He was a pioneer of American automotive engineering. He revolutionized the way
people got from point A to point B. He was also a massive fan of union busting,
Nazi Germany, and… Square dancing? Fasten your seatbelts. We're slamming on the gas
and driving into the ugly truth about Henry Ford.
Henry Ford was an American industrialist born on July 30, 1863. He spent the earlier part of his
career repairing and constructing engines when working for a division of Edison Electric. In
1903, he founded Ford Motor Company, his own automobile manufacturing company. In 1908,
Ford introduced the Model T automobile, the first affordable car of its kind.
With the introduction of the Model T, cars became accessible to the middle
class. The low price of the vehicle was due to Ford's efficient manufacturing,
involving production on an assembly line rather than individual crafting by hand. Cars were no
longer a luxury for the extremely wealthy but an item that the average family could purchase.
The solid black car was simple and easy to drive, with the steering wheel on the left and
a unique foot-operated transmission. It quickly became the iconic image of the American car,
available in nearly every city in North America. These nation-shaping
vehicles were always black. As Ford wrote in his autobiography,
"Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants, so long as it is black."
By 1918, half of all the cars in the United States were those unmistakable black Model Ts.
However, Henry Ford had a lot more to him than advancements in the world of
transportation and manufacturing. He had some deeply pernicious and damaging beliefs,
beliefs he was not content to keep to himself. Like many people in America
in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Ford was incredibly racist. One particular
target of his hate and paranoia was the Jewish community, and he was determined
to spread his antisemitic views and conspiracy theories to as wide of an audience as possible.
In 1918, he purchased the Dearborn Independent, a struggling newspaper. In 1920, he began publishing
his own weekly series, "The International Jew: The World's Problem." Classy stuff, Henry. This
series was based on the debunked antisemitic hoax "The Protocol of the Elders of Zion," a
document that claimed to reveal a global Jewish conspiracy for power and money. It was a lie,
but the perfect lie to stoke the flames of hatred and justify Ford's biases. He published this
series for years, distributing copies of the paper in Ford car dealerships all around the country.
Henry Ford attributed a variety of things that he personally disliked to the influence of,
you guessed it, Jewish people. One of these was a popular genre of music that
was beginning to take the United States by storm: Jazz. In 1921,
in the third volume of his series "The International Jew," Ford wrote:
“Many people have wondered whence come the waves upon waves of musical slush that invade
decent homes and set the young people of this generation imitating the drivel of
morons. Popular music is a Jewish monopoly. Jazz is a Jewish creation. The mush, slush,
the sly suggestion, the abandoned sensuousness of sliding notes, are of Jewish origin.”
This is not only deeply antisemitic, it isn't true. But that didn't matter to Ford. He believed
that jazz was a corrupting force, threatening the innocence of Americans and encouraging them
to partake in the use of tobacco, alcohol, and other "sinful" behavior. But Henry Ford had a
plan to counter the popularity of Jazz in America and steer the population in the white direction-
ahem, the "right" direction. The answer, he believed, was getting Americans interested in
traditional forms of dance again, such as waltzes, quadrilles, and… Square dancing.
Ford paid for dance instructors to come to his town and teach the steps to these dances
and hired orchestras to play square dancing music. In 1926, he published an instruction
manual titled “Good Morning: After a Sleep of Twenty-Five Years, Old-Fashioned Dancing is
Being Revived by Mr. and Mrs. Henry Ford.” He also funded fiddling contests and radio shows
that promoted this "old-time dancing music," required his employees to attend square dances
that he threw, and created liquor-free square dancing clubs around the country.
By the way, in spite of Ford's association between square dancing and a traditional,
white version of American life, a lot of square dancing traditions,
such as the practice of calling out dance moves to the crowd during a square dance, originated
in black communities. But again, the truth about these things didn't matter much to Ford.
