by Jeff Guinn
The party was now down to two Model Ts for staff and a Packard with Harvey Jr. at the wheel, Edison beside him, and Firestone and Ford in back. They didn’t leave Asheville until midafternoon and had almost one hundred miles to drive before reaching Hickory, where they would spend the night. It rained hard during some of the drive. They stopped in a small town for supper in a café—no more campfire meals—and didn’t check into a Hickory hotel until well after dark. Ford informed local reporters that he still had no comment about the Michigan primary. It was apparently a dismal day for everyone—all Firestone wrote about it was that the hotel was noisy and he had difficulty sleeping.
Thursday was better. The morning drive to Winston-Salem was interrupted when one of the cars broke down near the town of Statesville. Ford put political concerns aside and fixed the problem within an hour. Twenty miles outside Winston-Salem, a delegation of officials in a half-dozen cars intercepted the Vagabonds on the road and announced they would lead them into town. Edison and Ford agreed to attend a luncheon in their honor and then, for the only time in the trip, made ceremonial visits to local businesses. Trailed by local reporters, Ford went to a factory where Camel cigarettes were packaged and rolled. He set aside his personal disgust with smoking to ask many questions about how the products were made and shipped, then entertained the press by comparing the Camel process to the manufacture of “U-boat destroyers and small tanks” at his own company plants, which had been converted from building cars for the duration of the war. Just before leaving, Ford made a show of taking a sample of loose tobacco for his friend Edison, who he emphasized didn’t smoke, but chewed. After that, Ford briefly stopped at the Slater Industrial School “for the colored race,” where some of the black students were trained as farmers. Ford donated a tractor to the school.
Edison spent his early afternoon practicing direct marketing. At a furniture store where Edison phonographs were on display, he warned a sizable group of townspeople following him that they all needed to buy his company’s models while they were still available. More and more, Edison warned, his businesses would have to concentrate on “government work” until war’s end. That would mean a looming, possibly lengthy shortage of Edison phonographs, which, of course, were the only brand directly associated with the man who had invented the machine.
In late afternoon they set off for Martinsville, Virginia, making the turn north that would eventually take them to their final destination in Hagerstown, Maryland. The Packard, with its famous passengers, left a little before the Model Ts. They hadn’t gone far on the hard dirt road when the Packard bogged down in mud left by the previous day’s rains. Edison and Ford insisted that raising the vehicle up with jacks would extricate it in no time, but after some failed attempts Firestone decided on an old-fashioned method. It was likely a relief to Ford that no press was around to record how the Packard was hauled out of the muck by a team of mules Firestone rented either from a farmer or at a nearby rail yard. The mules were hitched to the car with a chain Firestone borrowed from an impoverished woman who lived close by. She watched along with her son, a small boy Firestone described as “sickly and crippled.” The mother herself had no teeth.
When the Packard was yanked free, Firestone thrilled the woman with a payment of $25, asking her to please stand by the road and warn the drivers of the Model Ts to swing wide and avoid the treacherous mud. With that, Firestone assumed his companions would be ready to be on their way, but Ford thought otherwise. His reputation for personal thrift was well-known and deserved; Ford regularly denounced most forms of charity, which he believed encouraged the collective downtrodden to rely on others rather than taking responsibility for themselves. But he could be, and occasionally was, greatly moved by the plight of individuals. Since there was a little time to spare before the Model Ts were expected to arrive, Ford escorted the toothless mother and her crippled son back to their shabby home and told her that things would be taken care of—she would have the services of a dentist and a set of fine false teeth, and her child would be taken to a hospital and receive the best care available. Afterward Ford contacted his company agent in Winston-Salem, ordering him to see that this was done. The press was never informed about the generous gesture. Ford probably feared that any stories about it would result in a flood of requests from others in similar circumstances beseeching him for largesse.
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Friday was mostly spent sightseeing. Ford and the two Firestones took a tour of “Natural Bridge . . . the Cave, the Lost River and other points of interest.” Edison, worn down by two weeks of continuous travel, chose to stay in the car. The others returned to find him surrounded by admirers—it was well-known that the Vagabonds were in the area, and almost everyone in America could identify Thomas Edison on sight from newspaper photos and newsreels. Edison was extricated from the crowd, and the Vagabonds ended their day at the Castle Inn in Lexington, Virginia. A private party was being held there, and the hostess tried, but failed, to get Ford and Edison as guests of honor. Firestone and Harvey Jr. substituted for them. It was certainly a source of relief that no press was present—by this point, they’d had all the publicity they wanted and, thanks to Ford, some of it not as positive as they’d hoped.
On the trip’s last day, they drove through pouring rain to Hagerstown, with the drive’s duration irritatingly extended by numerous stops to pay tolls—Firestone counted nineteen of them. In Hagerstown, they decided the hotel where they’d booked rooms “did not look good,” so they asked others, probably Ford or Firestone agents, to recommend a better one. They were informed that their original hotel was the best in town, so they stayed there after all. After checking in, Ford and Firestone went for a walk while Edison napped in his room. They enjoyed being relatively incognito that night, and in the morning when they were ready to depart—Edison to New Jersey, Ford and the Firestones to Pittsburgh—they discreetly drove together out of town before parting to go their separate ways. Firestone wrote that they “regretted” having to part.
