The Vagabonds

by Jeff Guinn

  * * *

  The friendship between Edison and Ford was unaffected by the carmaker’s decision not to go. A few weeks after Edison declared for President Wilson in Saratoga, Ford followed suit with a Wilson endorsement, and, in his usual all-in way, committed his money, too. Ford’s key contribution was payment for pro-Wilson ads in newspapers all across California. Wilson won the state over Hughes by a razor-thin margin, and that gave the president a narrow national majority vote and electoral victory of 277–254 over his Republican opponent.

  Ford partially fulfilled his promise to arrange a Vagabonds winter trip. Edison and Firestone were otherwise occupied, but in February 1917 the carmaker took Burroughs on a boat trip to Cuba, where Ford explored various business interests while Burroughs sunned himself on deck. During the trip, Burroughs learned that his wife, Ursula, had died after a lingering illness. The two had been emotionally estranged for many years, and Burroughs did not leave Cuba and return to New York after hearing the news.

  * * *

  In March, America’s entry into the world war became virtually certain. British intelligence intercepted a telegram from the Germans to the Mexican government, offering Mexico the return of lands lost to America in the U.S.-Mexican war in return for a victorious Germany-Mexico military alliance. Soon afterward, German subs sank several American merchant ships. In early April, America joined the war. Many Americans who previously advocated neutrality became supportive. Prohibition, formerly despised by many, became a patriotic rallying point—drinking beer was now linked to the Germans.

  No one changed direction more than Henry Ford. He instantly announced that all his factories would focus on war-related manufacturing for the duration. This, to Ford, was not in any sense a contradiction. He opposed war, but he also considered himself a loyal American. At government request, the Ford Motor Company began assembling a variety of military products, from ambulances to small boats designed to hunt down and destroy submarines. Ford announced that everything would be made at cost; he’d accept no personal profit for his company’s contribution to the war effort.

  Edison devoted his full attention to the Navy advisory board that he had agreed to chair. The committee was especially tasked with inventing some effective means of countering the Germans’ strength on the seas. Edison mostly divided his time between southern Florida, where key naval installations were based, and Washington, D.C. He soon began submitting plans and inventions for the government’s consideration. To thwart enemy spies, none was made public.

  It took much of 1917 just for the American military to bolster its small, poorly trained and equipped ranks sufficiently to send forces overseas. But merely the knowledge that U.S. help was on the way boosted the Allies’ morale and set enemy leaders to considering how much currently gained territory might be retained in a negotiated peace. Meanwhile, a muddy, bloody virtual stalemate in Europe dragged on.

  Despite all the war-related responsibilities he and Edison assumed, Ford still wanted the Vagabonds to set out on another car trip. In August 1917, he began peppering Edison with requests for the inventor to pick some potential dates and routes. Edison put him off, citing various Navy-related experiments that were in progress and couldn’t be interrupted. Edison really was busy, but it’s also likely he wanted to remind Ford that he, too, could beg off a car trip. Ford wasn’t deterred, and finally Edison decided to make his point clearly.

  In early September, Ernest Liebold wrote on Ford’s behalf to W. H. Meadowcroft, Edison’s secretary, inquiring, “How does the matter of a camping trip stand with Mr. Edison at present? Has he completed the experiments which prevented him going on a trip two weeks ago?”

  Meadowcroft passed the letter on to his boss. Edison scrawled a long response across half of the page:

  Say I am at sea nearly all the time in a 200-ft. submarine chasing all around inland water . . . & have a large number of experiments still to finish—hope Ford gets a chance to come on yacht & help out, the experiments are very interesting. Edison

  Rather than restate Edison’s message in a typed letter, on September 14 Meadowcroft returned Liebold’s original letter with the inventor’s handwritten notation. Meadowcroft also added his own scribbled postscript:

  Dear Mr. Liebold: I send this just as it is. Please show Mr. Edison’s memo to Mr. Ford. If Mr. Ford will accept Mr. Edison’s invitation to go on the boat, I will give you the address. Yours sincerely, W. H. Meadowcroft.

