Motor City Shakedown

by D. E. Johnson

  I shuffled from foot to foot. “I really would like to help you in the front office … if I could.”

  Mr. MacFarlane’s eyes narrowed, and he gave me a bit of a scowl. “Do ye suppose, lad, that pushing papers around is going to help as much?”

  “No, I suppose not. I’ll help out, of course.” The project would still allow me to spend time with my father, which might slow down the Gianollas enough to let me figure a way out of this. But I had to talk with someone about my problems.

  * * *

  The secretary walked me down the hallway past dozens of doors. I peeked in and saw men hunched over their desks, pens scratching furiously.

  As I got closer, I heard Mr. Ford’s voice rising over the quiet office. “You said Tuesday! Listen to me, Dodge. If I don’t see those chassis by Tuesday, I’m going to find someone else! You hear me?” The receiver banged against the candlestick, and the shouting was replaced by low muttering.

  We had just reached Edsel’s door when his father came storming out of his office. I’d never seen him smile, and this was not going to be the first time. He was a small man who looked more a Kansas dirt farmer or New England minister than a tycoon, but he carried the unmistakable aura of power.

  And he didn’t like me.

  He stopped abruptly. “Anderson.” His voice carried a note of derision. “They let you out. Haven’t killed anyone lately, have you?”

  I nodded a tentative greeting. “Mr. Ford. How are you today?”

  “How am I today?” He barked out a laugh. “Suppliers that fail me, employees that loaf, banks that all want a piece of me. How do you think I’m doing?”

  My hand burned, and I realized I was rubbing it. I stopped. “I’m sorry, sir. If there’s anything I can do…” Edsel was standing in his doorway. I hadn’t noticed him before.

  “Yes, there’s something you can do. Let my son get his work done.”

  “I only need a minute of his time.”

  Ford turned to the secretary, said, “Time him,” and stomped off down the hall.

  The secretary looked at me, shrugged, and pulled his watch from his waistcoat. “Proceed.”

  Edsel grimaced an apology. I could see his embarrassment in his big dark eyes. “I’m done in half an hour. Why don’t you grab a cup of coffee across the street.”

  I nodded. “Thanks.” The secretary escorted me out of the building, making uncomfortable small talk until he was finally able to leave me at the door.

  I ran across Woodward, dodging traffic, and ducked inside the huge automat. Men, women, and children bustled back and forth. Plates, cups, and silverware clanked and pinged, conversation so ubiquitous as to be nothing more than a loud hum. It had been less than two years since the first Detroit automat opened, and they were now the rage. In front of me were hundreds of little windows, filled with coffee cups and a variety of foods. A few distorted figures were visible behind the glass—a section of face here, the white of a cook’s hat there—but only one restaurant employee was out with the customers, and all she did was ladle out nickels for change. In another wave of “progress,” our eating experience had become impersonal and sterile, yet another factory setting, this time a food factory built to feed people in as little time as possible.

  I looked around at the patrons. Most were hunched over their plates, shoveling food into their mouths, as if fearful someone would steal their hamburgers or wilted vegetables or gluey apple pie.

  Studying faces, I saw one thing in common—tension. Worry lines, rapid movement, loud bursts of conversation before diving back into the food. Was this what my father saw in me? This nervousness, almost a fever, that held people in its sway? It was no wonder so many Americans were suffering from neurasthenia, and no wonder it was called Americanitis. We seemed to be perfecting the art of nervousness.

  We were all in such a hurry—rushing from home to work to a game to a recital to home to work and so on—that this type of restaurant was a revelation to many. But this was exactly what was wrong with this country. People hurrying through their lives, rats scurrying from one place to another as quickly as they could without half a thought as to why.

  I joined the rats. I stuck nickels into a pair of slots and grabbed a hamburger and a cup, which I filled from the nearby coffee urn. Dodging other customers, I picked my way to a window seat and looked out at the frantic scene in front of me. The area was so busy you’d have thought Highland Park was just more of Detroit. Ford employed thousands, adding more workers all the time, and smaller buildings radiated around the factory like supplicants bowing to their master.

