The Vagabonds

by Jeff Guinn

  On Wednesday Firestone had his horses shipped back to Ohio. Some of the party went home, too—the three Vagabonds and their wives remained, plus two Firestone sons, a Firestone daughter-in-law, and Rev. Anderson and his wife, Jennie. After all the camp gear was packed, they drove ninety miles through green valleys and tree-lined mountains to Garrett County in western Maryland. They’d been invited to camp in a particularly charming spot there by state forester Fred Beasley, who described a waterfall and surrounding hills of great beauty. The drive went well, and Beasley hadn’t exaggerated the charms of their prospective stop, but some boys were already camped there. The youngsters moved to another part of what locals called “Swallow Falls” only when someone, probably Firestone, paid them $10 to leave. It was nearly dark by the time the Vagabonds’ camp was set up. Their heavy camp kitchen, following their passenger cars, caved in the narrow wooden bridge on the only road leading in to the falls, and while its driver and some other staff worked to extricate it everyone had to eat their dinners out of cans. Afterward the travelers turned in. Before she slept, Mina Edison wrote a letter to her son.

  My darling Theodore—This is nothing like [an enjoyable] camp experience. It is a Ford-Firestone crowd and I am absolutely homesick. Everything is . . . so elaborate and so fussy that there is no charm in it. The day we face homeward I shall be a happy woman. We are apparently remaining in camp a long time rather than moving on every day. I am in doubt as to which would be more desirable.

  Despite Mina’s moping, for the next two days the Vagabonds had a good time. The ladies wandered the woods. Ford and Edison studied Swallow Falls, calculating the hydropower that might be harnessed from it. Firestone, having just sent his own horses home, rented others from a local man and went out on rides with his sons. Everyone was entertained by the tales of local woodsmen Link and Hank Sines, whom state forester Beasley had asked to come out and visit with the campers. Ford bought an old steam engine that he found by a sawmill and had it shipped back to Dearborn. The automaker also spoke to a few reporters who turned up at the campsite. Ford was characteristically blunt when asked about the workers’ strike currently plaguing some railroads, but not the Detroit, Toledo & Ironton line he’d recently bought. Immediately after the purchase he gave raises to his new employees. This drew the wrath of other railroad owners, who claimed that Ford’s unnecessary generosity to the Detroit, Toledo & Ironton workers caused dissension among his competitors’ employees. Ford told the reporters that the problem wasn’t with him, but with railroad ownership more concerned with lining the pockets of shareholders than properly compensating employees.

  Ford was just as direct when asked about the Dearborn Independent’s antisemitic articles, saying he’d read and approved them all—“I have checked up on the facts and have come to the conclusion that everything contained in the articles is true.” Future articles would reveal the full extent of Jewish scheming, which included the instigation of the Civil War. Ford explained that everyone “thought that the Civil War was fought to free the slaves. . . . We shall prove that this international Jewish plot can be connected up with the Civil War. Just keep on reading.”

  * * *

  On Saturday the campers were ready to move on, but heavy rains kept them cooped up in their tents at Swallow Falls. Muddy roads on Sunday morning further delayed the trucks’ departure, but the passenger cars were able to navigate through the muck for about fifty miles to Elkins, West Virginia, with several stops in towns along the way. In each they took time to speak with local press along with any wire service reporters who were present. In Oakland, Maryland, Ford discussed his hopes for Muscle Shoals, if Congress approved the sale. The region, the state of Alabama, even the entire South would enjoy an economic boom from the increased availability of expansive hydroelectric power and cheap fertilizers. Ford emphasized that he wasn’t doing this for personal profit. The carmaker regretted that he couldn’t go into more detail “while the proposition is still before Congress,” but made clear, one wire story reported, “that his plans are . . . stupendous.”

  Edison also spoke with the press in Oakland. His topic was civilization, which the inventor defined as “a mere veneer . . . every man way down in his heart revolts at [it]. Turn a man loose in the woods and he won’t want to come back after a while.”