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A few weeks later, Firestone received a letter from Burroughs, who apologized for his cantankerousness and praised Harvey Jr.: “His patience and forebearance with me and my contrary moods, I shall never forget.” And, although Ford and Edison apparently took Firestone’s assistance in all things for granted, Burroughs complimented his “serenity and good nature and spirit of helpfulness towards us all.”
Burroughs and Firestone both wrote lengthy essays about the 1918 trip. Burroughs’s was included as one chapter in a collection of remembrances titled Under the Maples published three years later. Firestone’s never saw print, though he suggested in a December letter to Edison that his and Burroughs’s work might be combined “into quite a nice souvenir book.” But once they were home, neither the inventor or Ford seemed much interested in fondly looking back on the excursion. They had more immediate matters on their minds.
* * *
The war would end with the Allies triumphant on November 11, freeing Edison from his infuriatingly impotent role on the Naval Advisory Board. Now he could return to his beloved laboratory in New Jersey and focus on whatever might become his next great discovery. His ongoing fame was assured—in all the press coverage of the Vagabonds’ 1918 trip, Edison’s name appeared first among them in every headline except those reporting Ford’s political statements and the editorials lambasting the carmaker for some of his remarks. But Edison was a proud man, and uncomfortably aware that most of his celebrity was based on achievements several decades in the past. Though he immediately immersed himself in laboratory work with his assistants, the winter of 1918–1919 was also a contemplative one for Thomas Edison. He’d already given so much, but he was determined to find some means of accomplishing more.
* * *
Henry Ford, in contrast, spent the rest of 1918 doing.
First came the race for the Senate. As he’d pledged, Ford refused to campaign. Newberry, his Republican rival, spent lavishly and papered the state with pri
nt ads and cardboard placards. By normal campaign standards, Newberry should have gained an insurmountable advantage, but no amount of traditional advertising could sway the support Ford enjoyed with working-class voters. The election was clearly going to be close, and two days before, Newberry and the Republican state committee resorted to dirty politics. Though the war would end just eight days later, the conflict was still in a shooting stage and anti-German sentiment was high. The Republicans placed a full-page ad in the Sunday, November 3, Detroit Free Press accusing Ford of employing German sympathizers, in particular a native German named Carl Emde. The charge was ludicrous. Emde’s responsibility at Ford’s Highland Park, Michigan, plant was to oversee work on the Liberty airplane engines that the company built for the government, and all during the war his work had been exemplary. But the accusation was public, and instead of forcefully repudiating it, Ford dithered. He’d promised, after all, not to campaign in any way. If he responded, that would not only dignify the unfair charge, it might make Ford seem to go back on his word. He finally allowed the release of a press statement supporting Emde, but by then many Monday newspapers had already repeated the unfair charge, and on Tuesday it still lingered in the minds of voters as they went to the polls. This charge undoubtedly made the difference on Newberry’s narrow victory—he beat Ford by 217,088 votes to 212,751.
Under any circumstances, the carmaker was a sore loser, and this one especially infuriated him. He hired a small army of private detectives to investigate the Newberry campaign, especially potential shady financing aspects. That effort lasted several years, and yielded sufficient results to force Newberry to resign in 1922. Even then, Ford suffered an additional indignity when the Michigan governor appointed former Ford executive James Couzens to the vacated Senate seat.
Ford couldn’t control political results, but he was determined to be the sole controlling voice of Ford Motor Company. Ford owned only 58.5 percent of the company. For many years, he’d resented the half-dozen or so fellow stockholders whose views sometimes conflicted with his own, especially when two, brothers John and Horace Dodge, successfully sued him for putting too large a share of profits back into the company rather than paying appropriate dividends to shareholders. Angered by his loss to Newberry, and still nursing a grudge against the Dodges for their lawsuit, on December 30 Ford shocked America by resigning as company president. His son, Edsel, would assume the job in his place, but no one need worry that Ford himself would still make the decisions. Instead, he was going to start an entirely new automobile manufacturing enterprise, one based out in California. Word soon reached the press that Ford had already designed a better, cheaper car than the Model T. His new company would build it and wrest control of the market. Ford Motor Company stockholders assumed the threat was real, and within weeks agreed to sell Ford their shares at a whopping $12,500 a share. (James Couzens, who knew Ford best, held out and received $13,000 for each of his.) Though Ford had to borrow $60 million of the near $106 million total cost, he was still glad to do it. It had been an elaborate bluff, but he was now in complete control of Ford Motor Company.
A subsequent act typified the complex nature of Ford’s personality, the sort of contradictory act that made him then and later so difficult to fathom. Ford had sworn at the outset of the war that he would not accept even a penny of personal profit for company war-related services. On November 11, 1918, the war ended, and Ford Motor Company had charged the American government in full for its work. Now was the time for Henry Ford to send a check to the U.S. Treasury, reimbursing the government for whatever percentage of its payments ended up in his personal bank account. Eventually that sum was calculated at $926,780.97—and Ford never repaid it.