  I ate the sandwich and gazed at the factory while I thought. The building, more windows than walls, was bright on the inside, saving Mr. Ford a fortune in electricity bills. On this day, the windows sparkled like a wall of light. The only evidence of industry was the filth spewing from the five huge smokestacks standing guard over the building.

  Murmured conversation behind me suddenly coalesced, as it does when a familiar word or phrase cuts through the wall of noise surrounding us. A man said, “Will Anderson.” I turned around in my seat. Half a dozen young men in wool trousers and dirty white cotton shirts, with caps on the table in front of them, looked away quickly. I caught an eye or two. They were … afraid of me?

  I turned back to the window and lit a cigarette. Six men in the prime of life, yet my celebrity caused them to fear me. Will Anderson—the killer, the Electric Executioner. Though I had been exonerated both times I’d been brought to trial, the people of Detroit would forever know me as a murderer, guilty in the court of public opinion. Maybe I’d have to consider a change of scenery. Once I got rid of the Gianollas.

  A hand clapped me on the shoulder. I jumped.

  “Will, my lad. It’s so good to see you again.” Edsel grinned down at me and set a coffee cup on the table.

  As he slid his slender frame into a seat, I said, “Got an office by the old man now, huh?”

  “Yes, he wants me nearby. Can’t do too much damage that way, you know?”

  I pulled my cigarette case from my pocket and offered him one.

  “No,” he said, glancing out the window. “Not so close to the factory. Have to set an example.” He smiled, but I knew him well enough to see he wasn’t happy about it. “Is this a social call, or is there something you wanted to speak with me about?”

  “I’ve got a few problems, and I need some ideas.”

  “I’m happy to try.”

  I leaned in and told him about the Gianollas and the Teamsters and the Adamos, and, finally, about my project at the Anderson Electric Car Company. He sipped his coffee and listened, missing nothing, asking questions and clarifying, until I had finished.

  He wrapped both hands around his now empty cup and leaned in toward me. “Your father will never let the Teamsters in. Even if he wanted to, the Employers Association wouldn’t let him. Heck, the other car companies would string him up.”

  “You tell that to the Gianolla brothers.”

  “Go to the police.”

  “I did. Riordan wouldn’t give me the time of day.”

  “What about the state police?”

  I thought for a moment, biting the inside of my lip. “Gianolla said he had men in the city police, the sheriffs, and the staties. If he was telling the truth, my family’d be dead.”

  “Well, that doesn’t leave many options. The only way you’re going to get out of this is to get the Gianollas arrested—or killed.”

  “I do have one idea—if I can find Vito Adamo.”

  Edsel arched his eyebrows.

  I took a deep breath and articulated my idea for the first time. “The Adamos obviously hate the Gianollas as much as the Gianollas hate them. If I could arrange a meeting between the two factions and make sure the Adamos have the upper hand, they might be able to eliminate my problem.”

  Edsel leaned in still closer and spoke quietly. “But you’d be helping your enemy.”

  “I can put aside my desire for revenge
to save my family, and I bet he’d do the same to win this war with the Gianollas.”

  “He might think you killed Moretti. You’d be taking quite a chance.”

  “Give me another solution.”

  He pursed his lips and shook his head slowly. “No great ideas come to mind. But I’ll think on it. As to your other problem, I’ll do your efficiency homework for you. That’s practically all my father’s working on. I’ll show you some of the things he’s trying, and it’ll look like you’re burning the midnight oil.” He reached over the table and clasped the back of my neck. “You take care of the big problem, and I’ll take care of the small one.”

  “Thank you, Edsel. You’re not half as big an ass as everyone says you are.”

  “Ah.” He waved a hand in front of him. “It’s not like we’re competitors. Much as he’d like to, my father’s never going to come out with an electric. He and Mr. Edison talk about it all the time, but unless there’s a dramatic breakthrough in price it’ll never happen. So drink up. We’ll go look at a few things. You just have to keep this between us boys.”