  That ended the year’s Vagabonds-related correspondence. The press was informed that there would be no trip in 1917, due to Edison’s and Ford’s involvement with their war-related work.

  Chapter Four

  * * *

  1918

  In August 1918, Thomas Edison was ready for a vacation. The past twenty months had been among the most difficult of his life.

  Edison approached his Naval Advisory Board responsibilities with the same enthusiasm that marked his previous efforts as an inventor. He committed his time and his heart to creating devices that would enable America and its Allies to overcome the enemy at sea. At one point, he and his wife, Mina, lived on a boat anchored at New London, Connecticut, so he could experiment and confer on a daily basis with naval officials there. Work on personal projects at his laboratory in New Jersey was virtually abandoned.

  There sprang from his mind and floating workshop all sorts of potential equipment and weaponry, more than forty possibilities in all, each presented by Edison to the Navy with enthusiasm and the expectation that it would be accepted, manufactured, and put to effective use. The proposals ranged from a special anchor that would enable ships to turn quicker in efforts to dodge torpedoes to listening devices that would allow quicker detection of enemy submarines.

  None were implemented by the Navy. No specific reasons were offered; apparently none of his projects was studied further, let alone tested. It was hard not to take it personally—he was Thomas Edison after all. The insult was compounded when the Navy accepted proposals by other advisory board members. Edison decided the problem lay with a naval bureaucracy incapable of understanding the work he did on its behalf. After the war he wrote to the secretary of the navy that “when you are no longer Secretary I want to tell you a lot of things about the Navy that you are unaware of.” Under similar circumstances, Henry Ford would have gone public with his dissatisfaction, denouncing the Navy and probably suggesting that some element or other within the government actively plotted to block his eminently useful contributions. But that was not Edison’s way. He kept his resentment to himself.

  Still, as a patriot, Edison felt frustrated. Surely at least a few of his innovations could have been of use to the war effort. As a private citizen, his own business interests would have been bolstered by widespread publicity for any Edison invention that helped turn the tide against the Germans. He was seventy-one now, with limited creative years remaining, and he’d wasted almost two of them. So in midsummer, when Harvey Firestone wrote that he and Mr. Ford hoped Mr. Edison would consider a 1918 trip, Edison made it clear that he was eager to go and, for a change, could make room in his schedule for an excursion pretty much at their convenience.

  * * *

  In retrospect, the 1916 trip had fallen short of expectations both in terms of coverage and adventure. Ford’s absence was a contributing factor—the newspaper articles had first been about that, then Edison’s announcement of political support for President Wilson, plus some coverage of roadside picnics and a stop or two at local attractions. The route itself was nothing out of the ordinary. The roads involved were well-traveled by other vacationists. There were stories all the time about travelers in New York state and New England. More intriguing destinations were needed, places that would pique media interest and at the same time offer new sights and experiences to the Vagabonds themselves.

  Even a few years earlier, a cross-country trip might have served that purpose. There were several possible routes, the best-known and most direct of which was the Lincoln Highway, some
3,400 miles of road starting in New York City, wending its way through thirteen states, and ending in San Francisco. The highway was the brainchild of Indiana businessman Carl Fisher, who made his fortune selling automobile headlights. In 1912 Fisher began touting an East Coast–to–West Coast highway that would be completed in time for the 1915 opening of the Panama-Pacific Exposition. Initial funding would come from car and tire manufacturers, and companies whose products—asphalt, gravel, machinery to level and dig ground—would be used in construction. Fisher received a gratifying response from those businessmen he approached, with a single prominent exception. Henry Ford refused to participate, saying that if the public got such an impressive road for free, they’d expect someone else to pay for all the other roads that the country needed instead of assuming financial responsibility themselves.