Ford ended 1918 with one more act that initially received little notice. Angry at what he considered unfair reporting, mostly by the powerful Eastern and Northeastern press, he decided to buy a newspaper of his own. The content would reflect Henry Ford’s views in all things from politics to economics, just as the Model T reflected his firm belief in dependable no-frills automobiles. The American public embraced the Model T. Ford was certain they’d be equally enthusiastic about a newspaper he owned, which soon would rival even the major New York papers in circulation and influence. In December, even as he played his successful trick on Ford Motor Company shareholders, Henry Ford purchased his local newspaper, a tiny, undistinguished weekly called the Dearborn Independent.
Chapter Five
* * *
1919
Americans had reason to stand united and proud immediately following World War I. U.S. entry into the conflict essentially won the war for the Allies. For the first time, America was recognized internationally as a global power. Domestically, the economy appeared healthy, even robust, and many citizens enjoyed better lifestyles—including higher wages and resulting access to forms of entertainment and travel—than would have been possible only a generation earlier. Even the 1918 flu pandemic, which killed nearly five times as many Americans as had the enemy during the war (approximately 500,000 sickbed deaths to 110,000 on the battlefield), apparently was over, though no one was entirely certain why. Yet between the Civil War and the turmoil of the late 1960s, 1919 was the most chaotic year in American history, as civil unrest shook the nation.
It began with widespread suspicion of insidious foreign designs on America’s government and workforce. Following the war, isolationists vehemently opposed President Wilson’s intention of committing the nation to any peace treaty mandating U.S. membership in an international ruling body. Why should America, apparently on the brink of a Golden Age of military, economic, and cultural superiority, be obligated to risk it all in foreign squabbles? America would prosper best on its own, free of outside demands for its blood and treasure. Yet between December 1918 and July 1919, President Wilson was almost entirely abroad in France, negotiating with foreign leaders, apparently paying no heed to the daily affairs of his own nation, where there was much that could—and to many minds, should—have commanded his undivided attention.
Beginning in Seattle in early February, America was plagued by prolonged, often violent labor strikes, more than two thousand of them by September, encompassing not only factory workers but telephone operators and policemen. (Massachusetts governor Calvin Coolidge gained national notoriety when he broke a Boston police strike, stating memorably, “There is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, any time.”) Union organizers were determined to gain some level of management parity for their members, not only higher wages but improved conditions and fewer hours for the workers.
Race-related riots erupted from Longview, Texas, to Chicago. The Great Migration began before World War I, as black Americans mired in Southern poverty sought greater employment possibilities in the industrial North. Racial tensions flared in both regions. In the South, lynchings proliferated, and, for the first time, major Northern cities developed black slums. Many white-led labor unions refused membership to blacks. It was inevitable that violence should occur, and it frequently did.
American women determined to claim the universal right to vote abandoned genteel protest for more vocal demands. While Woodrow Wilson attempted to help form a new world order in France, sixty-five U.S. suffragists burned the president in effigy in front of the White House.
Many national leaders, and a burgeoning number of ordinary citizens, attributed the widespread turmoil to a single, malign source:
Bolshevism. Or, even more frequently, Reds. Many Americans feared an influx of Red (or Bolshie, or commie) agents posing as immigrants pouring into the U.S. and initiating unrest. It was common knowledge that the Russian Revolution began with a series of labor strikes, and in many of those now occurring in the U.S., organizers were suspected of communist sympathies, if not outright Bolshevik ties. From there, it was easy for the suspicious-minded to link Red influence to American race riots—the commies were encouraging the blacks!—and the suffragist movement—egged on by the Bolshies, women no lo
nger knew their place. Then on June 2, a coordinated terrorist attack set off bombs in eight cities across America, including on the front steps of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer’s residence in Washington, D.C. Two people died, and it was widely accepted that these might prove to be only the first such attacks, which almost certainly were the work of Bolshevik agents, possibly in league with American sympathizers.
It was in this paranoid atmosphere that Woodrow Wilson returned to the U.S. in July, determined that the Senate should ratify the Treaty of Versailles, including American membership in a League of Nations to preside over international affairs. Wilson was a Democrat. Republicans, sensing a convergence of moral responsibility and political opportunity, stood firm in opposition. With a two-thirds majority vote needed for ratification and Republicans holding just over half of the Senate’s ninety-six seats, the treaty could be approved only if all Democratic senators voted in favor (itself a dubious possibility) and Wilson convinced more than a dozen Republicans to defy their party leadership. When too many senators balked, Wilson took his case directly to the American people—if he could persuade enough voters in both parties to support the treaty, senators back in Washington would get the message. The president embarked on a trip intended to last more than three weeks, crisscrossing the nation, attempting to sell the relatively new notion that America’s responsibilities no longer ended at its shores. It was an exhausting task for a fit man, and Wilson had never been especially healthy. Worn down by headaches, asthma, digestive problems, and double vision, Wilson suffered a severe stroke that resulted in paralysis of his left side. White House doctors covered up the extent of the president’s illness, describing it as “nervous exhaustion” that could be remedied by rest. In November, with Wilson still out of action, the Senate rejected the Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations by a vote of 38 for and 53 against.