  I nodded and took a last gulp of coffee, and we left the restaurant, heading back across the street to the factory. Bypassing the office entrance, we walked in a side door and climbed the steps to the second floor.

  Edsel held the door open to a room perhaps three hundred feet long, with partially assembled Model T’s and a huge variety of parts scattered around. Draftsmen’s tables nearly filled the window wall. A long conveyor belt, like you might see in a production bakery, ran down the center of the room with smaller belts feeding into it from the sides. Car chassis in various states of completion sat atop it. The long belt went into, and out of, a pair of enclosed rooms.

  As we walked over to the tables, Edsel asked, “How many man-hours do you have in an automobile’s production?”

  “I have no idea,” I admitted.

  He frowned at me. “If you don’t know where you’re starting from, how are you going to know if you’ve made any improvement?”

  I held my hands up in front of me, a gesture of surrender. “Point taken.”

  “In 1910 it took us twelve and a half man-hours to build a flivver. Two years later we’re tracking at eight. And my father wants to improve that fourfold.”

  “Two hours per car? That’s not possible.”

  “You tell him that. Anyway, here’s what we’re working on. The first thing is interchangeable parts. We’ve got that down now, though Mr. Olds certainly beat us to it. You wouldn’t believe what a difference it makes. Just having every part fit without adjustment takes a load of hours off the build process.” He picked up a brake assembly and inspected it. “One one-hundredth of an inch tolerance. Every part fits.”

  “Well, sure,” I said. “Common knowledge. We can’t do it at this point, but we certainly understand interchangeable parts.”

  He smiled. “Here’s the difference.” He turned and walked back to the beginning of the big conveyor belt. “We could use almost any factory as an example, but let’s use yours. You have a number of departments, body and paint and chassis and so on, and every car is carted from one of those to the next. You have dozens of workmen doing nothing more than moving cars around the floor.” He looked at me for confirmation.

  I nodded. “So you’re working on an assembly line. The Olds plant had those, what, ten years ago? Hardly a revolution.”

  He gave me a sly grin. “Well, this one’s a little different. One of our men,” he said, and paused. “Do you know Pa Klann?”

  I shook my head.

  “Well, no matter. Pa toured one of the big Chicago slaughterhouses last year. He said it was fascinating, though I think it would make me vomit. Apparently they hook the pigs to an overhead conveyor, and every man has a single part to cut off from every pig. The chain delivers the pig to the man, and he hacks off a bit while it’s moving past him. At the end of the line there’s nothing left. Assembly line efficiency at its highest level.” He made a disgusted face. “Or perhaps I should say ‘disassembly line.’”

  “Sounds thoroughly sickening,” I said. “And can you imagine doing the same thing hundreds—thousands?—of times a day? Every day? I’d shoot myself. But I still don’t understand how this idea differs from the Olds model.”

  “The difference is simple. Each process is broken down to eliminate bottlenecks. Each of the feeder lines is timed out so those parts hit the assembly line at the proper moment. The car never stops moving.”

  “Sounds like Taylorism.”

  Edsel laughed. “Don’t let my father hear you say that. He already dislikes you enough. We call it Fordism.” He put a hand on my arm. “What would you say if I told you we’re almost to the point where we can build a complete automobile that never leaves an assembly line? And drive the completed car off at the end?”

  I gawped at him. “I’d say you’re off your rocker. It’s impossible. Unless, perhaps, you’re going to build a ten-mile-long assembly line so you can get the paint to dry before the car runs out of belt.”

  His smile wavered. “That’s the only holdup. Here, let’s…” He motioned toward the rooms enclosing the belt, and we began walking toward them. “Our engineers have tried thousands of different kinds of paint, and so far have found only one that dries fast enough.”

  “Really?” I said. “I can’t believe there’d be even one. But I don’t understand. Why isn’t one enough?”

