The Arsenal of Democracy: FDR, Detroit, and an Epic Quest to Arm an America at War
Page 44
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* This was a standard contract under Roosevelt’s war production plan. As Roosevelt’s secretary of war, Henry Stimson, put it to the President: “If you are going to war in a capitalist country, you have to let business make money out of the process or business won’t work” (Doris Kearns Goodwin, No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II [New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994], p. 56). A fixed fee enabled manufacturers to do the job right without cutting corners.
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* The author’s grandfather-in-law, Kenneth Wheeldon, studied as a Liberator mechanic at this school.
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* Rose Monroe was not the only woman upon whom the Rosie the Riveter legend is based. The story of Rosie would take a book of its own to fully unravel.
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* The Book-Cadillac Hotel was famous for being the place where Yankee first baseman Lou Gehrig collapsed three years earlier, causing him to miss a game against the Detroit Tigers, ending his streak of 2,130 consecutive games played. Gehrig would later be diagnosed with “Lou Gehrig’s disease.”
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* Today little is known about who at Ford Motor Company knew about the Treasury’s investigation. Nothing about it is stated in Charles Sorensen’s memoirs. It’s quite possible that Henry Ford II knew nothing about it.
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