He kept at it with his anti-jazz campaign, campaigning alongside his wife and square
dancing instructor Benjamin Lovett to convince schools to incorporate square
dancing into the physical education curriculum. This would, he claimed,
teach children "social training, courtesy, good citizenship, along with rhythm." By 1928,
nearly half the schools in America were teaching square dancing to their students.
Thankfully, Ford didn't succeed in wiping out jazz. But he did kickstart a movement,
and square dancing persisted as a part of the culture and a fixture in many American
schools for decades after him. That's right. If you grew up in the American school system
with square dancing as part of your gym class curriculum, you probably have Henry Ford to blame.
But Henry Ford's antisemitism was a lot more serious than an obsession
with square dancing. Henry Ford's work as a titan of industry and
vocal anti-Semite attracted him to one particularly infamous fan: Adolf Hitler.
In 1922, copies of "The International Jew" were translated into German and quickly found an
audience among those looking for confirmation of their antisemitic sentiments. Ford was actually
the only American mentioned by name in Hitler's 1925 manifesto, Mein Kampf. He referred to Ford
as a "great man" who was holding out against the Jewish influence over American labor. Thomas
Weber, author of "Becoming Hitler: The Making of a Nazi," attributes Hitler's exposure to
Ford's writing to his journey further down the rabbit hole of "conspiratorial anti-Semitism."
Ford's name was even brought up at the Nuremberg trials. Baldur von Schirach, a former leader of
the National Socialist German Students League and prominent Nazi, said at his 1946 trial that “The
decisive antisemitic book which I read at that time and the book which influenced my comrades…was
Henry Ford’s book, The International Jew." He added, "In those days, this book made such a deep
impression on my friends and myself because we saw in Henry Ford, the representative of success.
In the poverty-stricken and wretched Germany of the time, youth looked toward America, and apart
from the great benefactor, Herbert Hoover, it was Henry Ford who, to us, represented America.”
Ford didn't do much to beat the Nazi sympathizer allegation, either. In the summer of 1936,
Henry Ford accepted a 75th birthday present from Hitler in the form of the Grand Cross
of the Supreme Order of the German Eagle, the highest Nazi regime award given to foreigners.
One of the more positive things that Henry Ford is known for is the dramatic wage increase given
to factory workers in 1914. In January of that year, Ford announced that the company would be
doubling employee wages to 5 dollars a day. This was intended to bring stability to the workforce
and lower turnover rates caused by constant quitting. It was an impressive wage for the time,
but it came with strings attached. The workers' pay actually remained the same,
around 2.50 a day, and the extra money was considered a bonus that they would have to earn.
How? Why, by passing an inspection by the company's Sociological Department, of course!
If the workers committed such egregious sins as having unclean homes, drinking or gambling habits,
or wives that worked outside of the home? Well, that could kiss that bonus goodbye.
Other lifestyle choices that could jeopardize the bonus included taking in boarders at their
house, or neglecting to contribute to a savings account. You might be thinking,
"That sounds like a really inappropriate breach of privacy and a violation of employee
boundaries," and you'd be right! Welcome to the reality of life as an employee of Henry Ford.
Ford didn't stop his overstepping with the inspections. He established a school to
teach immigrant Ford workers English, which doesn't sound so bad at first,
except that it was mandatory. Workers who failed or even hesitated to attend were
laid off. Those who did attend were forced to participate in a graduation ceremony where
they would dress in a stereotypical costume of their homeland's culture,
then walk behind the stage and change into a suit and tie, emerging as a homogenized "American."
Another aspect of Ford's management style that earned him a good reputation was his willingness
to pay the same wages to his black and white employees. While this might have come across
as progressive for the time, considering the prominence of Jim Crow laws and segregation,
it wasn't out of a belief in equality. He hired black and white workers for different jobs,
keeping black employees working in the foundry and forge, the most dangerous places to work.