  He stopped at the entrance to one of the rooms, which I saw now was a paint room, and pulled one of many large pieces of steel off the belt. He held it up so I could see the shiny black finish. “Not just one kind of paint. One kind and one color—Japan black.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “Black?” I said. “You’ve never made an all-black car, have you?”

  “No,” Edsel replied. “Blue with black trim this year. Otherwise red, gray, and green.”

  “They’ll look nice in black.” I nudged his arm and grinned. “Or as nice as a Tin Lizzie can look, anyway. The black might help hide the ugliness.”

  He gave me a shove. “They’re not built for beauty.”

  “You can say that again.”

  We spent half an hour wandering up and down the conveyors, discussing the stages of the assembly line. The floors around the paint rooms were littered with steel parts in reds and greens and blues, the colors the buying public expected.

  “Too bad about the paint,” I said. “I can’t imagine how much money you’d save on production.”

  He shrugged. “Ah, they’ll get it. It’s only a matter of time.”

  “You know, you need to put that mind of yours on another problem—traffic. Figure out how to apply assembly line efficiency to the madhouse out there.” I gestured toward the street.

  He laughed. “Conveyor belts stacked at different heights for different directions—sure, I’ll get right on that.”

  “Something’s got to be done, and soon. Unless there’s a cop on the corner, it’s nothing more than a giant game of chicken.”

  “I hear they’re going to put up a mechanical semaphore at Woodward and Michigan.”

  “A what?”

  He laughed. “It’s a most inelegant solution to the problem. A policeman stands next to a big sign and switches it from Stop to Go and back again.”

  “Perfect. They’ll be taking bids—the driver with the biggest bribe gets to cross the street.”

  Edsel laughed again and clapped me on the shoulder. “Will the cynic.”

  “Thanks for showing me around. This will give me some good ammunition. Any chance you’ll chuck this and finally go to college?”

  He ducked his head and toed the floor. “My father thinks it’s all poppycock. He wants me here. And, really, he needs me here.” He looked up at me. “He needs a counterpoint. Everything to him is price. Make them cheaper, which will sell more, which will make them cheaper, which will sell more, and so on. The Runabout dropped from nine hundred to five-ninety in the last two years—and if
we get this done who knows how far down it’ll go.”

  “And your sales are doubling every year. It’s working, right?”

  “Yes, but what about style? What about speed?”

  “Not in an ‘everyman’s’ automobile. You’re stuck in the most successful car company in the world. Tough luck.”

  He grinned. “I know. It’s tough all over. But if I could just get him to make something besides flivvers. The opportunity is there.” He pulled out his watch and glanced at the face. “Dinnertime. Mother hates it when I’m late.”

  “Oh, hey, I almost forgot. I want to buy one of those cheap cars from you.”

  “For yourself?”

  I nodded. “I can’t deal with the streetcars anymore.”

  “A Runabout?”

  “Torpedoes are faster, right?”

  Edsel gave me a sidelong glance. “Say, if you want speed, why don’t you buy my Torpedo?”

  “You want to sell it?”

  “I’m working on a new Speedster right now. I could drive the electric for a while, so”—he shrugged—“sure.”

  “How much?”

  His face scrunched up while he thought. “How about five hundred?”

  “Sounds like a pretty good deal.”

  He smiled and wagged his eyebrows. “One owner. Drives like an old lady.”

  I snorted. I’d never seen anyone drive faster than Edsel. “I’d like to see that old lady.”

  “You know I made a few modifications, right?”

  “I seem to remember a getaway at about a hundred miles an hour,” I said with a grin.

  “Nah,” he scoffed. “We never even hit fifty on that ride. But it’ll go a lot faster than that.”

  “Sold.”

  “All right. One thing I’ve learned from my father is when they say yes, stop selling and get the money. When do you want it?”

  “How about Friday? I could come by in the evening.”

  “Deal.” He held out his left hand, and I shook it.

  “Wait,” Edsel said, looking down at my gloved right hand. “The throttle control is on the right. How are you going to run it?”