ Henry Ford