  Even without Ford, work on the Lincoln Highway commenced, and some early sections proved eminently drivable. But most of it was primitive, often nothing more than sand or packed earth, particularly in the middle states. In 1918 the highway remained a work in progress, but American car vacationists increasingly accepted the challenge of driving coast to coast. Within five years of the 1915 opening, an estimated twenty thousand drivers had traveled the entire route. For those willing to bring along lots of extra tires and drive twenty hours a day, it was occasionally possible to complete the trip in five or six days. It more likely took two or three weeks—even families packed into a Model T could manage that. There was enough newspaper coverage of these adventures that a Vagabonds jaunt on the highway from New York to California wouldn’t in any way seem special, except for Edison and Ford being involved. But there was another direction, one that in terms of car travel and media coverage remained virtually uncharted.

  The South.

  Nineteen eighteen America was a nation dominated in most ways—politically, economically, in media attention and coverage—by the Northeast. In terms of formal education and personal wealth, its population far exceeded that of any other region. The Pacific coast—California especially—was on its way up. The burgeoning film industry was based there, and the Panama Canal presented fresh trade opportunity. The Midwest had its farmers and a good deal of manufacturing. The Southwest was ranching and oil; Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona still retained a sense of frontier. But much of the South was scorned, particularly in the Northeast, where Southerners were widely regarded as intellectually backward, almost subhuman. The South was considered good for certain crops—tobacco and cotton chief among them—and a potential workforce fit for basic tasks requiring minimal intellect. People from the South looked north for an opportunity for better lives, not vice versa. Resentment over the Civil War still lingered, in both the North and South. That conflict had concluded only fifty-three years earlier—Edison was a teenager when the first shots were fired, and Ford was born a few weeks after the Battle of Gettysburg.

  Additional outsider disdain for the South was based on unfamiliarity caused by lack of access, especially in the new age of the automobile. There simply weren’t many decent roads there. Car owners might drive from New York to San Francisco on an extended vacation, but few attempted New York to Atlanta or Biloxi. Those who did generally went by train, which provided a relatively smooth, quick trip but lacked the same opportunity to experience the passing land and its people in a way that was possible in a car. An automobile trip through Virginia, West Virginia, Tennessee, and the Carolinas would range far enough south to satisfy the Vagabonds’ quest for a little adventure and intrigue the press at the same time. It would be almost the equivalent of travel to a foreign country populated by colorful, primitive natives.

  Henry Ford understood the publicity potential and took steps to maximize it. Once the general area for the trip was decided, Ford took over most of the planning. Operators of Ford dealerships in that portion of the South were instructed not only to expect visits, but to galvanize area press for maximum local coverage. It wouldn’t be enough for big-city papers and national wire services to write about the trip. Ford wanted every small-town daily and weekly to deliver front-page coverage, too. He demanded reports that included the complete transcripts of every story written about the campers—woe to dealership owners whose local newspapers’ stories disappointed him. Ford also brought along cameramen to record Vagabonds escapades in photographs and on film, so that the public could see as well as read about their hijinks. The photos would, of course, be made available to the print press, and the film to movie theaters for inclusion in the newsreels that preceded featured motion pictures.

  So far as his famous friends were concerned, Ford made it clear that on this and future trips he’d pay for everything. His staff would set up camp with equipment brought from Dearborn. Ford’s personal chef would cook. Ford provided vehicles, too—comfy luxury cars for the Vagabonds themselves to ride in, Model Ts for staff and for tents and other camp gear like chairs and tables. Edison’s storage batteries would once again provide power to light tents at night. Southern reporters in particular would surely be astounded by such a sight. As Ford biographer Charles E. Sorensen later wrote, the 1918 and subsequent Vagabonds outings “were as private and secluded as a Hollywood opening.”

  Edison decided to bring a friend along—R. J. H. DeLoach, a professor at the University of Georgia whose research in the cotton industry had caught the inventor’s attention. Ford invited a guest, too—Edward N. Hurley, chairman of the Federal Trade Commission and chair of the wartime Shipping Board, on which Ford also served. A starting date of August 18 was agreed on. Everyone would meet in Pittsburgh, which had sufficient quality roads to ensure a good start south before the bad roads began.

