Read Online Fordlandia by Greg Grandin - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Greg Grandin
Tags: United States, General, History, Biography & Autobiography, 20th Century, South America, Latin America, Political Science, Business & Economics, Business, Brazil, Industries, Corporate & Business History, Fordlândia (Brazil), Automobile Industry, Ford, Rubber plantations - Brazil - Fordlandia - History - 20th century, Fordlandia, Fordlandia (Brazil) - History, Rubber plantations, Planned communities - Brazil - History - 20th century, Planned communities, Brazil - Civilization - American influences - History - 20th century, Henry - Political and social views
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United States he would have undoubtedly considered black:
Most of the people are white people. They are as white as we are. They are not colored up. Once in while you would run across a fellow and you could see he was smeared up with some other nationality. I wouldn’t say it was Irish, or English, or Scotch or Dutch. I don’t know what it was, but he’d have a different color on him. You couldn’t tell. There was a color there. He wasn’t a smokey or a white face. Them are the best workers. The rest of the 3,300 people were all the same, all white generally, they are all white, sunburned or tanned.
Nor were the Ford men seduced into thinking about the natural wonders of the Amazon in existential terms as markers of evil or human progress—as were so many travel writers. For Theodore Roosevelt, who valued the rough frontier or jungle life as character building, the Brazilian rain forest was simultaneously empty of the moral meaning created by civilization’s advance and a cure for its corruption. But the men Ford sent down to build Fordlandia, and the women who went with them, largely avoided such musings. They did occasionally make mention of the tropical flora and fauna, yet often in the most prosaic way, commenting on the size of the bugs or the relentlessness of the heat and rain, and usually in mundane comparison with what they knew back in the States. Two decades after Constance Perini returned home, what still impressed her the most were the “black ants with claws just like lobsters” and the “largest flying cockroaches I’ve ever seen”—or, she said, “at least they looked like cockroaches.” 3
Charged with transforming the jungle into a plantation, company managers were of course concerned with the Amazon’s natural dimensions. They had to consider many variables—quality of the soil and level of the land, irrigation, potential for hydropower, density of mosquitoes—when choosing where to plant rubber, where to build the workers’ settlement and town center, and where to place the factory and dock. Dearborn sent a steady stream of questions to determine what equipment to ship: “What is the general tenacity of attachment of vines to trees and can they be readily pulled away from trees with heavy tractors or with a Fordson tractor?” “Is nature of soil such that trees will cling tightly to soil and carry a large portion of soil with roots if pulled up with tractors, or is soil loose and free enough to allow trees to be pulled out without leaving large holes which will require backfilling?” “What percentage of trees will be suitable for logging?” “What would be the cost of logging over 1000 board feet using native hand labor without machinery?” “Ascertain sources, quality and quantity of stone, gravel and sand for concrete. Crushing strength and chemical composition of clean sharp sand, gravel, and limestone should be determined.” But the managers answered these questions with an unimpressed prose, unlike the kind of florid verse that the Amazon usually provoked. 4
The jungle tended to produce not apocalyptic reflections on man’s place in the universe but rather a wistful homesickness, a constant comparison of the Amazon with Michigan. Mulrooney got a “big kick” when, upon his return to Michigan, his friends would say to him, “Oh, gee, Mulrooney, it must have been a wonderful place to fish and hunt, all woods.” “Yep, fine place,” he told them, “you couldn’t get out in the woods to hunt. If you caught a fish, it wasn’t any good. They were just a bunch of grease. Give me the fish in Michigan!” Whether Ford managers, engineers, and sawyers may have thought the jungle a gothic hell or a window on to the consuming indifference of the primeval world to the hurriedness of man, they mostly kept it to themselves. When they looked up and saw vultures, as O. Z. Ide did upon arriving in Belém for the first time, they thought of Detroit pigeons.
IF JOHANSEN AND
Most of the people are white people. They are as white as we are. They are not colored up. Once in while you would run across a fellow and you could see he was smeared up with some other nationality. I wouldn’t say it was Irish, or English, or Scotch or Dutch. I don’t know what it was, but he’d have a different color on him. You couldn’t tell. There was a color there. He wasn’t a smokey or a white face. Them are the best workers. The rest of the 3,300 people were all the same, all white generally, they are all white, sunburned or tanned.
Nor were the Ford men seduced into thinking about the natural wonders of the Amazon in existential terms as markers of evil or human progress—as were so many travel writers. For Theodore Roosevelt, who valued the rough frontier or jungle life as character building, the Brazilian rain forest was simultaneously empty of the moral meaning created by civilization’s advance and a cure for its corruption. But the men Ford sent down to build Fordlandia, and the women who went with them, largely avoided such musings. They did occasionally make mention of the tropical flora and fauna, yet often in the most prosaic way, commenting on the size of the bugs or the relentlessness of the heat and rain, and usually in mundane comparison with what they knew back in the States. Two decades after Constance Perini returned home, what still impressed her the most were the “black ants with claws just like lobsters” and the “largest flying cockroaches I’ve ever seen”—or, she said, “at least they looked like cockroaches.” 3
Charged with transforming the jungle into a plantation, company managers were of course concerned with the Amazon’s natural dimensions. They had to consider many variables—quality of the soil and level of the land, irrigation, potential for hydropower, density of mosquitoes—when choosing where to plant rubber, where to build the workers’ settlement and town center, and where to place the factory and dock. Dearborn sent a steady stream of questions to determine what equipment to ship: “What is the general tenacity of attachment of vines to trees and can they be readily pulled away from trees with heavy tractors or with a Fordson tractor?” “Is nature of soil such that trees will cling tightly to soil and carry a large portion of soil with roots if pulled up with tractors, or is soil loose and free enough to allow trees to be pulled out without leaving large holes which will require backfilling?” “What percentage of trees will be suitable for logging?” “What would be the cost of logging over 1000 board feet using native hand labor without machinery?” “Ascertain sources, quality and quantity of stone, gravel and sand for concrete. Crushing strength and chemical composition of clean sharp sand, gravel, and limestone should be determined.” But the managers answered these questions with an unimpressed prose, unlike the kind of florid verse that the Amazon usually provoked. 4
The jungle tended to produce not apocalyptic reflections on man’s place in the universe but rather a wistful homesickness, a constant comparison of the Amazon with Michigan. Mulrooney got a “big kick” when, upon his return to Michigan, his friends would say to him, “Oh, gee, Mulrooney, it must have been a wonderful place to fish and hunt, all woods.” “Yep, fine place,” he told them, “you couldn’t get out in the woods to hunt. If you caught a fish, it wasn’t any good. They were just a bunch of grease. Give me the fish in Michigan!” Whether Ford managers, engineers, and sawyers may have thought the jungle a gothic hell or a window on to the consuming indifference of the primeval world to the hurriedness of man, they mostly kept it to themselves. When they looked up and saw vultures, as O. Z. Ide did upon arriving in Belém for the first time, they thought of Detroit pigeons.
IF JOHANSEN AND
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