Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City

by Greg Grandin

  10. Bryan, Beyond the Model T, pp. 45–58.

  11. BFRC, accession 65, Reminiscences, Joseph Francois.

  12. Tom McCarthy, “Henry Ford, Industrial Conservationist? Take-Back, Waste Reduction, and Recycling at the Rouge,” Progress in Industrial Ecology: An International Journal 3, no. 4 (2006): 305; Ford Comes to Iron Mountain: The Birth of Kingsford, np, nd (located in Iron Mountain Public Library).

  13. David L. Lewis, “The Rise and Fall of Old Henry’s Northern Empire,” Cars and Parts, December 1973, p. 92.

  14. BFRC, accession 65, Reminiscences, Oscar G. Olsen.

  15. Cleven, “Life and Logging,” p. 20; BFRC, accession 65, Reminiscences, Alfred Johnson; Bryan, Beyond the Model T, p. 119.

  16. Nevins and Hill, Ford, p. 219; BFRC, vertical file, Village Industries, General, 1920s, “Henry Ford Says Farmer-Workmen Will Build Automobile of the Future,” published in Automotive Age, August 28, 1924; BFRC, vertical file, Village Industries, General, “One Foot in Industry and One Foot in the Soil.”

  17. “Ford Plans a New York for Alabama,” Chicago Defender, May 20, 1922; “City All Mainstreet,” Literary Digest, April 8, 1922; Littlee McClung, “The Seventy-Five-Mile City,” Scientific American, September 1922.

  18. “Rush for Muscle Shoals,” New York Times, Febuary 12, 1922; “The Truth about Muscle Shoals,” Atlanta Constitution, March 26, 1922.

  19. Samuel Crowther, “Muscle Shoals,” McClure’s Magazine, January 1923; “Ford Determined to Secure Shoals,” Atlanta Constitution, March 18, 1922; Nye, Henry Ford, pp. 32, 84.

  20. “Ford Determined to Secure Shoals”; Nye, Henry Ford, p. 93.

  21. Lacey, Ford, pp. 128–29; Leonard, The Tragedy of Henry Ford, p. 26; Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Journey to the End of the Night, trans. Ralph Manheim, New York: New Directions, 2006, p. 194.

  22. Segal, Recasting the Machine Age, p. 76; Brinkley, Wheels for the World, p. 394; Lacey, Ford, pp. 368–70.

  23. Sward, The Legend of Henry Ford, p. 314; Segal, Recasting the Machine Age, p. 76.

  24. Phillip Bonosky, Brother Bill McKie: Building the Union at Ford, New York: International Publishers, 2000, p. 56.

  25. Brinkley, Ford, p. 260.

  26. The book was published in English as The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind by E. Benn in 1896, but Ford cited the exact translation of its original French title, published in 1895. See p. xvii for the quote.

  27. BFRC, vertical file, Village Industries, General, 1920s, “Henry Ford Says Farmer-Workmen Will Build Automobile of the Future.”

  28. Collier and Horowitz, The Fords, p. 123; Brinkley, Wheels for the World, p. 426; Nevins and Hill, Ford, p. 536.

  29. Henry Ford, Ford Ideals: Being a Selection from “Mr. Ford’s Page” in the Dearborn Independent, Dearborn: Dearborn Publishing, 1922, pp. 357–60.

  30. For the Sunday Evening Hour, see Lewis, The Public Image of Henry Ford, p. 453; “Farewell, Ford,” Time, February 1942; Nevins and Hill, Ford, p. 598.

  31. Nye, Henry Ford, p. 82.

  32. Wik, Henry Ford and Grass-Roots America, p. 120; Sward, The Legend of Henry Ford, p. 129; Alvin Rosenbaum, Usonia: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Design for America, Washington, D.C.: Preservation Press, 1993, pp. 60–62.

  Chapter 5: Fordville

  1. José Custódio Alves de Lima, Recordações de homens e cousas do meu tempo, Rio de Janeiro, 1926, pp. 373–77; BFRC, accession 38, box 61, “History of the Companhia Ford Industrial do Brasil since Its Inception”; BFRC, accession 285, box 420, de Lima to Ford, September 29, 1925.

  2. Meyer, The Five Dollar Day, p. 40; Nevins and Hill, Ford, p. 600; Clayton Sinyai, Schools of Democracy: A Political History of the American Labor Movement, Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2006, p. 66.