  The reporters were surprised when a third member of the party asked to speak with them. Mina Edison was furious over the articles about her husband napping through much of President Harding’s Licking Creek visit and ignoring Rev. Anderson’s sermon. In particular, one wire story including the headline “Ha, Edison Exposed” had been reprinted in such geographically diverse newspapers as the Portsmouth (Ohio) Daily Times and Albuquerque Journal. Mina considered her husband too modest to complain and Ford too self-centered to address the printed insults on his friend’s behalf, so she took it on herself to set the record straight. “Mr. Edison takes his sleep scientifically,” Mina explained to the reporters. It was true, as he’d always said, that while at home in New Jersey and busy in his laboratory, Edison really did sleep only about four hours at night. But on vacations, which these camping trips were intended to be, “with sleep he rebuilds himself against the [next] rigorous spell of work . . . he has a most peculiar power of dropping into a heavy slumber instantly.” And her husband meant no offense to Rev. Anderson when he read a paper during the minister’s Sunday service at Licking Creek: “It is one of Mr. Edison’s chief regrets that because of his poor hearing he cannot attend church services. He used to try, but he couldn’t hear a word that was said. Nevertheless, his every instinct is Christian.”

  Mina asked Rev. Anderson to corroborate her statement, and the Reverend good-naturedly joked, “If I didn’t know how deaf Mr. Edison is, I might charge myself with preaching him to sleep.” She was undoubtedly gratified that many of the same papers that printed the “Edison Exposed” article ran follow-up stories with her explanation.

  * * *

  The group’s plan was to camp by the Cheat River outside Elkins, but the equipment truck hadn’t caught up when they arrived in town, so they spent the night in a hotel. The next day they set up their tents near the bank of the river, a mile or so removed from a Boy Scout camp. Two Scouts, Macon and Joseph Fry, decided to see the famous men for themselves. They later told reporters that Mr. Ford and Mr. Edison were “most affable.” The inventor was pleased to learn that the brothers had their own “wireless outfit,” and urged them to keep experimenting with it. Mr. Ford gestured toward the Scout knives hanging from the boys’ belts, showed them his own pocketknife, and, according to the Fry brothers, “told how he was recently attacked by an infuriated deer and was forced to kill the deer with his knife to save himself.”

  Reporters also visited the Vagabonds at Cheat River. None of them asked Ford to corroborate that he’d triumphed over a maddened deer in a battle to the death. Instead, they listened as Ford talked about his plans for Muscle Shoals, and the excellent potential of West Virginia rivers to provide statewide hydroelectric power. Ford declared, “This country is on the eve of a great wave of prosperity, if only we will grasp the opportunity.” Harnessing the might of rivers and “pushing” an international disarmament plan was critical—“labor questions would settle themselves, factories would spring up in every section and the country blossom like a rose.”

  * * *

  On Tuesday, August 2, the Vagabonds turned north toward home. They ended the day at the Summit Hotel in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, but on the way they stopped in or near several towns and spoke to the press. United Press wire reporter Karl A. Bickel was present outside Belington, West Virginia, when the group stopped to eat sandwiches and bacon cooked on a portable stove. This was the last time on the 1921 trip that Ford and Edison spoke with the media, and they persuaded Bickel and the other reporters that they were being allowed to listen in on a typical camp lunchtime conversation. Bickel described the scene:

  Edison leaned against the side of his car, Firestone sat upon the ru
nning board, Ford . . . moved restlessly about, sometimes reclining on the ground picking at the grass, or, if stirred by the talk, springing to his feet, making his point and then dropping to the ground again.

  Their subject was Warren G. Harding, who, Edison warned, would have trouble “forc[ing] the military to accept a real disarmament.” The president had promised the American people that he’d succeed, Edison emphasized, so if he failed, Harding would have to accept full responsibility: “It all rests on him.”

  Ford interjected that “the common people . . . are sick and tired of the claptrap talk. . . . Why, I have received as many as 2,500 letters in a single day about it. Letters from everywhere.”

  Firestone agreed that America currently had “great opportunity” for peace and prosperity, adding that “it all depends on the quality of American leadership.” These leaders must realize that foes of the common people lurked everywhere, ready to wreak havoc “if they see the slightest inkling of indecision.”

  “The motives of men are unfathomable,” Edison said, and Ford agreed: “You said it.”