They were also prevented from rising through the ranks to executive levels. He was able to garner
a good reputation while simultaneously regarding black workers as inferior and giving them much
more difficult jobs, which paid the same wage as the positions occupied by their white colleagues.
Henry Ford hated and feared a lot of things. Jazz, racial and ethnic minorities, immigrants.
But one of the things he hated more fervently than anything else was unions and anything he
saw as union organizing. When the Great Depression hit, life got a whole lot harder for the average
American worker, and that Union activity that Ford hated so much started to get a lot more popular.
More than half of the workers in the auto industry had been laid off,
and 125,000 Detroit families were left with no financial help. What did Ford think about
the Great Depression? He called it a good thing, generally speaking.
"Let them fail," he was reported to say, "Let everybody fail! I made my fortune when I had
nothing to start with, by myself and my own ideas. Let other people do the same."
This may come as a shock, but the impoverished people of Detroit didn't just immediately pull
themselves up by their bootstraps. Two years after the Depression hit,
four Detroiters were dying of hunger every day. There was no unemployment compensation,
and two-thirds of Ford's employees had been laid off. Henry Ford,
incredibly wealthy as he was, weighed in with some helpful advice: just work harder!
In 1932, unemployed auto workers led a hunger march to the Ford River Rouge factory. They
had fourteen demands: jobs for the laid-off Ford workers, payment of 50 percent of wages,
seven-hour days without pay reduction, slowing down of the deadly speedup at the factories,
two fifteen-minute breaks a day, no discrimination against black workers, welfare, medical care, free
medical aid in Ford hospital for the unemployed workers and their families, coal for the winter,
the abolition of the Service Men (more on that later), pay up of fifty dollars for winter relief,
wages for part-time workers, abolition of the graft system of hiring, and the right to organize.
Ford responded in an extremely reasonable and measured way.
Wait, sorry, that's not right.
He actually deployed the Ford Service Department. Who were they? Just his private police force,
a completely normal thing to have. These Service Men included Norman Selby, a former
professional boxer who had served twenty years for murder; Joseph "Legs" Laman, a serial kidnapper;
Joe Adonis, an infamous mobster; Chester LaMare, known as the "Al Capone of Detroit," and other
unsavory characters. The Service Men were so well-known for their intimidation of workers
that they coined a term for the anxiety-induced ailment they caused, "the Ford stomach."
The hunger march began in Dearborn, Michigan. It was going peacefully until Henry Ford's cousin,
who just so happened to be the Mayor of Detroit, sent in riot and military police to attack
marchers with tear gas at the city's border. One protester was shot in the fray, and the group
dispersed. But they came back together in front of the Ford complex, ready to continue the march.
When they reached the entrance, however, Ford ordered the Service Men to open fire
at the protestors. Three protestors were killed, and 22 others were injured. The
protestors were preparing to call the whole thing off and return home when Harry Bennett,
the leader of the Service Men, emerged from a car with two others, opening fire on the protestors.
Protestors responded by throwing rocks at Bennett, but he and the two men with him
killed another protestor and injured several more. Forty-eight workers were arrested on the
scene. Some of those brought into custody were injured and chained to their hospital beds.
An investigation was conducted by Prosecutor Harry S. Toy and a grand jury,
but the investigation concluded that there were "no legal grounds for indictments."
However, the battle between Ford and the organizing auto workers was not over yet.
On May 26, 1937, Walter Reuther of the United Automobile Workers Union arrived at the River
Rouge complex with a group of representatives from the Senate Committee on Civil Liberties,
clergymen, and women from UAW Local 174. The group carried leaflets reading "Unionism,
not Fordism," which they planned to hand out to Ford workers leaving the complex.
Reuther posed for some photographs snapped by Scotty Kilpatrick,
a Detroit News photographer, on top of the public overpass with the Ford Motor Company
sign in the background and prepared to spread the word about their cause.