  3. Nevins and Hill, Ford, pp. 485, 600; Brinkley, Wheels for the World, p. 250.

  4. Brinkley, Wheels for the World, p. 202; see also Mira Wilkins and Frank Ernest Hill, American Business Abroad: Ford on Six Continents, Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1964; Richard Downs, “Autos over Rails: How US Business Supplanted the British in Brazil, 1910–28,” Journal of Latin American Studies 24 (October 1992): 551–83.

  5. Barbara Weinstein, For Social Peace in Brazil: Industrialists and the Remaking of the Working Class in São Paulo, 1920–1964, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997; Downs, “Autos over Rails”; Joel Wolfe, Autos and Progress: The Brazilian Search for Modernity, New York: Oxford University Press, 2009, ch. 3.

  6. Paul Hoffman, Wings of Madness: Alberto Santos-Dumont and the Invention of Flight, New York: Hyperion, 2006.

  7. National Archives, RG 59, decimal file 121.5632/6, Morgan to Secretary of State, May 25, 1926; William Lytle Schurz, Brazil: The Infinite Country, New York:E. P. Dutton, 1961, p. 64; Machado, “Farquhar and Ford,” p. 262; Joan Hoff, American Business and Foreign Policy, 1920–1933, Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1971, p. 278, n. 33; Joseph Tulchin, Aftermath of War and US Policy toward Latin America, New York: New York University Press, 1971, p. 112; Herbert Hoover, Memoirs, New York: Macmillan, 1952, vol. 2, p. 79.

  8. “U.S. Appoints Commission to Study South American Rubber,” Atlanta Constitution, August 5, 1923; BFRC, accession 74, box 17, “Alleged Scandal about Our Concession”; National Archives, RG 59, microfilm 519, roll 32, 832.52/22, “State of Pará Offers Gratuitous 370,000-Acre Concessions of Rubber-Producing Lands in Development Project,” November 13, 1925; National Archives, RG 59, micro-film 0519, roll 43, 832.6176F75/1, Minter to State, July 5, 1927; RG 59, Micro-film 0519, roll 43, 832.6176F75/2, Minter to State, July 11, 1927; BFRC, Reminiscences, O. Z. Ide; Machado, “Ford and Farquhar,” pp. 284–96.

  9. BFRC, accession 285, box 20, letter from Schurz to Liebold, July 21, 1925; BFRC, accession 74, box 13, letter from Schurz to Henry Ford, September 12, 1925; Machado, “Farquhar and Ford,” pp. 260–61. See also Hoff, American Business and Foreign Policy, pp. 206–7, for similar practices by attachés in Asia.

  10. National Archives, RG 59, microfilm 0519, roll 43, 832.6176F75/1, Minter to State, July 5, 1927, enclosure 2.

  11. National Archives, RG 59, microfilm 0519, roll 43, 832.6176F75/1, Minter to State, July 5, 1927, enclosure 4, National Archives, microfilm 0519, roll 43, 832.6176F75/3, Minter to State, July 22, 1927; Machado, “Ford and Farquhar,”p. 306; National Archives, RG 59, microfilm 0519, roll 43, 832.6176F75/1, Minter to State, July 5, 1927, enclosure 1.

  12. BFRC, accession 74, box 17, Villares to Greite, August 14, 1926.

  13. National Archives, RG 59, microfilm 0519, roll 43, 832.6176F75/1, Minter to State, July 5, 1927, enclosure 4.

  Chapter 6: They Will All Die

  1. Machado, “Farquhar and Ford,” p. 225; BFRC, accession 285, box 696, Henry Ford Office; Dean, Struggle for Rubber, pp. 72, 75.

  2. BFRC, vertical file, “A Report of the Exploration of the Tapajós Valley by Carl D. LaRue,” April 19, 1927.

  3. Brinkley, Wheels for the World, p. 368.

  4. Leon Jacobs, “Hookworm Disease,” American Journal of Nursing, November 1940, pp. 1191–96.

  5. Barbara Weinstein, The Amazon Rubber Boom, 1850–1920, Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1983, pp. 75, 250–60.

  6. John R. Lee, “The So-Called Profit Sharing System in the Ford Plant,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences 65 (May 1916): 305; Meyer, The Five Dollar Day.