  On Wednesday, as their trip ended in Pittsburgh, Bickel’s wire story about Ford’s, Edison’s, and Firestone’s remarks was printed in many newspapers. Besides the comments themselves, many of the accompanying headlines placed the president on notice (“Ford and Edison Put It Up to Harding to Block War” in the Baltimore Sun).

  * * *

  On Thursday, the Chicago Tribune wrote a new editorial about its old antagonist Henry Ford, its first major mention of him since the libel trial two years earlier. The editorial’s tone reflected a lesson learned: This time the newspaper criticized Ford’s recently expressed opinions without calling him names. Ford, Edison, and Firestone

  are successful and rich. . . . Mr. Ford is incomparable in his vocation and has done a great service by the development and [sales distribution] of cheap automobiles. He has been rewarded for this service by a huge fortune amassed in a time bewilderingly short. But mental efficiency in one direction, knowledge and insight as to one range of facts or forces, gives no guarant[ee] of efficiency in other matters. . . . All of which ought to be a truism. Yet our American guilelessness goes on swallowing the utterances of men who are accepted, and esteem themselves, as authority on all subjects because they are authority on one.

  The Tribune reminded its readers of Ford’s opposition to the war, and how, once America entered the fray, “for a time his authority dwindled.” But now he was back, holding forth “at the behest of his admirers on many matters as to which his opinions [are] valueless.” This time, the editorial warned, Ford had a different goal—“running again for senate or presidency.”

  * * *

  At least in an exploratory sense, he already was.

  Chapter Eight

  * * *

  Interlude

  November 1921–June 1923

  In 1921 Henry Ford and Thomas Edison took another trip together, this one to Alabama. On November 23, the New York Times reported that the carmaker and the inventor would leave soon to “inspect” the dams and manufacturing facilities at Muscle Shoals. They hoped “to obtain data to convince the United States Government that Mr. Ford’s offer for the nitrate and water power project is liberal.” Members of Senate and congressional oversight committees had criticized what they considered Ford’s paltry offer for the taxpayer-funded operations that had fallen into disrepair. Ford pledged an immediate $5 million, plus about $1.6 million annually for the duration of a one-hundred-year lease. But the original construction cost at Muscle Shoals was $85 million, and Ford wanted the government to spend another $68 million for repairs before he took over the properties. Legislators wanted Ford to assume most or all of the renovation costs. Otherwise, they stated publicly and often, the terms were overwhelmingly in Ford’s favor, not the taxpayers’. Senator George W. Norris of Nebraska claimed that “No corporation ever [wanted] a more unconscionable contract.” That impression ran counter to Ford’s public image as a man of the people and the implacable enemy of financiers who exploited them. He could not allow the government’s criticism to stand.

  Ford’s best recourse was to overwhelm the elected officials with widespread support for his Muscle Shoals acquisition. To ensure he had it, he enlisted Edison. The inventor remained among the most famous Americans, and perhaps the most trusted. No elected official ever suggested that Edison wished to exploit taxpayers for personal gain. Ford’s publicity department stressed that while the automaker and the inventor would travel to Muscle Shoals together, they would conduct their inspections separately: They “will examine the project with a view to ascertaining how much water power may be developed and as to the cost [to Ford] of the development. [Then] conferences will be held between the two each evening during the inspection period.” The “data obtained” would be forwarded to the secretary of war.

  Ford and Edison left for Alabama by train on December 2. They made their studies and submitted their report, which unsurprisingly supported Ford’s claim that the benefits to the regional economy would far outweigh any additional government investment. The New York Times also reported that Ford had increased his initial offer to $28 million. It didn’t matter. Congressional debate about the proposal continued. Legislators were in no hurry.

  Ford ordered his publicity department to conduct a Muscle Shoals publicity effort that resembled a political campaign. Farmers were the target—they would benefit first from hydroelectric power and cheap fertilizers. Ford paid for rallies where participants wore buttons proclaiming “I Want Ford to Get Muscle Shoals.” Supporters were urged to write letters to President Harding. Robert Lacey writes in Ford: The Men and the Machine, his history of Ford Motor Company, that “Muscle Shoals became a national craze for a season, another California Gold Rush.” Ford himself reiterated again and again that he pursued the purchase only “to do a certain thing that will benefit the whole world.” And still the government remained unresponsive.