  * * *

  Edison arrived early. After registering at the Fort Pitt Hotel, he granted an interview to the city press and had plenty of headline-worthy things to tell them. The inventor guaranteed that Henry Ford would come along this time—Edison pronounced his friend’s nerves “all a-shake.” In the days ahead, the Vagabonds would try “hunting snakes and queer birds to put Ford back into a serene way of life.”

  There was no need to waste vacation time thinking up ways to fight the Germans: “We don’t have to think when we fight the Huns. Why? Know what they are? Boneheads! Boneheads!”

  In war as in life itself, women were forcing their way to the forefront: “We have about 300 women working in our plant and are running a school to train others. [Thanks to the war] male labor is scarce, as I have heard in Pittsburgh, but there is not going to be any trouble. Their places will be filled by women and the work will go on.”

  Edison explained that the first part of the trip would include “the Great Smoky Mountains in eastern Tennessee and Kentucky.” In all, counting DeLoach, Hurley, and Ford’s battery of servants, the entire party would number about twenty. He joked about the Secret Serviceman guarding him while he continued serving on the Naval Advisory Board: “[I’m] doping out a scheme to ditch him.” A reporter mentioned hearing that one hundred agents were assigned to Edison, who scoffed. “That was all bosh. [At first], only four. Nobody killed me, so now they only make me take one.”

  The rest of the party also checked into the Fort Pitt. Burroughs stalked upstairs to his room. A few reporters followed, and noted in their subsequent stories that Burroughs switched his street shoes for comfortable slippers, left the shoes outside his door to be polished, and shut himself up inside.

  Burroughs hadn’t wanted to go in 1916, and two summers later felt even more strongly about avoiding the South, which, based on a few previous visits, he detested. “I can see nothing beautiful in the Southern landscape,” he wrote in his journal a few months prior to the Vagabonds’ 1918 trip. “The everlasting blood-red soil, and the dark pine woods, the disheveled fields, the houses upon legs, ready to run away, the mud-bespattered horses and vehicles and pedestrians, the absence of grass, etc. etc., all offend my eye.” The drive from his home in Roxbury to Pennsylvania displeased Burroughs considerably. Edison and Firestone picked him up again,
and he felt because of their “furious speed the car fairly kicked up its heels at times and we were unseated all too often. It was not easy to unseat Mr. Edison beside the chauffeur—there is a good deal of him to unseat, and he is cushiony and adjustable, and always carries his own shock absorbers with him. My own equipment of this sort disappeared long ago, I am very sensitive on the subject of hard driving.”

  When they arrived, Burroughs was equally unimpressed with Pittsburgh and all its industry: “I think I [get] nearer the infernal regions there than I ever [do] in any other city in this country. . . . It might as well be the devil’s laboratory.” Ford’s presence on this trip was probably the factor that made Burroughs decide that he was obligated to go—it was hard to refuse the man whose largesse had saved the Burroughs family property from bank foreclosure. Complete respect for one of the richest businessmen in the country was also in keeping with Burroughs’s personal philosophy of nature—all forms of life, plants to animals to humans, remained in constant states of competition. Only the strongest thrived, because they deserved to. To Burroughs, that meant the worthiest men could be recognized by outsized personal fortunes: “Millionaires add to the positive health and well-being of all.” By that measure, Ford excelled.

  The carmaker and the naturalist shared certain philosophies. Burroughs had a genuine love of nature and a firm belief in the simple virtues of hard work and unsentimental judgment, the same qualities held in highest esteem by Henry Ford. Like Ford, Burroughs never publicly qualified his personal beliefs to accommodate differing opinions. When other naturalists on the public speaking circuit enthralled audiences with heartwarming tales of sweet goings-on in nature, Burroughs made a point of calling them out. He insisted that there was nothing soft about survival on any level. Only those who accepted this reality could claim that they were truly in tune with nature. Fairy tales of any sort were only for the weak-minded. When his son Julian was a child, Burroughs informed him that “Christmas [is] a fraud based on a folk tale.”