  7. Nevins and Hill, Ford, p. 614.

  8. Michael Edward Stanfield, Red Rubber, Bleeding Trees: Violence, Slavery, and Empire in Northwest Amazonia, 1850–1933, Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998.

  9. Hounshell, From the American System, p. 276; David Halberstam, The Reckoning, New York: William Morrow, 1986, p. 90; Baldwin, Henry Ford and the Jews, p. 231.

  10. Brinkley, Wheels for the World, p. 362; Segal, Recasting the Machine Age, p. 30.

  11. Collier and Horowitz, The Fords, p. 99; Halberstam, The Reckoning, p. 94.

  12. Marquis, Henry Ford: An Interpretation, p. 76.
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  13. “Mr. Ford’s Opportunity,” New York Times, March 20, 1927.

  14. Lacy, Ford, p. 217; Baldwin, Henry Ford and the Jews, pp. 222, 237.

  15. Baldwin, Henry Ford and the Jews, p. 237.

  Chapter 7: Everything Jake

  1. Royal Davis, “Cycles in the Automobile Pneumatic Tire Renewal Market in the United States,” Journal of the American Statistical Association 26, Supplement: Proceedings of the American Statistical Association (March 1931): 10–19.

  2. Roy Nash, The Conquest of Brazil (1926), New York: Biblo and Tannen, 1998, p. 200.

  3. Sean Dennis Cashman, America in the Twenties and Thirties: The Olympian Age of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, New York: NYU Press, 1989, p. 19.

  4. Collier and Horowitz, The Fords, pp. 122–23, 133; Thomas Bonsall, “Edsel: The Forgotten Ford,” Automobile Quarterly, Fall 1991, p. 21, cited in Brinkley, Wheels for the World, p. 401.

  5. “Life with Henry,” Time Magazine, October 8, 1951.

  6. BFRC, “Diary Kept by Judge O. Z. Ide during South American Trip to Investigate Possible Sites for Rubber Plantation, June–November 1927”; BFRC, Reminiscences, O. Z. Ide.

  7. Ferreira de Castro, A Selva, p. 10; Thomas Orum, “The Women of the Open Door: Jews in the Belle Epoque Amazonian Demimonde, 1890–1920,” Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies 19 (2001): 86–99.

  8. National Archives, RG 59, microfilm 0519, roll 43, 832.6176F75/4, Minter to State, July 22, 1927.

  9. National Archives, RG 59, microfilm 0519, roll 43, 832.6176F75/5, State to Minter, nd; National Archives, RG 59, microfilm 0519, roll 43, 832.6176F75/3, Minter to State, July 23, 1927; Machado, “Farquhar and Ford,” p. 310.

  10. BFRC, Reminiscences, O. Z. Ide; National Archives, RG 59, microfilm 0519, roll 43, 832.6176F75/5, State to Minter, nd; National Archives, RG 59, microfilm 0519, roll 43, 832.6176F75/3, Minter to State, July 23, 1927; Machado, “Farquhar and Ford,” p. 310.

  11. BFRC, Reminiscences, O. Z. Ide.

  12. Wilkins and Hill, American Business Abroad, p. 169; BFRC, Reminiscences, O. Z. Ide.

  13. National Archives, RG 59, microfilm 0519, roll 43, 832.6176F75/3, Minter to State, July 23, 1927; BFRC, “Diary Kept by Judge O. Z. Ide during South American Trip.”

  14. Machado, “Farquhar and Ford,” p. 311.

  15. First mention of “Fordlandia” in company records is in the Ford News, November 1, 1928; BFRC, accession 74, box 13, “Rubber Production.”

  16. BFRC, accession 196, “O. Z. Ide Fordlandia”; BFRC, accession 301, box 2.

  Chapter 8: When Ford Comes

  1. National Archives, RG 59, microfilm 0519, roll 43, 832.6176F75/3, Minter to State, July 23, 1927.

  2. Iron Mountain News, February 11, 1930.

  3. BFRC, Reminiscences, E. G. Liebold, p. 630.

  4. David Cleary, “ ‘Lost Altogether to the Civilised World’: Race and the Cabanagem in Northern Brazil, 1750–1850,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 40 (January 1998): 109–35; Hemming, Tree of Rivers, p. 122.