  Mounting frustration fueled Ford’s burgeoning political ambition. Above all things he hated layers of larded bureaucracy, time wasted when pared-down efficiency was required. Every moment of windy Washington debate delayed the blessings that he was prepared to bestow. Why couldn’t a man make the government a reasonable offer and get an immediate answer back? For the first time, Ford began privately mentioning his intentions if elected president: “I’d . . . like to go down there for about six weeks and throw some monkey wrenches into the machinery.” President Henry Ford wouldn’t tolerate laggardly political processes; he’d trash the system and rebuild it in his own efficient business image. Exactly how that would be done didn’t concern him—as with Ford Motor Company, he’d set the course, announce the goals, and then expect the people who worked for him—currently in Dearborn, soon in Washington—to make it all happen. If they didn’t, he’d get rid of them and appoint people who could. But Ford would relish throwing the monkey wrenches. Otherwise, he espoused no further political philosophies. From Ford’s previous actions and public statements, it could be generally assumed that as president he would avoid foreign entanglements of all kinds, abolish regulations on business, and champion the development of hydroelectric power. Beyond this, his beliefs and intentions were mysteries, and for disenchanted American voters, this was part of his allure. Since Ford declared no specific plans, they could assume that he’d do whatever they personally hoped that a president would.

  * * *

  There’s no record that Ford gave much thought to how Ford Motor Company would operate in his absence. Edsel Ford still served as president, but his father could and did veto anything the son wanted that went against the older man’s wishes. Edsel wanted to develop new cars to supplement the Model T, automobiles with different body styles, a few more embellishments, eye-pleasing Model T alternatives that offered traditional Ford automobile reliability at slightly higher prices. Ford wouldn’t have it—the Model T had been and would continue being the perfect car for the masses. Sales bore him out. Abou
t 1.1 million Model Ts would be sold in 1922, more than in any previous year. Survey results varied, but all agreed that Model Ts comprised 40 to 50 percent of all cars driven in America. Many were ten years old, or more—they were designed not to wear out. Ford didn’t disdain high-end luxury cars. He sometimes drove them himself (and the Vagabonds rode in them on their summer trips). In February 1922 he acquired the Lincoln Motor Company. But utilitarian Model Ts remained the Ford Motor Company’s trademark—and only—passenger car. Ford felt little concern for rival companies like General Motors, a conglomerate of brands including Buick, Oldsmobile, Cadillac, and Chevrolet. The continuing dominance of the Model T proved to Ford that he understood what consumers wanted better than any competitor.

  * * *

  By late 1921, politics and the Dearborn Independent claimed much of Ford’s attention, as did his now numerous nonautomotive businesses. In 1923 the New York Times listed these as ore, timber, coal, property investment (“land”), railroads, “industrial activities,” and banking. With the boss’s attention so often diverted, Ford Motor Company officials had leeway to run their departments as they believed Ford wanted, carrying out new, sometimes draconian policies in his name. This was most evident in the long-standing company programs intended to support employees in low-level jobs.

  Ford’s employment philosophy had been not only to pay higher salaries than competitors, but to control employees’ lives in a benevolent but firm manner—management, in Ford’s opinion, always knew best. The famed $5 workday came with conditions. To qualify for this munificent income, employees had to allow company inspectors to visit their homes. There could be no evidence of liquor on the premises. The household must be tidy. Inspectors had to see evidence of financial prudence—the increased income must not be frittered away. If otherwise qualified employees had no bank accounts, they were expected to open them—the inspectors showed them how, and monitored them afterward to make certain it was done. Court records were checked—no employee with a history of domestic violence was eligible for the higher wage. Foreign-born workers, especially those with little or no command of English, were enrolled in company-underwritten classes that not only taught language but American history. There were regular, elaborate graduation ceremonies—students crossed stages draped with bunting to receive diplomas. The company had stores open to all, with arrays of quality products available at reasonable prices. These operations were collectively known as the Sociological Department.