The Vagabonds

by Jeff Guinn

  Edison Day had been acclaimed the highlight of San Francisco’s Exposition, so San Diego was determined to top it with their own precious few hours with him. Edison and Ford were quickly disabused of any hope for some brief private time at their hotel. As soon as word of their arrival reached the Exposition, staff rushed to greet them and hustle them off. Every moment of their San Diego Edison Day was designed to outshine San Francisco. There, Edison arrived in a fine car, nice enough but not nearly as memorable as his fair entrance in San Diego. The entire Edison-Ford party of cars was grandly escorted in by a mounted squadron of the First United States Cavalry. The clip-clop of horses’ hooves was easily drowned out by the cheering crowd. Edison, looking slightly stunned, found himself greeted by three lovely young women, each of whom “presented great bunches of flowers into his hands,” according to the next day’s San Diego Union. The inventor was described as “smiling his thanks.”

  As Ford discreetly moved to one side, Edison was led to a stage crowned by a massive flower canopy. Dignitaries greeting them there included the Exposition president and San Diego mayor Edwin M. Capps. Edison stood soaking in the cheers, and that was only the beginning of the reception. A massive line of children, more than ten thousand in all, filed past. Each child had a flower; every blossom was tossed at Edison until, the next day’s paper reported, he was “nearly buried from view . . . [the flowers] permeated the air with their fragrance.” Edison, as usual, declined to make a speech, though he was strongly urged by Exposition officials to do so—that would really show up San Francisco. Finally, Edison offered a brief comment: “I’m solid for children.” He refused to say anything else, but those four words were enough. The crowd roared, and adults began lobbing full bouquets of flowers at Edison. An estimated four thousand bouquets had been brought onto the grounds for that purpose, and they formed a tottering pile atop the heaps of individual blooms tossed by the children. Then the throng pressed forward; everyone was determined to have a good, close look at the honoree. Many snapped photographs. Edison responded “with smiles and bows” until “the Kodak fiends [were] satisfied,” according to the newspapers, which collectively concluded that there had never been such a greeting in city history.

  The cavalry opened a passage for Edison and Ford to walk to a nearby exhibition building where “a tea and reception” awaited them. Only a narrow way could be wedged through the throng. They’d seen Edison, heard a few words from him, thrown flowers at him—now they wanted to touch him. But he kept moving, and the crowd turned its attention to the famous man at his side. They chanted, “Ford, Ford,” and “the modest owner of the biggest automobile factory in the world was forced to step into the crowd.” He declined demands for a speech, but as Mayor Capps looked on, Ford began shaking hands and chatting with some of the crowd. One of the first was a woman familiar with Ford’s antiwar statements, who told him, “God bless you for what you have said.”

  No laudatory comment could have pleased Ford more. Edison was obviously ready to keep walking to the relative quiet of the reception, but he paused when Ford did, giving reporters a chance to cluster around the famous duo and begin shouting questions. Edison put them off, saying, “I always meet the newspaper boys and talk to [you] on the last day of my visit [to] a city. Not today. Tomorrow, perhaps,” a clever misstatement since he was only obligated to the Exposition and San Diego for a few more hours. The reporters insisted he at least describe his reaction to the flowery reception, so Edison “swept his arm over the vast assemblage and looked his appreciation, apparently preferring to express it in this manner rather than in words.” Then Edison turned and went in to the reception.

  Ford, though, had plenty of words. When the reporters asked him to expand on antiwar comments he’d made in San Francisco—had he really promised to spend $10 million to oppose preparedness?—Ford was pleased to respond: “I did not say that. . . . I did say, however, that I would give $1 million in aid in the fight against preparedness, and I mean to fight it with all the power I can command. I mean literally that I will put all I have into a fight against it. I have been organizing for some time and the campaign will be systematically conducted. Money makes war. Nations have to make money to make war. It is our business to keep money away from them.”

  As had Edison, Ford swept an arm toward the crowd. “War brings these people nothing but crepe, hardship, starvation and taxes. I don’t believe in rallying around the flag.” He envisioned America entering the war, and Germany invading the U.S. in response: “How much . . . could you protect, even though for the next few years we devoted ourselves to building a navy, erecting forts, increasing the army? A foreign foe could land almost at will on our shoreline on either the Atlantic or Pacific. We couldn’t begin to acquire enough equipment to protect our coasts. I would rather be with no protection at all.”

  The press frantically scribbled in their notebooks. City officials envisioned the next day’s papers featuring front-page stories about Ford’s antiwar diatribe rather than Edison’s glorious reception. Mayor Capps was especially incensed. Within earshot of a reporter for the San Diego Sun, Capps hissed to Ford, “You may know all about a flivver car, but what do you know about war?” The newspaper reported the comment, but not Ford’s reaction. Certain of his beliefs, he may simply have ignored Capps. Compared to vast national interest and respect for anything Henry Ford thought or had to say, what difference did quibbling from a mere mayor make? Ford continued on to the reception, and afterward he and Edison did not have the opportunity to make a grand tour of Exposition grounds because, as the newspapers explained, “the duration of the public reception . . . and the [private one] that followed it had taken more time than had been anticipated.”