  5. Hemming, Tree of Rivers, p. 122; Cleary, “ ‘Lost Altogether to the Civilised World,’ ”p. 131.

  6. Weinstein, The Amazon Rubber Boom, p. 42.

  7. George Washington Sears, Forest Runes, Forest and Stream Publishing Company, 1887, pp. 157–58; Hecht, “The Last Unfinished Page of Genesis,” p. 61.

  8. Author’s interview with Diogo Franco, March 14, 2008.

  9. Henry Albert Phillips, Brazil: Bulwark of Inter-American Relations, New York: Hastings House, 1945, p. 63; James Orton, The Andes and the Amazon, New York: Harper and Brothers, 1870, p. 200; David Riker, “The Last Southern Seed,” unpublished manuscript.

  10. BFRC, vertical file, Rubber Plantations, Correspondence; Ford R. Bryan, “Henry’s So-Called Rubber Plantation in Florida”; “Ford Plans Rubber Grove,” New York Times, February 17, 1925, p. 10; Williams Johns Cummings, ed., From Kingsford: The Town Ford Built in Dickinson Country, Michigan (scrapbook of newspaper clippings in Iron Mountain’s public library).

  11. Eimar Franco, O Tapajós que eu vi (memórias), Santarém: Instituto Cultural Boanerges Sena, 1998, p. 39; author’s interview with Eimar Franco, March 16, 2008.

  12. Aubrey Stuart, trans., How Henry Ford Is Regarded in Brazil: Articles by Monteiro Lobato, Rio de Janeiro, 1926 (available in Yale’s Sterling Library); Thomas Skid-more, “Brazil’s American Illusions: From Dom Pedro II to the Coup of 1964,” Luso-Brazilian Review 23 (Winter 1986): 77; Machado, “Farquhar and Ford,”p. 311; Lourenço, “Americanos e caboclos,” p. 38; Edward Tomlinson, “Jungle Gold,” Collier’s Weekly, December 12, 1936.

  13. Tomlinson, “Jungle Gold.”

  14. John P. Harrison, “Science and Politics: Origins and Objectives of Mid-Nineteenth Century Government Expeditions to Latin America,” Hispanic American Historical Review 35 (May 1955): 189; John Homer Galey, “The Politics of Development in the Brazilian Amazon, 1940–1950,” PhD dissertation, Stanford University, 1977, p. 2.

  15. Folha do Norte, March 2, 1929.

  16. BFRC, accession 74, box 14, “Black Book: Strictly Confidential.” Gazeta de Noticias published Souza Castro’s attacks throughout May 1928.

  17. O Jornal, February 19, 1928; Assis Chateaubriand, As nuvens que vêm: Discourses parlamentares, Rio de Janeiro: Edições Cruzeiro, 1963, pp. 360–62.

  18. O Jornal, February 19, 1928; Assis Chateaubriand, As nuvens que vêm, pp. 360–62; Lourenço, “Americanos e caboclos,” pp. 35, 38.

  19. BFRC, accession 285, box 420, Liebold to de Lima, October 28, 1925; de Lima, Recordações de homens e cousas do meu tempo, pp. 373–77.

  Chapter 9: Two Rivers

  1. BFRC, accession 74, box 13, “Rubber Production in Amazon Valley.”

  2. McCarthy, “Henry Ford, Industrial Conservationist?”; “Ford May Use Waste Fire,” Los Angeles Times, April 11, 1928.

  3. Bryan, Beyond the Model T, pp. 140–50, 155; Nevins and Hill, Ford, p. 610.

  4. Ford News, March 15, 1928; August 1, 1928.

  5. “Ford Rubber Plantation Ship Leaves Detroit,” New York Times, July 27, 1928; “Ford Expedition Starts to Exploit Rubber Tract,” Washington Post, July 27, 1928; “Ford Voyagers,” Detroit News, July 28, 1928; Ford News, August 19, 1928.

  6. BFRC, Reminiscences, Ernest Liebold.

  7. “City That Lost Chance Offered It by Ford,” New York Times, March 2, 1930; Howard Wolf and Ralph Wolf, Rubber: A Story of Glory and Greed, New York: Covici Friede, 1936, p. 239.

  8. “Ford Sends Party to Start Rubber Culture in Brazil,” Christian Science Monitor, July 27, 1928; “Ford Voyagers,” Detroit News, July 28, 1928.

