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Authors: John Dos Passos
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workers might save enough money to buy a tin lizzie; the first day Fordâs announced that cleancut properly-married American workers who wanted jobs had a chance to make five bucks a day (of course it turned out that there were strings to it; always there were strings to it)
such an enormous crowd waited outside the Highland Park plant
all through the zero January night
that there was a riot when the gates were opened; cops broke heads, jobhunters threw bricks; property, Henry Fordâs own property, was destroyed. The company dicks had to turn on the firehose to beat back the crowd.
Â
The American Plan; automotive prosperity seeping down from above; it turned out there were strings to it.
But that five dollars a day
paid to good, clean American workmen
who didnât drink or smoke cigarettes or read or think,
and who didnât commit adultery
and whose wives didnât take in boarders,
made America once more the Yukon of the sweated workers of the world;
made all the tin lizzies and the automotive age, and incidentally,
made Henry Ford the automobileer, the admirer of Edison, the birdlover,
the great American of his time.
Â
But Henry Ford had ideas about other things besides assemblylines and the livinghabits of his employees. He was full of ideas. Instead of going to the city to make his fortune, here was a country boy whoâd made his fortune by bringing the city out to the farm. The precepts heâd learned out of McGuffeyâs Reader, his motherâs prejudices and preconceptions, he had preserved clean and unworn as freshprinted bills in the safe in a bank.
He wanted people to know about his ideas, so he bought the
Dearborn Independent
and started a campaign against cigarette-smoking.
When war broke out in Europe, he had ideas about that too. (Suspicion of armymen and soldiering were part of the midwest farm
tradition, like thrift, stickativeness, temperance and sharp practice in money matters.) Any intelligent American mechanic could see that if the Europeans hadnât been a lot of ignorant underpaid foreigners who drank, smoked, were loose about women and wasteful in their methods of production, the war could never have happened.
When Rosika Schwimmer broke through the stockade of secretaries and servicemen who surrounded Henry Ford and suggested to him that he could stop the war,
he said sure theyâd hire a ship and go over and get the boys out of the trenches by Christmas.
Â
He hired a steamboat, the
Oscar II
, and filled it up with pacifists and socialworkers,
to go over to explain to the princelings of Europe
that what they were doing was vicious and silly.
It wasnât his fault that Poor Richardâs commonsense no longer rules the world and that most of the pacifists were nuts,
goofy with headlines.
When William Jennings Bryan went over to Hoboken to see him off, somebody handed William Jennings Bryan a squirrel in a cage; William Jennings Bryan made a speech with the squirrel under his arm. Henry Ford threw American Beauty roses to the crowd. The band played
I Didnât Raise My Boy to Be a Soldier.
Practical jokers let loose more squirrels. An eloping couple was married by a platoon of ministers in the saloon, and Mr. Zero, the flophouse humanitarian, who reached the dock too late to sail,
dove into the North River and swam after the boat.
The
Oscar II
was described as a floating Chautauqua; Henry Ford said it felt like a middlewestern village, but by the time they reached Christiansand in Norway, the reporters had kidded him so that he had gotten cold feet and gone to bed. The world was too crazy outside of Wayne County, Michigan. Mrs. Ford and the management sent an Episcopal dean after him who brought him home under wraps,
and the pacifists had to speechify without him.
Â
Two years later Fordâs was manufacturing munitions, Eagle boats; Henry Ford was planning oneman tanks, and oneman subma
rines like the one tried out in the
such an enormous crowd waited outside the Highland Park plant
all through the zero January night
that there was a riot when the gates were opened; cops broke heads, jobhunters threw bricks; property, Henry Fordâs own property, was destroyed. The company dicks had to turn on the firehose to beat back the crowd.
Â
The American Plan; automotive prosperity seeping down from above; it turned out there were strings to it.
But that five dollars a day
paid to good, clean American workmen
who didnât drink or smoke cigarettes or read or think,
and who didnât commit adultery
and whose wives didnât take in boarders,
made America once more the Yukon of the sweated workers of the world;
made all the tin lizzies and the automotive age, and incidentally,
made Henry Ford the automobileer, the admirer of Edison, the birdlover,
the great American of his time.
Â
But Henry Ford had ideas about other things besides assemblylines and the livinghabits of his employees. He was full of ideas. Instead of going to the city to make his fortune, here was a country boy whoâd made his fortune by bringing the city out to the farm. The precepts heâd learned out of McGuffeyâs Reader, his motherâs prejudices and preconceptions, he had preserved clean and unworn as freshprinted bills in the safe in a bank.
He wanted people to know about his ideas, so he bought the
Dearborn Independent
and started a campaign against cigarette-smoking.
When war broke out in Europe, he had ideas about that too. (Suspicion of armymen and soldiering were part of the midwest farm
tradition, like thrift, stickativeness, temperance and sharp practice in money matters.) Any intelligent American mechanic could see that if the Europeans hadnât been a lot of ignorant underpaid foreigners who drank, smoked, were loose about women and wasteful in their methods of production, the war could never have happened.
When Rosika Schwimmer broke through the stockade of secretaries and servicemen who surrounded Henry Ford and suggested to him that he could stop the war,
he said sure theyâd hire a ship and go over and get the boys out of the trenches by Christmas.
Â
He hired a steamboat, the
Oscar II
, and filled it up with pacifists and socialworkers,
to go over to explain to the princelings of Europe
that what they were doing was vicious and silly.
It wasnât his fault that Poor Richardâs commonsense no longer rules the world and that most of the pacifists were nuts,
goofy with headlines.
When William Jennings Bryan went over to Hoboken to see him off, somebody handed William Jennings Bryan a squirrel in a cage; William Jennings Bryan made a speech with the squirrel under his arm. Henry Ford threw American Beauty roses to the crowd. The band played
I Didnât Raise My Boy to Be a Soldier.
Practical jokers let loose more squirrels. An eloping couple was married by a platoon of ministers in the saloon, and Mr. Zero, the flophouse humanitarian, who reached the dock too late to sail,
dove into the North River and swam after the boat.
The
Oscar II
was described as a floating Chautauqua; Henry Ford said it felt like a middlewestern village, but by the time they reached Christiansand in Norway, the reporters had kidded him so that he had gotten cold feet and gone to bed. The world was too crazy outside of Wayne County, Michigan. Mrs. Ford and the management sent an Episcopal dean after him who brought him home under wraps,
and the pacifists had to speechify without him.
Â
Two years later Fordâs was manufacturing munitions, Eagle boats; Henry Ford was planning oneman tanks, and oneman subma
rines like the one tried out in the
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