  That night, Firestone hosted a dinner for the traveling party at an elegant hotel, arranging entertainment by a Hawaiian band and dancers whose performance Ford enjoyed so much that he later hired them to perform back in Michigan. The next day, the group dispersed. Firestone and Ford stayed on in California a little longer, while Edison was anxious to return to his laboratory in New Jersey and took the first train east.

  * * *

  Before Edison left, he had a suggestion. The best part of the California trip had been the drive from Los Angeles to San Diego, free from any demands but their own whims. While Edison didn’t enjoy public appearances, he did savor time spent with friends away from the crushing daily concerns at work. Surely Ford and Firestone felt the same. Why not embark on future car trips, picking a general rural area and route and then going along as they pleased? They could camp—perhaps John Burroughs would come along and point out all sorts of interesting plant life and birds, as had been the plan in 1914 during the aborted visit to the Everglades? Ford was immediately in favor. As he had during his earlier New England car and camping trip with Burroughs, he would supply tents and other camping equipment. Firestone would handle daily chores like food purchases and locating suitable nightly camping spots. If wives were consulted, they declined involvement. Mina Edison and Clara Ford probably remembered the Florida fiasco with less fondness than did their husbands. This would particularly have suited Edison—he always preferred the company of congenial men rather than women, who in his experience too often expected to be fussed over.

  And besides recreation, the trips would suit business purposes, too. The three men were pragmatic enough to realize that they couldn’t go anywhere, particularly as a group, without attracting constant notice. Their California adventures had just proven that newspapers couldn’t get enough of Edison’s and Ford’s adventures. Everywhere else in the country, reporters would surely vie for an opportunity to write about local visits, and thanks to the recent development of wire services, their stories would appear in newspapers all over the U.S.—publications in cities as geographically disparate as Aberdeen, Washington; Austin, Texas; and Charlotte, North Carolina had just carried wire stories about Edison’s and Ford’s escapades in San Francisco and San Diego. But on these trips the coverage would be on the
ir terms, going where and when they liked, not bound by commitments to fairs and avoiding the hubbub of major cities altogether.

  Then or not long after, Edison and Ford and Firestone gave themselves a nickname: They would be “the Vagabonds,” annually joining much of the rest of America in exploring the country by car, doing it perhaps in more cosseted fashion (they weren’t about to set up their own tents or cook simple meals over sputtering campfires) but still, in spirit if not entirely in practice, joining with their countrymen’s burgeoning enthusiasm for gypsying in automobiles. What better way for such rich, famous men to demonstrate their kinship with ordinary Americans? We are really just like you. They weren’t venal; there was no intention of tricking anyone. Their main goal was to have a good time. But few business magnates in America had a shrewder understanding of marketing than Edison, Ford, and Firestone. If rank-and-file consumers liked what they saw and read about, as they surely would, then sales of cars and light bulbs and phonographs and tires would directly benefit, too. It seemed to be a plan without flaw.

  Chapter Three

  * * *

  1916

  Nineteen fifteen ended badly for Henry Ford.

  Following his trip to the California expositions with Thomas Edison, Ford returned home to Michigan even more determined to pull America back from the brink of what he believed to be a senseless war. In November, he agreed to a visit from Rosika Schwimmer, a Hungarian activist whose antiwar beliefs rivaled those of the automaker for moral fervor. Under any other circumstances, Schwimmer would have been an unlikely Ford ally. She was a foreigner, and one of Europe’s best-known and outspoken suffragists. (It would take until 1920, when three-quarters of the states ratified the Nineteenth Amendment, before American women gained voting rights.) Ford wasn’t against women’s rights. He just didn’t think much about them. It showed in the factory salaries he paid. Women employed in Ford factories, though they received across-the-board raises in 1914, didn’t qualify for the full $5 workday. That was reserved for male employees.

  But Schwimmer quickly earned Ford’s respect. In April 1915 at the International Congress of Women at The Hague, she’d helped craft a resolution calling for the European war combatants to lay down their weapons and engage in mediation with neutral nations. When Ford began making his widely reported promise to spend his entire fortune if necessary keeping America out of the conflict, Schwimmer, alert to the potential of unparalleled financial support, pressed for a meeting. When she succeeded, her persuasiveness was such that crusty Henry Ford, mistrustful of almost everyone, was spellbound. What was immediately needed, Schwimmer explained, was a great peace commission composed of America’s best and brightest, which, with the blessings of the Wilson administration, would travel to Scandinavia and Europe, convene conferences with leaders there, and by sheer brilliance combined with common sense convince everyone to stop shooting and reason through their differences instead. Schwimmer said she had documents from European war leaders indicating their willingness to negotiate if only some responsible party could bring them to the bargaining table, and she showed some to Ford. There was subsequent speculation by critics of Schwimmer that these were forgeries, but they looked authentic enough to convince Ford.