Then, Henry Ford's right-hand man, Harry Benett, arrived on the scene,
accompanied by his officers. He ordered the Union organizers to disperse, but they refused,
insisting that they were not breaking any rules by being there. And all at once,
a fight broke out. Forty of Bennett's men charged the unionists, attacking them in spite of protests
from onlookers. Helpless to do much else, Kilpatrick and other photographers began
to document what they were seeing while nearby reporters took notes in an attempt to do the same.
Reuther was violently kicked, stomped, and thrown down two flights of stairs. Another one
of the union organizers, a 30-year-old man named Frankensteen, attempted to fight back against the
onslaught. In response, Bennett's men pulled his jacket over his head and beat him in what
he later described as "the worst licking I've ever taken." Union leaders were knocked down,
stood up, and knocked down all over again. Another leader was thrown off of the overpass,
falling 30 feet and breaking his back on the pavement below.
Some members of the Ford Service Department turned their attention to the witnesses present,
ripping notebooks out of reporters' hands, confiscating film from photographers,
and smashing cameras on the ground. One photographer was chased for five miles
until he was able to seek refuge in a police station. Scott Kilpatrick made it to his car
just in time to hide the negatives from his camera under the back seat.
Some of the Ford Service Department men cornered him and demanded to take the negatives,
and he gave them unexposed plates instead. As the story began to spread,
Harry Bennett issued a statement in an attempt to make the unionists look bad.
But the witnesses told a different story, and so did the pictures captured by Kilpatrick and
other photographers at the scene. These captured the violence, showing Ford security men beating
and grabbing UAW men and women. Reuther was caught on camera covered in blood, with a swollen skull,
and Frankensteen's face was cut, his shirt stained with blood. A picture is worth a thousand words,
and the message was clear: Ford's private police force was to blame for the escalation.
1937 wasn't a great year for Henry Ford's reputation when it came to labor practices.
The Ford Motor Company was called before the National Labor Relations Board that
same year to defend itself against charges that they were violating the 1935 Wagner Act,
which prohibited employers from interfering with workers' attempts to unionize. During
this hearing, workers testified that Ford employees suspected of being interested
in UAW would be removed from their posts and fired on the spot without explanation.
After the Battle of the Overpass, the hearing, and employee walkout protesting the unfair
firing of union members, Ford signed an agreement with UAW on June 20, 1941.
Speaking of Ford in the 1940s, would you believe that he was staunchly opposed to
the United States getting involved in World War II?
He was a leader of the America First Committee, which campaigned to keep America out of the
conflict. But that's not all! Up until the attack on Pearl Harbor, according to documents found in
the National Archives, Dearborn produced war materials for the Third Reich and selected a
man to run the German Ford subsidiary who had been a massive proponent of Hitler.
A US Army Report from 1945 says that German Ford was an "arsenal of Nazism" with the
consent of the Ford headquarters in Dearborn. Ford also cooperated
with the Nazis until at least August 1942 through its properties in Vichy, France.
According to a wartime report by the US Treasury Department, the Ford family encouraged Ford of
France executives to work with the German officials overseeing the Nazi occupation of
the area. Out of the 350,000 trucks used by the German army by 1942, one-third were Ford-made.
While Ford Motor was working with the Reich, the company was resistant to working with President
Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill with the production of war materials for the Allies.
In a 1940 letter from Heinrich Albert to Charles Sorenson, an executive in Dearborn,
Albert wrote, "The Dementi of Mr. Henry Ford concerning war orders for Great Britain has
greatly helped us." Of course, we all know how World War II ended up going,
but that doesn't take away from the enthusiasm with which Ford cooperated with the Nazis.
Henry Ford has a complex legacy. He was a bigot, an oppressive employer, and,
by all accounts, a pretty terrible person. He was also the father of the American automobile,
which revolutionized transportation forever. For better or for worse,
most of us wouldn't be getting around the way we do today if it weren't for Henry Ford.
Now check out “The Real Worst People in America.” Or watch this video instead!