  9. Detroit News, July 25, 1928; July 26, 1928; July 29, 1928.

  10. “Henry Ford, 65, Pledges Speed,” Detroit Times, July 30, 1928; BFRC, accession 1, box 11.

  11. BFRC, accession 38, box 61, “History of the Companhia Ford Industrial Do Brasil since Its Inception.”

  12. BFRC, accession 74, box 17, Oxholm to Sorensen, September 28, 1928; “Ford Plan Arouses Acclaim in Brazil,” New York Times, November 25, 1928.

  13. Brett C. Millier, Elizabeth Bishop: Life and the Memory of It, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995, p. 309.

  14. Nash, The Conquest of Brazil, p. 201.

  15. Hugh Raffles, In Amazonia: A Natural History, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002, p. 25; BFRC, accession 6, box 74, “The Ford Rubber Plantations.”

  16. BFRC, accession 74, box 2, “Report on visit of W. E. Carnegie, 1929.”

  17. “With Ford on the Amazon: The story of the Ford Plantation, an Eye-Witness,” Planter, January 1931, in BFRC, vertical file, “Rubber Plantations”; BFRC, accession 285, box 748; BFRC, accession 74, box 13, “Black Binder.”

  18. Lourenço, “Americanos e caboclos,” p. 40; “With Ford on the Amazon”; BFRC, accession 38, box 61, Oxholm to Sorensen, January 19, 1929.

  Chapter 10: Smoke and Ash

  1. BFRC, accession 74, box 13; National Archives, RG 59, microfilm 0519,
roll 43, 832.6176F75/3, Minter to State, July 23, 1927.

  2. BFRC, accession 74, box 13.

  3. Machado, “Farquhar and Ford,” p. 319; BFRC, accession 74, box 13; BFRC, accession 301, box 2; BFRC, accession 74, box 2, “Report on Visit of W. E. Carnegie.”

  4. Brinkley, Wheels for the World, p. 189.

  5. Phillips, Brazil, p. 56.

  6. Franco, O Tapajós, p. 81; author’s interview, Eimar Franco, March 16, 2008.

  7. Machado, “Farquhar and Ford,” p. 318; BFRC, accession 74, box 17, “Alleged Scandal about Our Concession”; National Archives, RG 59, microfilm 0519, roll 43, 832.6176F75/14, Minter to State, November 25, 1927.

  8. Machado, “Farquhar and Ford,” p. 318; BFRC, “Alleged Scandal about Our Concession”; Minter to State, November 25, 1927; BFRC, accession 38, box 113; BFRC, accession 74, box 1, Roberge, November 23, 1934; BFRC, accession 301, box 2, “Notes of Rubber Company Matters”; BFRC, accession 38, box 113, Longley to Sorensen, July 2, 1928.

  9. BFRC, accession 74, box 17, “Interplant Correspondence.”

  10. National Archives, RG 59, microfilm 0519, roll 43, 832.6176F75/2, Minter to State, July 11, 1927; 832.6176F75/29, Drew to State, April 22, 1929; BFRC, accession 390, box 86, Johnston to Wibel, October 9, 1933; “Ford Handicapped by Labor Scarcity,” New York Times, October 20, 1929; Machado, “Farquhar and Ford,” pp. 317, 358–63; BFRC, “Alleged Scandal about our Concession.”

  11. National Archives, RG 59, microfilm 0519, roll 43, 832.6176F75/22, Drew to State, December 15, 1928; Machado, “Farquhar and Ford,” p. 343.

  12. Hoffman, Wings of Madness, p. 279.

  13. “Henry Ford Still Thinks Soldiers Are Murderers,” New York Times, July 16, 1919; Wik, Henry Ford and Grass-Roots America, p. 253.

  14. Hoffman, Wings of Madness, p. 302.

  15. Hoffman, Wings of Madness, p. 300; David Omissi, Air Power and Colonial Control: The Royal Air Force, 1919–1939, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990.

  16. “Air Crash Kills 14 in Rio,” New York Times, December 4, 1928.

  17. Hoffman, Wings of Madness, p. 310; Samuel Guy Inman, Latin America: Its Place in World Life, Freeport, N.Y.: Ayer, 1972, pp. 223–25; Matthew Hughes, “Logistics of the Chaco War, 1932–1935,” Journal of Military History 69 (2005): 411–37.