  Soon afterward, it was announced that Ford would charter a vessel, temporarily rename it the “Peace Ship,” fill it with America’s most prominent leaders, and sail to Europe to mediate the war there into an immediate standstill. Despite President Wilson’s refusal to endorse the Ford-Schwimmer plan as an official mediation effort by the American government (a disappointed Ford called Wilson “a small man”), the carmaker, urged on by Schwimmer, moved forward. Invitations to participate were sent out to every state’s governor and virtually every well-known clergyman, author, and educator in the nation. Ford, never comfortable speaking at formal public gatherings, unwisely predicted in a New York press conference that “We’re going to try to get the boys out of the trenches before Christmas.” Through Schwimmer and her overseas contacts, initial Peace Ship meetings were scheduled in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, with the aim of winning over those neutral nations to the mediation cause. The ship’s sailing date was announced as December 4.

  Some newspaper editorials were mildly supportive, but more were skeptical. The New York Tribune’s snarky headline read, “GREAT WAR ENDS CHRISTMAS DAY: FORD TO STOP IT.” The Hartford Courant claimed, “Henry Ford’s latest performance is getting abundant criticism and seems entitled to all it gets.” There were suggestions that Ford was only in it for publicity. Evangelist Billy Sunday compared Ford to circus impresario P. T. Barnum, who reportedly said that there was a sucker born every minute. These criticisms irked Ford—how could anybody misconstrue his motives when he was not only so obviously right, but sincere? He was hurt even more by the flood of polite refusals from almost everyone invited to participate. These included men he considered close friends. John Burroughs tried explaining in a warm but straightforward note:

  I have such affection for you and admiration for your life and work that I hesitate to speak any discouraging word about any worthy scheme you may undertake. God knows we all want peace—a real enduring peace and not a mere truce . . . to stop the war now would be like stopping a surgical operation before it is finished. The malignant tumor of German militarism must be cut out and destroyed before the world can have a permanent peace.

  Burroughs and Edison came to the dock to see Ford and the Peace Ship off, but both turned down his last-minute entreaties to change their minds and join him. Ford even ignored his wife, Clara’s, pleas to her husband to get off the boat—she felt certain that he faced imminent humiliation. Ford wouldn’t be dissuaded—he knew that he was right. A band played “I Didn’t Raise My Boy to Be a Soldier” and the Peace Ship sailed, with an undistinguished mishmash of mostly anonymous antiwar activists aboard, as well as reporters from several dozen major papers, all eager to send home colorful stories describing whatever happened next.

  They didn’t have to wait long. Ford’s peace delegates soon began squabbling among themselves. The great man himself caught the flu and spent most of the Atlantic voyage shut up in his stateroom. In Ford’s absence, Rosika Schwimmer emerged as the Peace Ship spokesperson. She immediately took offense at what she considered disrespectful coverage and became openly antagonistic toward the journalists. An anticipated warm, widespread reception in Norway turned out to be tepid and paltry. Within days, still claiming to be indisposed, Ford slipped away and sailed home. Peace Ship efforts went on without him, and there was some limited success—various talks and resolutions came out of Scandinavia for another year, though nothing of any substantial nature was accomplished. Ford complained that the real problem in Europe was that “citizens don’t take enough interest in the government.” Though Ford’s pride was hurt, and his considerable fortune slightly dented—it was estimated that Peace Ship expenses, all borne by Ford, totaled just under $500,000—if anything his reputation among rank-and-file U.S. citizens rose even higher. Most of the country, particularly the middle-American working class, still wanted the country to stay out of war if at all possible. Ford was saying what they believed. When big-city newspapers ridiculed him for it, they were mocking Middle America, too.

  * * *

  Ford himself was entirely unbowed. The Peace Ship, to his mind, wasn’t entirely a failure—it had gotten people talking about peace, and that was the point. Despite their refusal to join him, Ford didn’t lose affection for Edison and Burroughs; soon after New Year’s he purchased an estate adjacent to Edison’s in Fort Myers. Plans proceeded for a full-fledged Vagabonds auto trip sometime later in the year, summer or early fall. Ford also followed through on his annual tradition of sending Edison a new car; a mixup resulted in the dealer billing the inventor, who obligingly paid $482.75. Ford was incensed; the dealer not only had to return the check to Edison, he had to meekly request a receipt so Ford could be certain that Edison was reimbursed.

  But friendship went only so far. In Mar
ch 1916 Ford was nettled when Edison offhandedly told a reporter he expected to soon convert the automaker “to military preparedness.” Ford’s antiwar sentiments were strong enough to risk offending his hero. In a lengthy interview with the Detroit News, Ford recalled that “Mr. Edison once told me that it was the greatest joy of his life to think that he had been working for years making things that would help people to be happy, but in all that time he had never turned his hand to the construction of anything designed to kill men. I hope he hasn’t forgotten that.” Ford suggested that Edison, still vacationing in Fort Myers but permanently residing and working in New Jersey, was too influenced by New York papers and their “scare bombs. . . . I hope the Florida fishing is fine and the weather is good, so that the jingo fog may clear away from the finest brain in the world.” The article was accompanied by a photo of Ford on a tractor. He never missed an opportunity to suggest it was wiser for nations to build such implements of peace rather than weapons of war.